Maximum Performance & Mental Sabotage

Dr. Jacques Dallaire Ph.D - Founder & President for Performance Prime

Do you MENTALLY SABOTAGE you own performance... and want to know how to stop it? Do you want to learn how to reduce your ANXIETY in the race environment, and in life in general? Do you want to know how to control your FOCUS more effectively in the race car and beyond? Dr. Dallaire has helped more than 800 racers from around the world meet and even exceed their performance goals.

Contact: Dr. Jacques Dallaire Ph.D at Visit Online!

     

• Tell us about your Motorsports background and how you go into this field of sports medicine. 
• So what is Mental Sabotage? – where does this stem from, why do people do it to themselves?
  • How do you reduce your insecurities / anxieties in the race environment, and does this carry over to your life in general?
  • How do you control your focus more effectively, in the race car and beyond?
• Much of what we’re going to talk about next is based on your Performance Equation – and how do you apply / use it?
• STRESS AND FATIGUE – how does it play in?
• So – let’s talk about some recommendations for getting out of your own head… You have this framework called “the Rules of the Mental Road”, there are 7 of them – let’s explore those

and much, much more!

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] BreakFix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all over the autosphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors, designers, and everything in between. Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrolheads that wonder what’s How did they get that job or become that person?

The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.

Crew Chief Eric: No one ever goes into any motorsports event and says today, I want to come in last the essence of competition is that we’re all fighting to be the best. Training, conditioning, practice, and even superstition all seem to go out the window when the green flag drops.

Have you ever wondered why you can be in the zone and perform at your best on a practice day, but during the race, nothing ever seems to come together? Maybe it was bad luck, or maybe You mentally sabotage

Crew Chief Brad: yourself with us to discuss why people psych themselves [00:01:00] out and how to prevent it from happening is Dr.

Jacques Dallaire, PhD founder and president of performance prime, where he spends his time working with race teams of all disciplines to develop the mindset of champions.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right, Brad. And let’s rejoin the action as we recorded live with SRO Motorsports at VIR. Welcome to break fix. Dr. Diller. How are you?

Thank you, gentlemen. I appreciate the invitation. So before we jump into what your area of expertise is in the world of mental therapy, let’s talk about your motor sports background and how you got into this field of sports medicine.

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: Okay, well, I think it’s probably useful to clarify, first of all, I’m not a psychologist, nor am I a psychiatrist.

My background is performance physiology. But I’ve been dealing with the mental skills side of the high performance world for just over 50 years. In addition to the mental skills side, the physical preparation side is something that academically I’ve spent a lot of time studying as well. I got involved with motorsports.

[00:02:00] of mine for a course I was teaching at McGill University back in the early 80s. The course was called Scientific Principles of Training and Conditioning. This gentleman raced karts and he was a real motorsports fan, as well as a competitor at the karting level. And he chose to apply a Project that I had given the students within the class, he had chose to apply that to the sport of motor racing.

And that actually started off my involvement in racing. That year, I found myself at the Formula One Grand Prix with heart rate monitors, measuring the heart rate response of Formula One drivers during practice and qualifying for the Canadian Grand Prix. So that was a start.

Crew Chief Brad: What is mental sabotage?

Where does this stem from? Why do people do it to themselves? How do you reduce your insecurities and anxieties in the race environment? And does this carry over to your life in general?

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: Wow, that’s an interesting series of questions because we could probably spend [00:03:00] 25 to 40 hours talking about those things.

Where does self sabotage comes from? Unfortunately, society today sets us up for self sabotage. Because results are so important, we are constantly reminded and encouraged to worry about results. And because everybody so desperately wants to be successful, they actually do worry about results. And that is fundamentally the cause of their self sabotage.

If you’re focused on how you’re doing, you can’t be fully focused on what you’re doing at the same moment in time.

Crew Chief Eric: How do you control your focus more effectively? In the race car and beyond.

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: It’s a skill. Think of a flashlight and a beam of light. Consider that beam of light, your beam of concentration.

You get to aim it where you want. You can shine it on one wall, or you can turn around and shine it on an opposite wall. You can take that flashlight, spin the head, and make it more like a floodlight, and broaden its [00:04:00] capture. Or you can narrow it like a spotlight, and narrow what it focuses on. So if you think about the skill set of concentration, it’s managing and controlling.

The beam of concentration and where we apply it.

Crew Chief Eric: So on the racetrack, there’s a lot of things going on at the same time. So how does any one person pick the one thing they should be focusing on? How they broaden that floodlight or that spotlight?

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: Depends the situation they’re in. If you’re on a straightaway and there’s a gap between you and the guy in front of you and the guy behind you, you can afford to allow your shift in focus to occur internally.

To think about strategy, to think about a problem you’re having, how you might solve it. If you’re dicing with someone in a corner, you don’t want to be inside your own head because you want to be paying attention to what’s happening around you. Because if you’re inside your own head, When you’re in that corner, you’re not paying attention to the exact spot you’re on on the track, where the other [00:05:00] competitors are, and so on.

So it’s a constant adjustment, a focus of attention, based on the demands of the situation in that moment. Think about it. If you’re thinking about a corner you just messed up, as you drive into the next corner, what is more likely to occur? You’re gonna mess that one up too, right? Why? Because your performance is defined by what you do in this corner right here and right now, but your mind is preoccupied by what you did in the last corner or what you might do four corners from here.

Either of those thought processes are counterproductive because rule number two of the mental road says the conscious mind can only actively process one thought at a time. And if you’re focused four corners away or two laps from now, what are you not focused on in the same moment? What you’re doing right here and right now.

And that’s when people get into trouble. They make mistakes.

Crew Chief Eric: We’ll talk more about the rules of the mental road as we move on here in the conversation, but you brought something to light that [00:06:00] I think was summarized very well by Enzo Ferrari. He says what’s behind you doesn’t matter. We talk about that a lot in high performance driver’s education as coaches, where if we focus too much on what happened in, you know, two corners ago, our students are suffering from the learning that we’re trying to give them in the fact that we’re focusing on something that really isn’t important.

We need to catch that the next time around and keep them focused on driver’s line, what’s going on, being situationally aware, et cetera, et cetera.

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: So I would have said it a little differently myself

Crew Chief Eric: than Enzo.

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: Yeah, honestly, I would have, I would have said it this way. We can learn from what happened before, so it does matter, but I shouldn’t focus on that.

What I should focus on is what’s happening right now.

Crew Chief Eric: So living in the now, per se. Yeah,

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: because there is value to what happened if I use it as a learning opportunity. When you say it doesn’t matter, I know what he meant. He meant it doesn’t matter right now, but it actually does matter.

Crew Chief Eric: Much of what we’re going to talk about in this session revolves around this principle of a performance [00:07:00] equation.

A lot of us are scratching our head going, math? Really? How does this all play in? So how do you apply it? How do you use it? Let’s expand upon this. Can you explain to us what the performance equation is? It’s a

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: simplistic, but I believe profoundly true, way of explaining where results come from. I’ve been doing this for more than 50 years and I’ve never had, as you said in your introduction, I’ve never had someone visit with me and say, I want to be a loser.

I’d like to fail. I’m really hoping to come in last this weekend. Can you show me how to suck at this thing I’m about to do? Because I’d really like to suck at it. No one’s ever said that. And that’s because everybody wants to be successful, because success is a heck of a lot better than failure. For lots of reasons, right?

So the really important question is not, does everybody share the same goal? Because I am certain, I’m at VAR as you guys are this weekend, I’m certain that every single competitor, not just the drivers, but crew members, team bosses, sanctioning body people, everybody hopes for [00:08:00] success this weekend. That’s the goal.

It’s not a single person who wants to lose. More important question is how do you make results be as good as they can possibly be? And that’s where the performance equation comes in. Something I created about 35 years ago as a way of explaining how results are generated. And there are two components.

The equation reads as such. A times B equals results. This has been true since the dinosaurs roamed the earth. And it will be true for the next 300 years or at least as long as we’re on this rock. So what does it mean? The A in the equation represents my performance. What I bring to the party in the moment when my performance is required.

In the race car, in a negotiation, in a presentation, on date night, doing brain surgery, singing a musical piece on the stage at Carnegie Hall, whatever it happens to be. In that moment, the knowledge, skill, experience that I bring. It’s part of that A game. It’s not good enough just to [00:09:00] have it, I also have to bring it.

Which means I have to put in the effort and make the commitment to bring my A game. Because I could be knowledgeable, skillful, and experienced, but be lazy. Or sleep deprived, or dehydrated, or haven’t been eating well, or sleeping well. All of those things contribute to minimize the quality of the A I bring to that moment.

So, our A game is the best version of us. Influenced by things that may reduce that to some degree. So the question is this, if a driver on this paddock brings their honest to God, a game to the party this weekend, and let’s sweeten the pot, every member of their team in their respective job brings their a game to the party as well, are they guaranteed to get the result they want?

Brad, what do you think? I’m gonna say yes. No, of course not. Of course not. You know, some people say yes, absolutely. I said, so, you’re telling me that if I could guarantee [00:10:00] you that you’re gonna bring your A game, and every member of your team will bring their A game, you would bet your parents house that you’re gonna win this race.

And then they think about it, and they say,

Crew Chief Eric: Mmm. I only bet if I know I’m going to win.

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: Yeah. Right. If I know I’m going to win. As we know, there are other things. Because if that’s all it took, the equation would read A equals results, wouldn’t it? Right. And who in their right mind wouldn’t simply bring the best they’ve got, and they’d be guaranteed to win.

So there’s a second variable in the equation. And you’ll see where I’m going with this. The second variable are the B factors. By definition, all the things that I can’t control. Doesn’t mean they’re always B minus, and they work against me. Sometimes I am the windshield. Sometimes I’m the bug, though. It’s a B minus when it’s bad, but sometimes it’s a B plus.

Sometimes the B’s are very big, and they have a significant influence on the outcome. Sometimes they’re small. They happen, but I can drive around it. [00:11:00] Is it not true that in life in general, In everything, the results we accomplish are a product of what we bring to the moment of our performance, influenced by the things we cannot control.

I think that’s fundamentally true.

Crew Chief Eric: It is.

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: It applies everywhere. So, where does the self sabotage comes in? When I ask people this question, why do you not always have the mindset that leads to those moments of personal virtuosity? Where you’re in your sweet spot, your groove and your zone. How do we explain why someone does so well on a practice day, chokes in the big moment of performance, only to come back and win practice again?

It’s not because we forget how to do on Sunday afternoon what we did so effectively on Thursday and Friday, and then miraculously remember again on Monday, or lose the ability on Sunday and then find it again on Monday. Something happens to corrupt our mindset that prevents us from bringing our skill set to bear in that moment of performance.[00:12:00]

So I ask the question, what is it that gets in the way and corrupts your mindset that prevents you from bringing that skill set that you obviously possess to bear when the chips are on the table and it’s go time? What do you think, Brad?

Crew Chief Brad: I think I need to know what this is. Well,

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: you tell me what you think it is.

I bet you do know. When you have struggled to put that moment of performance, virtuosity, that sometimes it can manifest, when it’s not there, what is it that gets in the way? Well, I mean, the obvious answer, I think, is myself. What exactly? That’s a pretty broad answer, myself.

Crew Chief Brad: I have a tendency to overthink things over and over and over and over.

And what does

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: that lead to?

Crew Chief Brad: Doubt, self doubt.

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: I’ve asked that question. Of thousands of people around the globe, in many different professions, very successful people. 100 percent of the time, I get the same two answers. Doesn’t matter what culture, language, gender, job. Or how old they are. I get the same two answers.

90 percent of the [00:13:00] time, it is the same answer first. Guess what I hear? Fear. A failure. Self doubt. Lack of confidence. Worry over the consequences of failure. Worry about disappointing someone. Worrying about getting hurt. Worrying about crashing. In a nutshell, worrying about failing. And the reason it burns the hottest is because that is the one that creates the greatest amount of anxiety.

Think about it. We never have anxiety unless we are worried. Because when you’re not worried, you’re not anxious, are you? You create the anxiety in yourself through worry. And what is it that most people worry about? Failure.

Crew Chief Eric: So, you’d say it’s a little bit of a self fulfilling prophecy then?

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: Absolutely. One leads to the other.

It’s tied directly to how the unconscious mind takes its directives from our conscious thought. We don’t have time to get into all that relationship, but it’s all tied together. But [00:14:00] here’s the key. When you understand that your anxiety is a product of your thought process, and you realize that you have a hundred percent control over how you choose to think, then You can change your anxiety response.

By thinking differently.

Crew Chief Eric: So a couple things here to unpack to your point of earlier, stress and fatigue play a big part in our performance as well. And sometimes that will degrade our ability to perform at maximum. And I think we get inside our own heads in that respect to going, Oh man, I’m tired. I really don’t know if I can do this.

I’m not in the mood, you know, all that whole thing. But then there’s also the other side of this. When we bring it back to motor sports, I feel that for the guys that are at the upper echelon of racing, it’s really about risk mitigation. How far can they go before it’s too far? And then if they do scare themselves, again, that fear factor comes into play, then that’s when their performance starts to fall apart.

But until that point, it’s complete full send the whole way through until something bad [00:15:00] happens. And maybe they’re thinking, I’m just lucky nothing’s ever happened.

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: I think there’s an interplay that exists between experience. And that comfort level that leads to confidence. The experienced driver is willing to go straighter and more quickly right to the edge of control.

Because he has more confidence in his ability to manage the car at the edge of control. The cushion is thinner. He gets there faster and it is closer to the edge. The novice or the person who doesn’t have quite as much experience takes a lot longer. More laps to get to that. And usually the cushion is fatter because he doesn’t have the confidence to trust that he can bring it back if it does go off the edge.

Because sometimes you can. Right?

Crew Chief Brad: But with that point, it makes me think that there’s a correlation between experience and confidence. There are other factors though. Oh,

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: for [00:16:00] sure. There is a relationship between confidence and experience. If you look at the research literature in the area of confidence, it tells us that there are two principal things that contribute to this question, this issue of confidence.

The first is preparation. The more well prepared I am, the more I’ve practiced, the more I’ve rehearsed, the more I have trained, the more confident I become. It is both a psychological and a neuropsychological influence. The psychological influence is I prove to myself repeatedly through practice that I actually can do this.

Because I’ve successfully done it in practice. The neuropsychological piece is, I groove the neural pathways, in particular when we’re talking about skill sets, where I improve the efficiency of that execution that simply reinforces that I’m getting better and better at doing this, and then it builds. So that’s the first piece, that’s that correlation between confidence [00:17:00] and experience or preparation.

And if you ask most people, When they start to lose confidence, here’s what they’ll tell you. When the results I’m getting, or I fear I might get, are not good, my confidence goes down. But when the results are good, or I believe they’re going to be good, my confidence tends to be high. Isn’t that

Crew Chief Eric: true?

Simply put, I view it as confidence being a lack of fear. Going back to that risk mitigation conversation. If again, you try something, you try something and nothing bad happens, you grow your confidence and I can continue to do those actions or those behaviors or whatever that thing is, whether it be sports or otherwise, I can keep getting away with it.

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: As long as I believe the thing we’re doing is doable. Correct. As long as I believe it’s doable. The moment I believe it’s not doable. Confidence goes out the window.

Crew Chief Eric: Einstein said nothing’s impossible, just improbable, right?

Crew Chief Brad: There you go. There you go. To me, when you talk about the luck and, you know, [00:18:00] nothing bad has ever happened, a prime example of the opposite happening is Nicky Lauda.

I mean, he had all the confidence in the world, and then he had that terrible accident. He was in the car two weeks later. With his head wrapped up, uh, like a Yeah, I mean, any normal, sane person like us would just be like, Well, I’m never getting in the car again. But not a Superman like him. So what gave him that Superman ability?

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: Fear is an interesting one. Because it has to do with what I believe I am capable of, right? I may be able to do it. Actually, I may have the skill and the ability to do it, but if I don’t believe I can, I will have fear. If on the other hand, I can’t do it, but I believe I can do it. I won’t have any fear.

It’s misguided because I’m going to put it in the weeds, but it is a product. Like fear is a product of false expectations that appear so real. If you think of the acronym FEAR, F E [00:19:00] A R, false expectations appearing so real in the moment, and yet the reality of it is, how often do our fears actually materialize?

Not that often. And yet they limit us. Why?

Crew Chief Brad: Because we let them.

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: Because we think they might. And that undermines our confidence, and when our confidence is down, our willingness to go closer to the edge goes down. And that affects our performance.

Crew Chief Eric: So the question is, how do we fix that?

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: I think the first thing that’s useful to consider is cutting the titanium cable that exists between confidence and results.

If the performance equation is true, the only thing in the A times B equals results equation I can actually control is A, what I do, what I bring to the party. I cannot control results because I can’t control the many things I can’t control, all the B factors in the equation. That’s fundamentally true in everything.

And yet, we [00:20:00] associate our confidence with outcome. We tend to have good confidence when results are good and bad confidence when they’re not. So it’s a fallacy if you think about it. If we’ve connected with that titanium cable, confidence and results, confidence will only be good when results are good, but it’ll be bad when results are not there.

Perhaps through no fault of our own, because of a B factor in the environment, and yet our confidence will not allow us to perform at the level that we’re capable of. We will sabotage ourselves. It really is that straightforward. So, what do you do with that connection? You sever that connection, and you re establish a new connection between confidence and the belief and commitment that I will lean into every challenge in front of me.

Win, lose or draw, can’t control that. But knowing that I will lean into every challenge and bring the best I’ve got. Confident that no matter how big the challenge is, I can do that. And you know what the great thing [00:21:00] is about that? It’s 100 percent in our control. So why worry if it’s 100 percent in our control?

All we have to do is work at executing that. Confidence stays high. You will be disappointed about lousy results on occasion, and that’s A OK. But those lousy results won’t gut your confidence, because confidence is not about something that you can’t control and that hasn’t happened yet, which is what results are.

Crew Chief Brad: So something tells me that the key to severing that connection lies in your rules of the mental road. It does. So let’s let’s explore those those seven rules. The

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: rules I created decades ago as a simple framework to help people to understand exactly what the thought process is that leads to mental self sabotage and also how they can avoid that trap.

Rule number one says, if you want to climb out of a hole, the first thing you have to do is recognize [00:22:00] that you’re digging. Stop digging. Then you can climb out of the hole because it’s impossible to be digging and climbing out of the hole at the same time. So what does that mean from a mental skills point of view?

What is mental digging? It’s the what if game. It’s the internal mind chatter. What if I’m not good enough? What if I can’t do this? What if I crash? What if I fail? What if I disappoint someone? All that internal dialogue That undermines our personal confidence and causes us to shift our focus to outcome and the fact that we’re worried about that outcome.

Rule number one simply says, if you want to climb out of the hole, you have to put the damn shovel down. Rule number two is a really important rule. The conscious mind can only actively process one thought at a time. I could prove it to you easily enough. You want me to prove it? Because we can do it right now.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes, prove it.

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: Okay.

Crew Chief Brad: On Eric.

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: What we’re going to do is, we’re, the three of [00:23:00] us, and the audience, we’re all going to do an exercise together. Here’s what we’re going to do. When I tell you to start, all of us together, out loud, we’re going to count backwards by threes. While you’re doing that, however, I’m going to ask you to solve a simple mathematical equation and give me the answer to as well.

Ready? Here we go. One hundred. Ninety seven. Ninety four. Ninety one. Keep going. Eighty eight. Eighty five. Two times three equals? That’s

Crew Chief Eric: correct.

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: Okay.

Crew Chief Eric: And now we’re at 82, and so on and so forth.

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: Yes. So let’s examine the cognitive processing that was going on in that little exercise. I don’t care if someone’s good with numbers or not.

If they’re good with numbers, they can do it on the fly. If they’re not, they have to picture in their mind’s eye a piece of paper, put a hundred down, Put a three under it, subtract it out. I don’t care what cognitive strategy they employed. Their mind is fully occupied by that task until I ask the question two times [00:24:00] three equals.

What happens to the first task? It stops. Listen carefully to the choice of my words. Your internal focus of attention shifts. You dip into auditory memory. And you ask yourself, what did he say? Oh, two times three. That’s six. Your internal focus of attention should have shifted back. You would have dipped into short term memory to remember where you were and you would have re engaged the task most people crash and burn on re entry.

Crew Chief Eric: The same concept as how a computer works by

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: interrupts. Absolutely. We are not multi core processors, and we are serial processors, not parallel processors, if you think of electronics, right? And the reason of the structure is what leads us to being unable to process one thought at a time. So here’s the significance of rule number two.

If I’m processing this, whatever this is, I can’t be processing [00:25:00] that at the same moment in time. If that is what I should be processing, because this is what’s relevant to my performance right in this moment, but I’m processing that other thing, what am I not doing? Paying full attention to what I’m doing in this moment.

very much. And that’s when people make mistakes. So when they say, you know what, so and so, Eric, he’s just not very focused. If Eric just focused more, he’d do better. They’re actually wrong because I guarantee you that little Eric is focused. The problem is he’s focused on the wrong thing. So when we say that person just isn’t focused, think about it.

Is that true? Is their mind completely blank or are they thinking about something? It just doesn’t happen to be the thing that matters in this moment. There’s part of the secret of this issue of concentration, isn’t it deploying it to what matters in the moment? It starts with recognizing when it’s incorrectly [00:26:00] deployed so we can redirect our flashlight to what matters

Crew Chief Eric: So in the context of motorsports and racing then What we’re doing is with practice and more practice and laps after lapped after lap is we’re building muscle memory to minimize the amount of Multiple things that we need to concentrate on, right?

Because, you know, coming out of the combination 14 through 17 on the backside of EIR through a roller coaster and hog pen, it’s very complicated. You can be very daring through there, but you can also do it almost innately. The car feels like it’s driving itself autopilot. Exactly. But you could be thinking on a million other things.

Who’s behind me? What’s happening? You know, should I make that pass? How close am I? The guy, do I need gas? These are again, what does that?

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: Right? Unconscious mind is where that happens, and the problem is we can’t control our unconscious mind directly. We have to sneak up on it with our conscious thoughts.

Here’s a concept that is worth considering. Our conscious mind’s thoughts serve as the rudder that engages our boat. [00:27:00] Our conscious mind’s thoughts are taken by our unconscious mind and acted upon. Emotions are an unconscious mind thing. We can’t directly control them. We can try and control how much of the emotion we’re feeling we show to somebody, but we can’t control the feeling part, because once we believe something to be true, the emotions flow from those beliefs automatically.

Our unconscious mind salutes and says, Aye aye, Captain. The key is to understand that the access point to change emotions like anxiety, competitive anxiety, is to change the way we think in our conscious mind. Change the position of the runder, You change the direction of the boat. It’s very simplistic, but it’s profoundly true.

And how many people do a good job policing their thoughts? Very, very few. Even though we have 100 percent control over our conscious mind’s thoughts, because I can choose to think about one thing, or I can choose to think about something else. I can choose to focus on [00:28:00] one thing, or I can choose to focus on something else.

It’s my choice. Most people don’t make that choice, and they don’t execute control over their conscious mind’s thoughts. They simply interact with their environment, and they allow the environmental situation and circumstances to infect their conscious mind’s thoughts. They don’t police their conscious mind’s thoughts in the face of those environmental circumstances.

It’s not what champions do, but it’s what the vast majority of people do. We don’t do a good job controlling our thoughts. We just react to our environment. That’s why people are good when things are going well, and they suck when they’re not. That’s a scientific term.

Crew Chief Eric: So what do champions do?

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: They control their internal environment.

They control their focus of attention. I am absolutely confident of this fundamental truth. The single most important mental skill in any profession, in any occupation, from any culture around the planet is this. The ability to control the [00:29:00] deployment of my focus of attention so that it is directed to what matters in the moment that it does to the exclusion of everything else in that moment that exists as noise.

That’s also what mental toughness is. The ability to do that. In the face of the most hectic, crazy, chaotic environment. To control the deployment of my focus so it is correctly oriented in the moment when it must be. Simple enough, isn’t it? And you know what the advantage is? When I do that, when I stay present, when I stay engaged with what I’m doing fully, I never have anxiety.

Because anxiety only happens when I allow my focus to shift away from what I’m doing to start considering the consequences of what I’m doing, especially if I fear that I won’t do it.

Crew Chief Eric: So doc, I think we stepped backwards into rule number three, which is you cannot not think about whatever [00:30:00] is on your mind.

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: I don’t want you to think about the next thing I’m going to describe for you, right? I don’t want you to picture in your mind’s eye a huge pink elephant. Wearing purple boxer shorts with great big yellow dots splashed all over it. Hard to do, isn’t it? What is the only way you could not see the pink elephant with the purple shorts and yellow dots?

Crew Chief Eric: You have to already be thinking about something else and blocking it out. Ah,

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: use the truth of rule number two. Because rule number two says the conscious mind can only actively process one thought at a time. If I was vividly picturing in my mind the blue squirrel with the orange bushy tail, I probably would not have seen the pink elephant with the purple shorts.

I use a focus on one thought to deny my processor the capacity to focus on another one.

Crew Chief Brad: But then, if someone’s talking to you and they tell you to do something, you have to turn them off, so you have to turn off outside noise and outside [00:31:00] inputs.

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: It’s a skill, you practice it. Have you ever been bred in a situation where, say, you’re doing something and you’re really focused on it and there’s commotion close to you?

And you don’t even notice it. And someone says to you, Could you believe that thing that happened? And you look up and you say, Huh? Because you weren’t even aware of it. Why were you not aware of it? Because you were so intently focused on what you were doing that you effectively had a shield up. And you never process that other distraction.

You can still use directed focus to shut down the noise from elsewhere. Because rule number two is true. Conscious mind can only actively process one thought at a time.

Crew Chief Eric: So I actually like rule number three quite a bit because I find it analogous to some of the things that we teach our students when we’re coaching.

And one of the things that came right to mind as we were talking about this is in a situation where you’ve lost control of the vehicle. Do not look where you don’t want the card to go. Meaning if you [00:32:00] see that guardrail or that arm co and you’re focused on it, that’s exactly where the car is going to go.

Now everybody says your hands go where your eyes go. I get it, but it’s a conscious decision to avert yourself and say, I need to escape. I need to look for an exit route. I’m glad

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: you made that second point because I was going to jump on you a little bit because the reality of it is. If I say to you, now whatever happens, make sure you’re not looking at the trees.

What’s the imagery that you employed as I made that suggestion, looking at the trees? As a high performance driver, coach, you want to tell them what you don’t want them to do because it’s of the consequence, but you never leave it there. You turn it and you add to it, what I do want you to do is this, I want you to look for the openings.

Look for the gap. Keep your eyes glued on the gap, and your hands and your feet will take you there. You don’t just say, whatever you do, don’t get too wide there, because if you get out too wide, you’ll end up on the marbles. And if you’re on the marbles, front [00:33:00] end’s gonna wash out, and you’re gonna plant the front of the car right in those tires, right near the pink bush.

So whatever you do, don’t get out too wide. What did you picture that whole time? The pink bush. And your hands and feet will do exactly what your mind led it to do. So you tell them what you don’t want them to do, but you then tell them what you do want them to do, and how it looks and feels and smells and tastes when you do it the right way.

And that is also true when you’re self coaching. Don’t just keep telling yourself what you don’t want to do. Remind yourself of what you don’t want to do, but then tell yourself as vividly as you can what it looks like when you do it the right way. How it looks and feels and smells and tastes, what the timing of it is, what the smoothness is, how the transitions feel when it’s done correctly.

Because the more of that imagery you can put in there, the more your unconscious mind salutes, snaps to attention, and in fact takes you in that direction. Rule number four.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, I think we’re backing into that one as well. But to your point about rule number three, one of the things that I try [00:34:00] to employ with my students, slightly different technique than other coaches would use.

But at some point during the weekend, I actually have them talk me through the track. Now they’ve learned in their own vernacular and their own syntax, what a lap should look like based on what I’ve instructed them on. But what I’ve come to realize not only by reciting, The track over and over again to themselves.

They’re memorizing it in that sense, but they’re also catching their own mistakes because they say turn in and then they don’t or break now and they didn’t. So they begin that whole continuous improvement cycle. It’s

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: reprogramming. They’re actually reprogramming their unconscious mind by using their conscious thoughts as a guidebook.

It is the rudder. That steers the direction of the boat.

Crew Chief Eric: So let’s get back to rule number four. What is rule number four?

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: Rule number four says your dominant thought, whatever you choose to make dominant in your conscious mind, it determines your emotions, your behaviors, and ultimately your ability to perform, but it must be dominant.

[00:35:00] Whatever thoughts you put into your conscious mind become the rudder that steer the direction of your boat. Be careful what you put in there, because once you believe something to be true, it becomes truth. Whether it’s true or not is absolutely irrelevant. If you believe something to be true, it becomes your truth, and your unconscious mind acts on that, because that’s its job.

Its job is to accept what the conscious mind tells it, and to take you in that direction. It doesn’t care if it’s true or not. If you say, I’m a loser, there’s no way I can do this, I’m a failure, your unconscious mind snaps to attention and says, loser, yes sir, I can take care of that for you.

Crew Chief Eric: So how does one control their dominant

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: thoughts?

Ah, rule number five is the key. It says, we are in control of our conscious mind’s dominant thought. We have 100 percent control. We have to

Crew Chief Eric: prioritize.

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: Well, the first thing is we have to recognize that we’re in control and then accept that we are, then we [00:36:00] actually have to execute the control. And what does executing control mean?

It means we have to recognize when we’re drifting. Off the ideal line, because the sooner we catch ourself drifting, the less of an off we’re having and the less of a correction it takes to get back on the right line. If we don’t catch ourself until we’re way off, four wheels off, pointing in the wrong direction, the amount of correction and the time it takes is substantially greater.

We have to become better at eavesdropping on the mind chatter. Going on inside of her own head. Think about this. If I eavesdrop on that little voice inside my head, and I think about the script that it’s playing, Will that not give me a great deal of clarity on what it is I’m focused on in that moment?

The script will define what I’m focused on. Whether it’s an external focus or an internal focus, the little voice will tell me where [00:37:00] my thoughts are. And if I check in and I just eavesdrop and I say, well, wait a second now, you’re worrying about something that you can’t control and hasn’t even happened yet.

Don’t go there. Go here instead. This you can control. This matters now. Go here. And it’s about small adjustments

Crew Chief Eric: in the world of endurance racing, which I’m sure you’ve come into contact with many drivers that have participated in things like the 24 hours of spa or the 24 hours, the Nürburgring or Rolex, etc.

Right. How do you get them to clear their minds, let’s use that phrase, for long periods of time where they don’t have thoughts that are domineering what they’re doing because they need to be extremely consistent for long periods of time and those one hour and three hour and six hour stints that they’re in the car, how do you train them to, to settle?

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: What do you do with your students? You tell them to hit their marks and then rinse and repeat. If the focus that each of those people takes. Is [00:38:00] a perfect approach, perfect breaking, perfect turn in, perfect apex, perfect exit, or however one divides the corner, right? Because there’s different strategies. If that becomes my focus, And then I simply rinse and repeat throughout my stint.

Simplifies things, doesn’t it? I don’t have to compete with a lot of other thoughts. All I have to do is focus on the perfect approach I’m doing now, then the perfect application of the break, perfect turn in, the perfect apex, and the perfect exit. I don’t have competing thoughts intruding themselves in there if I steer my flashlight to those tasks.

Isn’t that true? It’s not easy for an hour and a half on a double stint, an hour and forty minutes, but with practice you get better and better at doing it. And the more relaxed you are, the more calm you are, the more likely you are to pull it off.

Crew Chief Brad: Looking ahead to rule number six and seven, your perspective concerning the challenges that you face determines your dominant [00:39:00] thought and your emotional response.

Choose your perspective carefully these rules before we dive into them. They actually make me think of a book that I read I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of David Goggins. Yeah. Yes. He’s a fascinating person He’s got the concept of callous the mind which is very similar to what you were saying earlier where you’ve got to lean in to your challenges and your thoughts and everything and Exercise control.

Yeah. If you have, if nobody, if the listeners haven’t read his book, it’s called Can’t Hurt Me. It’s an amazing read. I recommend the audio book. ’cause he, he reads it to you and it’s, it’s fascinating. He’s, he’s a real BAMF mm-Hmm. to, to, to be a little crass. But rule six kind of strikes me as it kind of, sort of callous the mind kind of, kind of concept.

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: Yeah, it is. In a way, I, I guess I’d add another layer to it. I would put it this way. Make sure that you make the right choice. Because perspective is a choice. I can choose to see the glass as half empty or I can choose to see it as half full. What people don’t realize is that choosing to see it as [00:40:00] half empty tends to make me a pessimist.

We’re choosing it as half full makes me an optimist that influences the direction of my boat because my unconscious mind keeps me there. A lot of people fail to do, I think, is to recognize that our mindset is highly infectious. People around us will catch it. And I think the question we should ask ourselves more often is this, is mine worth catching today?

And if the answer is no, maybe it isn’t, maybe I should change my mindset. Because the basic truth is people around us will catch it. Our mindset will impact other people. Just in the same way as theirs influences us. If you’re always around a pessimist, what does it tend to do to a group? Brings a group down.

If you’re always around an optimist, what does it do? Tends to bring the group up. Why? Because we get infected. Rule number seven. Rule number seven simply says, If you do what you’ve always done, you’re going to get what you’ve always gotten. If you want something different, you need to approach it with a different mindset.

Because if you keep [00:41:00] doing the same thing time and time and time again and expecting a different result, as Mr. Einstein postulated decades ago, It is the definition of insanity. It’s physics. In this case, it’s psychology. Relatively speaking. Relatively speaking. Exactly. So, rule number seven is sort of the bonus rule at the end of the car commercial where the guy says it with a low voice very fast.

The real key rules are the first six. Because they tie together, and they present a framework that if I respect those rules in the way that I think, I will not only bring the best version of myself from a performance point of view to everything that I do, but I will crush anxiety from my life. If I violate those rules, I will sabotage myself.

My performance will be less than it is capable of, and I will create states of anxiety that I live with. Simple as that. Fundamentally true, universally applicable, infallible.

Crew Chief Eric: So that said, you know, many of us are, as you said earlier, the average Joe suffering from different forms of [00:42:00] things on this list, whether it be the A factors or the B factors.

How do we put all this together in summary and take ourselves to the next level to become champions?

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: Okay. I’ve given this a lot of thought over the decades, and I’m going to summarize what I think the secret to performance is, and I don’t care whether you’re a surgeon, a musician, a combat pilot, race car driver, or a business executive.

The key is to control the deployment of my focus of attention so that I direct it to what I can control, to the right thing at the right time, so that I don’t waste that capacity focusing on things I can’t control and that haven’t even happened yet. Control over deployment of my focus of attention so that it is on what matters in the moment that it does full stop.

That is the holy grail of the performance equation. It’s like the

Crew Chief Brad: serenity prayer

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: in a way, isn’t it? It’s exactly the serenity prayer. It’s nothing I’ve said today that people don’t already know I just package it in a different way and create a framework that maybe helps people [00:43:00] gain clarity on how the pieces are connected Because they are all connected.

We haven’t talked about how the conscious mind and the unconscious mind work together There’s a lot of things we haven’t talked about but they’re all tied together Ultimately, it’s about conscious mind dominant thought and policing

Crew Chief Brad: those thoughts So, Doc, are you going to tell us how to implement these rules or do we have to call you?

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: Well, you know what you can do? There’s things you can read, for starters. There’s podcasts you can listen to. This is one of them, give you some insight. You can go to my, uh, link tree. address, www. dardelaire, my name, D A L L A I R E dot C O. That will take you to my link tree. You can check out the website, you can look at some books I’ve written, but there’s also some podcasts there, of which this will be one of them at some point down the road, that I’ve been a guest on with the, uh, different people around the world where I talk about this stuff.

And you might get some insight from that. Something that twigs you and you say, you know what? I never thought of it that way. That makes a lot of sense. I’m going [00:44:00] to start controlling that, or I’m going to start trying to implement that thought process. And the more you do it, the better you get at it.

These are skills. So they’re skill sets, mental skill sets.

Crew Chief Eric: In closing, any shout outs, promotions, or anything else you’d like to share that we didn’t cover, maybe some upcoming seminars, some tours that you’re on, things like that, where people could get a more in depth look into what we’ve been talking about here.

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: The books might be useful. I’ve written three, one in particular, the third one is a very niche book because it’s about law enforcement and the military. Uh, the first one is a much broader, has more science in it. I call it performance thinking, mental skills for competition and for life. The second one I wrote out of frustration at seeing parents destroy their kids, meaning to help them, not realizing that they’re sabotaging them.

The title is helping kids perform mental skills. Every parent, teacher, and coach should master. I definitely need that one. Well, you know what? It goes back to the fact that [00:45:00] society keeps telling us that it’s good to worry about results, that we should focus on results because results are so difficult.

And unfortunately our kids listen to us. So what they end up doing is they’re constantly fearing that they’re not going to live up to the results that are expected of them. And the more they fear that they’re going to fail, the more they fixate on the gap between where they are and they believe they need to be at the expense of what they’re doing.

And it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy and their anxiety goes through the roof. And those kids are afraid to try anything challenging in case they might fail. So they live in the middle rut of life.

Crew Chief Eric: And that’s a very important point that you bring up. And I remind my daughters constantly, I even have this posted on my eldest daughter’s.

door so that she sees it on her way in and out of school every day is that stop being afraid of what could go wrong and get excited for what could go right.

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: That is in fact an expression of rule number six, isn’t it? Your perspective on how These [00:46:00] challenges appear influences your emotional response.

Instead of worrying about failure, get excited about the potential to learn and be successful. You’re looking at exactly the same challenge, but you’re seeing it as half full rather than half empty. And that changes everything.

Crew Chief Brad: Not to harp on David Goggins. I just find him fascinating, but he’s got something similar, not quite the same, but he’s got the account, the accountability mirror.

So you, you, you list out all the things that you need to focus on and then you hold yourself accountable. Every morning you look in the mirror and did you do anything to further these?

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: You know, these goals and these, this, this mindset, this belief system, this version of yourself really, right?

Crew Chief Brad: And you have hard conversations with yourself every day.

The ACT model

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: process is a process that I teach that is effectively a behavior modification tool and it’s incredibly powerful. It integrates neuro linguistic programming, control theory, psycho cybernetics, and rational emotive behavior therapy into something that’s easy and doable. And it’s proven around the world because I have a lot [00:47:00] of high performance people who have act models.

Many of them are on this paddock right now. I’m ready to sign up.

Crew Chief Brad: So, well, first of all, thank you. You’re welcome. Thank you for, for coming. This has been very insightful and I’m no longer worried or I’ve got more confidence. So I’m ready to go.

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: Well, you know what? Just remember this. If you insist on aligning confidence with outcome, you’ll always be on a roller coaster because you can’t control outcome.

Instead, align confidence with the commitment and the willingness to step in, to lean into the challenge, and to give it your all. It’s probably the thing that has affected my life personally the most in the last 50 years, is this understanding and this belief. Not just an intellectual belief, but an emotional, I trust in the truth of this.

It is impossible, impossible for me to do better than the best I can do. If in the moment I give the best I’ve got, wishing it to be better would never make it better. Worrying [00:48:00] about being good enough will never make it better. If I bring the best I’ve got, it will generate the best result possible on that day, in that moment, except for the B factors I can’t control, and there’s no sense worrying about them because I can’t control them.

Simplifies life a lot, doesn’t it? And you know what it does? It gives us license to stop worrying about results. So that we can pour all of our capacity into the execution of process, which in the end is what drives the results anyway.

Crew Chief Brad: Dr. Delaer has helped more than 800 racers from around the world meet and even exceed their performance goals.

To find out more about the Performance Prime Mental Skills program, be sure to log on to www.drdaire.co. That’s D-R-D-L-L-A-I-R e.co for all the website social, as well as contact information so you can work with Dr. Delair to increase your focus mental control. And

Crew Chief Eric: with that [00:49:00] doc, I cannot thank you enough for coming on break fix and giving us an insight into this side of motor sports, the mental side of the game and having this conversation.

I hope that people do reach out to you for assistance and how they can become champions as well.

Dr. Jacques Dallaire: Well, thank you very much for the invite, and I think I would simply cast the net a little broader. The stuff we’ve been talking about applies not just in motorsport, but in every facet of life, so don’t be afraid to apply it to your personal relationships, to your work life, to your hobbies, beyond motorsport, because this is about how human beings think, and how the way we think influences how we feel, how we behave, and ultimately how we perform.

And everybody wants to be successful. I’ve never met a single person who actually wants to be a loser.

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out on www. gtmotorsports. org. You can also find us on [00:50:00] Instagram at GrandTouring Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, You can call or text us at 202 630 1770, or send us an email gtmotorsports.

org. We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization. And our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies, and GTM swag.

For as little as 2. 50 a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers Fed on their strict diet of fig Newtons, gummy bears, and monster. Consider signing up for Patreon today at www. patreon. com forward slash GT motor sports, and [00:51:00] remember without fans, supporters, and members like you, none of this would be possible.

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

• 00:00 Introduction to Break/Fix Podcast
• 00:27 The Essence of Competition
• 00:51 Mental Sabotage in Racing
• 01:24 Interview with Dr. Jacques Dallaire
• 02:42 Understanding Mental Sabotage
• 07:10 The Performance Equation
• 15:50 Confidence and Experience
• 21:26 Rules of the Mental Road
• 24:01 Understanding Focus and Attention
• 25:56 The Role of Practice in Building Muscle Memory
• 26:42 Harnessing the Power of the Unconscious Mind
• 27:50 The Importance of Controlling Thoughts
• 28:45 Mental Toughness and Anxiety Management
• 31:40 The Power of Visualization in Performance
• 34:47 Dominant Thoughts and Performance
• 37:15 Endurance Racing and Sustained Focus
• 38:51 The Impact of Perspective on Performance
• 42:03 Summary and Implementation of Mental Skills
• 44:10 Resources and Final Thoughts

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