Think about all the stupid things you did, said, wore, and believed when you were young. If you're a human, chances are it was a lot.

Nowadays, all of it would be documented on TikTok or Instagram.

Some lessons are best learned in private or with friends. We've lost much of the ability to learn from our mistakes in a small pond filled with people who truly care about us. Instead, we've thrown young kids into the deep end, without many tools to help them navigate it. We need more empathy for them.

Meet Your Heroes—And Be Disappointed.

(To read on TheGrowthEQ.com, click here.)

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"Never meet your heroes. They'll surely disappoint." It's a common phrase, and one with some truth. But maybe that's a good thing?

When I was a teenager, I devoured a book on a runner who might have been the epitome of toughness and grit. After all, he ran himself to the brink of death to win a marathon. I remember thinking: this is what I have to be like—to channel the ability to tolerate enormous amounts of pain, to want it more than anyone else. That man was Alberto Salazar.
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Years later I got to work alongside him. Unless you're new to following my work, you'll know that didn't exactly turn out well.
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It's strange being severely disappointed by those you once worshiped as a kid, the people you built up to be the epitome of what you desired, champions who, through hard work, perseverance, grit, and determination, found a way to reach the top. I often think back to what fifteen-year-old Steve would think seeing this version of Salazar instead of the ones he imagined as he looked at the posters on his bedroom wall.

It's easy to get jaded. But to me, there's more value in crushing simple caricatures than living in the delusion of hero worship. It's better see the messy reality that comprises people, even those who have accomplished great things.

In his book Same as Ever, Morgan Housel writes of a similar phenomenon: "It's easiest to convince people that you're special if they don't know you well enough to see all the ways you're not." It's easy to look at others who are more accomplished and valorize them. We think they must be special, they must have some secret sauce or talent that us mere mortals can only aspire to. Distance fools us into thinking the world, and people, are unidimensional.

We don't do this only as kids; it's commonplace in adults as well. Just look around and see how many adults dare not question their favorite politician, athlete, star, and so on. It's the entire basis of social media. Create a caricature of a person you can parade around on Instagram that looks real, but hides all the messy bits.

Meeting externally successful people and seeing that they are flawed humans is important. We get to release from the simplicity of youth, or face massive cognitive dissonance. We get to deal with reality and stop comparing ourselves to an unrealistic ideal.

You see that even the brilliant scientist you admire probably gets things wrong somewhere. Or the self-help author whose work you love will probably have some views that are counter to yours, or maybe even be a bit cringe. It can go further: someone who is brilliant on the page or screen could be a jerk in real life. I'd argue that nothing has helped shatter the myth of greatness around billionaires as much as "X," formerly known as Twitter. We get to see them freak out, lose their minds, get addicted to social media, and rant and rave. In other words, these people who supposedly figured out how to win the game still struggle with all of the things that you and I do. Maybe they have a special talent in a narrow domain, or got a bit more lucky than someone else, but in the end, they are human, and often the most flawed of all.
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So if you get a chance to meet your heroes, do it. Some may be massive disappointments, others minor, and perhaps a few will live up to the hype. Either way, it's a reminder that people are more complex than hero or villain, good or bad. In other words, life isn't like Instagram. And that's a good thing. The more we see people as people, the better off we'll be.

-- Steve​

3 Tips from the "World's Best Athlete"

The winner of the Olympic decathlon doesn't just get a gold medal—they get the prestigious title of "world's best athlete." That's because the grueling two-day competition features ten track and field events that require athletes to run fast, jump long and high, and toss heavy items far. The current reigning Olympic champion is Canada's Damian Warner, who, at the Tokyo Olympics, ran a 10.12 100-meter dash, registered a long jump of 8.24 meters (this would have won him bronze in the outright long jump competition), and tossed a shot put 14.8 meters.

Warner's win marked the culmination of a journey that started in 2010, a year in which he first started training for decathlon and won a silver at the Canadian championships. That he's still performing at a world-class level nearly 14 years into his career suggests he's learned some lessons about consistency and excellence. So when I spoke to him recently, I asked about the mental approach that has allowed him to have success in a sport that is as psychologically taxing as it is physically demanding. Here are three key takeaways.

1. Good not great. Damian said it took him years to realize that his training sessions would fail to meet the athletic standard to which he holds himself. "The days that I have quote-unquote 'bad' practices far outweigh the days I'm feeling amazing and having great practices," he says. With help from his coaches and from a Covid training cycle that forced him into a facility that had no heat and only 30-meter stretch on which to practice sprints, he's learned the power of being consistently good, or even just okay. "We just did the basics as best as we could, went home, went about our day and just repeated that over and over and over," he says.

2. The power of negative thinking. "My sports psychologist encourage me to visualize the decathlon—but not necessarily everything working out perfectly," says Damian. Instead, his sports psych had him imagining the bus being late, or it pouring rain, or faulting on his first two pole vault attempts. It left him feeling more prepared than ever: "When I showed up in Tokyo, I was just like, unless something drastic happens, there's no way I can lose the decathlon. And that's a powerful feeling to have."

3. Dial in your routine. Damian studied NBA player Steve Nash and golfer Tiger Woods, and noticed that they both had very dialed-in pre-shot routines. So Damian worked with his sports psych to create his own. He has a different pair of shoes for each event, so he puts notes with his cues for the events in the shoes that correlate to that specific comp. When he's wearing his 100-meter shoes, he's a 100-meter runner. When he's wearing his long-jump shoes, he's a long jumper. "It's really helped me leave stuff in the past and stay focused on whatever event is at hand," he says.

If you enjoyed this be sure check out this week's episodes of FAREWELL (Apple/Spotify), which features a 50-minute conversation with Damian where he goes even deeper on his story and his process.

Listen to FAREWELL at the links above, or wherever you get your podcasts. The new show is coming along great and we're thrilled you are all enjoying it!

– Clay​

• Australian Open winner Jannik Sinner telling parents to chill out: "I wish everyone could have my parents because they always let me choose whatever I wanted to, even when I was younger. I made also some other sports and they never put pressure on me, and I wish this freedom is possible for as many young kids as possible"
• A fascinating study that finds that when we change the meaning of pain through verbal suggestions, our biology changes too: "Pain as a reward: changing the meaning of pain from negative to positive co-activates opioid and cannabinoid systems."
• S.C. Cornell and The New Yorker contribute an important and thought-provoking perspective to the conversation around trans athletes.
• And, as always, some of our prior writing related to today's main piece:
  • ​Why We See Threats Everywhere​
  • ​Don’t Trust Your Gut Unless It’s Calibrated​
  • ​Seeing Clearly in a Delusional World​
  • ​Overcoming Bias to See More Clearly​

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Thank you for reading this week's edition of The Growth Equation newsletter,

Brad, Steve, and Clay

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To Learn more and go deeper, check out our books:

• ​Master of Change​
• ​Do Hard Things​
• ​The Practice of Groundedness​
• ​Peak Performance ​

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Twitter: @Bstulberg and @Stevemagness​
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