Doron Maman: Building Mental Toughness (Full Transcript)
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Ronen Ainbinder
Today's episode is a massive one. It's a pleasure to introduce and welcome to the Halftime Snacks a man who's an absolute legend. This man is an entrepreneur, by definition. He founded a company, wrote a book, and is one of the best public speakers I've ever seen. He's the managing partner of Excellent. An Israeli-based company mentally and physically prepares young adults before their draft to the army's elite unit. His area of expertise lies in the intersection between psychology and sports. And he's here to talk with us about building mental toughness, resilience, and antifragility. Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, Doron Maman!
Doron Maman
Send this introduction to my wife every time I walk in the house; That's what I want to hear. Just like that!
Ronen Ainbinder
I want to start off today's chat with your story and the story of the company you currently run. So, I mean, how did you got into mental toughness? And how did you come up with Excellent what pain point is it addressing? Tell us a little bit about it.
Doron Maman
I'm a big believer in understanding why you do what you're doing. And I think to understand the story, you have to understand the why of Excellent before what we actually do. The "why" is that we believe that everyone has to be warriors. And when I say warrior, I'm not talking about weapons, I'm not talking about soldiers. I'm not talking about anything in that relevance. I'm talking warriors as a mindset, as a DNA. And especially in times like now with Corona blowing up all over the world. I think the ability to deal with change with an obstacle and be able to move past it. That mentality of being a warrior, and I can overcome any of these challenges is absolutely crucial. And this is what drives us. So when people ask me, Doron, what do you do? I don't say I prepare high schoolers for the army. I don't say that we have more than 4000 alumni that have served in the top units, not only of the idea but also throughout the world. I say I build warriors. That's just our DNA, what we live for. And when you understand that, everything else just falls into place. When people ask me what is Excellent, we build warriors, how do we do it? Practically speaking, the primary way we do it today is that we train high schoolers who want to get accepted to the IDF's elite units. For your listeners to get a little bit better of an understanding, think about applying for college. If a high schooler wants to use for an elite college for what Harvard, Yale, Stanford doesn't matter what, they're slim, what are their odds? I don't actually know. Do you know what their odds are getting accepted?
Ronen Ainbinder
I'm not so sure, but I'm pretty sure they're low.
Doron Maman
So I'd say they're pretty low, probably under 5%. In Israel, if you want to get accepted to one of the top units of the IDF, let's take the Israeli Delta Force (Sayeret Matkal). About 14,000 students apply, only 12 finish, not 12,000, not 1200, just 12. To get into that top 12, which every year after year after year, we have more and more students just now. We had two Two out of 12 belong to us only from this last year before that it was three; it's just the numbers go up and up and up. It's unbelievable. And the reason why goes back to when you first said it's about how do we not only bring that physical side, how do you get the mental toughness into the game? Because here's what's gonna happen. I believe this is true about sports. I think this is true about life. And especially for anyone who wants to be a warrior, physicality is not enough. If you look at the top teams in the NBA, it's not that one player knows how to do something that the other player doesn't; the same goes for the top tennis players. It's not that one is better at one thing than the other. You look at the top 500 players, they're all the same. But ultimately, what changes are the mental aspect. If you can bring it to competition, if you can get your own accounts, you're just going to put yourself so much further ahead of the game. So, we're addressing the pain points here: we're building you physically, we're preparing you for those physical tests where these tests aren't, run a mile. We're talking about a test that can last anywhere from four days to six days consecutively, no sleep, little food. These are high school students doing unbelievable things. They can stay for six days straight without sleeping food to push themselves. Do you have what's mentally there to push yourself past those other 13,988 potential people who want to take your spot? And when you acquire that mindset, what do you get to that unit or not? You just become mentally tough in the process and ultimately become a warrior down the line.
Ronen Ainbinder
That's a fascinating answer, then what do you think it's the distribution between the physical and the mental side? How much of it is needed to succeed as a warrior?
Doron Maman
Look, I want to play the Pareto principle, The 20-80 law, where it's 20%, this 80% that, I don't know. Still, I can't see precisely, but I genuinely believe that it is much more mental than physical. This is an ongoing conversation, especially in the sports psychology world and many other worlds. It's not this or that. They have to coexist. Our program's beauty is one of a kind program that you won't find anywhere else in the world. The workout's goal is not to work our biceps or quads or glutes or abs; it puts a mental value in the center of the workout. We will build this value through many different kinds of exercises using every one of your physical muscles. We might work on aggression. We might work on focus. We might work on determining mental toughness; the list is absolutely endless. Ultimately, they have to coexist. But to be a person that's not just talking, but can really walk, you have to put your mental limits to the test via your physical experience. And I think that's what these tests and that's what our organization does for the students.
Ronen Ainbinder
That's awesome. Given your expertise in the field, I want to hear your opinion about how an athlete should approach mental toughness. What's the formula that an athlete must use to build mental toughness, resilience, antifragility? What does LeBron have to do to get in the mindset of saying, Okay, it's time?
Doron Maman
I think mental toughness is the key formula deciding whether you're going to make it or not. First of all, mental toughness is defined in sport psychology as staying positive under the most difficult circumstances. And when you look at it like that, first things first, you must accept that shits gonna hit the fan. It will get hard. I have a son now. His name is also Jordan. And I always ask myself, what are the key values that I want to teach him growing up, and I want to teach him, and I say that the only two things guaranteed in life are pain and death. If that's the case, you will have one of two options, and you have to be very binary. You can either suffer or get stronger. Any person who's mentally tough as a person says, I understand she will hit the fan. I understand things are not in control, so I decided that I will fight. You will be at endless junctions daily, hourly, and you have decided you're going to fight or suffer. Will I become my own victim? Or will I overcome this, and when you have that, then that's the first thing that has to happen. To build that, we talk about our students that we call it "The Excellent Method." It's a three-stage process that we built that any person can apply in any aspect of their lives. If you apply it, you will be able to get to the top levels of performance, you'll be able to deal with those stressful moments. And you'll be able to come to that moment where you think that you have no choice and no ability to overcome it and just crush it. And the way it works is like this, the first stage we call it "Know your Why." Why are you doing what you're doing? And what happens is so many people do not have a genuine why. I look at athletes also, I think I think that's one of the places there's a great HBO documentary coming out soon, called the weight of gold, just watch. Just watch the trailer; I can't wait to see it. And you see all these gold medalists doing the unreal. And you see them talking about how they all fall deep into depression after they got their gold. And again, the reason being is because their why was motivated from the egoistic personal drive. Why do you want to be the champion? Because I want to be the best in the world? It's usually related to us when your life is automatically related to something greater than yourself. For example, think about a parent. Have you ever seen a parent whose background on their cell phone isn't a picture of their child? Of course not. Because they're always putting their why right in front of them. They don't know that they're doing that. You always got to put your why right in front of you, and you will know your why you will find out how. And after my first, my second startup crashed and failed miserably. I got an excellent piece of advice from a professor. He said first, take the next year no matter what they say first to say yes. And then figure out how. Now it's one of the craziest pieces of advice that I ever got, but it's meaningless. If I don't know why, if I'm doing it because I want to develop mental toughness, it's egotistical. Still, I can take it a level higher, and I can say I'm doing it. Because I want to inspire mental toughness in my son, I want to inspire my students' mental toughness. When I understand that my actions relay automatic effects onto other people, I will be that much more committed to pushing myself to mental toughness. So stage one, define your why. Stage two, we call hustle. And hustling isn't hard work, especially in today's world. Ken Robinson, in his book, out of our minds, discusses how there will be more people that will get a first degree between the years of 2010 and 2040. For the first degree, there will be ever given in mankind's history of mankind until 2010. And that's an unbelievable number. Why? Because it just shows you that first degree is already worthless. The market is so flooded with the same shit. So everyone is doing the same thing. If you want to hustle, if you want to work hard, we define hustle as what you will do that nobody else is doing to succeed? And that's a practical question. This is not a theoretical question. That means if my students come and we're training on the sand dunes and making 15 sprints. What are you gonna do that no one else is going to do? Are you gonna do a 16? A centered sprint? Are you going to spend the night doing stretches? Are you gonna make sure you're eating the right things? Are you gonna go see a physiotherapist make sure your body is up and going? That difference that one little extra action that you do, it'll be what separates you. And if you do that over time, you just create a greater and greater gap. We said to know you why it is one. Hustle; What will you do if others one word succeed? And the last stage we call win or learn. You have to be binary, no more of this gray bullshit. For example, I think one of the words that I don't allow my students to say if they say it has to do 100 burpees. The word 'but.' Because if I come up to a girl and let's say I was in the dating world. I said, "listen, I had a great time tonight, you're phenomenal, great, funny, sweet, pretty, but..." The second I say 'but' I erased everything that happened in front of that. And the same thing in our own psychology. The second I say 'but' I create a gray zone. And I don't look at myself and critically judge myself in a way that will build me. So we say no more thing but no more gray zone black or white. Did you get the desired outcome? Learn if you didn't. What do you have to do to improve yourself to be on the winning side? Start the day with your why, do one thing more than others won't do to succeed, and then go to win or learn. You'll put yourself far beyond the competition, build resilience, mental toughness, antifragility, and just completely dominate their field.
Ronen Ainbinder
That's amazing. I'm gonna make a mental note about it. Because for sure, it's a framework that works across multiple disciplines, either it's your studies, sports, dating life, it applies everywhere. I love it. Thank you for sharing it. Now, I want to ask you the contrast question: How can an athlete not approach mental toughness? What are the three common beliefs that regular athletes or soon to be elite soldiers in the army assume to be true about mental toughness with which you disagree? And why do you disagree with them?
Doron Maman
First of all, it's built-in. It's not. It's a muscle. Neurobiology discusses the concept of plasticity. It means your brain is consistently changing, morphing, and moving. Mental toughness, it builds it. And again, we mentioned LeBron; I think LeBron is a fascinating concept. Because if you look back to LeBron's days with the Miami Heat, in the first championship, I think they played the Dallas Mavericks in 2011. You look at LeBron, and he really was a mentally weak player. But you look at LeBron today, and he's not only leading in basketball, but I think in the whole sports world and the mental toughness aspect, which just goes to show you that it's not built-in. This is a muscle that that has to experience trauma, right? By the way, what is a workout again, when I go to the gym, and I lift weights, or bench or run or whatever. Ultimately, what I'm doing is I'm creating an organized trauma to the body, where I'm ripping the fibers apart. Then I'm filling up with proteins to get stronger, meaning I have to break it down to build it up—every time. You've just built you break down to build, and it's the same thing here. I joked about it before my second failed startup; this is my third business in life, and this is the best one. And I have no doubt that I would not be so good that I would not be successful in my field today. If I didn't experience it, I wasn't blessed by those failures before. I've been more mentally tough, and I plan to grow more mentally tough and deal with a lot more shit that's gonna blow up in our faces along the way. With the Corona and a million things that are happening now, and that's just the game. So it's not built-in. I think the second misbelief, and it's that mental toughness is not domain-specific. It's funny, our company is called Excellent. And we talk a lot about the difference between an excellent human being and being excellent at something. A person who's excellent and excellent in something just means he's taking one field. He is the master of it, he is a boss, he'll bulldoze competition. Suppose you want to be an excellent human being. In that case, you have to have that mindset that wherever you go, you will just dominate. John Wooden is one of the most winning coaches in the history of basketball. I think he took in 12 years, 10 NCAA championships. Which is just it's like being struck by lightning six times in a row while you win the lottery. And on the other hand, like it's, it's unbelievable numbers. He talks about his pyramid of success that, at the very end, you want to be what's what he defines as competitive greatness. At any moment, I can come and wake one up and say, Hey, Ronen, want to play a one on one? And you have to wash your face and say, Give me a minute. It's like, come on, bring it on, and you have nowhere to go from zero to 100 in 1 shot. And if I wake you up the next morning, say you wanna play chess, it doesn't matter that basketball is in your domain, you say I find chess because you know that you're not domain-specific. If I tell you to write an essay right now, all of a sudden, then you'll do it. And that's what it is. It's not domain-specific. And you have to be challenging your mental toughness, multiple levels to bring it up.
Ronen Ainbinder
The one I think, and I want to hear your opinion about it super quick, is the idea that your potential is limited. Meaning that you can only go to a certain degree or to a certain level. What do you think about that?
Doron Maman
It's very interesting. I always talk to my students about the concept of a marathon. A marathon does not make physiological sense. Anatomically speaking, the human body isn't designed to pass the 30-kilometer mark. But every year, hundreds of thousands, maybe even a million-plus, I don't know what the numbers are. But hundreds of thousands of people, old people, young people literally with one leg, complete a marathon, More kilometers than everyone else. Now, the first person that ever ran a marathon actually died like that. He ran from the city of Athens to Marathon to pass a message; he got to Marathon, the city, gave the message, and died. And that's the concept of limiting our potential that we are here on this planet as human beings. And we're kind of, we're always intrigued to see how much further can we take it. And I think that's the reason why the concept of a marathon became so exciting because people said, Oh, he died doing it. Let's see if we can do it. Then they made ultra marathons. There's a man who holds a world record of 365 days in a row running a marathon. It's insane. So yes, the limits are strictly what we define them by. What are our limits? I'm not talking about our limitations as the most unbelievable human I'm saying. Each one of your listeners should ask themselves what I define as my absolute best. And what we usually define our absolute best is the best place we ever go to, not the best place we can potentially get to. We create our own glass ceiling, which doesn't really exist. And we say the most I've ever run in my life is eight kilometers. Until that point, you will be convinced that your absolute best will be eight, which is why I really believe that we have to be so well aware of how we put ourselves these limits. And obviously, done correctly and healthily. So we don't hurt ourselves that these limits are just the things that kill us. Tony Robbins talks a lot about that we have six basic needs, and one of the needs of 5 is growth, right? And he just talks about in a sense, look at a tree, a tree does one or two, one of two things, it grows or dies, it doesn't stand in the middle of its life and say I'm just gonna chill here for a minute. You grow, or you die, and I think if you're not challenging your current limits, then you're dying. And no one wants to be on that side.
Ronen Ainbinder
I find that super intriguing, Doron, and I think that's worth looking into, introspectively inside of you. What you think your limits are and having that mentality that you can always go further? I think that's great. And I'm a huge sports fan, and I know you are as well. One of the things that I've always wondered about high-performance athletes is how to deal with situations when odds are stacked against you. How can an athlete use a disadvantage to his advantage? For example, I'll give you a quick example. The nuggets were down three, one against the Utah Jazz, and they came back. Now there were 3-1 against the clippers. And now they're in game seven. (For the listeners, just to know, the game seven hasn't happened yet). Or another example that I think about what if you're up against Usain Bolt in a race? And he's the best in the world, and you know that the odds aren't in your favor? How can you use that as an advantage? How do what do you think about that, though? The first thing that
Doron Maman
I say, when when I'm at a setback, and I, I raise my students sometimes or when I challenged whatever, I, I know, I'm in the comeback position. And I'm, the underdog, I say, Thank you, God, like women, I pray I say thank you, God, not because I don't want the pressure. It's because you got to learn to love the pressure. Right? That's, that's a major part of mental toughness. It's, you've got to learn to love the pressure, you have to be excited by this. Look, let me tell you something else you might not know about the nuggets. If the Nuggets win tonight, there'll be the first NBA history team in a single postseason to make 231 comebacks. That's never been done in NBA history. As huge and insane as this may seem, the glory you'll experience after a victory is measured by the size of the obstacle you overcame. Now, why am I saying that? Because, look, if you ever, I'll put it differently. I call it the Pleasantville effect. Have you ever gone to see a movie where the heroes chiseled, beautiful, perfect? He has no enemies, every basketball that he shoots, he makes he has a girlfriend. And that's the end of the movie. Of course not. There's no such thing, right? We see a movie to experience the obstacles, watch the protagonist, experience an obstacle, overcome it and win in the end. And that's the same thing. When you're starting off as the underdog, you have the opportunity to build a Hollywood Story and say everyone's gonna look at this, no one's giving us a shot. And yeah, as cliche as it may sound, I personally get super excited. So I truly believe that you can either retreat when you see a monster obstacle, or you can say, Wow, when I beat this. When I win, this will be the story that everyone's going to talk about. And I think that's, that's one way of getting excited. Warriors aren't just measured in sports. I think, comebacks, especially in the business world, it's going to be very interesting now to see how many companies are going to come back post-Corona, post wildfires, there's a lot of challenging situations coming in the world right now. One of the most exciting things turning this disadvantage into an advantage is that it's a Hebrew saying, "it's not a bug, it's a feature." How do you take that disadvantage, go a little deeper into it, and find the advantages because there's no such thing as a pure advantage? It just doesn't exist, right? There is no such thing as a pure advantage. And I think that when you can find value in what you're doing when you can find, the value of what you will benefit because there's always something to gain from it. Even if the nuggets lose tonight, people will applaud them. They're gonna develop this inner beast that's going to come back next season, even meaner, even better. And it's just going to move them forward. If and again, this is a big if, if they're maintaining a winner learn mentality. If not, then they'll collapse into themselves. And they'll never get to the NBA Finals. I think the last thing I would say, as a tip for that is, take what you're best at, and just get better at it. Like, Look, Shaq was one of the best, one of the best NBA players in history. But he couldn't shoot a free throw if his life depended on it. Now, shots spent his time practicing free throws all day long. Yeah, he said, he'd get 5000 more points at the end of his career, more or less, I think the close to five or 6000 points. But if he wasn't practicing being the most dominant player in the game, he wouldn't take any championships. Right? You have to know that. There's no such creature that's perfect in every position. You have to take your position, become the absolute best at it with your specialty, and the other things, commit to getting better. Commit to getting better. But make sure that people know that this is your domain when people come and ask you, I can't tell you anything about computer technology. I can't tell you anything about you know how to build a building. But I can tell you everything there is to build warriors because I'm a freak of it. I live it, read it, and 4000 alumni who have gone through here and the 500 students we have now, or just this is just all I live. So I think it's huge. I really believe in that.
Ronen Ainbinder
That's fantastic, though. If there's one thing that the listeners need to remember, you're either going to win, or you're going to learn, and that's it. That's great. And since you're one of the most inspiring persons I know, I can't finish this interview without asking you a personal question their own. You could have a billboard which would be seen by millions of people that we A day. What would you write on it, and why?
Doron Maman
You can't choose the game. You can't choose the rules; you can only choose how you play. And the concept of control means that we've been lied to, from day one, right? Like, as a kid, you're told you can do whatever you want. If you just keep your mind that you work at it, and you can fulfill your dreams and say, it's bullshit. It's not true. Nothing is in your control, absolutely nothing. You can't control if you'll be successful, if you'll get married if you'll make money. People usually say, What are you talking about? People usually in my lectures, they really get riled up by that. I say, Alright, fine, but you can literally exit this building a piano fall from the sky, land on your head, game over, you're done. Control means 100% control. And the truth is, you have no control over anything, except for one thing. And when you understand that you only have control in one thing, and you put all your focus there, you change all the game rules. And that thing is the only thing in your control is how you decide to play the game. The ref will give you bad calls; shits gonna hit the fan, Corona. Before that, I was telling you that we're having a physical product, which trains 500 students throughout the country. All of a sudden, you're in quarantine, leave your houses for six weeks, I can say, Alright, game over, or I can find out how I'm gonna choose to play the game. And we managed to sustain more than 90% of our customers. We managed to give them even more value giving online mental training and online lectures. We're just growing our product unbelievably to a point where we're even stronger today than where we were before. And again, not because I worked hard. It's simply because we decided we're going to keep playing the game. As long as you understand that you always have a choice, I think that always choose how to play the game. No matter if they change the rules. If they bring in a new ref, if the players change, you choose how to play the game of life. And when you have that, mental toughness is yours. You'll be a warrior, you'll just thrive in any situation. And, and victory will just become a byproduct of anything you do. I have no doubt about that.
Ronen Ainbinder
I love that. What a legend. I mean, I think that's a great place to end our conversation. I want to thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your story on today's halftime snacks. And I was delighted to have the chance to speak to you. It was great. It was a pleasure, and I had so much fun, and I hope we can do this again in the future.
Doron Maman
Amen. I hope so. I hope so.
Transcribed by Otter.