Welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast hosted by me, Dr. Mike T. Nelson. In this episode, we dive into the mental side of performance with Tarun Gulati, founder and CEO of Contemplate Life. Tarun shares his unique method of contemplation and how it helps improve mental fitness and overall performance. He discusses the importance of a deep connection with oneself, a decision-making framework, and how to apply these concepts in personal life, sports, and organizations. Get insights into the psychological aspects often overlooked in fitness and sports training, and learn about the principles and pillars of the Contemplate system.
Welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast hosted by me, Dr. Mike T. Nelson. In this episode, we dive into the mental side of performance with Tarun Gulati, founder and CEO of Contemplate Life. Tarun shares his unique method of contemplation and how it helps improve mental fitness and overall performance.
He discusses the importance of a deep connection with oneself, a decision-making framework, and how to apply these concepts in personal life, sports, and organizations. Get insights into the psychological aspects often overlooked in fitness and sports training, and learn about the principles and pillars of the Contemplate system.
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[00:00:00] Dr Mike T Nelson: Welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast. I'm your host Dr. Mike T. Nelson. On this podcast we talk about all things to increase muscle performance, improve body composition, do all of it within a flexible framework without destroying your health. Today on the podcast we have something a little bit different but it's still related to performance.
[00:00:23] This time we're talking more on the mental side of performance. But Tarun Gulati, he is a founder and CEO of Contemplate. life. And he has a unique method that revolves around contemplation and how we can use this system to help with performance of all aspects. This can be related to mental fitness in terms of sports, and Translations into athletic performance, and also just general performance.
[00:01:01] We had a really nice discussion, and I also like that he talked about how the use of a system can impact everyone from the players all the way through. the entire organization and gives you a framework and a lens of which to view that whole system together. So as you guys know, I'm a huge fan of systems thinking and sponsorships.
[00:01:32] We have Tecton. So if you're interested in an exogenous ketone, make sure to check them out. I've still been enjoying them a fair amount while I'm still down here kiteboarding in Texas and I still find that having a little break, having a can or two of Tecton, grabbing some food, and I feel like I'm ready to go for another couple hours again, which is great.
[00:01:57] And the nice part is, it's not a stimulant. So what it is it's actually a ketone, beta hydroxybutyrate, which is bonded to glycerol in this case, which allows it to get through the digestion and show up in the bloodstream in around 10 to 20 minutes. So you can have high levels of ketones within a very short period of time without necessarily having to do a ketogenic diet.
[00:02:22] So you can get some of the benefits from that. There's some pretty good data showing beneficial cognition under different levels of fatigue. There may be some performance enhancement too. The data on that is definitely a lot more mixed depending upon what you are trying to do. So check them out below.
[00:02:40] You can use the code DRMIKE to save some money. Full disclosure, I am a scientific advisor to them and an ambassador. And without further ado, enjoy this cool conversation more on the mental side of the contemplative method with Turan.
[00:02:59]
[00:03:00] Dr Mike T Nelson: Welcome back to the podcast.
[00:03:02] How are you today, Tarun?
[00:03:03] Yeah.
[00:03:04] Dr Mike T Nelson: And today the topic we're talking about is more of the mental side of fitness. So obviously we talk a lot about in this podcast of different sets and reps and nutrition and everything else. But I think the mental and also the kind of the mindset is also important. Do you want to give us a, have a brief rundown of how you ended up more focusing on that side more so than the physical side?
[00:03:34] Tarun Gulati: Sure. So this mental fitness framework that I've developed, which is called Contemplate. It comes from my personal contemplation practice of over 15 years. And I'll explain what contemplation is. But really I was, as I was living my life, I was looking at things that I'm doing, things that I'm saying to my family members, to my colleagues, to my customers in general, and asking myself, what impact is this having on my peace of mind?
[00:04:19] And just by being thoughtful about it and then thinking about it deeply, which is what contemplation is, systematic self reflection, you start to see that you are doing and saying so many things. that feel good in the moment, but are actually not good for your peace of mind. So all those times when we are sarcastic with somebody, or we criticize somebody, put somebody down, or anger, or in general making wrong decisions just because we are short sighted, going for instant gratification, so many things.
[00:05:02] Because the problem is the quality of your life depends on how you feel. at the end of the day. If you feel good, the quality of your life is good. But if you feel not so good, then the quality of your life is not so good. So then the next question is, how do you want to feel? If you want to feel fulfilled, purposeful and peaceful, then you need to make those kinds of choices.
[00:05:31] So how do you make those choices? And what I realized is you need two things to be able to make the right choices. One, you need a deep connection with yourself. Because these are choices about your fulfillment, your peace of mind. So you need to know what makes you peaceful. And two, you need some kind of a decision making system that helps you make these choices.
[00:06:00] But the problem in the modern world today is because the world is so noisy and distracting, if you live your life largely plugged into the matrix, largely focused on the outside and not inward, then you lose that connection. which means you lose internal clarity. And that is when you start making choices that seem exciting in the short run, but may not be right for you in the long run.
[00:06:29] And that is what causes stress. So it came from this self inquiry that I was doing for myself for many years. And then a few years ago, because I'm essentially, I've been a teacher at heart from a very early age, very naturally, So then I decided to create a framework out of this so that we can also take this to other people and train other people so that clarity of thought and peace of mind can be skills.
[00:07:05] You don't have to be gifted. You don't need anything special. You can learn it, apply it. And that is how the Contemplate Mental Fitness Framework was made.
[00:07:18] Dr Mike T Nelson: Very cool. Was there any life event or anything in particular that was the catalyst for you to come up with a system or was it just the end result of a lot of study in that area?
[00:07:33] Tarun Gulati: No specific event happened as in it wasn't something drastic that happened which led me to do this. As I said at a very early age, I was naturally introspective. That was just me. Nobody taught it to me. It was just something natural. Towards the later part of the, of my life, it developed a little more and I went a little deeper.
[00:08:01] And then out of that, these principles actually came out because I was looking at what I was doing and saying. So it just developed organically.
[00:08:13] Dr Mike T Nelson: And you mentioned making a decision or saying something in the acute sense. Yes. that may not be best long term. Do you think the reason for the default is that there's some acute benefit to that, but it has a long term cost?
[00:08:32] Like, I think of nutrition, right? In a different realm, people are like, oh the muffin tasted really good, but long term, eh, maybe blueberry muffins aren't like the best thing for your body to eat all day. Yeah, once in a while they're okay, but acutely they're like, oh, but they're so tasty. Is there like an acute benefit to doing some things that we maybe forget has a long, a longer term cost associated.
[00:08:59] Tarun Gulati: A lot of this boils down to one, have you deeply thought about what kind of a life you want to live, which does not come naturally. And that doesn't help. And to think about it in our education system today in schools, We teach everything about the external world. We don't teach anything about the self.
[00:09:31] Nothing. So there is a gap there. Then the mind as an entity intrinsically is restless. So that doesn't help. Now you see we are adding one problem on top of the other. We could have solved it at the school level, but historically we haven't done it. That's what we would like to do now. Introduce contemplation in schools in every grade.
[00:10:00] So once a week, no matter what grade you are, every kid goes to a contemplation class. for all the years history. But because that is not there and the mind is restless, and you're giving to short, given to short term pleasure, all of that is the mind. You prioritize short term's pleasure. Now that could be a blueberry muffin or it could be anger.
[00:10:28] Yelling at my partner might feel so good in the moment. Doing something on social media as an athlete may feel good in the moment, but if I'm not thinking about the long term implications of that on my peace of mind, then I may never realize what I should do. So I keep doing it because I'm plugged into the matrix.
[00:10:58] The inward connection is missing. So now think about it practically, where is all the input coming from? It's coming from the outside. So now my decisions are a lot more. out of emotion because I feel angry. So I will say something nasty or impulse the blueberry muffin. I just feel like having it. So I'm going to have it or even imitation because 100 people are doing this.
[00:11:29] It can't be wrong. Why do I have to think about it? So yes, there is a trade off between long term and short term. But if you look at the granularity of the problem is the lack of contemplation. You're not taking a pause and thinking about what will make me peaceful long term. The other issue is the focus on happiness, because generically we speak about, we hear about the pursuit of happiness.
[00:12:03] In my opinion, in my, whatever I have learned, our goal as a human being is the pursuit of peace of mind, not the pursuit of happiness, because happiness can again be short lived. It can again come from short term gratification. I may feel very happy criticizing you on Twitter today evening. The question is, will I feel peaceful about it?
[00:12:27] So peaceful and happy, a great combination. Only happy at the expense of peace, a very bad one.
[00:12:37] Dr Mike T Nelson: Is one of them more like a short term solution versus a long term solution?
[00:12:45] Tarun Gulati: That is what it is, essentially. Because all of this is going towards What gives me short term pleasure? What feels good in the moment versus what is good for me in the long term.
[00:13:00] But the only difference here is now we are defining good. What is good for me, we are defining good, we are defining what is right as more peace. What is more peaceful is right for you. What makes you less peaceful is wrong for you. That could be a person you are with, That could be a job you're in, that could be a behavior that you undertake.
[00:13:30] Peaceful, non peaceful. Right?
[00:13:35] Dr Mike T Nelson: Got it. What would a, you mentioned talking, adding about a contemplative phase to education. What would that kind of look like from more as we get into on the practical side? So if a, schools came to you and said, hey we're going to add a contemplative phase starting, grade, I don't know, seven or whatever.
[00:13:55] What would that kind of look like? What would be the focus of that?
[00:14:00] Tarun Gulati: So the contemplative system has a few pillars on which it works. The first is the practice of contemplation, which is what a person learns or whoever goes through the system. And remember what we discussed in the beginning.
[00:14:18] You need a connection with yourself. That's the first part. That's the contemplation practice. That part, that's what addresses that problem. But you also need a decision making framework or system. That's the second part of the contemplate system. In addition to the practice of contemplation, you also learn a few key mental fitness principles.
[00:14:43] These are simple, practical, non spiritual, non religious principles that help you think more clearly. So that you can make a better choice, a better decision, because the cumulative set of decisions and choices in your day will decide whether you feel peaceful at the end of the day, and then many days, months, and then many months.
[00:15:12] So the practice of contemplation and the principles and these two together help you think more clearly. But only such clarity of thought that makes you more peaceful. In your example, I'm very clear I want to eat that muffin, is half clarity. That clarity is not going to make you peaceful, you haven't considered that yet, okay.
[00:15:38] And the third pillar to this is a decision making journal that the students will use. That's, this is not a blank journal the way we know a journal to be. This is a decision making journal, it's called the Adioscope, which is like your personal microscope for life. This is where you write a real question or situation in you.
[00:16:03] Should I be with this person? Should I take up this job? A student may say, should I take up this major? Should I go to this school? Real questions in your life. And the Adioscope helps you think through these questions using the principles as your guiding. And you make the right answer. You make the right choice.
[00:16:29] You find the right solution that works for you. And then there is a vision planner where you look at multiple dimensions of your life. So the way this will work in a school would be we will train people from the school. It could be teachers, it could be other people, or it could be people from our side.
[00:16:50] These will be certified contemplate mental fitness coaches, and they will run a contemplate session once a week throughout the year for 52 weeks or however the school runs. Because this is a practice. If you're in grade 7, you're still making decisions. But this will help you keep your inner voice strong.
[00:17:18] Not buckle to peer pressure. Not make wrong choices. Not ingest wrong substances. But when you are in grade 10, the kind of decisions may be different. So you will always need it. a contemplation system so that you can continue to make the right choices. And think about what happens if you go through this from say grade 7 to grade 12.
[00:17:44] Five years, every week, once a week, you sat in silence and worked through the system. You thought about what makes you more peaceful. In five years, it will be ingrained in your system for the rest of you. That is how we would, we are approaching schools.
[00:18:08] Dr Mike T Nelson: There's the idea then that This would be more like a better internal compass to actually weigh the cost of both the acute versus the chronic outcomes for decision making.
[00:18:23] That might be a little bit over simplification.
[00:18:25] Tarun Gulati: That's what it is. It is an inner compass that you create based upon your values and what makes you more peaceful. And peaceful does not mean lazy, complacent, laid back. So peaceful for a student does not mean I don't need to do my homework. I don't need to study for the test.
[00:18:48] Peaceful means the absence of unnecessary stress, anxiety, or restlessness that is taking away your potential. You're not able to maximize your potential as a human being. because of that unnecessary restlessness. And that restlessness is probably coming from the environment because others are influencing you.
[00:19:14] Your inner compass, if it is trained, it'll hold you still.
[00:19:22] Dr Mike T Nelson: Got it. I don't know, this is a little bit of a weird question, but if you're familiar with David Hawkins book, which is power versus force, but in it, he's talking about that there's these, or what his system, he believes there's He calls them different vibrational levels, and that it's more a range of, all the way from anger, to love, and that the goal is, over time, you're ascending through these different levels to get to a better level at the end.
[00:19:54] I don't know what your thoughts are on that. And then, if peace is the top level, are there other sort of levels or other things that people go through in the process to get there?
[00:20:10] Tarun Gulati: I'm not familiar with that particular framework, but It is clearly on the same lines we're addressing. See, this is a topic that you can look at from 10, 000 different angles, and there will be some overlap or a lot of overlap.
[00:20:26] I think that's something that I see here. What we are talking about is going from restlessness to peace of mind, going from mental confusion, lack of mental clarity, to complete clarity, but both are related. Such clarity that makes you more peaceful. What that means is a violent person may be very clear that I need to hurt these people.
[00:21:06] But the problem is that clarity does not pass the peace of mind. So clarity and peace is what we are talking about. And all of the other things that he mentions is some emotions. So let's say EQ is another system, which is awareness. All that is a part and parcel of what we are talking because contemplate is a foundational overarching system.
[00:21:34] It includes emotions, but it'll always have a filter. It isn't just about being aware of your emotion. Think about it. How high EQ means. Many things. Let's just take one of the things. I am more aware about my emotions, but you can't stop there. What we are saying is you have to complete that logically. I want to be aware about my emotions.
[00:22:03] Why? Because I want to live a fulfilling purpose within a peaceful life. That's why. So we're just joining it from all the way at the bottom to all the way at the top and defining the end purpose very clearly as being peace of mind. Got it.
[00:22:27] Dr Mike T Nelson: And how can the system then help people with physical goals, athletes, or other people who have some performance goals that are more on the physical side?
[00:22:42] Tarun Gulati: So on the sports side, there is a lot that can be done. Let me briefly touch upon the regular fitness world. Sure. Physical aspect, and it also is a part of sports. But if you just look at fitness clubs today, the fitness industry. Traditionally, it has been only focused on the body.
[00:23:09] Mental fitness training is completely missing from the mix. But most of their members have mental stress. So we are now talking to gyms and fitness clubs to add mental fitness training to physical fitness training. And once we do that, you would wonder why this wasn't done 30 years ago. This is how it should be because you're not addressing Human being, you're only dressing the body.
[00:23:44] Now sports,
[00:23:49] if in professional sports today, let's talk about the highest level NBA, NFL Olympics. If this is the level of physical fitness training that you go through, let's say this is a hundred. This is the level of mental fitness training.
[00:24:08] Dr Mike T Nelson: So for listeners very low.
[00:24:11] Tarun Gulati: That's not even three. So if this is the physical training is a hundred mental training is not even three.
[00:24:16] Sometimes there is no training at all. It is actually post event support. Think about it when you have a therapist and people like those who are helping athletes, you go to them after an event, something has happened or I'm not feeling good or I'm feeling anxious. Now map this with the physicality of the sport.
[00:24:49] If the same system was applied to the physical part of the sport, what you would have is For months, you have no physical training. If you strain an ankle, we will give you a physiotherapist because a physiotherapist is the physical therapist. Now we're talking about the mental therapist. It's exactly the same.
[00:25:17] What is missing is mental fitness training for months and months just like you train the body. That just doesn't exist. What you're really seeing is a pro body with an amateur mind. So that gap has to be filled. But it isn't just about the quantitative aspect of the mental fitness training. We are more interested in the qualitative aspect.
[00:25:49] The Contemplate Sports Mental Fitness approach is that an athlete is a human being first, an athlete second. And we seem to have forgotten that. The focus is so much on performance, that the player as a human being almost doesn't exist. That needs to be the focus now. We have to evolve in that thought process.
[00:26:21] So an athlete being a human being first has all the regular mental challenges that a normal non athlete human being has. They have an argument with the partner, they have issues at home, they have stresses at work. Other aspects of their family, personal life, all of that is playing on their mind.
[00:26:46] On top of that, they have an athlete level, a player level stress, which is a pressure of gain, injury, and the rest. You know the story. The sports mental fitness training has to be looked at in conjunction with the physical fitness and physical technique training. It has to run in parallel. That's what the Contemplate Sports Mental Fitness System brings in, but it is always human being first.
[00:27:20] Clarity of thought and peace of mind of an athlete is much, much more important because if they don't make wrong choices in their personal life, they will have better focus. If they don't have stress in their personal life, in their sport life, they will have better performance. So yes, of course, we have all the performance related.
[00:27:45] exercises and we can go into the details of it. Stress, focus, peripheral vision, visualization, injury downtime. All of that is there. Yes. But the core of the contemplate sports mental fitness system is an athlete is a human being first. Make clearer decisions. Be peaceful. That will automatically make your mind lighter.
[00:28:12] Mental obesity is a heavy mind. You take away stress. You bring in clarity, you take away the fog, automatically now the athlete will perform better. And then of course, on top of that, we have all the mental fitness performance exercises. That's that.
[00:28:36] Dr Mike T Nelson: Is part of the goal of that to when the athlete is performing their tasks to be, I know the word like state of flow is an overused thing, but is the goal when they're performing the sports event that they are more in a state of flow, so therefore they're able to extract the higher level of performance from their body in terms of them performing the sports skill itself.
[00:29:05] Or is there something beyond that? And that's just a part of it.
[00:29:09] Tarun Gulati: That's just a part of it. So until now, the sole focus in the sports industry has been on winning. What we are saying is, which is performance. What we are saying is that needs to change. Now we need to bring in peace and performance.
[00:29:33] So yes, we can talk about the state of flow. Yes, there are detailed exercises in the contemplate system to get you to enter and maintain a state of flow. Yes, but the difference is now we don't want to talk about a state of flow only so that you can win that game. Because in that construct, whether you're miserable mentally after that game, that's irrelevant.
[00:30:02] Look at the mental health problems of past athletes. Now what we are saying is, Maximize your athletic potential. Maximize your potential as an athlete, but also maximize your peace of mind. We want both. We do not want an excellent, high performing, famous, and mentally miserable. We want both peace and performance.
[00:30:32] We want clarity of thought so they make better choices. So they don't do things that will hurt them, that will hurt the organization, that will hurt the team. They are peaceful, which will automatically enhance your state of flow for which anyways, there is a specific training system available, which we have, but not at the expense of these, but to work together.
[00:31:00] Dr Mike T Nelson: So part of it is also reducing the cost of the pressures and everything else that go into being a high level athlete. In addition to getting a higher level of performance out of it. So if I use a, it's a, probably an overused analogy. I can extract more performance from my car by redlining the car. Yes, it went faster, but at some point.
[00:31:30] I'm extracting too big of a cost out of the car for that level of performance versus maybe upgrade the engine or do something different to increase the efficiency of it. I can still get that higher level of performance from it, but I don't have that high associated cost with it.
[00:31:49] Tarun Gulati: And that's exactly the cost of mental health that most athletes go through.
[00:31:54] And as today, a handful of them have started talking about it today.
[00:31:59] But 99.
[00:32:01] Tarun Gulati: 9 percent of athletes go through this. They just don't talk about it because it isn't politically correct. It is perceived to be weak. That is why they don't talk, but it's a very high cost. So if you introduce clarity in your mind, you're clear about what makes you more peaceful and what reduces your peace.
[00:32:28] That helps you make better choices. One, it will take away the personal stress. which might be affecting your performance because it is playing on your mind. Just because you are in a practice session doesn't mean you've forgotten about that argument you had at home. You're a human being, okay? But that clarity of thought as to what makes me peaceful will also help you make the right decisions in your sports performance.
[00:32:59] So not overtraining your body when you know it is not required, when you know there is too much of a cost associated. Not taking drugs just because you want to win, because where is that coming from? That is coming from you, fixated only on winning as the goal, and not on living a fulfilling purpose within a peaceful life.
[00:33:21] As the goal, your goal is wrong, and if the goal is winning, then suddenly all the incentives around it change, then everything is about only winning. What we are saying is winning and well being, performance and peace of mind. Why have only one when you can have both? And in fact, if you go through the clarity of thought and peace of mind, prioritizing route towards performance, you will only get better performance, not worse.
[00:33:58] So if you're already, think about this. We have examples of some very talented athletes Transcribed Going through terrible things in their person. It could be someone passed away. They could be facing a trial. And despite that situation, they perform at their fullest potential. It's not new. But what I am saying is, performance is already there for this person.
[00:34:33] Maybe for the remaining 99%, even the performance would suffer. But let's take the highest example. The performance did not suffer. Now what we are saying is, Are you peaceful? That may not be. So let's have peace and perform.
[00:34:56] Dr Mike T Nelson: Does that go back to what we talked about earlier about maybe over prioritizing the acute effect and not necessarily the chronic? So the over prioritizing. prioritization of winning the game this coming up or winning the game or winning this season again at the expense of the cost and the chronic outcome after that.
[00:35:24] Tarun Gulati: Yeah, and these trade offs have to be solved at an organizational level. So let's look at the structure of the sports entity, for example. We may not be able to get into all the levels for lack of time, but let's at least address a few levels. Owners of a club or a team. Let's say general managers, coaches.
[00:35:56] and scouts, athletes, and the medical staff. Let's just talk about these four or five entities. And there are others, of course, the CFO has to make sure the money is there, the marketing, all of them. At the owner's level, let's say broadly, you have two kinds of owners. One owner is, I am passionate about sports.
[00:36:18] Yes, I own the team, but I will leave the day to day decision making to my executives or my general manager. Now, in that case, the owner needs to hire the right top executive that needs clarity of thought that needs a peaceful mind. But more than that, they would need to define the overall non financial vision of this team based upon their values.
[00:36:48] And that is where it starts at that level as an owner. If you decide as my non financial vision for this team, I'm putting in 300 million. My non financial vision of this team is not just winning. It has to be winning plus well being. It has to be winning plus impact. It has to be peace and performance.
[00:37:14] Impact on the players, community, city, country, but most important, the players well being. But the second type of owner is Vision plus operations. So they not only own the team, they also want to play an active role in running the team. So now they are responsible not only for defining this piece plus performance vision, they will also be involved in implementing this vision, making it a reality.
[00:37:48] That needs a lot of contemplation on there. So that's the owners. Now let's look at a general manager. The hiring and firing of the coaches needs a lot of clarity, needs a lot of contemplation, needs a lot of peace of mind. You cannot do it if you're stressed. Signing a player, trading a player, you're probably spending 20 million on the player.
[00:38:19] If you're stressed, if you're not clear in your mind, if you're not peaceful, how will you make the right decision? If you're not implementing the well being and winning strategy, how will you choose the player? You may choose a wrong player. only based on winning without looking at their mind. You only looked at the body.
[00:38:44] You only looked at what they can do with the body. You forgot to look at the mind. Now, a more, a very important decision for a general manager of, let's say, a group sports, they can also be tennis. And I was like, let's talk about group sports for a minute. You are not creating a player. You're creating a team.
[00:39:08] And a team is a combination of individuals. And you will almost never get a perfect set. So all you need to do is contemplate deeply, so you're clear as to who is the right individual and who's not, and who's the best I can get within this budget. And then, use the contemplate system to polish their minds, to mold their minds, to smoothen out the rough edges.
[00:39:39] Because, The edges will not be the same. One athlete may have an anger problem. Another athlete may have an insecurity problem. Another athlete may have a distraction problem. You have to polish those minds such that those individual minds then become one unified team mind. So when they're on the field, there is almost like an invisible private mental thread running what we call the contemplate mental matrix.
[00:40:13] That connects all the players to each other. There, the external dissolves completely. Now you have elevated your players from individual consciousness to team consciousness. And you are witnessing, now this is not just a game. This is a sports orchestra that you are witnessing. And this is possible only through contemplation and clarity.
[00:40:40] So that's the general managers. Then of course the coaches. The pressures that they have again. If you don't have clarity, if you're working under stress, it's very difficult. Scouts, sometimes choosing a player who is much better on the mental aspect, may not be as good on the physical, may be a better decision to make in the overall scheme of things, because you know the vision of the team.
[00:41:09] And then you have the medical stuff. Athletes, of course, we've spoken about athletes. Making wrong choices off the field, on the field, before the game, you go to a wrong party, you say something nasty on social media. Tens of wrong things can happen. Clarity and peace will keep you sane and it will lead to performance.
[00:41:32] And then you have the medical staff. They are performing under so much pressure. They have to put the Keep the players healthy. If someone is injured, they have to put them back and they have this constant. I want him back. No, he's not ready. No, I want him back. No, I'm clear. He's not ready. If you make a wrong decision in that pressure, you may hurt the athlete.
[00:42:01] You may hurt the organization and you may hurt yourself. All of this needs clarity.
[00:42:11] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. I think about the last Example, so as of this recording, the Miami Dolphins quarterback, Tua, had another concussion, pretty bad. I believe it's his third one of his career. And, on one hand it makes me nervous because having worked with, just a handful of high level players, almost all of them want to play.
[00:42:36] Like, if he could be 100 percent assured that he's good to go tomorrow, which obviously is not gonna happen, He for sure would play. So there's an incentive a lot of times even on the players aspect that they enjoy the game, they do want to perform. There is an incentive on the team aspect if it's one of the star players to have them come back.
[00:43:00] Obviously I don't think there's any purposeful ill intent of people who don't want to put someone in a circumstance they're not ready for, they don't want to do anything intentionally that's going to be harmful. To me it just feels like a lot of the subconscious incentives are based around performance.
[00:43:22] And yes, health and these other matters are still considered. But I guess I just get nervous in those situations without them, pulling family members and other people into the decision making process so that they have time to have an intelligent discussion, consider some of the other things that you're talking about here to make sure that acute decision Is the best decision.
[00:43:50] And also like you're talking about thinking about the long term ramifications. And then on top of all that, it's very hard to get an exact risk of what is the risk, right? Maybe he can get back to a hundred percent. Maybe he does never take another bad hit like that and plays another five years has no issues.
[00:44:13] Maybe something unfortunate happens where he's not quite back to a hundred takes another, hit in the head and now has. Major issues, potentially the rest of his life. So you're also dealing with, there's never going to be a hundred percent prediction of what's going to happen in the future either.
[00:44:31] Tarun Gulati: Yeah. And now you see, if you were to apply this system to the entire entity, think about this for a minute, it starts from the owner. If the owner is clear, it is not just winning. It is winning and wellbeing. And that is my non financial vision for this team. That percolates down to the general manager.
[00:44:56] But now you see, Mike, because the owner is so clear about the peace aspect, about doing the right thing, they hire the right general manager first, because you can't afford to have a general manager who doesn't agree with this philosophy. Otherwise the system breaks. So now the second leg is right. Your entire team of executives also believes in winning and well being, peace and performance.
[00:45:32] So that layer is intact. Now the coaches. So now the top layer believes peace plus performance is the right way to go. Now the coaches are hired accordingly. Think about this. And there might be a choice of you getting the Technically the best performing coach, but what if they don't align with your values?
[00:45:59] You may not choose to hire them. You may find somebody else. So the coaches now are thinking athlete is a human being first and athlete second. Yes, we want to win, but not at the cost of their mental health and their physical health. That's not the idea. We are looking at life, 80, 90 years of that life and not 10, 15 years of what they're going to give to sport.
[00:46:26] Because if you do that, then you're treating them as a commodity, not as a human. So now the coaches are aligned. The athlete has gone through the program. So they are also thinking about long term well being. They understand there is this short term gratification. I want to play my contract. What happens?
[00:46:46] All of that is happening in their head. But they have that physical stillness because they've practiced it and they are prioritizing long term peace of mind. The same goes with the family because within the Contemplate Sports system. When we go to schools, athletic departments, we have a program for their parents as well, because the parents are almost always equally involved in the sport.
[00:47:17] So they also have to have a calm mind. Sometimes the parents also get lost in foggy. So the parents are also, so the family is also supporting the decision. Yes, there is an injury. Don't worry about it. If you're not good to go, we will not take a chance. And the team is also aligned. Because remember, now the general manager and the coaches have also picked those players.
[00:47:46] Sign those players, keeping in mind who aligns with this vision and not just somebody who only wants to win at the expense of them. Now you have an orchestra. Everybody is in alignment and I'm telling you, this team will perform miracles. That have never been seen. This team will go into the recesses of their mind using contemplation and find things that they can contribute to the sport that never existed and be peaceful.
[00:48:25] They will be good partners. They will be good parents and they will be the best athletes in play. That's what we look at.
[00:48:35] Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. It's interesting. You talk about finding those matches and at least as a, Like semi outsider, like I feel in some aspects of sports that's gotten better. Obviously, I live in Minnesota, so I'm a Minnesota Vikings fan, but when they replaced both the GM and the head coach, they hired both of them as a pair.
[00:48:57] And the thought being, because there were some issues also in the past, which has been in different teams also, even just the Making sure the philosophy matches it both have Kind of the same set of values can the same set of things are gonna do so that you're starting to I think Look at things of more of a team dynamic on another level not just replacing things like parts of a machine at least to me it feels like we're slowly getting there and trying to look at more of the entire dynamics as a whole instead of just, pulling out certain parts of machine and putting in a new thing.
[00:49:40] Tarun Gulati: Yeah. And not wanting to do it quickly.
[00:49:45] Dr Mike T Nelson: Right.
[00:49:46] Tarun Gulati: To replace the biggest problem again is patience. Lack of patience comes from restlessness. That is what restlessness is. So if peace of mind is built into the whole system right from the top, then the decision will always be, of course, we need to find a general manager and a coach.
[00:50:09] Yes, very critical, but we are not going to do it in a rush. We will wait to find the right person because we know once a wrong person is in, it'll be chaos. Let's wait for the right person. That's where the alignment comes in and patience is not being restless. is very clear in your mind is very good.
[00:50:39] Dr Mike T Nelson: So if someone's listening to this and they want to apply part of this to their own performance, what would be like an exercise or an example or something they could do to integrate this into their own performance?
[00:50:55] Tarun Gulati: It's a very elaborate system. It consists of two broad parts. One is the core contemplate mental fitness system, which is where it. You learn the practice of contemplation and multiple principles for mental fitness. Let me give you an example of a couple of principles. The first principle is the principle of the twin voices, where you learn to identify and differentiate between multiple voices in your head.
[00:51:29] There could be two, there could be more than two. And then you ask yourself in this situation, I'm about to do this. I'm about to say this. Or I did this and I said this, what are the various voices in my head about this? What is each voice saying? Voice one is saying, do this. Voice two is saying no, do that.
[00:51:54] Is there a voice three? And then you ask yourself, following which voice will make me more peaceful? And which voice will make me more restless in the moment? Another principle is the urge to prove. Very prevalent in general in the world today and in sports.
[00:52:22] What we are saying there is, do you experience an urge to prove how good you are? Prove that others are wrong, prove that you are right, prove a fan wrong, prove a journalist wrong. Is that making you more peaceful or is that reducing your peace of mind? Would you rather be silent instead of saying something angrily?
[00:52:51] Would that make you more peaceful in the long run? Another principle is feels good versus feels right. Something may feel very good before a game. The question is, does it feel right? Does it feel peaceful? So similarly, there are many other principles. That's the core part of the training. And then the second part is the sports mental fitness.
[00:53:22] training module, which is what goes into the tactical aspects. So the thread is always maximize your potential as an athlete while maximizing your peace of mind. That's always the thread. And within that, you learn specifically how to manage multiple kinds of stress, performance stress, my future as an athlete, coach expectations, failure, social media, all of that.
[00:53:51] How do you apply a mental reset after a pleasant event? After an unpleasant event? How do you define your injury downtime strategy? Train yourself on your peripheral vision? How do you enter into a state of flow? Maintain it? How do you focus on constant improvement rather than winning? Because winning comes from constant improvement.
[00:54:18] Constant improvement comes from falling in love with constant improvement. So if you flip your strategy and focus on, I fall in love with constantly improving as a player because, not because I want to win the game, not winning, because doing this on a day to day basis, when I improve myself, It makes me feel more peaceful, more fulfilled, more alive.
[00:54:47] So exercises around that, emotional awareness, physical stillness, energy management, meditation, visualizing, everything is there. That's it's an entire system for your entire athletic career. Also before sports. And a hundred years after, it's all there. And that's the key. You're a human being first, a prayer second.
[00:55:16] So that is how we implement it in an entity. We'll train a few coaches from their team, department, club, academy, depending upon who we are talking about, they will become certified coaches, and then we will help those coaches to run this for athletes, for other people.
[00:55:39] Dr Mike T Nelson: Cool. Awesome. Thank you so much. And where can people find out more about it?
[00:55:46] Tarun Gulati: The website is contemplate. life. C O N T E M P L A T E dot L I F E. And you can find me on LinkedIn. You can DM me on LinkedIn and we can get together and have a chat.
[00:56:03] Dr Mike T Nelson: Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing all your information and everything today.
[00:56:07] I really appreciate it. And we'll make sure to link to that information and everything below so people can find out more information. Thank you so much.
[00:56:17] Thank you, Mark. Thank you for having me.
[00:56:20]
[00:56:21] Dr Mike T Nelson: Thank you so much for listening to the podcast today. Huge thanks to Turan for all of the great information there. Make sure to check out his website. We'll put a link here below. Which is www dot contemplate dot life There's a lot of great information There if you're interested, you can definitely dive deeper there If you're interested in ketones check out tecton They are the link below a full disclosure I'm a scientific advisor and an ambassador to them But as I said at the beginning of the show i've still been enjoying them here down in Texas South Padre, Texas, as we are working and getting in some kiteboarding.
[00:57:04] So thank you so much for listening to the podcast as always. Really appreciate it. Stay tuned. We've got a bunch more great guests coming up as always. If you liked this podcast, please hit the like, subscribe, leave us a review. All that great stuff helps us get better. Distribution of the podcast into more people's lives.
[00:57:26] Thank you so much. Really appreciate it Talk to all of you next week.
[00:57:30] What do you suppose they call that? A novelty act? I don't know, but it wasn't too bad. Well, that's a novelty.
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