Good morning and welcome to the Increasing Re Impact Podcast. I'm Justin Sua, episode 1,845.

Over the course of my career, I've had the chance to watch many of the best athletes in the world compete at the highest stage.

And it doesn't matter if it is baseball or football or basketball or any of the Olympic sports.

One thing that intrigues me is that

in the heat of competition, you will often see athletes, men and women, team sports, individual

sports, go into a different persona. A lot of them will flip a switch and you'll see that once that normally

happy person turned into a really intense focused person. That person who is normally happy,

easy going with lots of smiles, they don't smile a lot. And oftentimes people think, oh, why are they like that? What's going on?

It's them getting into the right mindset for them to play at the highest level.

Kobe Bryant once said this, quote, when it was time to play, I'd switch my mode into something else.

It was the equivalent to Maximus, Decimus, Meridius, and Gladiator, picking up the dirt and

smelling it. It's go time. That was my mental switch. I was like an actor getting ready for a

film. You put yourself in that cage. When you are in that cage, you are that character. Then when you

leave there, you can be something completely different.

Close quote.

Many times these athletes will use a persona to put themselves in the best position to succeed.

And this persona sometimes is different than their actual personality.

Now, not all athletes use this, and this doesn't work all the time.

But my question for you to consider is if you were to assume a character before you go into a

meeting, if you, like an actor, if you were to act the best version of yourself, how you would

want to be, what would that actor look like? What kind of focus would you

have? What kind of attitude would you have? How would you treat your teammates? What would your

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