Easily listen to SPARK Insights With Coach Reg

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Hey, it's good to be back with you.

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Welcome to the Sparks Insights podcast.

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Wanna talk about something that's

been in the news this week, and I want

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to do a little thought experiment,

and I wrote about it in this week's

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issue, so rather interesting.

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this person does something, it becomes

national news, and I'm not talking about.

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Our president, I'm talking about Tiger

Woods, and I promise you this episode

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and this newsletter is not about golf.

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It's about what I love talking about,

and that's purpose and meaning.

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Michael Bamberger wrote on golf.com.

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It's not easy being an inherently

shy person who is one of the

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most famous people in the world.

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It's not easy leading a public

life when your private life

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has been revealed to the world.

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It's not easy being a single

father, even when you have all the

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financial resources in the world.

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It is not easy becoming singularly

talented at one difficult thing,

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playing tournament golf like nobody

has ever played it, and then to have

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to find meaning in your life when

that chapter of your life is over.

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So if you haven't seen the news, this

past week within the past week, tiger

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Woods was involved and yet another.

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Car incident.

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is the fourth incident that has

been made prominent in the news.

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And this one again, was concerning because

he was arrested for suspicion of DUI.

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And, as of this writing just yesterday

tiger announced that he's gonna

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be taking some time away to deal

with what's going on in his life.

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Here's what strikes me about this.

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Tiger is.

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One of the most privileged

human beings on the planet.

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Certainly, it's hard to argue

given the success he's had.

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He is the most successful

golfer that's ever lived.

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Somebody argues somebody like Jack

Dick Los has won more, but tiger.

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Tiger has dominated the game and he has

shaped the game more than anybody else.

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No, no disrespect to people that

came before him or after him.

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Even Scotty Scheffler, who's

arguably him and Rory McElroy are

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to the probably most famous and best

golfers on the planet right now.

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Tiger Woods far exceeded that in terms of

his career, his career arc and trajectory.

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He has performed this single thing,

we call it tournament competitive

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golf, better than anyone in the

world, and it's made him famous

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and wealthy beyond measure.

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But he turned 50 recently and

his body is held together with

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titanium and medical wizardry.

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It's simply wearing out time

marches on for all of us.

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And unfortunately, when you

have gone through that many

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surgeries, it is difficult.

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Oh my goodness.

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I can't imagine the wear and tear on

his body and having been put together

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by, being re patched together and,

spinal fusion and just all these

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incredibly complex and delicate surgeries

that has to be accompanied by pain.

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And, and that's why it's kind of

purported that he's he was found with

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painkillers at the scene of that accident.

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Can you blame a human being for

trying to minimize their pain?

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I am not diagnosing Tiger.

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I don't know him.

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I don't know intimately what's

going on inside his world.

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I'm not gonna pretend I do, I will

do a little thought experiment.

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But it's really just for

illustration purposes.

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What I keyed on was this

idea of what Michael said.

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It's not easy to find meaning in your life

when the chapter of your life is over.

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That just fuels me.

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I, my, my radar, my spidey sense is

tuned to athletes and founders that

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talk about the significant difficulty of

transitioning out of something that you

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have known most of your life, that you

did well, that you did better than most

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people that have ever walked the planet.

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And you've reached heights that most

human beings can't even imagine.

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And when that has taken away from you,

whether it's voluntarily or not, life

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throws you a major, major curve ball.

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And I think what's.

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Shameful.

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I'll call it shameful.

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I think it's a shame that the public

loves when this happens because

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they get to crucify another hero.

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Tiger is just a human being.

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He's a human being that has done things

that other people marvel him for,

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but the fact is he is a human being

and he faces a question that every

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living person has had to deal with.

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Who am I and who am I?

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If I'm not blank, fill in the blank.

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This could go as simple as, who

am I if I'm not a kid anymore?

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Who am I?

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If I'm not a mom anymore?

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Who am I?

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If I am not a founder of a tech company?

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Who am I if I'm not an electrician?

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These are things that every

human has to deal with.

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We deal with transitory parts of our

lives, our containers change, and the way

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we express ourselves and the manner in

which we get to express ourselves changes.

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What we are expressing is buried deep

within if and if you're not aware of it,

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it's very difficult to move on from what

you've been doing, what you've known.

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We identify with things that fill us with

purpose, things that give joy to others.

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But when that thing is removed

or it's completed, we're lost.

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And if we don't have a GPS, if we

don't have any internal compass to

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figure out why I'm here, who am I?

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What am I building things for?

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We are bound to feel lost

and grasp for anything that

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feels safe or even worse, we.

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Grasp for things that make us stop

feeling things altogether, and

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that's when things get really dark.

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So this is the work that I've given

myself to, I help people find, get

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attached to language for who they are.

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Help them get clear on their purpose

so they can stop performing for their

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identity and start expressing what's

been underneath the entire time.

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This is something that I've been

doing folks for 40 years and counting.

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I don't forget sitting, on a Zoom

meeting with a former NFL player.

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And he talked to me about the suicidal

thoughts he had when his career ended.

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And unfortunately, this is

not a story that is isolated.

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It's common amongst, high

profile professional athletes.

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I remember sitting in a room with a

founder there was a small group of us,

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and he was telling us about, he sold his

company for eight figures and he spent two

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weeks in a coffee shop refreshing his bank

balance and just feeling completely lost.

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He had no idea who he

was without the business.

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in the world that I've

walked in, with athletes.

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I've seen them go from somebody

to nobody and that transition is

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just a breaking point for them.

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And, it's not because they're weak.

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It's just that nobody's helped them

build something beyond their performance.

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here's something that's interesting.

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There is so much massive support

and programs and experts for

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performance coaches, trainers,

therapists, strategists,

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nutritionists, agents, you name it.

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There are so many platforms and

ecosystems that help people perform at

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the highest level, and what I found is

there's very little, almost nothing for

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what comes after, and this is the gap.

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This is where people fall apart.

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It doesn't matter if you're Tiger Woods.

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It doesn't matter if you're a high school

basketball player or a business owner

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who just came to the end of something.

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The pattern really is always the same.

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Your identity gets

fused to what you build.

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It's fused and it's connected

to your output, and the people

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around you relate to you based

on what you do, not who you are.

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And when the output and the performance

stops, you don't know what's left.

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Now, I don't wanna make light of Tiger's

situation, but I sat and I thought about,

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what if Tiger took the purpose factor?

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As you know, purpose factor is an

assessment that I do with folks.

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I've had the privilege

of taking over 80 people.

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Through this assessment and walking

through their assessment personally in

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a one-on-one phone call, I would highly

recommend that if you haven't done it yet,

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go take a look at bobregnerus.com/purpose.

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What people have found has given them

language that has opened up their worlds

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to them, it's given them language, what's

going on underneath their performance.

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It's given them identity outside

of the containers that they're in.

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So I thought it would be interesting

just to think for a moment, what if

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Tiger Woods took the purpose factor?

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What do you think I would've found?

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I believe that Tiger is a builder,

and all I do when I recognize

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patterns is I follow evidence.

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So one thing that I did in my

research just really jumped out to me.

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Tiger won the 1997 Masters.

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It's the.

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Biggest golf tournament of the year.

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He won the Masters by 12 strokes.

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After doing that, he looked at his

game and he said, not good enough.

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He literally tore down his entire process.

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He tore down his entire

golf swing and rebuilt it.

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He has rebuilt his swing.

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Now, I don't know if you

understand how difficult this is.

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I promise this wouldn't be about golf,

but I just want you to understand

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how technical the golf swing is.

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It is something that golfers obsess over.

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But Tiger, the best player on the planet

has rebuilt his swing from scratch.

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At least three times across his career

because he saw something like this ceiling

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or this level that nobody else could see.

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He was always building the next

version, the acquired strength

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that I picked up is all in.

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There's just no denying Tiger goes.

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Literally from zero to a hundred.

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And when we talk about patterns, his golf

game goes in a hundred miles an hour.

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And unfortunately, he has been caught

driving a hundred miles an hour.

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But when you think about the

swing change that I talked

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about, he went all in like it.

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He knew it would cost him years of

results, but he trained like a Navy seal.

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He practiced Literally

until his hands bled.

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And that wiring is what makes

life so hard for him right now.

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Because an all in person

can't just compete.

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You have to show up at the Masters, and

if you finish like 20 shots off the lead.

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Participation trophies mean

nothing to somebody like Tiger

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who's all in it's torture.

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So from the time he was a little

kid, competitive golf was Tiger's

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container, but it was never his purpose.

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A builder doesn't need a golf club

because I come across builders all

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the time and builders build things.

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I come across builders

every single day building.

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On different platforms in different ways,

and it's not that they are, we don't

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want them to over identify with that.

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If you're building a company or

you're building a golf swing, it's

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the same thing underneath the surface.

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But I want you to understand that

you will always over identify

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with something like this.

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And it is just human nature

to over identify with that.

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Now, one of the other skills that I

think Tiger definitely displays, that's

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part of purpose factor is strategy.

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is definitely his acquired skillset.

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Strategic minds like his, I mean, he

breaks down a golf course, he breaks

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down a swing like nobody's business.

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He doesn't go into a tournament.

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On a feeling, he goes in with a plan.

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He doesn't do anything without strategy.

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And that is something he has acquired

as a skill right alongside with golf.

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But really what he was doing, he

was flexing his strategic muscles.

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Very, very much but like most people.

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Letting go of that container of,

of competitive golf, which he's

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been in and is known for, and

the best that it's ever been.

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It is so hard.

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And for him to not do that

is feels like quitting.

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And even though it's

not, it feels like it.

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And quitting is just one thing that

somebody like Tiger can simply not accept.

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This is where we get stuck.

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The container gets fused

or confused with purpose.

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When the container breaks down, you

believe that your purpose is gone when

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it just needs a new place to live.

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Now, a few weeks ago, I

wrote about Alyssa Liu.

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She won gold at the Olympics.

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She walked away from skating

at age 16, went to UCLA.

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Studied psychology, took a backpacking

trips with friends, got a piercing

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that shows when she smiles.

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She became somebody outside of her sport.

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And then when she came back,

she came back whole W-H-O-L-E.

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She wasn't skating to prove anything.

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She was skating because she wanted to.

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Now from what I see, tiger never got that.

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He went from a child prodigy who was on

television as a young boy to become the

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most dominant golfer in history, and

now he's a man whose body is breaking

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down and his private life has been on

display for the entire world to see.

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There was really never a chapter

in between the chapters where he

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got to figure out who Tiger was

when Tiger wasn't playing golf.

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And I'm not saying that

that would fix everything.

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Because, you know, life is exceedingly

more complicated than that.

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But the pattern in athletes that

I see is the same pattern that I

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see in founders and executives.

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It's the ones that are able to do

identity work before the performance ends.

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Those are the ones that

survive the transition and

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the ones who skip it collapse.

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It's that simple.

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When the when the performance ends, when

the business ends, when the career's

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over, when the body gives out, the ones

that I've had the privilege to work

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through don't lose themselves because

they've figured out what's underneath it.

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I've been saying this for a while,

but the most dangerous moment in

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a performer's life is not failure,

it's success without identity.

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And unfortunately, tiger Woods has

been the most visible example of

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that truth that we've ever seen.

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And I mean that with all respect to

the man because he's going through

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something very heavy right now.

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, if you know someone who's in transition

now, somebody who's exited a business

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or entered a career or staring at

a chapter that they aren't prepared

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for, forward this message to them.

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And if that someone is you,

I wanna have a conversation.

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Head over to bobregnerus.com.

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Click the conversation button and

set up a time to talk with me.

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That's where this work starts.

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Speaker 10: Thank you again for listening.

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I always enjoy hearing from you.

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Please let me know how this

lands for you and I'll see you

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next week on Spark Insights.

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Bye for now.

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