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"A definite person determines the one best thing to do, and does it."
A definite person determines the one best thing to do, and does it.
Harrison brought Peter Thiel's Zero to One back off the shelf, Henry brought a summer of notes from the Academy floor, and they landed in the same place from opposite directions: most of what gets called well-roundedness is an unwillingness to choose. We talk about what clarity does to a person's energy, the player who was afraid to name her dream school, what it actually costs a young athlete to keep every option open, and the thing neither of us expected to be the summer's biggest win.
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From the episode
"Just make sure you know you're consciously choosing. Someone will make the sacrifice you're unwilling to make, and they will get better than you. As long as you're okay with that choice, do it."
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The Infinite Game is Harrison and Henry Schertzinger on mental, spiritual, and physical health, and the wisdom that helps you play life at a higher level. Becoming over winning.
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Grateful to walk this road with you. Get after it.
The Infinite Game Podcast exists to capture yesterday's and today's wisdom to help us all play life at a higher level. With topics of mental health, spiritual health, and physical health being the focus for pursuing mastery in the game that matters the most: life. There will be two styles of shows, one, with Henry and Harrison talking, the other, hosting guests to glean insights from them!
The Infinite Game is a project that believes the expansion of our capacity and the shouldering of personal responsibility is the key to changing culture.
Henry, how are we doing?
Beside that, we're back to the rhythm where it almost feels unnatural, but this is the
majority of the year.
This is the next 40 weeks for us.
We're able to wake up, execute on what we see are the highest priorities, and then just
let the day continue to build.
So exciting.
It's unbelievably exciting.
We live in incredible times.
You start to see how important it is to realize someone's shaping the world.
If not you, then if you don't know who, you really don't know what the world's about to
look like.
Yes.
And it's exactly what I'm talking about today from zero to one.
My, one of the first things I wrote down in reflection about this summer was this line
of how real achieving something becomes when you fall in love with what gets you that thing
instead of the thing itself.
Yeah.
It's an interesting back and forth though, because I was almost going to bring up the
opposite.
I was just warning that clarity releases.
It affords so much energy.
When you are crystal clear on what you have to do, what you want it a hundred percent,
you lose energy in the fuzziness of the future.
I agree.
And a good example of this was talking to one of our players and just great player top,
top class division one talent.
And I was asking just, do you have a dream school?
Do you have a place that you want to go?
She was hesitant to say it.
And then she did say, and you could see that light start to come, the energy in which like
the energy completely shifted.
And in that moment I was like, that's the goal.
That has to be the goal.
Don't be so hesitant.
The stance of being humbly hopeful.
That is not where you want to be completely agree.
You have to want and love something specific.
But then you go achieving it, achieving it becomes so real if you love what gets you
that thing.
Oh, yeah.
Now you must know idolize the view from the mountain top, but if you don't like climbing,
you're never going to actually get there.
No, that's why I love and this might seem like unrelated, but it's incredibly related.
So sweatshirt season is probably in two months and on the sleeves of our sweatshirts are
kind of these three principles.
The first one's architect greatness.
Second one is trained to thrive.
Last one, sincere pursuit, and it's that staircase where architect greatness.
You have to have a clear aim, compelling vision.
You have to have that set up.
Then you cascade straight down to, all right, what is, what, how are you training your nervous
system?
What skills are you acquiring?
You've got to obsess over that process.
And then the last one is the identity of sincere pursuit.
I'm somebody who goes hard, who is obsessed with again, some sort of mission, purpose
and aim that I'm waking up with.
You can see to my face, there's, there's not fuzziness in what I'm about.
We've said that a number of times, you can notice when somebody falls off, it's almost
like in their skin, it's in their eyes and someone who has a definite purpose, the world,
it not only backs them and I don't know why I'm going aside, but I don't know why I'm
going completely blank on the famous book that was written from the psychologists in
Auschwitz where he could search for me and search for me.
And of course he could predict when someone was going to die because of the lack of light
in their eye and people.
When we say comments about a player or say they're drifting, watch them become a two
week warrior or something like that.
It said ingest, but we have a macro view because we've had this like micro intense experience
of our own, our own careers.
So we had our own careers, which were very real and very intense.
And then now we see hundreds of careers unfolding.
So it's just the case study is insanely deep for every personality trait and type.
Yes, no, it's, it's a gift for us, but it's also, it's sad to see cause from our perspective,
you see, you know, there's not really much we can do.
You can only say so much, but you can't really, you don't have a ton of influence.
And that's what I talked to Lexi about and she was reflecting on her career as well.
And we said, man, if we were to just known how predictable investing in the inputs and
then what the output is, you would go, man, I can do this.
Like I can actually do this.
It becomes not easy, but simple.
Yes.
And then you see kids flounder or just not have the correct priority list.
And it's a shame.
Cause again, what I wrote, how real achievement becomes when you love what gets you that thing
instead of that thing.
People idolize the college athletics life, which they should getting the gears epic.
The travel is awesome.
Having the admiration of the students on campus is generally very cool, but you have to like
love what gets you that.
Yeah.
I agree.
Being a weapon of a human being like actually being definite.
That's exactly what I'm about to actually talk about right here from zero to one, uh,
which is incredible book, Peter teal and read it back probably 2016, 2017.
But there's points in your life where a book just doesn't even apply, right?
Didn't have the businesses or the mental scaffolding to put any of this information to work.
And just on an aside, I've been very benefited by following intuition, meaning if a book
continues to stick out to me, I go, hmm, wonder why that title, wonder why that person wonder
why that theme keeps popping up in my day to day.
I go grab it and go, Oh wow, this has exactly what I need at the right time.
So I used to say, I basically have a cosmic curriculum.
I'm just following the thread of interest.
Well zero to one called to me again, picked it out and just some parts of it have been
incredible.
Not only for our businesses right now, but personally, this is something I wish I would
have been told earlier would have changed much.
Don't know.
I fortunately ran into this Emerson line early, but the way Peter teal then expands upon it.
Awesome.
So this is a classic Emerson.
He goes shallow men believe in luck.
They believe in circumstance, but strong men believe in cause and effect.
Now he goes to the next one, uh, the first explorer of the South pole and he goes, victory
awaits him who has everything in order.
People call it luck.
And so there you see this, what Henry's calling love, what some would just call schooled in
the art of inevitability, Jim Rohn line.
But it's just trusting.
It's not even a trust is like a weird way to say it.
It's just like understanding and Peter teal doing leads to becoming, do the thing, have
the power, do the thing, have the thing.
And this is not even quote unquote law of attraction.
It goes back to the one before it, which is action is the attraction.
It creates the ripple effect.
But Peter teal talks early in the book about the future.
Like Henry's saying, someone will build it and design it and it's rooted in today.
And it gets planted more and more.
It grows more and more through actions today.
But he goes on, this is the part that I love.
He goes, you can expect the future to take a definite form or you can treat it as a easily
uncertainty.
If you treat the future as something definite, it makes sense to understand it in advance
and to work to shape it.
But if you expect an indefinite future ruled by randomness, you'll give up on trying to
master it and definite attitudes to the future.
Explain what's most dysfunctional in our world today.
Process Trump's substance when people lack concrete plans to carry out, they use formal
rules to assemble a portfolio, various options.
This describes Americans today in middle school were encouraged to start hoarding extracurricular
activities.
In high school, ambitious students compete even harder to appear omnipotent.
By the time a student gets to college, he spent a decade curating a bewildering, diverse
resume to prepare for a completely unknowable future.
Come what may, he's ready for nothing in particular.
A definite view by contrast favors firm convictions.
Instead of pursuing many side mediocrity and calling it well roundedness, a definite person
determines the one best thing to do and he does it.
Instead of working tirelessly to make himself indistinguishable, she strives to be great
at something substantive, to be a monopoly of one.
This is not what young people do today because everyone around them has long since lost faith
in a definite world.
Memorize that.
A ripple, a ripple goes in many directions and I hope one of the ripples that we're trying
to create goes in that one, which is monopoly of one.
Kids are not ashamed of wanting to be great at something.
The fact, it is so heartbreaking when I'm not saying a kid makes a decision to not be
great but they don't realize the choice they're making is not going to allow them to be great.
This is literally going to be impossible because, and I said it to one of our players who showed
up to their first field hockey practice, I said, "Hey, you can play field hockey.
I am so fine with it.
Not going to be upset.
Just make sure you know you're consciously choosing.
Someone will get better than you."
In this time, you will not, someone will choose to not, meaning they'll make the sacrifice
you're unwilling to make and they will get better than you.
As long as you're okay with that choice, do it.
And they'll bring examples up like, "Well, this person can play multiple sports.
Well, this person, well, you guys did."
Well, let me rebuttal that.
We could have been so much better.
We made it to the highest level.
But were there ultimate split tree decisions that could have happened that would have set
us up?
Yeah, sure.
Okay.
We look back.
We get to use that for our own lessons.
You cannot use other people's stories.
You can use them for reflection, but you don't know how they were built, the level of standards
that were put on them way earlier, the how much earlier they got the fundamentals of
the game, whatever it may be.
I mean, there's so many different variables, like genetics can't calculate that.
Who are we to ever say you would want our experience?
I mean, it was insanely stressful.
Oh, yes.
UNC was not the ideal situation with how much we had to learn and how quickly we had to
either decide to fight or quit, just give up.
Thank God for delusional self confidence, because your world either will be shattered
or you will impose your world onto things.
It's like when two people meet and so the gravitational pull of two planets, the stronger
one will win and like a warp the other one to eventually see the world as they see it.
I mean, you've got to exactly that right there, what we're saying you have to love being like
forming yourself into a weapon.
I think on the I think the classic rebuttal for someone would be, but what if in eighth
grade I choose the wrong thing and then I'm unhappy three years later that I didn't choose
something else?
Good life lesson.
Great life lesson.
Granted, choosing the right thing is important, but you go back to, is your goal what the
thing is giving you or who you're becoming doing the thing?
I would also say, what do you mean by right?
What do you mean by wrong?
Is it eventual?
Like are you saying you just burn it out and you quote unquote feel burnt out or you eventually
hate it or you eventually, I mean, think about the tennis players.
There was a great article of our friend JJ Wolf in the paper, he's coming back to Cincinnati
one last night, coming back from an injury at his peak.
I think he was 39th in the world, 2023, I think he's had shoulder injury.
But point is this, when we were playing club soccer with him, you think he was, he eventually
obviously stopped club soccer, went all in our tennis, tennis players and golfers.
They don't apologize for their pursuit.
They do not swimmers.
They do not apologize.
You only hear it from the football and basketball crowd that wants to take the Olympic sports
players.
But the regret is, I think regret is a choice, whether you feel regret over your decision
or not.
Cause it's the wrong perspective.
I love the line monopoly of one.
Yeah, I agree.
And I'm not saying the game monopoly distorts kind of what that monopoly is.
Yeah.
What a monopoly is.
But it is like you've, you've, you've reached exit velocity to where there's no more competition
for you.
You have so defined yourself as world-class, as remarkable that you've get, you get to stand
in a category that is undeniably ability or respect doesn't mean, well, I was going to
say it doesn't mean everyone and starts to like clear the way for you, but it's that
you have, you have defined your place in the world, in that world, in that like, and you
can create physics in your environment.
You can help those around you.
You can, you can change days for yourself, essentially you're creating the future for
those around you, which is, I think what we do over the summer, meaning giving someone
the skill, giving someone the ability or handing an opportunity to someone they own.
I think the most beneficial thing we give is the opportunity then to lead.
Yeah.
Meaning you give someone a skill, but then you give them an opportunity to do something
real with that skill, to be a leader, to be a real leader, to impact others.
And I think this summer, the biggest step the culture has taken overall is watching
the older players spot the younger players, seeing the guys show another player how to
do the form of something, seeing players cheer across the field at a, at a shot.
Yeah.
I think we take, maybe take that for granted personally, and then therefore for our community,
but there's a lot of people who go through this world and never have the feeling of someone
looking up to them in the place of being responsible or not even being responsible, but feeling
that younger person admiring, yeah, admiring, and then leaning on and caring.
We had some of our college players last days yesterday, and you can see that the sadness
of and the tears of the younger players and losing not like a friend, but a role model,
like someone that they're leaning on and attaching themselves to.
It's an awesome thing to one, cry about and to feel sad about, but it's a, it's an awesome
thing to have.
Like how blessed are you to have one, somebody that quality to look up to, but then to, to
be that person is a honor.
It is an honor.
And it's only, uh, to forget it or lose sight of it is, is unfortunate.
Yeah.
It'd be strange to not feel some sense of duty to the people around you.
Yeah.
Like I couldn't imagine a life disconnected from feeling the need to show strength because
people are watching and that's again, the message to the role model is almost the same
as the message to the younger player, the younger player.
You have someone above you that believes in you, thinks you can be super special, honor
that relationship by becoming special.
And then when you're the older role model, you have players underneath you that believe
you are someone worthy of admiration.
So become great and inspire the next generation to stand on your shoulders.
Yeah.
Being disconnected from community is not how we were meant in which this is another thing
we've been talking about recently.
And the you project this summer has just like opened our eyes greatly to what we've been
talking recently, the difference between progress media and social media.
And then the idea that reframe what Instagram is, Instagram is not a social media app.
It's literally you're subscribing to Netflix of people.
You're subscribing to their show.
You're just seeing what they want you to see.
The you project is a social community.
It is your network of people.
And I think the ratio is obviously the culture we're building, but you get 19 likes, you're
getting 19 comments, maybe more, maybe more.
And that that's a real social network.
Yes.
And that is your friend sharing that journey, supporting, uh, they support you and yours.
You get to support them and theirs.
And it is, it's exactly what we, we dreamed of building.
Yes.
It's going to be exactly what we dream of building.
Because there is this influencer culture.
They're not influencing anything.
No.
It's interactive.
Sure.
Entertainment.
Yes.
I have you project has allowed me to shift my own relationship with social media in such
a profound way that I, once I get the time to write, I, I want to go hard on an essay
about focus because I don't think any, like anybody until you truly shun media understands
what focus, I didn't understand what focus was until I literally was just like, I will
never ever again, it's not even not consume social media, but it's, I'm not going there
for my source of connection.
Everybody that I care about is now on the, is now on the app.
Okay.
Other than a couple.
Yeah.
Other person, people we really care about.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
It's a lot of them, but all my computer in a very, very tight way at like 15 minutes
at the end of my day, but once you feel that level of the mind just fractaling and all
of a sudden bouncing and pinging around to a thousand different things until the mind
has been like tunneled into one thing in like a steadfast, focused, focused manner.
There's nothing, I mean, I've, I've really started to understand what people have said
about focus and presence is a superpower.
Yeah.
Few people achieve it because the one you could call the chaos machine of the phone too.
Then of course, and the studies that will come out and I don't know who was on Joe Rogan
recently.
Oh, Dr. Zach Bush.
And he talked about just, you can see right at 2008, 2009, the introduction of the smartphone
and then the creation of social media.
It is unbelievable.
We are living in a science experiment that nobody knows what it's going to do, except
we're starting to obviously see books like The Anxious Generation, your own personal experience.
Just if you take a step back and every day clarify, right, specifically, here's my goal.
Here are the top five, like critical tasks that have to occur today and you do not distract
yourself until those things are done.
Like genuinely you don't fractal your mind.
You don't just, if you will have peace of mind and that is literally, yeah, unbelievable
piece of mind.
I love it.
I love this one quote, which is the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be
lit.
Yeah.
And you can see the difference between a player that their mind is just an engine.
It's a consuming engine of the circumstance and it's just like pushing them and then players
that their mind is just a garbage bin and it's just been filled with trash.
Yeah.
And it's two different things.
Do you believe your mind is something that is filled with things or your mind is just
an engine that eats whatever you're in front of?
What is stimulating your mind in the moment?
What is stimulating your mind day to day it is, it is, there's that book barbarians at
the gate.
I just love that, that concept where you are primarily the defender of your mental landscape.
You have to cherish and really protect what goes in there daily and it needs to be positive.
You know, what's helped me a ton, maybe this was the last thing I'll say, we try to keep
these a little tighter, but the thing that has helped me a ton is I will name somebody
as my current mentor.
Like I will study this person for seven to nine months.
You know, I've bounced around from one person to the next, to the next, to the next.
And when you find that thing that you love, that person that all of a sudden their words
resonate with you, their energy resonates with you, you trust kind of them as a funnel
for information where you're like, this person is more well read than I, I want to understand
them almost as if I could finish their sentences eventually, uh, that will change everything.
Cause if you're just going to social media to get that little dopamine hit, uh, that
little awakening, uh, of energy, it is, we will have players that start reading soon
and they're going to be superhuman.
You're reading.
Yeah.
There, there is no single grade or hack.
The last thing, the last thing I'll say cause writing about this yesterday, the days that
you can separate yourself are the ones where you have the most choices, the most meaning
when you show up to training, everybody's there.
Like you're not really making any choices.
You chose to be there, but other than that, you're getting what everyone else is getting.
But now that we're heading into the school year, that's when you can separate, we'll
see who's making the choices.
Who's a part of the breakfast club who's doing something in the evening.
Doesn't have to be exhaustive, just needs to be moving you closer to where you want to
go.
And then reading again, it's undervalued, but it is the most important thing you can
do.
Yes.
Reading and journaling are so from a observer's view, like what's that going to do?
I'm just putting words in my mind and, and pen to paper, you're like, you're removing
my constraints.
Nevermind.
Also new ideas in, new ideas out, you're, you're in a shell of your current conception
of the world.
So what needs to happen is you got to just throw shit at it and break yourself out.
And all of a sudden, insights, revelation, inspiration, the call to a new and a new and
more elevated, uh, step.
Think of your mind.
Think of your mind as a dark room and your flashlight right now is barely even lighting
up the corner of it and the more you enlighten your, your mind, the more of the room you're
able to see.
And then Elon Musk saying, all you should do is read as much as possible.
Even if it's the dictionary, let's read it.
Let's trust him.
This man is doing something that I can't even believe his SpaceX company meeting yesterday
was so outrageous.
The vision he's casting it it's, it's unbelievable.
It is.
Yeah.
He mentioned Star Trek like three times.
Yes.
They're looking at Safa and they're going, wait, this is, this is what we've been dreaming
of.
Yes.
We've been talking about this since we were 10 years old.
Yeah.
And you can't stop snoozing your alarm.
Yeah.
Not you.
I'm saying people.
Yeah.
Last thing.
If you're a young athlete, young kid, we're going into school season, just, just put this,
this standard on yourself.
If you don't do stuff before school that, so I don't want to be harsh, but so irresponsible.
Yeah.
Come away.
There's got to be something.
I have to share the last quote, the quote I shared this morning.
First off too.
It doesn't have to be a full hour.
You know, it could be 10 minutes of mobility, five minutes of mobility, making sure you get
hydration and reading five pages, doing 10 minutes of remembering a 10 minute run, like
all of that stuff, writing down your goal for the day, three things you're grateful for,
two things you want to improve.
Those things don't take long, but you talk about the biggest difference, the biggest difference
in what I talked about before, having a definite view, firm convictions, being determined to
be great at one thing, to be a monopoly of one.
That's where it starts.
That is where it starts.
What about my quote this morning that you project got?
It was good.
Insane.
This is the last thing I'll say.
It's this quote.
It says, it's not winter that defeats you.
It's your insistence on summer.
Yeah.
That was fine.
It's the definition of someone who gives up on their morning grind because it's not the
warm bed that defeats them.
It's them wishing getting out of bed was easy.
Them not expecting what they're trying to do to be hard.
Them not expecting a couple mornings to be just like randomly sad because of how hard
it is.
Expect it to be hard.
It's not winter that defeats you.
You wishing it was summer.
Only easy day was yesterday.
Yeah.
I mean, there's easy moments inside of hard days.
Yeah.
That's what you wait for.
Weekends too.
You wait for the sleep in sometimes.
All right.
Are you good, Henry?
Yep.
All right.
God bless my friend.
Praying for you.
Please pay for us.