#179 Dr. Gio Valiante (Part 1): Discipline and Resilience
Oct 31, 2023
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Dr. Gio Valiante, a leading performance psychologist, shares insights from his work with elite athletes and entrepreneurs. He emphasizes the vital role of discipline and resilience in achieving success, distinguishing between talent and effort. Valiante explores how environment shapes personal development and the importance of teaching resilience, especially to children. He discusses cultivating habits that foster growth and critiques modern parenting practices, advocating for a focus on genuine support over superficial appearances.
Developing discipline and resilience requires changing behaviors and infusing discipline into habits as soon as possible.
Creating an environment that demands discipline and resilience can shape behavior positively.
Exposing children to failure and adversity, praising effort, and teaching them to take risks contribute to developing resilience.
Deep dives
The Five Ways to Gain an Advantage and Win
Dr. Geo Valiente discusses the five ways individuals can gain an advantage and achieve success. These include talent, which involves having natural abilities; work ethic, which entails putting in more effort than others; differentiated perspective, which means seeing the world differently; having a rigorous process to follow consistently; and effective hiring to compensate for individual deficiencies.
The Importance of Discipline and Developing Resilience
Dr. Geo emphasizes that discipline is a habit of mind and behavior. Changing actual behaviors and infusing discipline into habits as soon as possible is crucial for sustainable discipline throughout life. He also highlights the significance of developing resilience, which is often born out of learning how to handle failure. Resilience can be fostered by allowing children to experience normative failure and encouraging them to persist through adversity. Developing self-confidence and delaying gratification are key aspects of building resilience.
The Role of Environment in Encouraging Discipline
Dr. Geo discusses the impact of the environment on discipline and behavior. He mentions that talent hotbeds, such as locations that produce exceptional athletes, tend not to be characterized by wealth and comfort. Instead, they have environments that signal the need for individuals to find a way to succeed. Dr. Geo highlights the importance of situational cues that promote focus and skill development. Changing the environment or creating an environment that demands discipline and resilience can shape behavior positively.
Parenting for Resilience
Dr. Geo emphasizes the significance of parenting in developing resilience. He suggests that overprotecting children can lead to fragility, while exposing them to failure and adversity can build resilience. Reinforcing work ethic, praising effort rather than intelligence, and teaching children to deal with failure and take risks contribute to developing resilience. Dr. Geo emphasizes the importance of spending time with children, being truthful, and allowing them autonomy to solve problems to promote self-confidence.
Sources of Advantage beyond Talent and Effort
Dr. Geo adds patience, ability to withstand pain, temperament, partner selection, energy, curiosity, luck, and positioning as additional sources of advantage. These factors, combined with talent and effort, can significantly influence success and fulfillment in life.
In the first of a special two-part episode, celebrated performance psychologist Gio Valiante calls on his vast experience working with some of the world’s top athletes and entrepreneurs. Shane and Valiante discuss developing discipline and resilience in work and life. Valiante offers his thoughts on the five ways to gain an advantage and win and how to change your habits. He also discusses the role your environment plays in discipline and how you can develop resilience in yourself and your children. Valiante is regarded as one of the most successful performance coaches in the world. He’s worked extensively with golfers on the PGA and LPGA Tours, Olympic athletes, and leading figures in NCAA football and the NFL, where he served as the Head Performance Coach of the Buffalo Bills. He has also logged over 5,000 hours coaching some of the most sophisticated investors in the world, including hedge fund manager Steve Cohen.
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