Jim Murphy

Shane Parrish: I want to start with this book, Inner Excellence. You wrote this book. You wanted to put together a manual on mental toughness and performance under pressure. The first thing I highlighted in this book—it’s not even on a regular page; it’s in the preface—is “The quality of your life is based on three elements: your inner world of thoughts and feelings, beliefs and desires; your frame of reference (mindset) from which you see the world; and your relationships.” How did you hit on that? 

Jim Murphy: Well, I mean the book was five years of full-time writing and research. That is a very holistic approach, and I think that’s what you need. If you want human optimization, we need to be holistic. We need to get deeper than just the mind. We need to go into the heart, into the subconscious. So in the five years of full-time writing and research that became Inner Excellence, that was one of the first things that I realized. If you want to really help anybody, whether you’re a counselor, a parent, a coach, yourself, we need to get to where your greatest fears are and your greatest dreams. That subconscious heart, spirit, neuro level is where we’ve got to get to.