Reflect: Rules for Life

Try hard. Care deeply. Put yourself out there. Don’t be scared of coming up short; it’s how you grow. Be patient. Realize good things tend to take time. Never sacrifice your health. Walk. Run. Lift. Swim. Dance. Cycle. Depression hates a moving target. Ask for help when you need it. Help others, too. Learn from failure. Learn from success. But also embrace a next-play mentality. The past is in the past. The future is in your imagination. You’ve only got the moment you are in. Stay curious. Never stop learning. Focus on what you can control and try not to waste energy on what you can’t. Find things that make you feel alive and pursue them relentlessly. Love deeply: people, places, crafts. Build community. Stand up for what you believe in. Be strong. Be kind. Take the work seriously, but yourself not so much. Don’t wait for everything to be perfect, lest you’ll spend your entire existence waiting. Fall off the path. Get back on the path. Life is an infinite game. You never know what’s going to happen next. Sleep when you are tired. Keep going.

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READ: 3 Life Lessons from an Extraordinary World Series

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The 2025 World Series may have been the best playoff series in recent sports history.

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The Los Angeles Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays played each other neck-and-neck all the way to the end of a deciding Game 7. (And beyond, the game went extra innings.) There were so many great plot lines, from the underdog Blue Jays team cohesion to the Dodgers staying with it even when their backs were against the wall.

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But there are three stories in particular with extraordinary lessons for baseball, for sport, and really, for all of life.

You Never Know What Could Happen Next (And The Power of Evidence-Based Belief)

Toronto Blue Jays rookie pitcher Trey Yesavage started this season playing Single-A baseball in a Florida league. Six months later, he was breaking records on the biggest stage in baseball.

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For those who don’t follow baseball, that means Yesavage made it from one of the lowest leagues to starting in the World Series in a single season. It’s unheard of.

After striking out 12 Dodgers in a pivotal game 5, including future Hall of Famer Shohei Ohtani, Yesavage was asked what led to his success.

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Yesavage answered with two things:

1. Relentless self-belief.
2. Keeping at least 2 of his 3 pitches in the strike zone.

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Note the combination of a lofty ideal (self-belief) with concrete, gritty, and simple controllables (keeping your stuff in the zone). This is where the magic happens.

If Yesavage steps on the mound against the best in the world without a plan and process, he’s in trouble. The idea of facing greats like Ohtani would be utterly overwhelming. But keeping 2 of your 3 pitches in the zone? It’s something within your control. When you give your mind something to focus on that you know you can do, it decreases anxiety and makes the challenge manageable.

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Yesavage also repeatedly remarked how much he trusted the team behind him, and what a boost it’s been to have his parents in the stands (they’ve traveled to all of his games). Herein lies another crucial lesson: self-belief almost always involves more than oneself. The people with whom you surround yourself are so important.

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When you focus on what you can control, do what you know you can do, and have the right people in your corner, you give yourself evidence for your unwavering self-belief.

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Belief without evidence is delusion. Belief with evidence is a superpower.

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Excellence is not perfection.
Excellence is not certainty.
Excellence is not the secret.

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Just because you think it doesn’t mean it becomes reality. If you try to manifest your way to a World Series win, reality will hit you hard—figuratively and literally.

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Belief is still everything. But you’ve got to have a process. You’ve got to give yourself the evidence.

Letting Go—and Letting it Rip

Yoshinobu Yamamoto threw a complete Game 2, came back for 96 pitches and six innings in Game 6, and then—on no rest—threw another 34 pitches to close Game 7, leading the Dodgers' extraordinary comeback to win the World Series.

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Unreal. It’s hard to find words. It’s the kind of performance that reminds us what humans are capable of when everything is on the line.

Some context: Pitchers’ arms are among the most studied and protected limbs in sports. A pitcher who throws too many innings is a recipe for inaccuracy, not to mention injury. Throwing 100 pitches in three hours is like sending a lightning bolt through your elbow again and again and again.

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Most starters rest four or five days before throwing again. But game 7 is game 7. Sometimes you don’t worry about optimization or your recovery score. Sometimes you stop counting and show up.

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The worst thing an athlete—or really, anyone—can do is believe that if conditions aren’t perfect, there’s no way they can perform.

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“I can’t take the mound, I pitched last night.”

“I didn’t sleep well, I can’t race.”

“It’s a bit loud in the house, I can’t write.”

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This mindset makes you fragile.

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Have standards, routine—yes! But be willing to let go of the idea of “perfect” and do it anyway. When it’s time to meet the moment the worst thing you can do is overthink it. Yamamoto didn’t ask whether he was rested enough, what his “recovery score” was, or whether the data said he was optimized.

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He stepped up. He trusted his training. And he gave what he had to give.

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The greats aren’t great because they always have perfect conditions to get the job done. They are great because they show up and give it their best shot even when they don’t.

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After Yamamoto finished game 6, he said he’d be ready to go in game 7. Everyone laughed it off. Commentators called it “an insane” thing to say.

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But then… game 7 turned out to be insane. Nobody planned for 11 innings. And when the plans were thrown out, Yamamoto came in. The rest is history. An iconic effort.

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The lesson for all of us, on and off the field:

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One of the best things you can do for your confidence is not to have things go to plan and still perform well. It frees you from the need to have perfect conditions to give it a go. You give yourself the evidence that you are resilient, durable, robust, and can get the job done. Optimize, track, measure, and plan to your heart’s desire. But also be willing to let all that go.

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The Beauty and Challenge of Being in the Arena.

Sport is a brutal, beautiful game of inches.
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When Blue Jay's Isiah Kiner-Falefa slid into home plate in the bottom of the ninth inning, less than 5 inches separated his team from a championship.

Looking back, you can always find the "error." Chances are, Toronto players replayed every missed opportunity in their heads for days. "What if I took a slightly bigger lead off? What if I threw that pitch just a bit more inside? What if I took ball 4 instead of swinging?"

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But you're looking back with a clear mind, absent the friction of the moment. In the arena, you are battling overwhelming stress, fatigue, pressure, and a chaotic environment. Perfection isn't just unlikely; it's impossible.
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We saw it on that same play at the plate. The only reason it was close to begin with is that the Dodgers' second baseman, Miguel Rojas, stumbled on a routine play. If he fielded the ball cleanly, like he does 99 percent of the time, those inches become feet, and no one is faulting Kiner-Falefa.
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The point is this: it's easy to beat yourself up, but that feeling of despair, of your mind racing on what ifs, is the magic and soul-crushing cost of being in the arena. The joy and intensity of giving something your all doesn't come without risking the potential downfall.

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We could see it in another disappointment. After closer Jeff Hoffman gave up the crucial game-tying home run in the top of the 9th inning, he was utterly devastated, holding the burden of an entire team, "I've cost everybody... a ring."

But there was his teammate, Ernie Clement, telling anyone who would listen after the game, "I would go to war with Jeff Hoffman."

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In a world of filters, spin, and curated narratives, sport is stubbornly real. You can't fake it. The scoreboard doesn’t care about your "personal brand." Physics doesn’t care about your story.

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You get the genuinely raw emotions of joy and heartbreak. Grown men and women shedding tears. Teammates having each others' backs. A group of people who come together and understand what it's like to really go for something, risking falling short and heartbreak for a temporary moment of exhilaration.

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Being in the arena gives you an honest place to practice courage, humility, and awe. Sure, you can find it in sports. But you can find it in so many other arenas as well. It's about laying it on the line for something you care about, where you can't hide behind chattering explanations or social media hot takes.
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At its core, true excellence—in sport and in life—is an utterly human endeavor.

You dream. You practice. You prepare. You stay ready. Sometimes the world won’t line up the way you want it to. That doesn’t mean you shrink. It means you adapt, seize the moment, give what you can, and let it rip.

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-- Brad and Steve

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Listen🎧: "The Optimization Trap — and How to Escape It"

(SPOTIFY/APPLE/YOUTUBE)

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This week, on “excellence, actually”, we use Yamamoto’s gutsy back-to-back World Series appearances in Game 6 and 7 (as mentioned above) to discuss what we’re calling the optimization (or protocol) trap.

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This is when you become so tethered to a specific routine or “optimal zone” of performance that you become fragile. You trade self-efficacy for hyper-control or neuroticism.

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There are plenty of times when you have to perform and you’re not at your best, or the external conditions aren’t ideal. Being able to send it anyway—much like Yamamoto did in Game 7—is the sign of a truly elite performer.

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So today’s episode is all about training and building anti-fragility.

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We discuss how to differentiate between wisdom and fear when you hear the voice telling you to pull back; how to use “safe-to-fail” experiments to train self-efficacy; how to distinguish between faith-based confidence and delusion; and how to build routines that are flexible rather than rigid.

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— Clay

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