The 'inspiration gap' kills innovation. How can we do better? | Shane Battier | Big Think Edge

Ended of development and analytics for the Miami Heat and he also has the Shane Battier or the Battier Take Charge Foundation with his wife Heidi Battier that helps community that helps children, young men and women who are going to go through college. It's just a wonderful resource that I won't want to dive into soon. He really embodies the characteristics of great leadership in community and purpose. I can't wait to chat with them, and if you have questions for him, please start typing them in on whatever platform. We'll have a Q&A section on the tail end of this. For now, let's just dive into this conversation.

Shane, how are you today?

Bob: I'm doing well, man. I'm doing well. You know I wake up; it’s a chance to get a little bit better, so if that's my mantra and here we are. I look forward to having a great day.

Yeah, I like that mantra. I have something similar: if I'm vertical, I can smile, then it's okay. It's okay then; you know we live to fight another day tomorrow.

So we're both Midwest guys. I'm an Illinois guy; you're a Michigan guy. Let's start there. What did the Midwest do as far as creating leadership values inside of you?

Shane: I'm a proud Michigander; I'm a proud Detroiter. I grew up, and you know, I think what's great about the Midwest is that you really learn sort of the blue-collar mentality. I don't think I wouldn't be here today if I didn't have that upbringing and mentality. I saw my dad, who worked in the auto industry and worked logistics and transportation. He company holds the big steel coils from the steel mills, the stamping plants. That’s the most glorious job. I don't think my dad was intellectually stimulated by it, but my dad got up every day; he punched the clock, they dropped me off in school, drove an hour to win Michigan, put his time in, always got back home for little league games and concerts, had dinner with the family, had a beer at night, and then went to bed and did the whole thing over and over. It's very just punched o'clock mentality which was shaking me. So, like, you know, I was lucky to be tall and have some hand-eye coordination, but my biggest strength was that punch to class every single day. That's where I'm from growing up in the Midwest for my dad.

Oh yeah, I'm with you on that. The Midwest mentality, you said blue collar. It's simple and salt-of-the-earth people. Not that they're simple people, just salt of the earth. It's get up in the morning, get to work. You know, I spent two decades in Chicago; it doesn't shut down because it's snowing. You go through the snow, and you get to work, and I think that's super important.

Now, as he transitioned, then you’d mentioned your father. Tell me a little bit more about your father and mother, and what kind of values did they instill in you?

Yeah, well, I was the luckiest kid in the world; I had the greatest parents, and unfortunately, dad passed away about a month ago after a long battle with his health. But you know, my parents first of all showed me was you just have to be present; you got to show up. That goes along with the assembly line mentality. You got to be present. My parents, you know, were not highly educated people with advanced degrees, but they were good people with good hearts, and they valued education, family, and working hard, and doing my best. And so, you know, my dad was an amazing coach. You know, for the apologies to Coach K and Erik Spoelstra, I think my dad and Betty were the greatest coaches I ever played for—Little League baseball and football. The things he taught me had very little to do with technique. You know, this is my advice to all the parents watching of young athletes. I had nothing to do with technique, and how to throw a curveball, or how to pass block; it had everything to do with controlling the things I could control. It was my enthusiasm, my preparation level, my hustle on and off the floor. My journey tuck in my dad said, “If you look sharp, you play sharp.” You know, hyper sportsmanship; do you support your teammates? When he falls down, you'd run over and pick—like all these things had nothing to do with talent, nothing to do with technique. But controlling the things that you could control to the best of your ability— that's how you become an amazing teammate, and if you have a team of those, that's the hallmark of an amazing team. Unfortunately, those lessons get lost nowadays because supporters are so hyper-competitive. But it really was the core of what I learned and was the reason why I was able to have the career that I did in basketball.

Well that's great. I mean, controlling the things that you can control is relevant now. So let's use this as just a quick bridge to what can the youth today understand about controlling the things that they can control? By youth, I mean anybody really; we're all young at heart. So let's just say leaders of any age, any size in this current environment. Tell me more about controlling the things you can control.

Yeah, well, like I always tell people, there are two types of people: problem identifiers and problem solvers. Both are equally important in the equation. With the advent of social media and the proliferation of Instagram and everything else, we have a lot of problem identifiers. So we deal with my kids and dealing with young people: I have identified the problem. Now, what are you going to do on this single day, no matter how small it is, to address the thing that you need to see change? And we see that nationally now with so many inspired protests. You feel the pulse of the millennial generation who want to be out there, who say, “Yeah, okay, not always the time—not just the talk workers—but to move into action.” Nothing great or important has ever been accomplished by just talking about it. And so that's the inspiring part. You know, I'm 41 years old Abed; it's amazing to hear just the passion and the real enthusiasm and energy for change by young people.

Absolutely, absolutely. My hope, my grandest wish, is that this drive for change takes place, and it's not just lip service. Because, as you said, there are a lot of people who can point things out, and who's going to move the needle? And that's got to go up and down the whole chain of command.

Yeah, so let's use that then to go to Coach K. All right, so I'm an adjunct at Duke Fuqua, as we tried it before we were on campus the same time together. So, you know, I'm sure our reputations were just right aligned with each other. Tell me about your experience under his guidance.

Yeah, well, obviously, you know I'm biased, but the greatest coach outside of Big and a D.A. I ever played for. And, you know, he's just a man of integrity, first and foremost, but he's an amazing teacher. What I tell people is, look, he never talked to us about winning games. He never said, “Okay, we're playing Wake Forest; we got to beat these guys,” or, “We're going to Carolina. You know, it's about just winning the game.” It was always about standards. And it was always about, “What is your standard?” “Man, what's your standard as a basketball player?” “What's our standard as a program, doing basketball?” If we measured up to those standards, all right, winning and losing takes care of itself. You know, there were games, and we made one game, but won again by eight points, should have won by twenty. All right, most coaches would be like, “We won the game.” In Coach K, we would say, “You know, the next day in practice, all right, get another line. We start running because we didn't uphold the standards of which we held ourselves accountable to—no one else.” And there were games that we lost—not too many—but he'd say, “Look, we did everything that we can do, and that's our standard, and I'm proud of you, and that's okay and we're going to beat this team the next time.” Usually, we did. It was a constant message of it's about standards; it's about what our potential is; it's not about the result. That's really, really hard in a results-oriented business. But it really is about being process-oriented and being able to live by that.

I think there's a lot of humility in that as well, and even vulnerability, because I've heard you mention before the importance of the next play. So where does vulnerability and humility come in as you define and then talk about the importance of the next play?

Yeah, you know, there hasn't been a great organization, a great leader that hasn't had intellectual humility about them—that you can always learn more. The people who think they know everything—and we read name names, or they're out there—those are the people who stop growing. Those are the people who get passed up eventually. No matter how good your idea is, if you're not continuing to learn and understand that and have a conscience thought that, “Look, I'm a good idea, or I made this platform,” but I need to continue to evolve and to grow.

You know, it's interesting, like, I have amazing respect for people who win back-to-back championships in sports or create company upon company upon company, because you're fighting the human dynamic. The humans don't know what it takes to win whatever championship it is, whether it's in sports, or fun in a company. You think you know, and you fight like heck, and your squad you crash, you sacrifice, and you finally make it, and you say, “That was the hardest thing that's done in my entire life,” and then we're asking me to do it again. For a lot of people, they believe that the effort they put in last time is automatically going to be good enough to do it again—sports and business, whatever. And that's never the case. The people who do it again and again and again understand they have to be bold, they got to learn, they learn from where they messed up last time, and got to be galvanized. It's the constant process of growing, of getting better, keep learning; those are the people who create true legacy and are one-hit wonders. I learned that from winning the second championship after winning the first championship in 2012 with the Miami Heat.

That's fantastic. Yeah, the growth mindset, the learner's mindset—that's imperative, that's imperative for individual growth as well as leadership leading people to grow as well, and that's what you're really focusing on as well with the Battier Take Charge Foundation. Tell me a little bit more about that.

Well, I was lucky to be six-foot-eight when I was 14 years old and pretty coordinated. I was able to really unlock my dreams through the best education I could get through basketball. I was always very grateful and thankful because my parents didn't have a lot of money. I knew because of the constraints of my family's finances I couldn't go to Duke University, and so my opportunity was limited. Opportunities were limited. If you have the desire, enthusiasm, passion, and drive, there’s a way you should be able to climb as high as you want. So, I said to myself, “Look, if I ever make it to the big time, I’m gonna use my platform and my voice to help kids who are like me who want to do big things; I want to change the world; I want to make a name for themselves.”

So, therefore, the community through education. My wife and I, Heidi, started the Battier Take Charge Foundation ten years ago; we've given over a million dollars in scholarships over the last ten years and impacted, you know, over seventy kids in our program. So we're fighting the good fight. We're small, but we know our impact. The reason why we're here today is narrow and inspiration gap, and it's a really important salient topic for what's going on in our world today. I believe you need to see it before you can really believe it for yourself, and it's been our experience with our kids.

We are in some really low-income areas in Miami and Houston and Detroit nationally, and we talked to our kids and their friends and their family. Obviously, there are financial constraints; obviously, there are familial restraints and societal restraints that preclude a lot of people from reaching their potential. But what we find over and over and over again is that there is an inspiration gap, and people in these communities—kids in these communities—they don't see anyone who's like them who has done what they want to do. So they don't know; they don't know. There's a lack of inspiration problem. And so, that's what we're passionate about: celebrating our scholars, celebrating the kids who—our first student is now getting her doctor’s doctoral program. We have amazing professionals. We were with our first lawyer at the bar last year, and this 95% of our kids are first-gen college attendees.

It’s so important for kids to see that—to say, “You know what? They did it; I can do it too.” So I preach to people, if you've had success, all right, no matter how small, celebrate! You never know who's watching, and you never know what spark that may ignite in somebody else's, “So you know what? I can do that too.” And that is how you get groundswell elemental.

Absolutely, absolutely. You are obviously an inspiration to these young men and women. How does being that inspiration really ignite that spark? How does it drive toward innovation, creative problem-solving? How does it drive to pushing the envelope and taking us to the next level?

There's never been a great maker or a great creator that hasn't looked to other great makers and creators throughout the history of time. Steve Jobs didn’t read the wisdom of Marcus Aurelius and say, “You know I’m meant that the iPhone.” But I bet you he read how Marcus Aurelius looked at the world, and his perspective planted the seeds for “Yeah, I thought.”

There was an amazing butterfly effect. That's why it's so important to learn from the great innovators—how they fought, the questions they asked, the mistakes that they were willing to make. That's how innovation is sparked. And by being in a creative environment, it's amazing what innovation can be spurred in your mind.

It's a muscle. Innovation is a muscle. Just like going to the gym—you got to work at it every single day. My favorite author, James Altucher, got me on a program that I still do today. I've been doing it for a long time. When I wake up in the morning, one of the first things I do—I do my meditation, I breathe into my coffee, but I write down ten ideas. These ten ideas could be about anything, but you know people who I love, people I need to reach out to, things I'm ashamed of, things that need to change in the world, ten things I’m grateful for. The routine of generating ideas; it's amazing after doing this for a long time how the innovation muscle just grows. You get some crazy ideas in the shower again because you train your brain to think about those things.

I can't agree with you more. I've been preaching that same song for 21 years. Improvisers' brains get trained to be attentive in the moment at a very high level, reactive to each other. It’s trained to be creative. Once it starts going, you work this muscle out—the organ, the brain—like any other muscle, so it gets stronger. It takes less energy to actually feed it, and you streamline your thoughts, and then they just start popping out of nowhere.

With this though, there are always mistakes, there are always bad ideas. So, every time you wake up in the morning, you're not ready to have ten brilliant ideas. Every epiphany that you have washing the dishes or whatever you might be doing—barbecuing in the back—is not the best one. Where does failure take place in this better play?

Huge, fern; that’s how you grow. You learn. The message to young people today, especially young professionals, we run up in an Instagram generation where the selfie is perfect, the lighting is perfect. You know, I get your filter; everything looks so perfect. Any great individual will tell you, success ain't perfect, and that's a message that really needs to be taught to our young people. You know, the LeBron James of the world—you may see him dunking and just doing amazing things on the basketball court, the step-career is James Harden. But what you don't see is them sweating and hurting, and just running themselves to exhaustion and failing, trying and failing.

So the narrative of success is a fraud, it's a sham. It's to get sand kicked in your face and get up and try new things, and fail and learn. Be honest with yourself about getting feedback from those failures. Instagram is great; I love it; it's fun; it's not reality.

People: you know—yeah, amen, absolutely.

Let's go first person. Tell me about one of your biggest failures, and what did you pull out of that to become a better leader?

I would say my biggest professional failure—I really struggled with retirement from basketball. Look, I was a self-made millionaire; I thought that I made it to the highest level of the NBA, started on two NBA championship teams, National Player of the Year. I look at myself as, you know, I got this, and like, there's nothing I can handle because I'm a self-made man. That’s sort of, you know, the athlete narrative that you're taught when you're young, and it just keeps on going.

A funny thing happens along the way: as the stakes get higher, your inability to ask for help becomes much more difficult because you think that you're weak if you have to ask for help. And so when I retire—I'm not going to play anymore, my body was banged up; eventually, I was ready for a new challenge— but it was very difficult for me to ask for help. Helping and relating, how to think about the death of my career, how do I think about where the new metrics that I need to define for myself to find my happiness and my success. I was a real jerk. I didn't do anything bad, but I was really bad to the people that were around me and pushed them away because I was incapable of just asking for help.

It took a lot of work with a couple of coaches and a lot of soul-searching to understand I lived, you know, I was proud of my career, but I was limited because I didn't ask for help more. Again, I believed in the narrative that everything was perfect, and I had it all on my shoulders, and I delivered. That’s not the case. It really takes a community to help a person rise up to new heights.

I learned amazing vulnerability. I learned to say, “I don't know.” I learned to say, “You know what? I'm struggling; help.” That's what I learned from my failure—to do that throughout my career. Luckily, it wasn't a fatal mistake; my wife still loves me; my kids still love me. But it was really important—maybe the most important lesson I've learned.

That's great! I think it speaks to your character of understanding that you do need help and going to the outside and finding somebody who can be a coach, a voice of reason, a sounding board. Sometimes just help you figure out your way so that you can help the people around you.

In this very sensitive climate that we're in right now—with civil unrest, needed social unrest—you know, what can you say with this specific point that can help inspire people? Because it doesn't take a community to raise an individual or individuals.

As the community starts getting formed or continues to get formed and leaders start being raised from within, what guidance or thoughts—simple thoughts—can you give?

Yeah, and we're all on different parts of this journey. So it's great for the national discussion; the narrative has so changed from past times. Our country has dealt with this and the Black Lives Matter movement. It's amazing to see the passion behind it. A lot of people don't know what to do, and my advice would be: ask questions. Ask questions of your friends; “What are you doing?” Ask questions of your local government; ask questions of your national government; ask questions of your employer: “What are we doing to make real change?”

And look, a lot of people say, “I don't have the answers.” Well, you only get answers if you ask questions. So that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to question my community, my leaders, my University of Half, you know, how do we get to this point? You know, being a guy who's in data, I live by the phrase, “What gets measured gets managed,” which is a great quote.

So, demanding people to show the data—okay, you're about inclusion, you're about diversity—where is your data? Because the numbers are out there, and you can hide behind the talky-talk, but you cannot hide behind raw data. So, you know, demanding accountability from people who make statements that we're going to do our best to create inclusion and diversity, let’s see the numbers of people. And that’s really, really powerful. We have the methods now and the infrastructure; we can really get creative, understand the data. The data can shine a whole lot of sunlight on areas where there needs to be work.

But you know, that's a broader level for that. I would encourage everyone to vote! Got to vote! Register, vote by mail! You know, I’m upset; no one told me about voting by mail before. I discovered it in the last couple of years, and it’s so much better and easier. You’re able to really think about your ballot instead of being pressured in the voting booth. So vote by mail—it's a game changer. You can, you know, and get involved in your local government.

You know, most people do not understand how affected their lives are by local politics. They think it’s all at the national level and in Congress. That's true to an extent, but our day-to-day is so much more shaped by local government, and most of us are ignorant to the issues or the candidates or the platform.

So, I'm making a concerted effort to gain knowledge about my local officials and trying to influence them for the change that I want to see.

Absolutely! I love that. You just learned about the mail-in voting, and everyone should! I don’t know; there’s some controversy around it. People say, “Should it be?” It's your at-home mail—mail your end! You had anybody like you would if you're shooting tweets out. So, no one's going to bother you. Mail from your house and vote!

I can't agree with you more, and I also really appreciate, again, the vulnerability of asking questions. You know, let's become knowledgeable with multiple sources—not a conformity bias where we're just looking for the answers that we want to achieve. Let's get a broad perspective, let's learn from a lot of people, so that when we make our decisions, we're making intelligent, well-formed decisions—thought-out decisions. Because ultimately it goes back to then, now who are you talking to? How are you inspiring them?

Yeah, and that, again, you have to see it to understand how to think about it. You never see the other side of the coin. Then it's going to really far for you. I'd say it to get that. What we're talking about here is empathy. We're trying to raise empathy. This is what it’s about—empathy. It's not mean you agree with a different viewpoint. Empathy means you acknowledge there is another viewpoint, and that is what the Black Lives Matter movement is all about.

Yeah, there are problems here, and we need to acknowledge it—not to T.A.AI like “I get it.” More people see that today, and that's the encouraging part. We need to do all we can to increase empathy. Empathy and knowledge always wins; it always wins.

Absolutely! The enlightened leader understands at least the need for emotional intelligence in the way that we are communicating, collaborating, building community, learning. So empathy is such an important part of that.

Yeah, so let's go to bridge this a little bit, and business improv, we define improv as adapting and communicating. Tell me about improvisation on the NBA court.

Oh man! Just like on the improv stage, you don't know where the play is going, right? It can go in a multitude of different ways. You know, in basketball, I could pass the ball, could catch the ball, rebound the ball. I could set up a screen, I could block a shot, I could take a shot. I can miss a shot; I could get to this ball. Literally, the iterations of what could possibly happen are pretty much endless, and like it is on the improv stage.

So that’s really intimidating if you're not prepared for it, but that's where the practice and the muscle memory comes in. The importance of just putting the reps in—putting the time in—it gives you amazing confidence to be able to handle any situation. And that’s a little different than business—a bit different. You know, it’s all about contingency plans; talk about strategy, how could the strategy go off the tracks, discuss it again and again and again—you build up muscle memory. So when you're faced with adversity, it's like, “Okay, it's a little hairy, but I got this; I’ve lived it in my mind; I’ve put the reps in already.”

That is the importance of dedicated practice to be able to handle those situations. The people who are most innovative—they put the time in! Never said before, and they're ready for anything!

That's it! It's not, you know, what do you do when excrement hits the oscillator? How are you scrambling with your hair on fire? It’s practice, practice, practice! Think about the different scenarios, talk about the different scenarios, develop contingency plans, and then once it's game time, let the muscle memory, unconscious competence take over, and you’re just running, and you're running with the team as well!

It’s not an individual; it’s needed on the hardwood, it’s needed outside on terra firma out there when we're face to face with each other—it’s needed to do this technology as well. We have to let people know that we got each other’s backs, and to get stronger, and we're going to get through this together, because we're communicating this way in any and all teams.

Yeah, so we're going to bridge over to questions in a second. I have one more for you because you're known for, I don't know if you know you're known for this—for at least two big speeches that you've given and one, if you quote Fuqua Duke, I do. Yeah, I was somewhere. You’re at the other part of the university from a very famous area, and I heard as well that you gave a rally cry for the Miami Heat.

So tell me, where does the fire come from that as a team player you feel the need to step up in front of the team, activate your voice, and inspire them?

That came from growing up in a mixed household to be honest with you. My dad was Black; my mom's white. You talk about the inspiration gap. There was no one who was like me; ain't nobody. You know, and it was really hard for me to conceptualize that, but there was one place I always fit in—and that was at recess on the kickball court or the basketball sandlot.

I realized—look, when I help my friends win games and I'm a part of that— it doesn't matter what I do, but like, how do I help my friends win? My friends loved me and wanted me around. So for me, when it became literally a matter of social survival, it was win or die of loneliness. That was a lesson that I learned as a first or second-grader to always foster teamwork and camaraderie.

You just never, you never know when the certain strand of teammate is going to be the difference. I used to run all of the instability pools for the teams I played for and the survivor pools in the NFL. It was a big pain; my bucks took a lot of time. But to see the guys in hollering or, you know, LeBron's terrible pic of, you know, Kansas going to the Final Four, and they lose in the first round, and the camaraderie that that competition creates. You know, I’m gonna say that that was not championships, but when times were darkest down through to Boston, you never know where that strand that we really needed to was formed. We all matter; it all matters.

Great speeches and rah-rah and all that kumbaya stuff—but maybe bring your team Starbucks one day to create that bond, and maybe, “Hey, you're doing a great job today! I appreciate your effort!” All those little strands add up to create a strong championship fiber, and every successful team has that championship fiber.

Absolutely, absolutely! Again, even today, right now, any leader can go out and team player can go out make that connection virtually. Do something, say something that helps somebody else. You know, it might not be a cup of coffee; it could be a virtual cup of coffee, you know, or setting up a ridiculous pool, you know, having some fun right now to make that connection. It matters, you know.

That absolutely does. All right, so I'm going to go over to the question board here. The first one that's jumping out at me is, I know that you subscribe to positive organizational models. Organizational models tell us what that is. How do positive organizations inspire their people to be better and drive positive change?

Yeah, I was introduced to Kim Cameron and Robert Woolf at the University of Michigan, the leaders on positive organizational scholarship, and I know what that was. It’s certainly not a concept that is prevalent in sports. This is why I thought it was super interesting—a chance for innovation within sports. Essentially, positive organizational scholarship revolves around the focus on the things that are great in an organization and trying to expand on that.

Essentially, it's human nature to always focus on the negative. Whether it’s, if you look at every academic journal written on health, for instance, all right, a vast, vast majority is centered around how you cure sickness or how you get people who are on the left and the adult curve—you get them back to the middle. Okay, there’s very little—and I would call it positive scholarship—on what the people on the other end of the curve are doing that we can learn from and proliferate to magnify and create great health even more.

So in a business, you know, it's easy to look at, “Okay, we're losing money,” and, “You know, we got to shore up this department and strat them to the middle and have them have average productivity.” Instead of looking at your highest functioning teams and people and say, “What is it about these people that we can teach the rest of the organization to explode our productivity?”

So it's a change in thinking, and it’s not being Pollyanna and ignoring all the things that are wrong. So I obviously, we need to do that; but be less obsessed about those negative things and focus on some of the positive things that you can learn from them and proliferate and really make your companies and your personal productivity really explode. You know, every great innovative company that has disrupted the market has lived in that territory, and not the other territory of the bottom 20%.

Yeah, the positive psychology, positive organization—they're focusing. It's not to ignore what's wrong or the bad things completely; it’s to say that, to your point, we spend a lot of time trying to fix things about ourselves that we don't like as opposed to celebrating the things that we do like. Those who celebrate the things they do like end up being happier ultimately, because we're not ignoring those things, because usually, it’s a sacrifice, and then we rub off on other people that way.

Yeah! And how often do we in a professional work or our daily work, we can use the like excellence and thriving and flourishing and abundance and resilience and virtuousness? Those are all amazing attributes that, if you ask somebody, do you want that? Everyone would say, “Hey, we want that.” So how do we get to that? From a personal perspective, from a professional perspective, that's where the magic is.

Yeah, I think so too. And it relates back to the team as well. We want to be involved with teams that care about us, with people—like, it's the basic human desire that people listen to us or understand us. So ultimately, we're talking about employee retention as well.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. One of the interesting parts about the positive organization, there’s a study on Fast Company; they did a study on the top 100 places to work over the last 10 years, and they tracked their stock performance over the last 10 years. It was 2x the returns of the average market! All right? So this is not voodoo! People who are happy at work, they produce more! So it's understanding, you know, what makes these companies great places to work and creates an environment for people to flourish and have virtuousness and have ownership.

So, you know what I would argue is a competitive advantage to proliferate these ideals versus just plugging the holes in the dam.

Absolutely, absolutely. Another question out there: how does one build empathy?

It's—it starts within! It starts within your story; starts with an honesty about yourself that you want to learn all the perspectives. There has to be a curiosity of, “Huh, I wonder what that’s like.” All right? If you don't have that curiosity, you're not going to be motivated to learn from a different perspective or look at a problem from someone else's shoes.

It really starts from within, and again, it's a muscle. It's a muscle that you work, and you gain empathy through reading, through talking to people, through asking questions, and you do it again and again and again. It may be awkward first; you’re not used to, you know, putting yourself in someone else's shoes and saying, “You know what? That’s okay; that’s a sign that it’s an exercise; it’s a muscle you need to work out.” Just with practice, you can become a very empathetic person.

I believe that 100%. But it starts with yourself, your natural curiosity, and practice.

Yeah, absolutely! I like what you said as well. It might be a little sore at first—like you would if you're working out any muscle that you haven't worked out in a little while. Unless the first couple of weeks, it takes to get that muscle in good enough shape, that you’re not a cane sore. And then you start working out, and you start building that muscle.

And in order to build muscle, you have to break it down, and then it comes back together again. You break it down, and that’s the same I think for our soul; that’s the same for the way that we connect with people, and it’s the same that links to empathy.

Yeah, absolutely. Well then, who do you, Shane, look to learn from currently? What do you look to learn from currently?

My wife! My wife teaches me a lot of lessons daily. So I’m lucky to have her. My wife are, you know, I look to learn from everybody! I don’t think there’s one person I say is my guru, but I try to talk with great leaders—CEOs and learn about things that I don’t know about.

Pat Riley, obviously, one of the legends of basketball, being around Coach K, asking them how they think. I read autobiographies about great historical figures, and listen to podcasts, and so I don’t know if there’s one person. But I do have a, what I call my tribe, my board of directors. You know, a lot of companies have boards. Why? Because you want to glean from the collective wisdom of successful businesspeople to help their business perform at its very top level, right?

Well, why don’t we do that for our personal lives? Why don’t we have a personal board of directors where you can be very intimate, very honest about what you’re feeling and where you’re going through, where you need to improve? Most people are scared to hear that, and so I tried to develop that with my friends, and we have some real conversations. It goes back to being vulnerable and looking at yourself under a different lens. But I, you know, I would love for my kids; I learned a lot from my wife, I learned a lot from everywhere. I’m lucky that I have enough curiosity.

That's great. And like you said though as well, the more you do it, the more you want to do it, and it becomes part of your DNA essentially. That growth mindset, that learner’s mindset—anybody can achieve this. It just means we have to be vulnerable enough to say maybe I don’t know everything I know almost everything once—what’s the stuff I don’t know? And then maybe that will lead to a lot that we don’t know.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely! Okay, I go to your meditation technique. What is your meditation technique? One of our viewers wants to know.

Currently, I was introduced to Sam Harris's waking-up app, and I found that super, super interesting. It's very different; I just—well, it’s Transcendental Meditation TM for many years, and you know, I thought it was great. I just wanted to try something different. I’m always trying to see, “Is there something I’m missing here?” Or something that makes me feel a little bit differently.

But meditation is a huge part of my life; it's part of my morning routine. I call it the power hour. I get up every day—or a little later since I work from home now—but I used to get up, and I used to make my coffee. I would do my daily journal where I write three things I’m grateful for, three things I want to accomplish today, and my personal mantra, which is, I live by the three C’s: contribution, challenge, community. I live to make others better; I live to improve myself, and I live to be valuable to be part of something larger.

The last part—my left, my last part of my mantra is I’m a scratch golfer, so I’m trying to put in my mind that I’m a zero handicap golfer, because you got to put that in your mind before it can happen. Small—I’m close; I’m not there yet. After my journaling, I do my, you know, about 10 to 15 minutes of meditation, then I get my workout in and by the time the kids are up, I’m making breakfast and we're off on our day.

But the power hour is super important for me just to have my time and reflect, and it’s really changed my life.

That's great! I only, since this all started in early March, have I gotten into a morning stretch and meditation technique. I use my wife gave natural birth to our two children, and she at one time— we were going through hypnotic birthing – she was really doing the majority of work! I would just say things to her quietly and try not to make jokes out of it, which rarely worked.

I use her birthing thing as my mantra in the morning; my body is healthy, my body is strong; my mind is healthy, my mind is strong. And then, my people need me—get focused.

That's great!

Yeah, whatever works! Right?

Exactly! So I might give a natural birth pretty soon. I’m nervous!

All right! You know what? I'm gonna be wrapping up here in a second, so I’m gonna take the last question here. Shane, what excites you right now?

Potential! Potential! You know, whether it's Black Lives Matter and our young people pushing for real change—that's exciting to be a witness of that. To be a parent excites me to see how my little kids are growing up to be responsible and loving citizens of the world. It excites me to see how the relationship between my wife and I changes as we get older. It excites me to become a scratch golfer as a mental and physical caliber—I'm not a basketball player anymore, so I guess my competitive outlet.

That's exciting! I’m excited to struggle! Well, that's the key—our brains crave struggle. All right? The second you stop struggling up here—it’s over for you. And so anything that you can struggle well creatively, and help people live my mantra of contributing to challenge myself, be a part of something— that’s what excites me. Whether that’s Battier Take Charge Foundation, or we’re doing a great talk with a really smart guy here—that’s the fun part of life.

Shane, you are a rock star! Thank you so much for sharing your life with us. Everybody, check out the Battier Take Charge Foundation. Help out where you can! Hit with him or anywhere else, and this is a big, big live join us on Thursday, June 11th at 1:00 p.m. with Shamu Beria. We’ll be talking to Slava Tjak about the pandemic and society and capitalism—very interesting individuals. And I’m gonna put my money on that—that's going to be an intense conversation! So swing by Thursday, the 11th, at 1:00 p.m.

Thanks for watching Big Big Live! I'm Bob Callahan with Shane Battier. Be safe, everyone!