Mark: That 'stay positive' coffee mug on your desk? It might be the worst advice you'll ever get. Today, we're exploring a radical idea from a top performance coach: to win, you don't need positivity. You need to get neutral. Michelle: Whoa, that feels like a direct attack on my entire Pinterest board. Are you telling me my inspirational quotes are lying to me? Because I’ve built a whole personality around them. Mark: They might be! And that's the core of the book we're diving into today: Finding Neutral by Trevor Moawad, co-authored with Andy Staples. Michelle: And Moawad is a fascinating figure for this. He wasn't just some guru; he was the mental coach for superstars like NFL quarterback Russell Wilson. But here's the twist: his own father was one of the world's most famous positive thinking motivational speakers. So this book is almost a rebellion against his own upbringing. Mark: Exactly. It's a journey from 'think positive' to 'think true.' And it's a journey he had to take himself, under the most brutal circumstances imaginable. Which brings us to the first big, controversial idea.

Mark: The book opens with a gut punch. Moawad isn't theorizing from an ivory tower; he's in a doctor's office, his eyes are yellow, and he's just been diagnosed with a rare, aggressive form of cancer. And in that moment, he realizes the idea of 'just being positive' is not only impossible, it’s almost insulting. Michelle: I can only imagine. Someone tells you that you have a life-threatening disease, and the response is, "Chin up!" It feels so dismissive of the reality of the fear and the pain. Mark: Precisely. He calls it "unearned positivity." It's this idea that you can just slap a happy sticker on a terrible situation. Moawad argues that this is actually a form of delusion. What he needed wasn't a fantasy; he needed a plan. He needed to get neutral. Michelle: Okay, but isn't neutrality just... apathy? Like you don't care? What’s the difference between being neutral and just being numb? Mark: That's the key distinction. He quotes Russell Wilson, who has this brilliant line: "It’s okay to have emotions, but don’t be emotional." Neutral thinking isn't about being emotionless; it's about not being controlled by your emotions when you have to make a decision. It's about stripping away the bias, the panic, the wishful thinking, and seeing the cold, hard facts of the situation so you can act. Michelle: That makes sense. You acknowledge the fear, but you don't let it drive the car. Mark: You got it. And this isn't just for life-or-death situations. He found the same thing with elite athletes. He tells this great story about the tennis player Victoria Azarenka. She said the constant push to be positive felt "cringey" to her. Michelle: Oh, I love that. "Cringey." It's the perfect word. Mark: It is! Because what she wanted from a coach wasn't a cheerleader. She wanted data. She wanted a strategy. She wanted to know the facts of her opponent's game and the facts of her own. She wanted a neutral assessment so she could execute. Michelle: So my vision board is officially cancelled? Mark: (laughs) Not necessarily! But Moawad would say you have to ground it in reality. He uses this great analogy of a marathon runner. The positive thinker just stands at the starting line and says, "I can do this!" The neutral thinker says, "Okay, the facts are I've only ever run four miles. The goal is 26.2. What is the step-by-step, factual plan to bridge that gap?" Michelle: It's the difference between wishing and planning. Mark: Exactly. The neutral thinker builds their confidence on a foundation of evidence—the training they've actually done. Their positivity is earned, not just hoped for. It’s about focusing on your behavior, not just your beliefs. Michelle: Okay, I'm sold on the 'why.' But the 'how' seems impossible. When you're in a full-blown panic, how do you just... flip a switch to neutral? It sounds like a superpower.

Mark: Well, the book argues it's a skill, not a superpower. And it starts with two simple concepts: "downshifting" and focusing on the "next right step." He gives this incredible example from the UCLA women's basketball team. Michelle: Let me guess, they were in some high-stakes championship game? Mark: Even worse. It was 2020, the season was a mess because of COVID. They were down to just eight available players. Five teammates were out for various reasons. They were exhausted, undermanned, and playing against a top-ranked Oregon team. It was a recipe for a meltdown. Michelle: So what did they do? Mark: In a critical timeout, instead of a big rah-rah speech, one of the players, Lindsey Corsaro, asked the team a simple, neutral question: "What does this situation require of me?" Not "how do we feel?" or "can we win?" Just, what is the next right action? Michelle: That's such a powerful reframe. It takes all the drama out of it and just makes it a problem to be solved. Mark: It does. And they won. They focused on the immediate process, not the overwhelming outcome. And that leads to the second part of the toolkit, which Moawad calls "Lock On / Lock Out." It's about starving your distractions to feed your focus. Michelle: Which is so hard in the modern world. Our brains are like a smartphone with 50 apps open, all sending notifications. Mark: And Moawad argues you have to be ruthless about closing those apps. The most moving example of this in the entire book is about Serena Williams. Michelle: Oh, I'm listening. Mark: In 2007, she's in the Australian Open final. It's a huge moment. But she decides to dedicate the match to her older half-sister, Yetunde Price, who had been tragically murdered in a drive-by shooting a few years earlier. Michelle: Wow. I can't even fathom the emotional weight of that. Mark: Right. So how do you stay neutral and focused with that kind of grief and pressure? During the changeovers, she would look down at her notes. And on the paper, she had written only one word. Michelle: What was it? Mark: "Yetunde." That was it. She said she would look at that name and think about how proud her sister would have been, how much she supported her. She locked on to that single, powerful thought, and locked out everything else—the crowd, the score, the pressure. She used that memory as her anchor. And she won, winning her eighth Grand Slam title. Michelle: That gives me chills. It makes the idea of "locking on" so much more than just a productivity hack. It's about finding what truly matters and letting it guide you. So for us non-superstars, 'locking on' could be as simple as a checklist? Like that CEO you mentioned, Si France, during the pandemic? Mark: Exactly like that. Si France ran a company caring for frail seniors, the most vulnerable population. When COVID hit, he was facing pure chaos. So he created two simple checklists he reviewed every day. One for work: "Stay neutral, focus on essential tasks, accept uncontrollable outcomes." And one for family: "Take care of family health, maintain morale." That's it. That was his "Yetunde." It was his anchor in the storm, and it allowed him to navigate his company and his family through the crisis with incredible success. Michelle: It's about making the main thing the main thing, as they say. Mark: And that brings us to the most surprising part of the book. All these tools for an internal mindset... turn out to require an external team.

Mark: Moawad's final big idea is that you have to think of yourself as the General Manager of your own life. You are in charge of your roster. Michelle: I like that. The 'GM of Me.' It sounds so official. Mark: It is! And when a crisis hits, you have to be deliberate about who is on your "active roster." Who do you call? Who do you lean on? Not everyone is built for that kind of information. Some people will amplify your panic; others will help you get neutral. Michelle: That's so true. You have to protect your own headspace, and sometimes that means protecting it from well-meaning people who just aren't equipped to help. Mark: Exactly. And Moawad had to learn this firsthand when he was building his own team to fight cancer. He sought out people who had been there before. He tells this amazing story about getting advice from Mark Herzlich, a former NFL player who had also survived a rare bone cancer. Michelle: What was the advice? Mark: Herzlich told him, "Control everything you can." For him, during chemo, that meant he couldn't control the nausea, but he could control his weight. So he forced himself to eat. Moawad took that to heart. Before his own chemo sessions, he would go to a diner and order a huge plate of French toast. It was his one act of control in a situation that felt completely out of his control. Michelle: That's so small but so profound. It's his 'next right step.' Mark: It is. And he built his team around people who understood that. His "anchor," he said, was Lawrence Frank, the President of the LA Clippers. Frank didn't offer platitudes. He just listened, spoke Moawad's language of process and performance, and helped him stay in the moment. He was the perfect teammate for that specific game. Michelle: That's so powerful. It reframes asking for help not as a weakness, but as a strategic move, like a GM making a trade. You have to be deliberate about who's on your 'roster' for a crisis. It's not about who you love, necessarily, but who can help you stay neutral. Mark: And it's about letting them help. Herzlich said the turning point in his own cancer battle was when he stopped trying to shoulder it all alone and let his team fight with him. It's a collaborative act.

Mark: Ultimately, Finding Neutral isn't just a mental trick. It's a philosophy of radical responsibility. It's about accepting the brutal, objective facts of your reality—whether it's a missed shot, a global pandemic, or a cancer diagnosis—and then asking the only question that matters: "What's the next right step?" Michelle: And what's so moving, and what gives the book its incredible weight, is that Moawad wrote this while facing his own mortality. He wasn't just teaching it; he was living it, right up to the end. The book is his legacy. He passed away in 2021, shortly after it was finished. Mark: It truly is. He lived his message. And if there's one thing listeners can take away, it's a simple exercise from the book. He would have his clients take out a notecard. On the front, write down your five core values and your five main goals. Michelle: Okay, I can do that. Mark: Then, on the back, write down your current behaviors. The things you actually do every day. And then you just ask the question: do they align? Is what you do getting you closer to what you value and what you want? That's the starting point for finding neutral. Michelle: That’s a beautifully simple, and probably terrifying, exercise. We'd love to hear what your 'next right step' is after listening to this. Find us on our socials and share your thoughts. What's one distraction you're going to starve this week to feed your focus? Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.