This article is adapted from Ted's Smart Thinking podcast episode 376: A Needed Conversation.
A couple of years ago, I had one of those conversations that just stays with you. The kind where you hang up and sit quietly for a few minutes because you know something shifted. That conversation was with Greg Hardin, author of Stay Sane in an Insane World, mental fitness coach, and one of the most remarkable human beings I have ever had the privilege of speaking with.
Greg passed away not long after we recorded that episode. But his ideas, his stories, and his voice live on. And over the last few weeks, as more and more people have reached out to me asking about leadership in crisis, about how to endure through change that feels unpredictable and unfair, I kept hearing Greg in my head. So I went back and listened again. And I want to share what I heard.
This one is for every leader, every educator, every parent, and every person who is in the middle of something hard right now. Greg was talking to you.
Greg worked with some of the most decorated athletes in American sports history. Tom Brady. Desmond Howard. Michael Phelps. He also worked with medical students, engineers, alcoholics, and addicts. And here is what he told me when I asked him what all of those people had in common.
The greatest competition in your life is between your ears.
Not the opponent on the field. Not the budget shortfall. Not the difficult colleague or the board member who does not get it. You. Your self-talk, your self-imposed limits, your narrative about what is possible and what is not. Greg believed, and I agree with him completely, that every limit we accept is one we put there ourselves.
That does not mean life is easy. It means the door to a better version of yourself is one only you can open.
Greg had a phrase he used with every single client, from elite athletes to struggling students to C-suite executives. He would lean in and say: become the world's greatest expert on one subject. You.
What does that actually look like? It starts with honest self-evaluation. Not criticism, not self-flagellation, but a clear-eyed look at what is working and what is not. Greg would have his clients take a list of self-defeating attitudes and behaviors and honestly mark the ones that showed up in their own lives. Things like blaming others. Making excuses. Ignoring the truth. Pushing people away. Acting inferior when you are anything but.
He told me he once went through the list himself and marked eleven items. His first reaction was overwhelm. His second reaction was gratitude. Because naming the thing is the first step to changing it.
Then he gave them an assignment: pick three. Work on three things for the next six months. Not twenty-five. Three.
Simple and easy are two completely different constructs. This work is simple. It is not easy. But it is the most important work any of us will ever do.
One of Greg's foundational principles came from an unlikely place. He walked into his first job out of graduate school, a hospital-based program for alcoholics and addicts, and everywhere he looked there was the Serenity Prayer written on the walls.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Greg said that prayer changed his whole outlook on life. He could not understand why they did not teach it in schools. And from it, he built one of his core coaching principles: control the controllables.
Here is why this matters for leaders. We spend enormous energy trying to control things outside our sphere of influence. The economy. State policy. What people think of us. What someone else decides. And while we are burning ourselves out on the uncontrollable, the things we actually could influence sit there unattended.
Greg put it this way. By the time you get to the things you can control, you are so worn out you cannot even handle those. Stop wasting yourself on what you cannot change. Pour everything into what you can.
Greg coached softball and baseball pitchers, and he had a concept I have never forgotten. He called it PAST. Previous Action Somewhere in Time.
Whether you just made the greatest play of your career or the worst one, it is already over. It is history. And your job right now, in this moment, is to be present for what is next.
He told me about a pitcher who carried every mistake with him on the mound, who could not shake a bad pitch before the next one came. Greg connected with him through a shared love of hunting and the concept of Buck Fever, that moment of total overwhelm when the deer is right there and your body floods with adrenaline and you freeze. Greg asked him how his father taught him to handle Buck Fever. Breathe. Ground yourself. Take the shot.
That is mental fitness. And it is a skill. You can train it.
Greg described three levels of fitness: physical, mental, and spiritual. And he said the piece that most people miss, in all three, is recovery.
Think about two athletes running a hundred yard dash. One of them can turn around and run it again in ninety seconds. The other needs a month. The difference is not just physical. It is how fast they recover.
Mental fitness works the same way. Life is going to knock all of us down. Greg was not promising a world where hard things do not happen. He was promising that if you train your mind the way you train your body, you will get back up faster. Not because you are numb to it. But because you have built the capacity to go through it and grow through it instead of being consumed by it.
His words, not mine: instead of going through it, grow through it. Instead of becoming bitter, become better.
This was one of the most powerful concepts in Greg's book and in our conversation. He called them psychic vampires. The guilt, the shame, the old wounds, the voices from people who hurt us years ago and are long gone but somehow still live inside our heads.
Here is the thing about psychic vampires. You cannot ignore them into submission. The longer you avoid them, Greg said, the stronger they get. While you are out there growing and evolving, they are in the closet lifting weights, waiting for you to crack that door.
The only way to destroy them is to drag them into the light. Name them. Examine them. And often, do that work with someone else, because we cannot always see our own blind spots clearly enough to dismantle them alone.
Greg loved teaching executives to ask for help. He would remind them: you hire consultants for your organization. You use advisors. You bring in experts for every challenge your business faces. Why would you refuse that same resource for yourself?
Asking for help is not weakness. It is strategy.
At the end of our conversation, Greg summed up what separated the elite performers he worked with from everyone else. Tom Brady. Desmond Howard. Michael Phelps. What did they have in common?
They were hungrier than most. And they were humble. Hungry and humble equals coachable.
My son Charlie was on the Zoom call for that conversation. A few hours later, I texted him and asked what his biggest takeaway was. He texted back four words: I own my own excellence.
That is everything Greg was trying to say.
My biggest takeaway from Greg's book, and from spending time with him that day, was this: be coachable. Put your pride in your pocket and be coachable.
If you do not believe in yourself, why should anyone else? That is the question Greg asked Tom Brady when he was sitting in his office at the University of Michigan, thinking about quitting. Brady went on to become one of the greatest athletes in the history of sports. Not because Greg gave him a playbook. Because Greg asked him a question that forced him to look in the mirror.
As Greg used to say, there is only one person you cannot lie to. And that is the person staring back at you in that mirror.
Greg Hardin is gone, but his lessons are not. If this conversation is landing for you today, please share it with someone who needs it. And then ask yourself the questions Greg left us with.
Can you love yourself more than anything? What would it take for you to become your own best friend? And who in your life could use a little bit of Greg right now?
That is smart thinking. Let's go.