He Wrote the Book Today’s Super Bowl Players Can't Put Down. Now, Jim Murphy Wants Us to Find Our Inner Excellence
It’s Super Bowl Sunday and whether you’re rooting for Kansas City or Philadelphia, keep your eyes peeled for Eagles player A.J. Brown, because you might catch him reading a book called Inner Excellence: Train Your Mind for Extraordinary Performance and the Best Possible Life.
When Brown was caught reading the book on the sidelines during a playoff game this season, the book became a viral sensation. This week, The Sunday Paper sat down with author Jim Murphy, a performance coach who told us this book isn’t actually about sports.
“It’s about training your heart and mind for the best possible life,” says Murphy. “It’s about learning how to be your true self—how to develop inner peace and inner strength so you can find joy under the most stressful situations.”
Here, Murphy tells us more about the lessons from his book and how they can help all of us live our most meaningful lives.
A CONVERSATION WITH JIM MURPHY
You write about what makes up a meaningful life: our inner world, our personal frame of reference, and our relationships. Why do you consider these aspects of our lives so crucial?
We're created for relationships. We all want to live a life with amazing experiences and deep, enriching relationships where we feel connected and fully alive and like we’re making a difference—learning and growing. Everybody wants that, so it’s really important that all of us—coaches, parents, or anyone who wants to impact others— understand this.
We're created for relationships. Our inner world is the quality of our life based on the quality of our relationships and how we see the world. If your inner world is in shambles, it doesn't matter how many millions of dollars you have. Life may look great on the outside, but who would want that life?
To develop your inner world is to transform your heart, so that what it loves most is powerful and meaningful. That enables you to grow in belief, focus and freedom, the three key elements of extraordinary performance.
For a person feeling stuck—whether it’s an athlete or someone facing everyday challenges—what daily practices or mindset shifts do you recommend for regaining momentum and fostering resilience?
There are four daily goals that are really important:
- Give your best
- Be present
- Be grateful
- Focus on your routines and only what you can control.
It's really about saying, Look, there's so much out of my control, but I just want to get a little better today. Can I get 1 percent better today in my habits and my routines? Can I eat 1 percent better? Am I willing to set my running shoes out for the morning? Maybe I haven't gone for a run in 10 years. Can I just set my shoes out by the door? Am I willing to do that?
There's a big question that's crucial to ask: Are you willing to face any feeling in your life? Most people are not willing to face painful feelings. And if you're not, then fear can have a powerful hold over you. But if you're willing to face any feelings, then you can be fearless.
Alongside that, I think it’s important to ask: Are you willing to fail? And are you willing to fail dramatically? I believe a good goal is to be willing to fail, fail dramatically, and not be embarrassed. If you're truly humble, you could never be embarrassed.
That seems paradoxical, saying true humility prevents us from feeling humiliated. How does embracing humility change our response to failure and setbacks?
A truly humble person could never be humiliated because humiliation is a hit to your ego. It’s like, “Oh, I don't look good. What people think of me is not good now.”
If you're truly humble, you could never be humiliated, but you could be embarrassed. If you’re humble, then you're not attaed to what other people think of you. Your real thought is, How can I serve in love? and not What's in it for me?
For people who can't get over a memory of a past mistake, you suggest a reframing technique to alter one’s internal narrative. Could you describe how this process works?
Sports psychology is great, and I use it with all my clients, but it's limited. It's limited because it's really a focus on the mind, where the power is in the heart. When I say heart, I mean your spirit and your will.
There are some little things that you can do when you have memories that are painful or embarrassing. You can rewind it and visualize it going backwards. But here's something I think that can be really helpful: It’s the understanding that you can change any feeling that you have. You can learn to change that in a moment.
Once you learn that you can have control over your feelings, now you've got real power.
You mention that the pursuit of perfection can obstruct our ability to live fully in the present. How has overcoming perfectionism allowed you to embrace the moment?
I was on a sailboat trip with a friend in the South Pacific. I thought I’d be gone for three days, but it turned out to be 15. The only way to bathe was to jump in the ocean and towel off when you got out. There was no Amazon for me to get something with a couple of swipes on the screen. No organic food. No comforts of home. The friend I was with had a pair of sandals and a pair of shorts. He was living free; I was a perfectionist and not living in the present the way my friend was.
That experience showed me that I was limiting my freedom by this obsession with perfectionism. That was powerful for me.
Think about going about your day right now. It's easy to think you need certain things. If you have kids, you need your kids to behave. You might need the weather to be a certain way. You need your airplane to be on time. When you realize that the vast majority of what you think are needs are actually preferences, your life will change.
When A.J. Brown was caught reading your book and it shot to No. 1 on Amazon, what was going through your mind? How did that change your perspective on your work?
The texts started just flying in and then I couldn't keep up with it. That Sunday night was just crazy. And then Monday was even crazier, and my life has just been this whirlwind that I can't even begin to explain. Since then every day has been an incredible gift from God.
Your book has clearly struck a deep chord with many readers. Why do you think that is?
There's a deep need for community. Our deepest need is to be fully known and fully loved. People want something more than superficial connections.
When Covid hit, there was this real isolation, and I think it's still lingering. In fact, isolation and anxiety are at an all-time high, not just in America but around the world.
Inner excellence is nothing new. I'm trying to share what I've learned, what God's taught me about people who have lived extraordinary lives and what we’ve known for centuries. I just tried to put it in one place so we can all learn from it.
Jim Murphy is a mental skills coach, retreat leader and the author of Inner Excellence: Train Your Mind For Extraordinary Performance and the Best Possible Life. Find out more about his work at innerexcellence.com.
Celeste McCauley is a writer and editor who lives in Brooklyn, New York. She looks for everything inspirational in our everyday lives.
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