Steve Magness on Peak Performance and Passion

Steve Magness has written three books, which have sold more than 200,000 copies and been translated into 15 languages. Also, Steve is a performance coach. He works with athletes, entrepreneurs, and executives, as well as serving as a consultant on mental skills development for professional sports teams. Additionally, he is a running coach, working with professional runners, including Olympians, national champions, and top finishers at major marathons. He’s also the co-creator of The Growth Equation, an online platform dedicated to the understanding and practice of performance and well-being.

In this episode, we discuss Steve’s running journey and how he became interested in running (5:43), his family dynamic at home and their reaction to him seriously pursuing running (9:59), if he fell in love with the cross-country community and was able to make connections with his teammates along the way (13:45), his success in cross-country (15:11), why he feels his cross-country peak was in high school despite training harder afterwards (16:25), how he treated rest (18:38), if he truly loved running (21:25), passion + persistence = excellency (24:52), commencement speakers (26:50), how to create routines and habits without overdosing into addiction (28:29), how he gets people to push through while still being aware (32:56), if he still runs competitively (36:03), if he misses running competitively (36:24), if he’s more like his mom or his dad (39:24), if he ever felt any pressure from his dad to go into orthodontia (40:29), the link between passion and process, as well as the link between passion and suffering (43:36), what he’s most passionate about right now (45:13), balancing talking about what he’s already done with what he’s currently working on (49:05), writing multiple books at the same time (51:23), what he’s working on now (53:36), being and becoming (56:07), the process of writing both solo and with a second author (1:00:39), and nurturing nature, stress + rest = growth, and how those concepts play out in his daily life (1:09:17) and The Growth Equation (1:12:48).

You can check out The Growth Equation website here. Additionally, you can follow Steve on Twitter and Instagram @SteveMagness.

Thanks so much to Steve for coming on the podcast!

I wrote a book called “Shift Your Mind” that was released in October of 2020, and you can order it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Additionally, I have launched a company called Strong Skills, and I encourage you to check out our new website https://www.strongskills.co/. If you liked this episode and/or any others, please follow me on Twitter: @brianlevenson or Instagram: @Intentional_Performers.

Thanks for listening.