YouSaid · the spoken record

Paul Assaiante

lines on the record: 78
first: 2023-12-12
most recent: 2023-12-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Get that out of the way. Now, the rest of the day is kind of fun stuff, but what we do is we push it off and we push it off. And it's sort of that hairy monster. It's sort of that lioness. And we just, I don't want to have to deal with that. Oh, it's tomorrow. Now I have another sleepless night worrying about what I could have knocked off this morning. This is a beautiful life and the steps and the interaction should be joyous and additive. That's a great gift, and you can get people to appreciate that.”
2023-12-12 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Paul Assaiante: Learning to Face Your Fears · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I have found that a bad idea, no matter how hard you work, will probably never work and a really good idea, a partner who's your friend and who likes you, that can almost never fail. And it's true generally of the day-to-day condition. Obviously, we have to do things that we don't like. I have the boys on the team make lists constantly making lists. They don't, this generation doesn't do that. And I tell them before you go to bed, I want you to read your list once. And then you wake up, you find yourself more focused on the tasks at hand. And there's one thing on that list typically that you're not looking forward to or you're looking forward to the least. Do that first.”
2023-12-12 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Paul Assaiante: Learning to Face Your Fears · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yet enjoying the process. Is so important. It's ironic, you know, when they come back to visit in 10 years with their partner and their children. They don't talk about individual matches. Where number they were. They talk about, do you remember that bus ride in the snow on the way to Maine? Do you remember where you arrived late for him? You know, they talk about pieces of the journey. Know, I have a friend who recently passed away, and as he was getting closer to the finish line, I said to him, what's this all about? And he said its purpose was. Have you found your purpose? It's not hard getting up and working toward or in sync with your purpose. But if you're doing something out of Yourself or your own desires, that's work. You know, I've had some failed relationships in my life and”
2023-12-12 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Paul Assaiante: Learning to Face Your Fears · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What's interesting? You know, you've asked something that I've never thought about before. Maybe the intensity is a function of doing something that you don't necessarily enjoy. First of all, there needs to be a realistic measure of where you are and where you're trying to get to. I think too many people have unrealistic goals and it's instantly a deterrent. You know, I want to get up that mountain, but I can only do a half a step today. That's where you are. Meeting me where I am, I'm at a half a step. I'm not going to take two steps because two steps is too painful. And I don't want to come back tomorrow and go through pain. So I think the consistency comes from measurable, reasonable goals. And I personally believe in terms of conditioning, I don't want people to put in 100% on any given day. I want them to save a little for tomorrow. I want them to be able to say, that was good. That was good workout. I feel pretty good about myself. I'll come back tomorrow and we'll start again. So consistency, discipline.”
2023-12-12 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Paul Assaiante: Learning to Face Your Fears · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For the others, it's drudgery. Nobody wants to go to get Root Canal work done every morning. So if it's drudgery, then you've got to do a real serious mental shift there because that's not going to work.”
2023-12-12 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Paul Assaiante: Learning to Face Your Fears · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Guys, you didn't get great in tennis by pulling all nighters the night before a tournament. That's crazy put in a little every day. So what does that take? That takes discipline. Unless you've been given sprinkled with fairy dust, you've got to put in every day. And I view every day as another brick in the house that you're building. And no one brick is any more important than any other brick. But it's that daily consistent discipline and putting it and enjoying it. You know, it shouldn't be a burden. It shouldn't be work. The great ones have this great capacity for imagination where they can come in and it's fun. It's exciting. They see the value. They see the purpose.”
2023-12-12 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Paul Assaiante: Learning to Face Your Fears · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, first of all, I think we procrastinate, especially this generation. This generation will, you know, it's always interesting. I've had, you know, I've coached Tennyson Squash and gymnastics, but Tennyson Squash. And these people have been highly successful. And they were successful. They've been successful because every day they put in a little. Whatever that is, whether it's mental, physical, emotional, what are they working on? But every day they put in a level. And then they go to class and they wait until the week of the final. And then they take study aid medication so they can pull two all-niters and try to get ready to take the exam.”
2023-12-12 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Paul Assaiante: Learning to Face Your Fears · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On the things that need to become less liabilities, but on game day will playing to your strengths. We're playing to your forehead.”
2023-12-12 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Paul Assaiante: Learning to Face Your Fears · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then he says, and stay in your lane. And that's brilliant. Because what he's saying there is now that I've put you in a position where you should be able to hit that forehand all day long and run around the backhand. If you go out of that lane, now your weaknesses are going to get exposed and now you become a liability. And so I think that is really important. One of the things you do in squash is what something called solo practice, which is you come into the courts alone and you practice for a period of time. And we sort of orchestrate what that would look like, particularly in terms of working on your weaknesses. Joe has a weaker backhand than forehand. Joe shows up for his 10 a.m. solo practice. And what does he do? He goes out on the court and he hits four hands. Joe, what are you doing? You're not working on it.”
2023-12-12 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Paul Assaiante: Learning to Face Your Fears · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's the sign of a good coach. So one of my friends is Bill Belichick, and Bill is the coach of the Patriots. And there he goes. Asiente's name dropping. But Bill has this great phrase that to me is an onion. It has so many levels. And as you go down in peels, it gets sweeter and sweeter. And what Bill says is do your job. Okay, that's, what does that mean? He puts people in position, and this is the sign of a great leader, so that they're able to compete using their strengths. They're able to perform using their strengths.”
2023-12-12 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Paul Assaiante: Learning to Face Your Fears · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I believe that you practice your weaknesses, but you compete to your strengths. And the more you can shore up your weaknesses when your opponent tries to expose those, then you're going to be more able to get past it. You always want to go out there in competition playing to your strength. It's interesting when I was coaching, you know, doubles in tennis. You can position people so that their weaknesses are almost never exposed.”
2023-12-12 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Paul Assaiante: Learning to Face Your Fears · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All of a sudden it's human nature becomes more important to you. And so I believe the opposite. I believe let's make practice more difficult, make it more like game day, so that game day doesn't feel like such a shock to the system. We don't have a hard time getting young people excited to play Harvard on Saturday. But we have a hard time getting 19-year-olds to find the relevance and practice on a Wednesday afternoon when nobody's watching. That's when you need to earn your living. That's when you need to get their attention and demand full engagement. So I believe in the Japanese philosophy, which is that you cry and practice and you laugh in competition.”
2023-12-12 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Paul Assaiante: Learning to Face Your Fears · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There are sports psychologists in the world who are making tons of money trying to teach people how to compete or perform with a calm mind the way they would in practice. Now this is just me and they're all wealthier than me and they drive nicer cars than I do. I think that's backwards because you know what? Once you put a scoreboard up there.”
2023-12-12 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Paul Assaiante: Learning to Face Your Fears · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And failure is the playground of success, and so when you talk to your son, okay, let's talk about how did you prepare? How did you study? Did you leave it to the last minute? Did you do it in increments as you went along? When you woke up, did you feel healthy? Did you eat properly? Did you go into the exam alert and ready to go? And then there was the exam. Did you handle the moment well? Did you choke when you realized that you didn't know some of the information? Did you cheat? All of these things are things to talk about. And then on the other side of it, what was learned? And his failing in that exam gave him an opportunity to learn more than if he had gotten a 95. You don't learn very much in that moment. I think preparation is...”
2023-12-12 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Paul Assaiante: Learning to Face Your Fears · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, first of all, what a good father you are. That's beautiful. You can never teach or coach on the heels of loss. Business or otherwise. Your relationships. When there is emotion, that is not the time to go in and try to figure out anything. You need to come back later when things have calmed down. You can't come back too much later because then the opportunity for learning is lost. So to me, everything is preparation. Practice is everything. You cannot Perform on game day. You cannot present in the boardroom any better than you can in practice. And so the key to me and what I will miss most in retirement is practice. Practice is an opportunity to fail.”
2023-12-12 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Paul Assaiante: Learning to Face Your Fears · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was so busy. Striving, and to me, there was no peace in that So, to me, that's failure, not being authentic to what it is that's important to you and then striving toward that.”
2023-12-12 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Paul Assaiante: Learning to Face Your Fears · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Failure is chasing Me fail, and this is very personal, but for me failure was chasing. And for me in my career A good part of that time was very ego attached. I'm embarrassed to admit that, but I was doing it unknowingly because I was filling an empty vase that was my self-perception. And so I was striving and striving and I was going to get there, whatever there was and hell to be all others. And then I realized that it's nothing to do with me. And then that became a wonderful time. It's to give you an example. I recently got a phone call from a friend and he said, you know, one of my neighbors was your assistant tennis coach at West Point in 1975. And my stomach knotted up. And I said to him Please tell him he would like me more today than then, and that I apologize.”
2023-12-12 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Paul Assaiante: Learning to Face Your Fears · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, Coach, we're earning enough to live the life that we want to live. Man, that you don't find that very often. But to me, that's the definition of success, is being able to reflect on where you are feel very good about that, and continue to work toward continuing that.”
2023-12-12 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Paul Assaiante: Learning to Face Your Fears · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Me, that's really successful. Now, that doesn't mean you take your foot off the gas. You continue to drive down the road, you continue to do the things that allowed you to achieve whatever it is that you have enough of so that you can live the life you want to live or give to the causes you want to give to. But to me, that's success where you can just look in the mirror and say, I have enough. I have a player who I am just so enchanted with. He's young. He graduated only a few years ago. He was from Sweden. He was a beautiful squash player. He's got a wonderful wife from Sri Lanka, and they have two little children. And they're in the investment industry in Philadelphia. And I saw him recently, and I asked him the question my father always used to ask me, what's next? What's next? What's the next conquest? What are he striving for? And he said,”
2023-12-12 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Paul Assaiante: Learning to Face Your Fears · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Such an interesting thing I have never had any money. I'm just a coach, but I've always been on the sidelines of wealth. Most of the people that I gave lessons to had disposable income or that sort of thing. And in that world, it's very common that the measure of success is how much money you have. But I think success is to get to a place where Where you can look in the mirror, almost nobody gets here, by the way. You can look in the mirror and say, I have enough.”
2023-12-12 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Paul Assaiante: Learning to Face Your Fears · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And this is in the game of life. If other people are not paying attention and making their own adjustments. So I always look at life as a race. And if you and I go out for a mile run, four laps around the track. And the first lap I lead, I'm running at whatever pace, say 75 seconds. And that's the pace that led. And you now decide to pass me. If I continue running at 75 second pace, I'll lose the race. I now must adjust to your adjustment. But we're oftentimes so frozen and unable to recognize that that shift needs to occur, that it's all over us before we even notice. And this is where my feelings about emotion are your enemy because emotion takes away your ability to recognize what adjustments and shifts need to be made.”
2023-12-12 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Paul Assaiante: Learning to Face Your Fears · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, it's for the players, it's usually something mindset, a skill deficiency, not approaching competition as an opportunity. And so to dive in there, it almost becomes like I become a man without an island. This little island I'm on, I know I want to get to that big island, but I'm on this little island and I don't really want to go back into the water, but that's the only way you can get to the big island. I also think You have to recognize that what got you here won't get you there. You've probably heard the phrase don't change a winning game. Well, a winning game is only going to start.”
2023-12-12 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Paul Assaiante: Learning to Face Your Fears · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was interesting. I was with a friend this weekend who's a very successful hedge fund investor. And one of the things he talked about was that he embraced risk. And people in that business that are successful are very much wired that way, and probably it's one of the reasons that their failures are so much deeper. But I think mostly we're protecting. We have where we are. You know, one of the things I find as a coach is in an effort to move forward, you sometimes need to take a half a step backwards. And people will absolutely fight that to the death. I don't want that. I want to become, I want to go from good to great, but I'm not willing to go to good minus for a short time to get to great. And so I think we tend to protect where we are ferociously.”
2023-12-12 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Paul Assaiante: Learning to Face Your Fears · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The bravest warriors in history were the samurai. And when you ask the question, what's the worst that could happen? The answer would be to die on the battlefield. Yet they saw that as a glorious cause. And that made them fearless. So when you're struggling with something, step out and ask yourself, what's the worst that can happen? Is this really going to be a life-altering experience? And if it is, how do I come to grips with that? And if it's not, then why am I making it a bigger deal than it actually is?”
2023-12-12 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Paul Assaiante: Learning to Face Your Fears · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so the concept is go at the problem, go at what you perceive to be the problem. And what you'll invariably find is it's a toothless old lady. When players come into my office and they do all the time with thorny issues or whatever they're wrestling with, I always ask the same rhetorical question, which is, what's the worst that can happen? Once you address the concept of what's the worst that can happen, it's not that bad. And that has been the thing that's holding us back. Once you come to grips with that, you're fine. I think”
2023-12-12 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Paul Assaiante: Learning to Face Your Fears · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And what the lionesses do, and it's the lionesses who do the hunting, the lionesses position this old lion in the middle of a field facing the bush. The bush could be a mile away. And the prey or between the old lion and the bush. and all the lionesses hide in the bush, and when this old lady roars, the prey run away from the roar to their death.”
2023-12-12 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Paul Assaiante: Learning to Face Your Fears · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so that's an interesting question to kick off with. When I was really getting into the self-exploration, you know, I was meeting with my shrink. I'm a neurotic mess. He said to me one day, you know, you're really an interesting dude because I've never met anybody who is so conflict avoidant. You run from your shadow. And yet on weekends you lead players into highly emotional competitive environment. So I'm going to tell you a little story. And it's a true story. And the story is that in Africa lions hunt in packs. And when they go out to hunt, they take with them the oldest female of the pride. By this point she's old and infirmed and toothless, can no longer catch her own prey a little bit like me. But she has the deal.”
2023-12-12 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Paul Assaiante: Learning to Face Your Fears · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When players come into my office and they do all the time with thorny issues or whatever they're wrestling with, I always ask the same rhetorical question, which is what's the worst that can happen? Once you address the concept of what's the worst that can happen, it's not that bad Is this really going to be a life altering experience? And if it is, how do I come to grips with that? And if it's not, then why am I making it a bigger deal than it actually is?”
2023-12-12 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Paul Assaiante: Learning to Face Your Fears · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT