'Be Very, Very Careful With the People You Put Around You'

The flight was headed from Dallas to Orlando — and the young man seated next to him in first class was wearing a T-shirt, flip-flops and jeans.

Dr. Bhrett McCabe speculated he may come from family money. After all, he appeared pretty young.

But when McCabe inquired after some brief small talk, the young man told him he had created a backend database systems for computers, sold his company for hundreds of million of dollars, and had also worked in Washington, D.C., on legislation for businesses.

McCabe, who was launching his own business, asked if he had any advice — and what the young man told him still resonates years later.

The Daily Coach continued its discussion with McCabe, now a prominent sports psychologist, about the yips, navigating performance anxiety, and the five people we all need in our lives.

This interview has been condensed and edited for brevity.

Dr. McCabe, take us through your career path after LSU. How did you get into sports psychology?

I had struggled with an injury that was probably the equivalent of a torn labrum. I really struggled with throwing, but I found an edge on the mound, and even though I didn't have the physical ability, I had a much stronger mental side that allowed me to be one of the top pitchers in the conference. I had to find a way to compete.

We had a family friend of ours who had always told me I'd be a good psychologist. I said, "That's the stupidest degree possible. Look at the people sitting in those classes. That's not my jam." She kept bringing it back up after my injury, and she was a great catalyst for me.

I went to the academic advisor at LSU who said, "Look, this is really hard. You're a fourth-year senior, one semester away from graduating with a degree in Business, going to law school, and you're going to change your major to Psych?" I said, "Yeah, I want to go to grad school, but it has to be LSU because my fiance's in grad school." It's really hard to get into PhD, science-based programs.

But when you finally dive into what really matches your rhythm in life, doors open up. Not only that, I didn't make below a 4.0 after that because I was competitive and had something to fight for.

Take us through grad school and what ensued.

My wife and I had been married nine months. We found out she was pregnant my first week of grad school. I had a professor who I loved, but I didn't feel like I was being challenged, so I switched to someone much more demanding. This guy was an unbelievable challenger, and he exposed a lot of insecurities and doubts and fears.

I took a job in the pharmaceutical industry when I finished because we had two kids and I needed a job, and I worked that for eight years and was fortunate to start seeing clients on the side.

My wife said, "If you want to leave and start your own business, then you need to replicate your salary before you leave. And not only that, you need to gross it up." Not the net take-home, the gross, plus all the benefits you had in the pharmaceutical industry. Car, business, taxes, insurance. February of this one year, I matched it and doubled my salary.

She said, "What do you have on the books for next month?" I said I didn't have anything on the books. It took me a couple more months, but finally I said I'm doing this. It hasn't been easy, but I look back now and I'm so thankful I did. I had to invest in me. I had to lay it on the line a little bit.

Some of your work as a psychologist has involved a pretty hot topic in sports recently: the yips. What's the science behind them?

The yips are a perfect analogue to what we as clinicians see in panic attacks. Panic attacks usually arise because an underlying system has a false alarm but triggers the body as a true alarm.

For example, if your window sensor on your alarm system goes off at 2 in the morning, when you wake up at 2 in the morning, you don’t think it’s a stupid sensor. You think, “Oh my God, someone is breaking in.” If you’re in a high-stress environment where there have been 14 break-ins in your neighborhood in the last three weeks and you saw someone trying to get in your house two weeks ago, if the alarm goes off in the middle of the night, I can guarantee you you’re going to respond with an absolute bolt of adrenaline. The logic isn’t that it’s a bad sensor, it’s that it's do or die.

The brain can’t make a mistake on a threat. What it does is it triggers it the same way. We often try to relax, but that doesn’t work. We need to embrace it and understand what we’re doing.

It seems like it kicks in more on the mundane tasks than the challenging.

What happens with the yips is you’re out there competing, and it means something to you. You’re throwing, always something simple, throwing from second base to first, catcher to pitcher. Basketball player shooting free throws. Kickers don’t have the yips on long kicks, just short ones.

We all have general basic mechanical flaws in our game we can overcome naturally. It’s the basics of human movement patterns. That false alarm triggers it as if it’s a real alarm. What does everyone tell us? "Hey, calm down, smooth it out, accelerate through the ball, finish your throw," which are all counterproductive to how we actually do things.

Now we’ve created this whole idea. And, oh yeah, we’re terrified of the outcome because it embarrasses us and we start making judgments about the future because our motor system is taking over.

What are some strategies to overcome them?

The only way through it is you have to immerse yourself into this idea that I’m not going to try to calm down tension.

Jason Kuhn, a former Navy SEAL who worked with Tyler Matzek of the Atlanta Braves, does a great job on it. He says, “We’re not going to try to reduce tension. We’re going to try to feel tension.” That’s so brilliant.

I try to tell putters in golf, we’re not going to try to smooth out our stroke. We’re not going to try to accelerate through the ball because that movement alone will create a yip. What I tell catchers is when you throw it back to the pitcher, throw a slider, you won’t have the yips. We want to do something that’s intentional, not preventative.

I also like them to name the yip, like “Bob is here, the yip guy.” That way, it’s not really personal, like I’m not an idiot. If you play the game long enough, you’re going to have moments where you question, “Can I still do this?” That’s what it is. It’s a system that’s trying its best, and it’s screwing you up.

You have some pretty interesting thoughts on the five people we all need in our lives. Where did that come from and who are they?

I was going from Dallas to Orlando to the PGA Show about 10 years ago and was sitting next to a traditional tech kid on the flight. We started talking and he said he didn't usually fly commercial. I said I was starting my own business. What advice do you have?

He said, "Be very, very careful with the people you put around you." He said in today’s world, everybody’s teaching you to listen to everybody and love-based approach and everybody’s got an opinion. It doesn’t work.

He said, “I don’t need my line manager in China telling me the decisions I’m making in the boardroom are right or wrong. That line manager in China needs to tell his or her manager who then needs to go up the chain of command." He said it’s not that he doesn’t value that. It’s that he gets paralyzed and has to make decisions. He said you need to put certain people around you:

1. Colleagues: Somebody who’s walked the walk and been there with you. Somebody where you can say, “I’ve got a situation happening and I need to know your opinion on this.”

2. Competitors: Every single morning we need to wake up and see we have somebody who is moving the line. There’s nothing wrong with studying what your opponent is doing.

3. Confidence Builders: You have to have people who tell you you’re good. This stuff is hard, and there were a lot of nights where I was evaluating what I was going to do next. There’s a lot of vulnerability and fear and doubt and second-guessing and low self-esteem and “Can I do this?”

4. Challengers: Somebody who is going to tell it to you true. What you’re doing now is not enough. I need more out of you. My wife is my challenger. “That’s not good enough. You need to do a better job here.” But she sees where it’s going.

5. Critiquers: Somebody who is going to tell it to us completely honest. Doesn’t care about our feelings. Honestly, doesn’t really care if we make it or not. People say a scale doesn’t lie. It doesn’t.

Q&A Resources

Dr. Bhrett McCabe ― Website | Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn | Book: Break Free From Suckville