Jay McHale
@mchale_in_flow • 17,031 subscribers
Former investment banker turned mindset architect. Combining ancient wisdom + modern science into actionable frameworks anyone can use. Founder @FlowVeda
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Jocko Willink says he broke a 30 second freeze on a 1990s SEAL training exercise by taking one 12 inch step, and it showed him the call four senior leaders could not see. "And by the way, I'm the youngest and most junior guy in my platoon, and I'm standing there looking down the sight of my weapon." "And I'm waiting for someone to make a call and tell us what to do." "And I wait for five seconds and I wait for 10 seconds and I wait for 20 seconds and no one's saying anything." "And we're waiting for a leader in my platoon to make a call to tell us what to do. Tell me what to do." "And finally, after like 30 seconds, which seems like an eternity, I can't take it anymore." "And so I take a step, like a... one foot step, 12 inches. I take a step off the skirmish line." "I look to my left. I look to my right. And what I see is every other guy in my platoon is staring down their weapon, staring down the sight of their weapon, which means their field of view is tiny." "It's like a 20 degree field of view." "There's my platoon commander... there's my platoon chief... there's my leading petty officer... there's my assistant platoon commander... so everyone in the platoon is looking down the sight of their weapon, which means they all have a very narrow field of vision." "Well, when I take a step back and look to my left and look to my right, guess what kind of field of vision I got? I got a massive one." "I can see the whole scene and I can see exactly what it is we need to do." Four experienced leaders were standing in that line looking at the same problem, and not one of them was short on skill or nerve. They were looking down the same narrow tube he was, and by his account the answer was sitting outside it the whole time. I think about that whenever I am stuck and certain the problem is that I do not know enough yet. Usually I know plenty. I have just been reading the same thread for twenty minutes, or turning the same argument over on the same walk, from the exact spot I was standing in when it started. Jocko was the most junior man on that line and he still saw it first, because he was the only one who moved. - Jocko Willink (Jocko Willink) on Huberman Lab (Andrew D. Huberman, Ph.D.)
Jay McHale594,524 views • 2 days ago
Rory McIlroy says the way he beat his first-tee nerves was to picture the ball in the trees and walk the worst case all the way to its end. "I say this all the time. It's counterintuitive to a lot of people to do this, but I do. If you're trying to overcome anxiety or nerves or on performance, I do try to think about, well, what's the worst that could happen?" "I'm not gonna die on the golf course, thankfully." "I used to have, like, first tee nerves, like, big time. I would struggle on the first tee. And so I would say to myself, well, what's the worst that could happen?" "So if you hit it in the trees, okay, then what do you do? You go up there and you figure it out, you know, you're skillful enough to hit a punch shot out of the trees and, you know, get it up to the green and get it up and down and make a par and move on." "For whatever reason, imagining, like, the worst-case scenario, give me a level of comfort, because I felt like any worst-case scenario that I could bring up in my head, I'll be able to deal with." "Especially on the first tee for me... if you get nervous on the golf course, you get tight... it gives me a sense of freedom. And like, if I can swing free, that's when I play my best golf." "So whatever thought process I need to get into to get there, whether that's imagining the worst-case scenario." "I think I'm not standing behind a tee shot and visualizing myself hit a bad shot. Like, I'm visualizing myself hitting it where I want to. But I think just even before I get to that point, thinking, well, what's the worst that can happen?" "And then if the worst that can happen isn't that bad, it's like, well, that's okay. You'll be able to manage it." What I find wild is that he never once tries to calm himself down. He walks into the scary version instead, all the way through the punch shot and the par, and the nerves lose their grip because nothing is unknown anymore. The thing you are dreading shrinks the same way once its worst version has an ending you have already seen. - Rory McIlroy (Rory McIlroy) on The WHOOP Podcast (WHOOP)
Jay McHale567,082 views • 4 days ago
LeBron James lifts on game day, shoots three to five hours before tip, and calls one piece of his routine non-negotiable. "Tomorrow, we have a game. I'll go in early and I'll get a lift in before." "And then right after I lift, I'll shoot, you know, early, three, four hours, five hours before the game start." "Because it's a back-to-back on Friday, I probably won't lift that day. It'll be more of a recovery work and then a little bit of shooting as well, just to prep me for the game." "I have schedules dependent on how the games are flowing throughout the season." "That's routine with the schedule." "Yeah, yeah. Every day. Non-negotiable, for sure." The detail I keep circling is what survives the hardest day. Second game in two nights, the lift can go, the shooting can shrink, the daily activation never moves. There is nothing left to negotiate at that point, because the decision was made once, years ago, and the schedule is what carries it now. The promise you make to yourself in a calm moment is exactly the one you talk yourself out of when you are tired. His answer was to stop having the conversation at all. - LeBron James (LeBron James) on Mind the Game (Mind the Game)
Jay McHale318,471 views • 4 days ago
Roger Federer says he lost the 2008 Wimbledon final at the very first point, not in the darkness of the fifth set. "But looking back, I feel like I lost at the very first point of the match." "I looked across the net and I saw a guy who just a few weeks earlier crushed me in straight sets at the French Open and I thought, this guy is maybe hungrier than I am. And he's finally got my number." "It took me until the third set before I remembered..." "Some defeats hurt more than others. I knew I would never get another shot at six in a row." "I lost Wimbledon, I lost my number one ranking, and suddenly people said, he had a great run. Is this the changing of the guard?" The five-time defending champion, on his best surface, spent two sets playing against a thought he carried onto the court from Paris. The reset, when it finally comes, is worth hearing in his own voice. The lesson: your attention picks a story before your effort gets a vote. Check the story you are carrying into the first point of whatever you start today. - Roger Federer (Roger Federer) at Dartmouth Commencement (Dartmouth 🌲)
Jay McHale724,974 views • 9 days ago
Rory McIlroy says distraction is a good thing, and with a six-shot Masters lead he wouldn't let golf into his head until he got to the course. "Yeah, I'll probably try to keep my mind off it." "That distraction is usually a good thing for me, especially with... late tee time and the lead." "So yeah, there's actually two really good semifinals at Monte Carlo in the tennis, so I'll watch that." "We've been watching the tennis early in the mornings, so I'll do that." "And then hopefully spend some time with Poppy." "I think we're about halfway through Zootopia 2, so maybe do a little bit of that." "I get to the golf course two and a half to three hours before, and then I'll start to think about things." "But before that time, yeah, I really try to stay off my phone and distract myself and try not to think about it too much." "You know, I just want to go out and play two good rounds again." "Obviously, this golf course has certain characteristics that... guys can get on runs, guys can make eagles." "You hear roars all over the golf course." "I think the next two days for me, it's just about really focusing on myself." "It's hard to avoid those big leaderboards out there, but like, I know that I've got a lead, so I don't need to keep checking it all the time." "So for me, just really focusing on myself and staying in my own little world out there is the best thing." He isn't fighting the thought. He's put a start time on it: golf is allowed into his head when he arrives at the course and not a minute before, and the hours in front of that mark are filled with tennis and a cartoon with his daughter so there's no room left over. The phone stays off because the phone is how it gets back in. That changes what the night before something big is actually for. You run the thing over in your head for hours and call it preparation, when mostly you are rehearsing it badly and calling that getting ready. Rory had the biggest lead anyone has ever taken into a Masters weekend and still gave himself permission to put it down until a specific hour, then went out and stopped checking the leaderboard, because he already knew what it said. - Rory McIlroy (Rory McIlroy), 2026 Masters press conference (The Masters)
Jay McHale36,538 views • 3 days ago
Matthew Walker says the problem with waking at 4 a.m. is knowing it's 4 a.m. "How do you know it's four o'clock in the morning?" "That's your problem. You're looking at the clock." "And knowing that it's 3:15 or 4 a.m. in the morning does you no favors at all. It's not going to change the outcome." "So the first recommendation is remove all clock faces from the bedroom." "It's okay to, if you really must do, keep your phone next to your bed, but keep it out of sight, even though I would strongly recommend that you keep your phone in the kitchen." "Or even better still, a friend of mine recommended recently, just put it in the garage, put it in your car, in the garage." "And that way, the amount of motivation effort to go and get your phone within the first 10 minutes of the morning is very, very high, meaning you're probably not going to do it." "So let's baby steps. Let's just say crawl, walk, run. First thing to do, just make sure you can't see any clock faces." "And if you wake up, resist the urge, because as soon as you start doing that night after night, you're actually training your brain, reinforcing it to wake up at 3:15 in the morning." I used to treat checking the time as neutral information. Walker's point is that it is the trigger: you wake up fine, one glance, and now you are doing math about the alarm and how tired tomorrow will be. If he is also right about the training, the reliability of your 3:15 is the evidence, and a rehearsed loop is one you can interrupt. - Matthew Walker (Dr. Matthew Walker) on On Purpose with Jay Shetty (Jay Shetty)
Jay McHale17,231 views • 5 days ago
3. Pre-Sleep Rituals in America (Ofuro vs Phone) Most Americans wind down with screens. • 58% use devices within an hour of bed • Scroll social media • Watch stimulating content This floods your brain with blue light and mental stimulation right when you need calm.
Jay McHale629,455 views • 1 year ago
Japanese use sobakawa buckwheat hull pillows. • Firm hulls conform to neck contours only • Maintains natural cervical alignment • Small size supports just head and neck • Hulls shift but never lose supportive structure Studies show 50% reduction in neck pain with proper pillow support.
Jay McHale300,639 views • 1 year ago
3. Consuming Too Much News That habit you think keeps you "informed" is destroying your brain. Constant negative headlines trigger chronic fight-or-flight responses. Your brain floods with stress hormones that damage memory and learning. Information overload is literally shrinking your brain tissue.
Jay McHale58,404 views • 11 months ago
Eckhart Tolle's system to escape the cold, dark prison of overthinking:
Jay McHale15,997 views • 9 months ago
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