00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyan, and this is episode number two hundred in eighty one, and today in the show, I'm joined by Olympic gold medal winning skier David Wise to discuss how the mental toughness, habits and training that helped him succeed as a professional skier also translates to hunting. All right, welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by on X, and today we've got David Wise joining me here shortly, and I want to have David on the show to help us continue this conversation we started last week in the last episode you might remember we began having this discussion around the power of habits and other processes in your life to help you become a more effective hunter. You know. Throughout that conversation me and Dan had we talked about a number of different ideas and systems that I've been learning about through various books and interviews that I've listened to in my pursuit of I guess studying high achievers I'm just fascinated by people who have reached the highest levels of excellence in their various fields. I'm always curious about how the things you can learn from those people, how those habits, how those behaviors and systems, how they might all be applicable to hunting. You know, can we learn from, you know, an elite businessman or an elite athlete and take something from from their lessons learned and from their life and apply it to what we do when we're trying to be, you know, the best version of ourselves out in the woods or the fields of the mountains, wherever it might be. So that is this this thing that's been kind of percolating in my mind. And we began to explore that last week with some examples from my own life and dance too. But today I wanted to take things to the next level and really test that theory by actually talking to and learning from an elite performer in some other world and see if there's something that translates to what we're doing as hunters. And it seemed to be that David Wise would be the perfect guy to help us do this, because not only is he an elite athlete, you know, he's a two time Olympic gold medalist freestyle skier, he's a four time X Game gold medal winner. Not only is he doing these incredible things with his skis, but he is also a hunter, so he knows exactly how some of these things might cross over to these two parts of his life. So here in a minute, we're going to discuss with him the habits and the training regimens and the mental processes that have helped him achieve excellence as both a skier and a hunter. And we're gonna explore how he handles high pressure situations, how he deals with failure, how he overcomes obstacles, how you know, how we can get better at training towards the goal, and all sorts of things like that that I think are are just fascinating as in life and generally, as I'm saying, and then of course when we're approaching things as hunters, I think these topics, um, are very very helpful. All right with me? Now on the line is David Wise. Welcome to show. David Hey, thanks for having man. Yeah, I really appreciate you taking the time. I know, uh, you're busy guy, and um, it's not it's not always at the top of the to do list to hop on a phone call or something, so so appreciate what going to happen. I'm ever so slightly less busy right now because I have a broken leg, so, um, I certainly am taking a mandatory break, if you will, but but I'm always happy to jump on it. And the easiest thing for me to talk about is honey, So I'm still well, that's I'm not happy about your injury, but I'm happy that at least you were able to have a good excuse to chat now. And and I don't want to get to the broken leg too early, because that's something we are gonna have to touch on at some point, but of course, but I do want to to dive into a whole slew of different things because, as we were just talking about before we start recording, there's this really interesting crossover I think, UM, that we can apply between high achievers in different fields. Right. I think I'm guessing you're probably the same as I am, and that I'm constantly searching for ways to improve, to grow, to evolve, and as part of that, I'm studying other people, other people that have achieved excellence, other people that UM are at the highest pinnacle of whatever field, and I've been might be, and I'm always inspired by folks like that, and I want to learn how they did it and and and learn from their mistakes sometimes two and all those things. So with that goal in mind, yeah, we we start a conversation last week on the podcast where my coast and I started just kind of chatting about the power of habits and different structures and systems within our lives that can help us become you know, maybe more efficient or effective, um, whether it be just in daily life or as hunters, Like, how can we apply these ideas that are talked a lot in business and um, sports and whatever might be. There's a lot of people talking about these I don't want to say, like self improvement ideas, but if you want to really really generically and shallowly lump them into a category and maybe we'll throw it there. Um, but how do you apply some of that stuff too, you know, the passion in pursuit of hunting. So we just kind of dabbled on the surface. When I look at you though, as someone who is a professional skier, your Olympic gold medal um gold medalists, I guess would be the appropriate way to say, you've done these things, you've reached a pinnacle in that world. But I know you're also a hunter, and I gotta believe you also are chasing, um some kind of goals and objectives on that front. I just see and I gotta imagine there's a lot of cross over there. Like that's my theory when I thought to reach out to you, is like there has to be some really interesting things that transfer across both sides of that boarder, And that's what I'm hoping we can talk about. So is that a game plan that you're interested in? Yeah, let's go alright, good, So we we do need to get just a little bit of foundation, a little bit of you know, background on you. Um so in like the shortest well, maybe we'll maybe we'll do this. You can give me like a little cliff notes, like, hey, this is what I do. But we'll kind of cover that already in the introduction. But what I'm most interested in if you could look back on your life lie up to this point, if you had like a is there a specific moment or a circumstance or something maybe even uniquely just about you that led you to being where you are now as a professional skier and as a gold medalist, you know, at least on that side of your life, the skiing set your life. Is there something you can point to and say, yeah, this is why it happened. Absolutely, that's a that's first of all, that's a good question. I like. I like the out of the box questions because everybody wants to know about the Olympics or the Olympic village, or what's it like standing on the podium and hearing the national anthem? Those things are those things are fun to talk about. But um, I like your question because it's unique for me. Actually, I grew up wanting to be a professional athlete. Um, I didn't necessarily specifically want to be a professional skier. Skiing was just what we did as a family, um, you know, every weekend. And I was super into skiing. I'm not going to pretend like I was more into any other sport than I was into skiing. But I always just looked at it as I looked at life as an opportunity to be outside. I was like, what what things can I do? And how many more things can I do that get me out of doors? So I played football, and baseball growing up, and um a little bit of soccer, and sort of at the start of high school time, UM, it came down to those three sports for me, football, baseball, and soccer. I mean football, baseball, skiing. Soccer, football, baseball skiing where my three sports. So I would do skiing in the winter, um, you know, baseball in the spring and football in the fall. And UM, as I sort of entered high school, everybody else hit puberty and I didn't like I was just a late bloomer. So I went from being sort of exceptional. You know, I was never the best. I was never the most talented kid out there, but I was. I was mid to hot, you know, I was. I was dependable on on all these uh sports teams I played on. I went from being the dependable mid to high guy to the smallest, weakest kid on the team. And I mean it was just it was kind of it was almost a surprise to me because I had been I had sort of gotten used to maybe I had gotten complacent about being one of the faster kids on the team, being one of the stronger kids on the team because I was naturally, um physiologically, I was always talented. UM and I always had a strong build for my age. But then when everybody else hit puberty and got their man strength and I didn't, all of a sudden, I was getting out classed majorly. So I was the smallest kid on the football team. I was the smallest kid on the baseball team. Uh looking back on it now, I'm six one and I struggle to stay under a hundred ninety pounds. I grew eventually, I just didn't grow early. So that is probably the moment that really pushed me towards skiing. In in in the grand scheme of things, it's because skiing is a completely a finesse sport. It's an agility sport. Has nothing to do with how hard you can hit the other guy. Uh. So I was still strong for my size. I just happened to be size small and um so I really started focusing on this agility sport and and and then that's when I fell in love with the art of skiing. I realized, what's what's most beautiful to me about free skiing is that there's no there's no set way that you have to do it. There's no structured way that is absolutely right. If you can do it and make it look good. Then the sport respects and your peers were respected. So I sort of fell in love with at that time in my life, fifteen sixteen, seventeen years old, with this idea of of creating art on a pair of skis and uh. About midway through high school, I realized I can either because I had started traveling at that point for skiing. I realized I could either pass school and get decent grades and ski, or I could past school, get decent grades and play football baseball. But I couldn't do all three. So that's when I kind of had to shut it down on the football and baseball front. I still play whenever, whenever friends of mine invite me if they have a team that they want me to show up and and uh play on the weekends. But ever since then it's been skiing has been my my main goal athletically. That brings up an interesting question that I've kind of contemplated myself. I remember, gosh, this was years ago, off speaking, It was probably right in the early years of the podcast. I was chatting with a guy who's who's a great hunter, and he had a belief that you can't be great. He was talking specifically about white tail hunting, but we could just apply this to any pursuit, any kind of activity. He said, you couldn't be excellent, You couldn't be you know, top one percent unless you gave it your all. You know, if if you also like to go voting, you also would go fishing, and if you also want to do this thing and that thing, you would never be great. You would never reach the top of your potential um And I kind of didn't like that because even though I definitely have a focus, like anyone who's listening to this podcast knows that above all other things, like I really spend the most time in my heart is most into the white tailed world. Jeez, there's a whole lot of other things I get pretty obsessed about and really excited about. And I've fallen hard for fly fishing, and I love backpacking and camping, and I love all these other things too. Um So I always kind of the back of my mind, I wondered, am I doing myself a disservice? Am I not going to be able to, you know, reach whatever potential there might be because I'm spreading myself too thin? Or should shut these other things down and just stick to one. What do you think about that? Can you have too many passions? Or how does that look in your world? Yeah? I think, um that's a why I have to respectfully disagree with your friend, because, um, I would say that my career has been characterized by balance. Um where. And I do know a lot of athletes who focus on their being. They wake up, they eat, sleep and dream about their sport and their craft and being the best that they can be in that and that certainly is effective for some people. But speaking for myself, there was a time in my life when I did look at skiing that way. When I turned eighteen, I told my dad, Listen to Dad, I'm not truly a professional skier unless you're not paying for anything. So I'm not taking any more UH funds from you. I'm gonna try to make it. I'm either going to make it as a professional skier or I'm gonna quit skiing and go to college for one two or three years ago, however long this experiment lasts, I'm gonna go give this my hundred percent effort. So for that, at that time of my life, I poured my heart into day in, day out, every every decision that I made my litmus test for it was and is this going to make me a better skier? And if the answer was no, then I would not do it. I'd cut it out. And so I cut so many things out of my life and man, the skills that I was able to add to my repertoire of skiing, we're unmatched. I mean I was getting better so quickly, but um, it actually kind of crippled me on the mental side because I was so focused on this skiing thing and pursuing excellence and skiing that when it came down the competition time, I could land ten and runs out of ten in practice and crashed twice in the contest because I was over pressuring myself because that was all I was. If if at the end of the day you cut my legs off, I was nothing because I was so caught up in being just a skier. So it actually took my first injury, my first major knee injury, and for me, it was a long process. Uh. Getting married and having a kid obviously changed that drastically for me, But it wasn't until I found balance in my life that I became a truly excellent sportsman. Until that I became a truly proficient competitor because I was naturally militant. I've always been naturally uh intense. I've always taken skiing seriously. I've always taken it. I've always seen it as a as sort of a job, as a job, and it's fun. But at the end of the day, I'm gonna do everything I can to be the best at it that I can be. But it wasn't until I found balance in my life that I was able to take the pressure off my own shoulders and just enjoy the ride. Because at the end of the day, if you're pressuring yourself too much, it takes away from your performance. UM. So, I I disagree with your friend and the fact that I don't think you have to pour yourself into one thing. Uh. I also don't think that the jack of all trades master of none is necessarily a good formula either. I think you should have some focus in your life, but it's all about finding the balance between focus and over intensity or over pressuring yourself. And um. For me, bow hunting has become that that balancing passion. I've noticed just in fascinating conversations I've had with people who excel in other realms than what I do. That they that a lot of them have a balancing passion. Some guys like to play the guitar, some guys love to fly fish. Um. But all these very passionate and um sort of the top one percent kind of people all have something else that they do that they're super passionate about, but it kind of takes away from that intensity so that they're not over pressuring themselves when they're in their element. And for me, that's been that's become bow hunting for sure. So where or how do then you look at hunting? You know, do you apply to that same militant um drive move over into the hunting world and you have that same behind everything you do in the in some level of pressure. Or do you look at hunting as the exact opposite of your usual daily life and that's when you unplug, you relax. This is your chance not to be stressed. Oh how does that work for you? Yeah, that's a that's a tough balance for me to find because I think excellence is universal. Um, Guys I know who are really really good at things, they don't do anything halfway. They either don't do something at all, or they give their heart and soul to it. And that's kind of how I am. That's how I am with with hunting. I can't show up and say this is my vacation. I'm just going to enjoy this and no pressure. I'm like, Okay, what's the task we're here to do today? Oh, that's right, We're looking for a big old buck and we're gonna try to sneak and stick an arrow in them. It's it's there's I can't turn that off in the same way, dude, you get me out on the Beer League softball field and I will give it a percent. People like, Dave, why are you trying so hard? I'm like, what else? What other option do I have? I'm here, are like, are we trying to beat the other team? Where we try not to beat the other team? Because that's what I'm here for you. And so that's definitely a balance that I that I do struggle to find sometimes in hunting, where I actually catch myself starting to over pressure myself to be successful in hunting, the same way I over pressured myself as a young skier. And so it's actually a good thing for me to go through every year. It's almost like it's like a recurring It's like a recurring nightmare. Like I get there, I over pressure myself, I'm not enjoying myself, and then I have to take a moment, relax, take a couple of deep reasts, remind myself, Okay, you're out here for a task, but if you're not enjoying the ride, it's pointless. Even if you succeed, if you didn't manage to enjoy the ride along the way, the satisfaction isn't going to be there. So that's a good way for me to start ski season because I come straight out of hunting season and right into ski season and I have this like clarity of mind. I go into skiing and I'm like, well, there's no pressure. You know, the freezer is full. If nothing else, the free just looking good. Yeah, that's a good feeling. Um, it's funny you mentioned that that recurring nightmare. I go through the same thing. I don't have the the other side of me like you do with skiing, but I definitely find myself every year when hunting season comes around, I I'm I'm so obsessed, I'm so driven, I'm so goal oriented that inevitably, even though every single year, I have the same conversation with myself and and and at some point during the year, I have like the I'm not sure what you call it, to come to Jesus moment. I'm like, Okay, Mark, you gotta relax, Like you said, I gotta take a deep breath. You have to enjoy the process. But I always get too deep into it. Um, it's it's you know, I think it's part of certain people's DNA to be like that. And and to your point, there's there's got to be a level at some point you realize that you need that balance. Um, it would be it would be remiss of me to not though, if we're talking about balance. And this isn't where I was originally gonna go with this. But you've got a family, and I have a new family now. I've got a son who's fifteen months old. I think it is now fifteen or sixteen months old. Yeah, thank you. So that you know, the last year and a half of my life has been completely different, and so I'm dealing with this new challenge of being credibly driven and just go, go, go, go go. And for me, it's the hunting and business side of things. Um, trying to find a new way to balance all that and meet all my obligations and be a good father and husband while also still giving, you know, as much as I possibly can to these things that I'm passionate about. On top of that, you, I gotta believe you got that to an even greater degree. How do you think about that? How do you handle that? Um? This is something that so many hunters, I think, deal with as well. Yeah, I mean it's it's super challenging, especially if you look at it from my wife's perspective, because here she is, she married a skier, and she knew what she was getting into when she married. And so it's no surprise when I leave in the winter. And then I started getting real into this bow and this this happened, Um, it actually happened. I grew up as a hunter. I was always I was a hunter for basically as long as I can remember. But I was always kind of you know, your your weekend warrior, recreational hunter. Um. But after the Olympics, in my buddy Remy kind of noticed that I was stressed out. He's like, Dave, you got like too much on your play? Are you doing too much? And and ironically it was. It was all of the sort of success and fame and glory that came along with winning a gold medal that stressed me out because I'm naturally an introvert, so um, I feel most at peace in the wilderness by myself or with a with a small core group of people. And so I was getting hit up by so many people and talking to so many people, and I was constantly getting lost in just this like pressure of of society, pressure of being a public figure now. And so Remy said, hey, Dave, I really think that you would enjoy this archery thing. I think it would be a cool way for you to almost um meditate because you have to slow your heart right down. But it's it's still like a very focused it's a very focused sport, if you will. But um part of the focus of it is slowing down and um executing and doing things, you know, establishing a pattern. And so Remy gave me a bow. I tried it out, and I fell in love. And that's when I debt was really deep into hunting, because like I said before, that I was a recreational hunter. So if you look at in long answer to your short question, if you look at it. From my wife's perspective, She's like, she looks at my season all year long skiing, and then she's like, and now you've added this other extremely time consuming how uh you know? Bow hunting is first of all, it's the hardest way to hunt, and that's why part of why you and I love it so much, but definitely takes up a lot of time. I'm constantly out there shooting my bow. I'm constantly out there, um, scouting and sending trail cameras and looking for new places to hunt, making contacts in different states, all this stuff, and it's just super time consuming. So um for me, it yeah, having a family and having these two super time consuming passions is very challenging. UM. But it all comes down to the balance thing for me where um, I feel like the bow hunting balance is the skiing for me, and the family balances both both passions. Where UM, if I'm honest with myself and I have that kind of Jesus moment, I have to remind myself that my family is most important. If I put my if I ranked my family first, um, then it really takes the pressure off of all these other things that I do. It takes a pressure off of needing to perform while and skiing. It takes a pressure off of needing to uh bring home the biggest buck of my life every time I go out it. Um it creates a balance. So as long as um, my wife and I are communicating well and she's aware of what's coming down the pipeline, and I take enough time uh out of those other passions that I have to make her feel allowed to make sure that the kids get enough of my time and attention, then it's actually a great combination. I mean, the upside of being a professional skier is that I have plenty of freedom in the summer my schedule even though I'm still training always and I still have that militant approach to improving skiing my skiing ability in the off season as much as the on season. UM, I have a little bit more freedom, Like I can strain it on the road, I can we can go for family trips, we can go for you random adventures. Where do you want to go to day? Let's take an eight hour drive to a hot spring and camp out as a family and really spend quality time together. Because I am gone all winter long. Uh, So I have to balance that time away from them with time with them. Um. And the same thing applies to hunting. It's not like I, I honestly don't hunt nearly as much as I would like to, but I certainly make enough time to do it every year because it's good for my soul and it's good for our it's good for our bellies. Um. For me, nutrition is a huge part of hunting and one of the one of the many reasons besides how much I love it that I got into bow hunting was just that I had way more opportunity when it came to, uh, drawing tags and being able to hunt more locations and things like that. So my goal is to eat no red meat that you are you know, limited ready, and I'm not gonna I'm not gonna say no to a stake at a restaurant or a burger or whatever when I'm traveling. But my goal, my my season goal is always to provide for the professional athlete grind almost exclusively with game meat. That's awesome. That's uh something very I mean a hundred percent. Can relate to several of things you talked about there. For with the different hobbies, Like you talked about how your wife signed up for the whole skiing thing, but maybe not the hunting deal. Same with my wife, and that she knew I was obsessed with hunting, and she knew I liked to fish and be outdoors and everything. But then when I got really heavy into fly fishing, and then when I recently said, hey, I really think I want to learn how to climb, she was like, you know what, we should put a time out on that for now with your other twelve different obsessions and maybe maybe take a little time out of that. So I struggle with the same with the same things. But I noticed that something you've done recently. I saw you took your wife on her first deer hunt. I watched your your video over there and why is Off the Grid series there on your YouTube channel, and I thought that was very cool to see how you were getting your family involved in one of these passions of yours. And it's definitely something I'm trying to do too. Do you foresee that, you know, continuing growing, developing is as part of that balancing act. Yeah, thanks for tacking that up. That I was. I was originally heading there and then I went down a rabbit trail. Um. Yeah, So in terms of the balancing the family thing, my kids, Uh, you know, some of my favorite memories, my absolute favorite memories. My dad was super supportive in my ski career, my whole life. But if I'm honest with myself, my favorite memories with him are hunting or fishing, And ironically, I'm not even that in fishing anymore because we're you just mentioned the lack of time thing. Um, I am a professional skier and I'm constantly training, so I really only have time to either be really into fly fishing or really into bow hunting. And I choose bow hunting because it's way more exciting. Um. I do love fly fishing, and any time I get a chance to go out, I'll go out. But um, all of my favorite memories as a kid come down to those times I spend in the outdoors with my dad. So that's absolutely where I want my family to go. That's our trajectory, and that was why I was. I was motivated to get my wife out there, and um, for me, it wasn't a pressure thing. I didn't want to pressure her to be on her I didn't even really want to pressure her to enjoy it, but I just wanted her to understand it, and so I mentioned that to her. I've been mentioning it to her casually since we um started dating. I mean, when we first started dating, she was a vegetarian, and I said, okay, I respect that I have some moral I have some moral uh stances about the food we too. What if I cooked you some game meat that I harvested ethically and and took very good care of And she was like, okay, we would be willing to try that. So that's how we started. That was our platform of our first of our relationship, right at the start, and ever since that moment when I fed her games you know, red fedter some deer burgers and she enjoyed them. Um, I kind of put the bugget ringer. I was like, you know, if you just go and get this under safety done, then I can put you in for a tag and we can go we can go out together. It's something we could do together. And I think, Um, when my time started getting more and more limited and I and simultaneously I started hunting a little bit more, she realized, this is actually a good idea because he can't say no to it. He can't like he has to spend time with me if I give my hunting license. So she did it all on her own. So one day I came home and she surprised me with her She showed me, there, look at my hunting license. I got this. So, UM, in Nevada, drawing tags with her rifle is kind of tricky. So she actually got her hunting license. And then, UM, it took her a couple of years to draw a tag in an area that I could hunt, during the time of year that I could hunt. So it was actually a good thing because then she developed this anticipation, this excitement about okay, did I draw to tag this here? Oh? She finally drew one, and then you know, it was like there was so much preparation that went into it. It It was like a two or three year process that when we got out there. UM, I think she was more excited to hunt than she would have been had it been easy, had you know, she just drew got her hunting license and we went out and hunted. Um, I think that the experience would have been slightly different. And and even even with the way that the hunt win, UM, the first day, we didn't see a single deer, and that was perfect. I was I was honestly excited. I was like, this is great, this is perfect. It's not like I did it on purpose, because, like I said, I don't have the ability to be like, oh, I'm just gonna take you over here so we don't see any deer, Like if I'm out there to hunt, I'm gonna go give up my all and try to find something to shoot. Um. But we literally didn't see a single deer. And so by the second day she was aunty. She was like, Okay, where are we going? Where? What are we Like, are we gonna have more opportunities today than we had yesterday? Because yetually it was kind of a duck and so uh, the moment came when we had we were in range of something, and um, I was setting up the camera and I went to go, you know, check on her. I thought, you know, I'd have to talk her through it. The deer was betted, so we had all the time in the world. And UM, I look over and I'm like walking down to her to help talk her through it, and she's already got safety ops, She's ready to go. I was like, Okay, this is this is this is for real. So um, that experience for her, I mean then she shot the deer and cried, and I was like, oh no, I might traumatized her forever, Like that's the last thing I want to do. I want. I wanted this to be a good, positive experience, and I was really adamant about not putting fresh around her throughout the process. I was never, um, I never. I pretty much told her right from the start, I was like, we're going out for a date like this is a four day backpacking camping experience. We're just gonna happen to have a rifle along with us, and if we get a chance to shoot a deer and you want to great, if we get a chance to shoot a deer and you don't want to totally find by me too. Um. But then on once she shot one and cried, I was like, oh no, Like, is that the last year she's ever gonna shoot? So I waited, I waited like an hour to ask her if she want it to go again, and her her answer was instantaneous yes. And so that was a really I mean, that was a really cool that that was probably a life changing experience for me, as I was like, took somebody who didn't understand hunting, didn't believe in hunting, didn't know about hunting, and UM did it the right way. Taught her how to do her the right way, and she got to eat the tender alliance of a deer she shot that night and now you know, cooked it over the campfire. It was amazing. And that's the experience that I want to have with my kids. Uh. Sorry for going down another rabbit trail there, but that's what I'm looking forward to with my kids because I remember my first year with my dad and we really didn't know what we were doing. We was out there kind of bumbling around and we got lucky and we got one. But it was such a cool experience. So I look forward to that with my kids. And both of my kids are actually pretty fired up about that too. We're fortunate to live outside the city and we have deer and bears uh sort of roaming through the neighborhood here and there, so um, they're there there. Experiences with wildlife are maybe a little bit more intimate than your typical city kids, so it's pretty fun. That's that's incredible. That's that's awesome to hear your wife has such a good experience. I can't wait to be able to do something like that with my son. UM looking forward to that very very much. That point, that final end result when you have to pull the trigger, that is kind of the top of the mountain that each one of us has to climb up all season, right, each one of us that hunts. You have this goal of filling some tag, there's some animal you're after, You're you're trying to put meat in the freezer, and there's a whole lot of stuff that leads up to that. And for every different person there's a different level of of of time and energy that goes into it. Some people just grab the gun of the bow on Friday and head out and they hunt for the weekend and that's their season. Um. But then there's other people. UM, I think you're probably in this category, and I certainly am where I'm thinking about this almost every day of the year. I'm doing things leading up to the season, during the season to try to make sure I'm as prepared as I possibly can be, to make sure that everything is in order to make sure that you know achieving that goal is is going to happen, or at least that I did every single possibly thing I could to achieve that goal um, And when you look at a lot of folks out there who who are really goal oriented or these high achievers, one of the things that seems to be pretty consistent. I'm not saying it's it's all the time, but something I hear about a lot is the importance of a morning routine. A lot of folks within various fields talk about the power of having like a good start to your day, and that's something I've been trying to to build into my life, and I've I've kind of wondered, like, is there something there that could help hunters too. Maybe it's just you know, a good start to the day all throughout your year is going to be helpful and just like getting all these different things, or maybe that's even applicable actually during the season. I'm not sure. I'm just starting to kind of think about this, but I'm just kind of curious, do you have any kind of morning routine or any kind of way that kick starts you to make sure you're as effective as possible? Um, whether that be off season, um, in the season of hunting, or maybe within your skiing world. I don't know, Like, when I say this, where's your mind go? Yeah? I think um. One of the parallels for me between UH skiing and hunting has always been that UM. For me on the skiing side, it's getting ready to drop into the half by at any big at any high level of competition. Maybe it's X Games, maybe it's World Championships, maybe it's the Olympics. It's always the same. It's like I'm standing at the top, the half is empty, somebody calls up on the radio, judges are ready, and the and the starter says, go ahead, let her buck and UM, all of a sudden, all of the preparation of a year, or if you're talking Olympics, four years of preparation comes down to one moment. And I love to talk about the fact that half I've run last thirty five seconds, So four years of preparation will come down to thirty five seconds, and how well are you gonna execute in those thirty five seconds? And in bow hunting it really comes down to about five to ten seconds. From I mean, obviously there's there's the there's the physical preparation, there's the hunting preparation, there's the shooting preparation. If you're talking about bow hunting, you know you gotta you gotta make sure your pins are dialed. You gotta make sure that your broadheads are flying as straight and as and as true as they possibly can. You gotta know that the arrow is gonna hit behind the pin that you're using. You gotta make You gotta know that your pins are are You gotta know which pin is gonna hit at what at which range, etcetera, etcetera. Then you gotta do There's like, so there's the long term preparation. There's the habitual drawback anchor settle your feet, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull until it goes off. There's that kind of preparation. Um. And then there's the fitness aspect being fit enough to be able to get out there. Uh. For me, in terms of Western hunting, a lot of a lot of success is based on how far in you can get or how or how fast you can get there. Most of the time for me, it's like, oh, there's one and I have half an hour to get there? Can I make it two miles and a half hour? And um, So the fitness plays it, you'd aspect into it. And then there's the more acute stuff like can you stay cool, calm, collected, and if the wind switches while you're on your way in, can you make the right decision and and and take a little bit of extra time or possibly even move faster or whatever it is. And so then you get in range of this critter and then it all comes down to that five seconds of draw the bow, back anchor settle, level the bow, and pull till it goes off. You know, It's it's so that there's so much similarities for me in that way. I'm constantly training, I'm constantly improving my skills. Um, But it doesn't matter if I landed ten runs out of ten in practice, in the same way that it doesn't matter if you hit the dot ten times out of ten shooting at the target in camp before you went went out and blast the hillsides. Uh, comes down to that one arrow that you get to release when you're in range. And um, that's so fascinated me. I love that. I love the pressure. That's part of what has drawn me to skiing over time. It's like there's there's a lot of different aspects of skiing that I could could have pursued, but half five competition appealed to me the most because of that pressure. In the same way that bow hunting appeels to me the most because of that pressure. I love. I love developing habits that do encourage you to be successful in that moment. So um, in terms of habits, Uh, you brought up a fascinating concept to about a morning ritual, and um, I would say that that's actually twofold and one of the things that gets ignored potentially is actually the evening ritual. So um, I've done some studies with different companies that I work with, and um with some of my trainers with the ski team and my trainer here at home, and we found out that, UM, well, I mean, I think this is kind of a popular topic in in athletics right now. Quality of sleep is way more important than quantity of sleep. And um, so I've done some I wore an e KG for a week and tried some different habits and saw which ones. You know, it's it's not about necessarily that you're that you're just asleep. It's about the fact that you're asleep and your heart is um is settled and it's steady. When your heart rate is extremely uh rhythmic and slow and steady, that's when you're getting the most rest. That's when you're getting the most recovery. UM. So I have both a morning routine and an evening routine, and that for me is is actually the greatest basically creates the greatest quality of sleep. And that's something that I started to apply to my unting last year because, like I said, we were talking about earlier in the podcast, where you get out in the field and you've been waiting all year and you're so excited to hunt again and you kind of get off your rhythm and all of a sudden you're making bad decisions. You're like, why am I mentally off today? Well, I've been sleeping at such and such equality for the last six months, and all of a sudden, I'm out here, I'm sleeping poorly, I'm waking up at the weird times as I want to get out there in glass, and of course I'm mentally off my game. So I started actually applying these things that I had that I had learned and put in practice for skiing for hunting as well. And so for me, the evening routine is just something that settles my heart rightdown, um. Because if you spend your time right before you fall asleep, which a lot of us do, and I have a tendency to fall back into it as well, reading emails on your phone or flipping through Instagram on your phone or staring at a screen. Um, that's the last thing that your consciousness reflects on, right, but for you fall asleep and it inevitably plays into the quality of sleep. So before I go to bed, I try to whether it's just a ten minute stretching routine or maybe it's a little jog around the block. I'm not trying to spike my heart rate, so I'm not going for a sprint or going for a long run, but just something active that gets my heart rate slightly elevated. And then I'll read a book or something calming before I go to bed. That drastically increased my quality of sleep. UM, you talked about family and the balance of family. For me, one of the things we discovered I did this, UM, I did this e KG study. I was talking about one of the things they discovered. The scientists who looked at the data were like, Man, every time you skiped your family before you went to bed or FaceTime or whatever, you slept way better. So maybe you should introduce that into your routine. UM, so you know, and it calls it all comes down to each individual person. I'm not saying that there is a formula first success in that way, but there is certainly each person has their own formula, and mine happens to be, um, settling myself down drastically before I go to bed, and then like you said, yeah, waking up and doing um, not necessarily exactly the same things, but having certain benchmark things that start your day out in the same way, so that you you feel like, no matter where you are, you have a rhythm. Uh. As humans, part of the reason we like dance and we like music so much is because we're rhythmic beings. And so if you can develop that rhythm from the start of your day, your day, it will go better. And so um, yeah, whatever whatever happens to be, if you have to even if you have to adjust your schedule at home so that your schedule and when you're in the field can match it a little bit better, maybe that's gonna be a good thing for you in the long run. Because Yeah, one of the hardest things on a long hunt is is finding that rhythm again, because it is it is way different for me. Most of the hunting I do is in late August early September, and so first light in August is that like five thirty in the morning. I don't I'm not. I mean, I'm kind of a morning person, but I don't love getting up at four thirty in the morning. Like six thirty spine, but four thirty man, that's his struggle. So of course it's gonna throw you off the rhythms. So if you can find certain things, uh, for me, it's coffee. It's like I always have a hot cup of coffee or sometimes sometimes if I feel like I've been drinking too much caffeine lady lately, I'll do tea, just something hot to start with. UM and not allowing myself to just stare at my phone first thing in the morning is really important. So whether I'm going to read read the Good Word for the to start my morning or UM, or just take some time to be solid, to be silent and and have some solitude before the day. It's important for me not to look at my computer screen or my phone the first thing in the morning, because like I said, that just sends me up, and the same thing before where I go to bed. Yeah, the nights that I stare at my phone right before I fall asleep. I sleep poorly. The nights that I, uh take time to read a book or listen to a podcast or something like that, I do much better. Yeah, it's a really interesting point something that I've struggled with two and um it makes me think of when we talked about the whole sleeping thing. Definitely thinks like in the white tail world. For me, it's when you have like the heat of the white tail rut and you're hunting maybe seven or fourteen days straight all day every day. You're waking up at the you know, well before the break of dawn, and you're out there in the woods in a tree all the way until after dark, and just it really it's one of those rhythm things. It really throws you off your rhythm from regular life and it's just so exhausting. Or if you're in the Western world, you know, your big seven to ten day trip out in the mountains like very physically and mentally grueling. So sleep so great point in the quality of sleep. That's something that I that I'm not thinking about as much. I've tried to get better at quantity and inconsistency. I've heard that having consistent times can be helpful. Um, but you brought up coffee, and I'm curious. This is something I've been working on two specifically, when I go on these trips during the rut, when you're doing like for me this like two weeks or three week just marathon um during November. For us here in the White Tail Woods of the Midwest. For many years, I was horrible when it came to how I ate during those days because it was like, Wow, I'm just I'm not thinking, I don't have time to really you know, think through healthy meal. So I would just buy all sorts of snacks and junk food and I would grab something more and throw in the backpack, and my my meals for the day would be, you know, a Snickers, a bag of chips, uh ho ho, peanut butter, jelly sandwich, can of pepsi, and like all sorts of stuff like that. It was just like binge eating junk food for twelve hours during the day, sitting in tree standar or something. And the last couple of years I've noticed that's not that's not helping me. It's not helping me keep you know, high energy throughout the day. Staying folk us throughout the day. Um, in a whole lot of ways, I'm imagining that's that's probably not a good thing. So I've I've started to shift. Um, whether it be that kind of situation or Western trip. I gotta believe that what you're eating and drinking plays a factor and how effective you can be as a hunter. Um. I'm guessing that's something you think about. Two. Do you have any thoughts on that. I'm sure it's a big part of your the other side of your life in the skiing, So I'm guessing where's your head on all those things? Yeah, absolutely, It's it's funny like we I think we all, especially people who are really into hunting, uh, inevitably get really into nutrition. Are not really into it, but we but we have. We take an interest in nutrition. There's a reason that we like to eat game meat is because it's better for us. And then all of a sudden we suspend that when we go out in the field, as if it doesn't even matter and where eating jump with it. I've been guilty of the same thing. I'm like, I don't know what to take. Here's swelve Snickers ball and you know, like I'll just snack on those throughout the day, and then I expect the same quality of performance out of myself as if I had been eating the same you know, high quality complex carbohydrates, HI high protein diet that I normally am used to, and then I'm surprised when I when I'm under performing, and um for me at the discovery came, I mentioned my wife is super supportive. She's very supportive of my skiing career, which she's actually uh sort of drink accoolate with me, and she's super supportive of both my love of bow hunting and my level of archery in general. And it was she was the first one who pointed out to me that um, I was underperforming on the archery side, because I had been doing a couple of shoots archery tournaments and she's like, well, what are you eating during the day, And I was like, oh man, it's an archery shoot. You know. We we McDonald's breakfast on the way there, because you've gotta be at the gotta be at the range at like, you know, six thirty in the morning, that we don't have time to cook a nice meal for ourselves. And then she's like, Okay, what do you eat during the day. Oh, well, you know, they got like a snack jack midway through on on shot number eighteen or shot number twelve where you can buy a burger. And she's like, that is not the quality of food that you're used to eating, so of course you're underperforming, and she just kind of like opened my eyes and I was like, wow, I don't know how I didn't recognize that myself. So then I started making preparing myself healthy snacks throughout the day, whether it was avocado in a zip block bag with lime juice squirted in there so that the avocado didn't didn't spoil and it also had that that little tang of lime. I'm eating that. And then I had smoked salmon in my in my archery backpack, and uh, you know, just some higher quality food. And all of a sudden, my performance was what I expected it to be. I wasn't suddenly a professional archer. I wasn't shooting better than my practice, but I was at least shooting as good as my practice. And so that I learned that on the target archery side and applied it last year to the hunting side because I realized, wow, I do I hunting food. Even even those back country meals, the rehydrated stuff is usually not the best quality. You know, it's quantity, and we all think that we need this quantity, but the reality is it's it's just like sleep, Quantity doesn't really matter if the quality is terrible. So even though you're fueling the machine, you're not feeling the machine in the right way if you're eating this jump. So um. Yeah, it does take a lot more prep on the preparation side, but that's one of the things that you can be doing, uh during the off season and being getting ready for There's there's all kinds of um. As I've gotten more and more into it, there's all kinds of information out there for how to make your own back country meals that are awesome, or how to prepare for um, how to prepare for the grind outside outside of of of just you know, running to the supermarket right before your trip. And one of the things this is just that this is a random life hack because I know guys that utee your show like to like to listen not lighthecks. Um. I got really into cold brew coffee, uh, just because um, I felt like the quality was better for what it just tastes the best to me if I take the French press, I have just a normal French press in my house and put the coffee grounds in the night before and leave it in the refrigerator overnight with water and let it brew overnight and then press it in the morning. To me, that's the best cup of coffee I can drink. So I looked into, Okay, how can I have this out in the field, because this is obviously the best. I'm not about to bring a French press out into the field and do cold press coffee cold brew coffee overnight, but you can dehydrate. You can cold brew and dehydrate coffee down to like a shot size. So essentially you either um put it in the fridge and let it let it evaporate off itself, or leave it out in a back grde off your yourself itself, or you just boil it down to just the sort of the dregs of the coffee and you put that in shop form. You can just add it to a couple of water and there you got. You got your cold brew coffee first thing in the morning. So that's what I did when I was sent last year. That's what I like it so speaking of of life hacks and things like that, and you kind of talked about a couple UM activities that I think would fall within this. You mentioned, you know, the need to be staying fit leading up to hunting, or you mentioned shooting your bow leading up to the hunting season. Um. A lot of these things can become a part of your life if you have a thoughtful approach to him and and for a lot of people, that thoughtful approach hopefully usually leads to habits. This is something that seems to be pretty darn't consistent across a lot of different fields. High achievers usually have really good habits around important things in their life. What are those good habits for you? Um? Or how or how I guess, how does this work for you within your life of of skiing and or hunting um, whether it be creating good habits or breaking bad ones? Yeah. UM. I stumbled upon this concept luckily for me early on in my career, where rather than just training what was easy or what was comfortable for me, UM, I started training what I call training the fringe, and that means preparing for UM, preparing for the worst case scenario or preparing for the hardest thing that you're going to do, rather than just preparing for the easiest thing that you're gonna do. I think people have a tendency, especially when it comes to hunting preparation, to um go out set of targeting up flat at thirty to forty yards and if they can shoot the dot uh five times in a row, they feel good about it, like there there it is, I'm ready. But um, anybody who has ever been out in the field knows that moment when you have a deer in range never feels that in You're never nearly as calm as you were when you were shooting at that dot. So um, there's a there. It's a good practice to practice things in as hard of a way as possible because and I'm not saying you should, um practice things that are like super challenging and then try them in the field. But if you practice, if you practice the ultimate extreme of what you're capable of, then when you have something that's less than that, it's gonna seem easy. So um. For if we're talking about life hacks, one of one of the things I do before both season, UM, Western hunting is a little longer range than white tail hunting, I think in some ways because we're open country spot in stock, so, um, I would like to be I like to be effective where I'm willing and comfortable taking a shot out to sixty sixty five yards at a deer. So if I'm said telling myself, okay, I want to be effective, I want to be able to hit a you know, I want to be able to hit an orange ten times out of ten at sixty five yards even when my heart raise up. Then I have to practice at an even greater range with an elevated heart rate. So I'll usually practice at a hundred maybe a hundred and ten yards, and I'll do a wind sprint first. So what I do is I take two arrows, and I shoot both arrows, and then I sprint to the target and sprint back, so that's two yard win sprint, and then I throw the arrow on almost as soon as I get back, so that the first shot is super super elevated heart rate, and then the second shot is sort of a mid to high heart rate. And if I can get consistent putting both of those arrows in the effective zone, uh and putting them in similar spots, then I know, you know, if I get a shot at sixty sixty five yards, I can handle it, and you know, then I'll then I'll practice off my knees. Or if you're a white tail hunter, you should practice that extreme angles. You should practice shooting basically directly under your feet, because what happens if the deer is literally right below you. You know, practice the extremes because it's gonna make you just that much more effective, uh, conversion rate, like you're I think for bow hunting, the most important thing is your conversion rate. The reality is, if you spend enough time in the field, you're gonna get an opportunity or two or five. But how often you convert that opportunity to a harvest really comes down to your preparation. So when I'm preparing for skiing, I'm always training. When I'm in the gym, I'm training essentially more strength and I'll actually need physically, like I want to be stronger than I need to be. I want to be more agile than I need to be just to pull off my sport. And um, there's sort of this attitude and skiing that I was the anomaly for a long time, but now people are starting to embrace the training aspect, because most people would say free skiing is kind of a it's an action sport, it's a it's a it's a were the rebels of the of the athletic world, and so they say, oh, you don't need to go to the gym to ski, you just need to ski a lot. But the reality for me when I just skied a lot was that my muscles were only ever being trained to meet what was required of them. So they only were ever being trained to meet how much power I needed for a certain takeoff on a certain trick, but they were never being trained to exceed that. Whereas when I went to the gym, I could train one specific muscle in one or or set of muscles in one way, and I could actually be stronger than I needed to be to pull off that specific trick. And it was a huge asset because the reality is no run is ever that I ever do in skiing is is perfect. It's just how quickly can I react to those imperfections and make them look seamless. In the same way that no stock is ever perfect. Something's always going to go wrong. That's what's that's what's so exciting about bow hunting, you know, the wind swirls and you gotta make the shot quicker than you thought you were going to, or you know, you at the last second you crunch leave the leaf that you didn't see, and the deer's all of said more alert. And those things are never going to go perfect. I mean occasionally they do and it's great and you're like, wow, I don't know, I don't know how that went so perfect, but it did. But I would say most of the time it doesn't. So you have to you have to be prepared for those for the ways that things can go wrong with the way I think, things that can go different than you expected. So yeah, that's that's in terms of preparation and habits um I I habitually practice in harder ways than I would do than shots I would take in the field. I'm never gonna take a hundred ten yard shot in the field. I'm just not they're gonna take a hundred yard shot in the field. But that doesn't mean that I shouldn't practice at a hundred yards and be able to hit a candle, you know, nine times out of ten or ten times out of ten. That's that's always a goal for me. Before bow hunting, season starts. Yeah, makes makes the real deal at fifty or sixties so much more just just almost easy second nature at that point because it's nothing compared to a hundred ten. So yeah, you're able to stay calm because you're like, well, that's just right there, I can I can do this. So what about this though? What about simply the act of doing the training at all? That even is a challenge for some people I know, and myself included. Sometimes when I I get out of the habit of shooting my bow as often as I should, and I'm so caught up in work, and it's so busy with work, work, work, working. As soon as I'm done with work, that I had to be helping around the house and getting dinner around and then I'm spending a couple of hours of my son before he goes to bed, and then it's nine o'clock and I'm tired, and I do one more thing and work, and then it's ten o'clock and I want to read, and that's your day's gone. Right. So I feel like a lot of people have, in their own little way, struggle to fit in these things that they know are important. Um, but sometimes they slip through the cracks. I'm guilty of this. Sometimes I'm constantly battling and trying to find ways to to take something that I know I should be doing and and get it into my routine so it doesn't fall through those cracks. Something like shooting your bow or or your gun, or physically fit whatever it might be. Like. Take for shooting for example, Um, how do you or do you have a habit around shooting your boat or do you just when you have free time you shoot it? Or is it something that's every day or every week or some kind of routine that it's going to happen. How does that work for you? Yeah, I don't even know if you feel I don't even know if you should feel guilty about that, because life happens, man. And we talked earlier about how my first priority personally is my family and if if hunting ever comes between me and my quality uh and the quality of my fatherhood or the quality of being of my husband nous, I don't know if that's even a word, um, then then I need to put it on the sideline, um, because I really do think that those things are the most important. The relationships we have in our life are the most important things that we're going to do. Of course we're passionate about our howies were passionate about um our livelihoods. But at the end of the day, the relationships are most important. So it's really easy to get out of the rim. It's really easy to to let things go and not do them. Um. So habits do help in that in that way where um, maybe it's maybe it's getting up a little bit earlier for me. That's That's kind of what it comes down to, is the things that I prioritize. I'm like you as soon as I'm done training. So I mean a typical day of training for skiing for me, it takes five to six hours, and then you add two to three hours of emails and correspondence with my sponsors and uh stuff on top of that. All of a sudden, I have a full full day of work done. When that's over, I want to come and come home and hang out with my family. I want to come hang out with my wife and spend some time with the kids, maybe do something quote with them or whatever. So all of a sudden, that time that I could have spent shooting my bow or going for a run to get fit and ready to hammer the hills looking for elk goes away. So UM, if I want those things, I have to get up a little earlier and do it, and just do them first thing. So UM, when when our three season starts getting closer, if I start to feel aunty like I haven't shot enough late, I'll get up early into or I'll get up early and go for a run and then I'll shoot twenty arrows and when I get back from the run or something like that. So those habits are certainly helpful. But another life hack for you and for for anyone listening. UM. One of the most underrated skills is the power to visualize. Um. It's certainly a buzzword nowadays and people are getting more and more into it. But UM, one of the things that I do in my sport is I was talking earlier about training the fringe or preparing for worst case scenario. I spend a lot of time visualizing the worst case scenario. So that goes from everything to poor conditions in the half pipe. Maybe it's a blizzard, Maybe it's you know, thirty mile an hour across wind. Maybe the pipe is poorly cut, so I have to pop extra horror to try to stay in the pipe without landing on top of the landing on the coping or whatever it is. I'll train. I'll visualize myself executing in those difficult circumstances, so that if that happens in my life, I feel like I've been there. And that's something that I've applied to my hunting life as well, where I'll visualize certain things. I mean, I'm obsessed. I think you can hear it in my voice, but I talked about it. I'm obsessed with honey. So I've watched a lot of videos and I've seen what other dudes have done wrong and how things went wrong. So whenever I watch another video, whether it's you or Steve, or it's Rammy Warren or somebody I look up to and I watched them blow it, I take note of that almost more than the times that they're successful, because I'm like, wow, they blew that or that opportunity went south for a certain reason. Then I'll actually take that into my repertoire of things I visualized, and I visualized how I could have how they could have been more effective, and I'll visualize doing that, executing that more effectively and UM. So then if happens to me, I feel like I've been there. UM. And in the same way for skiing, I'll i'll actually visualize crashing, and I don't do it a lot. I visualize landing. I would say, I have to certainly visualize landing just as much as I have to visualize crashing. But the reality is, at some point I'm going to make a mistake, and so I have to visualize what I do once I've made that mistake just as much as I do. I have to have to visualize what I do when when I haven't made a mistake, you know, like the perfect takeoff, perfect landing is what I'm shooting for. But what about a bad takeoff? Can I still fix that? Or maybe I am going to land on the deck and you know it's either going to be a catastrophic injury, or if I stay cool, calm and collect and UM sort of mitigate the force of impact and spread it out between multiple body parts rather than just one, I might actually not get injured, and another person who hadn't been prepared for that situation would have. So that's another thing that you can prepare for. UH. Visualization wise, UM is looking at Okay, what could go wrong? What would I do? What would I do in a perfect world? Uh? Steve talks a lot. Steve Bornella talks a lot about when how there's no way to train. You always say there's no way to train for that moment when you get to make the shot, and I disagree. I think that you can prepare for it. You can see it in your head a thousand times. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's better than not doing. If you visualize that moment over and over and over again, then when it actually happens, it feels like you've already been there and you your chances of executing well are way higher. I mean, I didn't execute my first shot at a deer well. My second shot certainly went a lot better than my first, and that that was an experience thing. But the power of visualization is that you can develop this familiarity with something that you do. I was about to ask, you actually do it when you do that visual visual excuse me visualization, because for me, I think this is such a great point to bring up. I do this exact thing and I don't even know if I've talked about it before, but I do think it helps so much when I get and so when I'm on a white tail hunt, I climb up into the tree and in my tree stand, I get my bow hung up, all my stuff settled. Usually one of the first things I do once I'm set is I grabbed my bow and I visualize exactly what each different possible scenario might be. So I literally think about seeing a deer emerged from this patch of brush and he's walking this way, and I think, Okay, where am I gonna look at the shot? And I picked the shooting lane, and in my head I'm envisioning him walking into it. Then I draw my boat or kind of fake drow my bow without actually pulling it back. But I make sure that I can go through that physical motion. I think through the whole thing, and I try to do that in each different possible shooting lane or or section of the tree where I might possibly have that shot. And just going through that in my mind, playing out those scenarios, both physically and mentally, I think makes a huge, huge difference. I really do think it in some small way better prepares you for that moment um. So is that the main time when you're visualizing things in relation to hunting, or are there other times within your training, within the months or weeks leading up to things when you do this kind of worst case scenario um thinking through, Yeah, the only the reality is the only person who knows that you're doing this or are really benefits from this is you. So I mean, you can do it. You can do it as much or as little as you want. I personally am a proponent for doing it a lot because I really do believe and I believe it works. Um. But that's a great example most especially if you're in a white tail or not just white tail, but if you're in a tree stand hunting or a tree saddle hunting environment. Um, Once you're out there and you're set up, you still have a lot of time. You know, things don't happen right away. They almost never do, So you have a lot of time that rather than sitting there and reading a book on your phone or flipping through Facebook waiting for something to come in, you could be preparing yourself for whatever situation you could have in that location right in front of you and the world. You know, you're gonna be kicking yourself if something comes in from a direction you didn't expect and you don't know what to do when it does. So I think that's a perfect time to apply this visualization thing. Is, once you get up in your tree and you're settled, look at every single shooting lane you could possibly have, even look at the weird ones, look at the ones that I would be totally unexpected. Yeah. Sure, you you understand the patterns of deer. You know exactly where you think they're going to come in from. But the reality is, dear autonomous, they they sometimes do whatever the heck they want to do, and then it's a totally different from what you expected. So plan, plan for anything and everything. And then if you've if you've seen those experiences a couple of times over in your head, then when it actually happens, like I said, it will actually help you stay cool, cool, calm, and collect more than if you had just waited and and trusted yourself. I know I'll have this when it happens. And then how many times after the fact you're like, well, I wasn't ready for that to happen. Um, So I visualize a lot while I'm practicing, because first of all, you know, I like to make practicing fun. In the same way that when I'm at the gym training for skiing, I try to make that fun as and enjoyable as well as effective. So my trainer Max and I we do a lot of stuff that's balanced oriented or eyes closed, one legged or um. He likes to create super balanced, challenging surfaces because he knows that skiing, I'm constantly skiing on an unstable surface. So he'll literally put soap. He'll put like a slippery block with soap under it and tell me to land on it without falling, without the things slipping off from under me, or on a balance board or things like that. So I'm constantly challenging myself in a balance oriented way, wow strengthening, and that makes it fun, It makes it interesting, It makes it it's something that I, uh, I can get excited about even though I'm just essentially in the gym grinding again, you know, it takes the drudgery out of it. So that's what I do when I'm practicing shooting, as well as I put myself in the most exciting scenario as I can. I think it's I think it's actually a really powerful tool to be able to use your imagination and be like Okay, I'm on this location. Can I imagine this being a hunting like scenario? Okay, maybe I would shoot off my knee, maybe I shoot off my butt. Uh, perfect example. UM, I have never hunted antelope with the boat before, or I had never hunted the handlop with the boat before. Um, but somebody casually mentioned that they had shot off of their butt, and UM, I was like, really, in what situation would I ever shoot off my butt? For a Western hunter, that's unheard of. Sure, shoot off your knee, you know, shoot leaning back, you know, shoot on unstable surfaces. But like, in my mind, I could never picture a situation where I would be sitting on my butt shooting a bow. But because this guy's mentioned that, I was like, all right, I'm gonna try that. So I literally sat down on the ground flat like you know, Indian style, with my legs splaid out, and practice shooting. And my first couple of shots were awful, but I got to the point where I could still get my bow level and steady and shoot decently well. UM, So then I drew a teg. I drew an antelope tag into the sixteen and went out and hunted it, and UM, Actually, this is one of the episodes I'm gonna be releasing on the Wise Off the Grid channel on YouTube soon, so you guys can go do a little flashback and watch this after having listened to this. Um And I was a little underprepared. I had had a busy summer, so I had a couple of spots set up. But I went in and checked those spots and there was nothing. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna have to go find this. I had a couple more options. I had done enough preparation that I knew I could go elsewhere, but I didn't have a blind set up on these other locations. So um, I went in to check this new location. Uh. And I was looking, I was like, okay, actually this is a great spot. There's playing an antelope sign here. I hadn't had a camera on there, so I didn't know if there had been anything coming in coming and going. But I could tell they had been antelope there just because of the tracks. So I was like, man, I'm this might be my spot. I'm gonna set up a blind right here. And I was kind of like crawling through the brush seeing where I might be able to set up the camera, etcetera, etcetera. This is a solo and I was completely alone, and I look up and here's an antelope coming in. While I'm setting the blind up. I'm like building a blind and there's an antelope coming in, and I'm like, oh crap. Obviously I'm not in the blind. There isn't one. So what do I do now? So I just tucked in to the bushes. I actually had to crawl back, you know, thirty or forty yards uphill to get my bow, which is a terrible mistake. Obviously, you don't do that if it's if it's hunting season and the season is open, you should always have your weapons somewhere nearby, because you never know what's gonna happen. Rookie mistake. Crawled up to crawl up through the bushes, got my bow, crawled back down to where I had been planning to set up my blind, and I go to draw. I go to pop up and draw my bow back, and I realized I'm gonna be way too exposed if I shoot from my knees. So I sat down on my butt, drew the bow back, and shot the sandal. And if I had never practiced that, but shot. I just did it. I did it on a whim. It was a complete whim. But if I had never practiced that, I wouldn't have been able to I would have probably wouldn't been able to capitalize on that opportunity. So, um, you know, just random things like that. You know, just practice anything and everything, and and visualize while you're practicing because it makes it more interesting. And then, like I said, once you get out in field, um, every terrain is different. Every every time I draw a new tag or hunt a new location, I'm like, oh man, this terrain. You know, maybe I'm hunting aspen used to hunting aspen forests or aspen groves or juniper forest or whatever, and I'm in like a full on pine forest. That's obviously different terrain. Uh. So then you then you have to go through the different options in your head. Okay, what would it be like to encounter a deer here? And how would I act? And how would I shoot? Things like that. Just think through those things ahead of time so that when you do get the opportunity, you're ready. Is there anything else you do to train mentally, whether it be skiing and or hunting. I think I think the mental side of things, any kind of high pressure UM situation. It could be athletics, it could be hunting, anything that takes a lot of work that leads up to a single moment. There's a lot of mental stuff going on. There was sometimes gloss over. We like to talk about the the weight training, or we like to talk about all the work you're doing in the field to prepare for a deer hunting season order you know, hike in fifteen miles and get in the back country. Not a lot of time to spend about what's happening between the years other than visualization, like we just discussed. Are there any other things that you do to train that muscle, whether it be to handle the moment of truth or anything else. Yeah. Um, And that's one of the things there's no formula for. And a part of probably why that gets ignored is because that is the hardest thing to quantify. That's the hardest thing to teach people is how to be mentally strong mental toughness, uh, the ability to execute under pressure. There is no easy way to do that, as part of it comes from experience, um, but certainly you can do certain things to to prepare for it. And one of the most important things for me is sort of getting my heart right. It's uh reminding myself that no matter what happens at the end of the day, this isn't the most important thing I'm ever going to do in my life, you know, um, whether I'm competing in the Olympics or I'm drawing back on the biggest buck I've ever seen, even if I messed that up. You know, in pyeong Chang last year, I had I crashed on my first two runs. My ski came off on both of my first two out of three runs, and people ask me, how did you manage after all that adversity, how did you manage to land that third run? And part of it was because I wasn't defining success on if I landed that run or not. I already knew that I was successful and blessed and fortunate to be alive, and I was just gonna go out there and enjoy it. So that's where my for my mental fortitude in that moment came from, was just that I didn't I didn't. It's not that I didn't want to land that run, but I knew I wasn't saying if I don't land this run. It's the worst thing in the world, and I think that that's something that can certainly help people keep their heart rate lower, feel less stressed in the moment. Is no matter what opportunity you have in front of you, remember the long game. This, even though it seems like it's the only opportunity you're ever gonna have, you are going to have another opportunity. So take a deep breath, stay calm, be cool, execute the shot in the same way that you always do, and um, take that pressure off yourself. That's that's I mean, like I said, there's no real way to to train people to be mentally tough other than putting them through situations over and over and over again. But obviously you know not already has time to sit down with a mental mental coach and do that. So UM, I think the visualization thing is huge, um, as well as just sort of taking stop. One of the other things I was thinking about as we as you're talking through that though, is is right there, There's only so much you can do to train yourself for those moments, you know, going through it, getting you know, getting your head right, in your attitude right about what's really at stake here. But I'm curious if there are any physical because because as I've been studying habits, some of the things that I've been reading about how you establish a good habit is having a queue. The first thing is there's that queue, there's something that triggers the habit. And I wonder if this applies to things like shooting your bow or dropping into the half pipe. Do you have a queue or a trigger that you consistently apply right before that moment to make sure that the next few seconds go as right as I possibly can so you can execute on that game plan. Um. What does that look like for you that a couple of moments before you get into it? Yep, Um, yeah, I always have. I stumbled upon this somewhere along the way. Um. I always have a man truck for the year that I write on my sleeve. And so right before I drop in, you know, whether it's a local competition or to the first competition of the year or the last competition of the year, I try to remind myself to look down, read to sleep, uh, and apply whatever is written there to what I'm about to do. The first one I ever came across was embraced the opportunity UM, and I would just read that to remind myself that, UM, what the judges thought of me, what my competitors were doing, what everyone else thought of me, none of that really added to how well I was going to ski. In that moment. All I needed to focus on was the fact that I had an opportunity to go do what I felt like I was made to do and enjoy it. So I would look down, remind myself to embrace the opportunity, and then I would go ski uh this this past one UH for peeong Chang and all of the two thousand eighteen season, I wrote you cannot fail because it's not your victory, And that for me was a reminder to myself that, UM, no amount of success in terms of gold medals or anything else was gonna make me anymore content or happy. I had already achieved those things and found out that none of those things actually really added to my happiness as much as UM quality time with my family or seeing my kids go through milestones of their own. So I was just reminding myself, that's right, this is just an opportunity, and even in failure, you can still be a shining example of of of a human being so, Um, you cannot fail. Literally, you can't fail because even if you crash, that might be exactly what somebody out there who's watching needed to see, and you can smile about it, and them seeing you crash and then smile about it might be just the ammunition they needed to get over something in their life. Um. So that's where I was going earlier when I fully brain farted. Was that. Um, In my opinion, my personal opinion, you really can't fail. All we have is a long list of obstacles and things to overcome, and each one that you overcome, each one, each thing that you survive, becomes part of your quiver, you know. And um, So obviously as a bow hunter, I'm trying to and I'm trying to set myself up for as much success as I possibly can. But rather than being bitter or frustrated when something goes wrong, just take stock of what went wrong and add that to your add that to your your quiver. Say Okay, this happened that time and I reacted this way and that didn't work out. So next time, this is how I would This is how I would do things differently. And instead of taking a reactive approach to life. You end up starting to take more of a proactive approach to life, because I think a lot of people are reactive and and the easiest way to add to UM react to hard times this bitterness. Right, if you have something, you know, maybe you got laid off from work, or you were in an accident that was somebody else's fault, or you had something unfair happened to you, the easiest thing to do is be bitter about it because you're like, this is not fair. We all have this like sense of justice that and when things go don't go our way, our sense of justice is UM is offended at that. And I've just realized that things things aren't always going to be just, things aren't always gonna be fair. So rather than getting caught up in the bitterness of it, I just embraced it. I'm like, Okay, this this situation may in fact, I'm not going to pretend it doesn't suck, but while it's sucking, I'm going to try to learn something from it and use that moving forward. Yeah, man, that there are there are a few things in life that are more i don't know, more universal than that. I'm whether it's skiing or hunting, or work or family, like, there are going to be challenges, They're going to be significant bumps on the road. And I've always tried to take an approach similar to what you just describe there. It's like, what if you just look at things from a very practical standpoint and you have something that just happened, and what possible good can like that, you can't change what happened. It's water under the bridge, So you can either choose to be negative about it, and you can you can dwell on it, and you can cry woe is me, and you can get cranky and want to give up and all these things. And maybe that's the the thing that you're body and your motions you know, instinctively instinctively want to do right. That's like the easy thing that feels kind of good in the moment to be piste or to get upset. But but what in a practical sense of the of the thing, what does that achieve? Like if your goal is if you still have a goal out there, how is that going to help you take the next step towards it? And so I've always tried to really quick really move on from whatever it's gone bad, Like what's next? Like, Okay, this thing happened, understand Like it's a like for whatever reason, it's like a counting term always stuck with me. It's a sunk cost. Like it's a thing that happened. That's the reality. How do you move on from that? How do you what's the next thing? There's no point in dwelling on further. Um. It's so applicable in the hunting world. I mean, so many things go wrong. You you screw up a stock, or you you've been in a tree stand for fourteen days straight and you sat there for twelve hours every day and you've froze your butt off, and then you can see the buck of your life and you miss the shot um or or or even worse, you you hit a deer and you can't find it and you wounded it and used to live with that. Um. I mean those are There's so many possible low points where you go from the highest highest to the lowest of lows and it can just send you into a tailspin. Um. Yeah, I mean I feel like this is one of those things that is not discussed enough in the hunting world, like how to deal with those mental challenges throughout, whether it be failing or whether it being something that's thrown in your way. Um, and you describe a couple, you describe, you know, crashing on in the Olympics, right, you've got some incredible opportunity and you and you bifoit to the first two runs. Or I know, just recently you broke your femur right, and that's got to be just an unbelievably demoralizing, challenging thing too, that's completely thrown your plans out of whack. That's not just physically damaging, but I'm sure mentally challenging. To Um, what are things that you've And you've described a couple here, but I'm curious if there's other things you've done too to to build up your defenses to deal with this inevitable challenge that's gonna come. Right, we know something's gonna happen. The only thing I can guarantee everybody listening is that you're gonna have some kind of thing like this pop up in your life or your next hunting season. Are there any other things that you do to to mentally armor yourself heading into the future, heading into a hunting season, or any other things that you do to help deal with this kind of a net will obstacles and challenges that that hit us every year, every week in some kind of way or type. Yeah, I think you brought up a good point. It's not a it's not a question of if adversity is going to strike. It's just a question of when. And Um, sometimes when you're riding the high point, you get used to it and you learn to expect it. You're like, man, things have been good so long, They're going to continue to be good forever. And so the preparation in terms of preparing for hardship is just as important in the good times as it is in the bad times. Um. You know, basically coming off of uh winning the Olympics and sociate in two thousand and fourteen, UM, I had been riding away. It started with the started with the X Games in two thousand eleven to let's yet or two thousand and twelve. Yeah, won the X Games two thousand twelve, thirteen fourteen, right into my first and right into the sports first Olympics, and I was the guy fortunate enough to bring home the gold medal. So I was riding a high and all of a sudden, I went from the highest time of my life to some of the lowest times of my life. UM My wife's dad died, my sister lost her leg. We were just surrounded by deaths in the family and deaths among friends, and it was just a really heavy time, really difficult time. And um, I realized that I can't expect things to to continue to going good in the same way that you can't expect things to continue going bad. You have to have during the hard times, you have to have optimism, but during the good times you also have to have a certain amount of reservation. You have you have to appreciate them for where what they are, you know, but you also have to realize, Okay, these this is good, this is this is as good as things can go. And I can't learn to expect this or else I'm certainly going to be distraught when they start going poorly. Um. Ironically, while I was having three of the least successful seasons of my career in skiing, I was having the best years of my life as a hunter. Uh you know. I I got into this bow hunting thing and was immediately successful. Um. You know, in a in a period of three years, I think I uh filled every single tag that I purchased. I was like, you know, I drew drew an about a deer tag filled it, and then I was like, well, that's fun. Maybe I'll go buy over the counter tag filled that one. And then I bought a nelk tag filled that one, and it was just like, man, I could everything I touched in the hunting in terms of hunting turned to gold. So I was struggling on the skiing side and being successful on the hunting side, and then last year was almost a flip flop. I went from you know, I had an amazingly successful year in skiing and a really very a really difficult year hunting. UM still was able to manage to semi filled the freezer, so it wasn't all bad, UM, but it was definitely challenging. So yeah, preparing for those those rough times, UM, reminding yourself what is important. I talked about balance earlier, where UM, I think it's really important to have things that balance you h and make you can that that that you can be content with outside of the things that you're passionate about. So UM, I got into writing when I had one of my first injuries, my first knee injury, and I realized, okay, if I ever have a career ending injury, there's something that I can do that still occupies occupies my entire mind and soul that's not skiing. So that takes a little bit of pressure off. So when I have a crash and skiing, or have a situation like I'm in right now sitting here with my leg up because I was broken femur um, I have something else to pour who I am into and or I think we were made. I believe we were created, uh to create like we were. We were created by God, to do things with our lives, to do to to make new things or make new pass or um the innovators in some in one way or another. And so having having those balancing aspects of your life, I think it is a huge tool to h to weathering those hard times. Like you said, in hunting especially, it's having enough grit to get through the hard times and still make the shot when things turn around. Is the hardest. It's the hardest aspect of hunting. Um. Like you said, sitting in a tree stand twelve hours a day for ten days in a row and still making that shot out after sitting there for eleven hours, freezing your ass off is hard? Is it really hard? But um, if you can find your way outside of making that shot, um, I think it will really add to your ability to make that shot. If you're like, Okay, I'm here, this is an opportunity, I'm I'm I'm here because I love the art of bow hunting, and if I get an opportunity, I'm sure as hell going to make the most of it. But if I don't get an opportunity, this time was still well spent. This time was still worth it to me. If you can find that place, uh, I think that'll be a huge asset to move forward. Like I said, these are all just my opinions, so you know, take it really Yeah, And we've we've covered some really interesting things here. I I'm realizing now that I had about seven hours worth of things I would have liked to talk to you about it. It's my fault. I've been long winded. Ah my, No, I'm loving the tendency to rabbit trail. That's that's the kind of conversation i'd like. Um. So we kind of talked about a lot of things on the mental side, being mentally tough, how to visualize, how to move on from failures, how to prepare your self both both physically and mentally, how to balance things, how to develop good habits. A lot of ground has been covered. Um, But but you're a person that I that I think and I'm I'm assuming that you are surrounded by a lot of by virtual simply of of what you do professionally and maybe otherwise to just the types of people that you're interested in surrounding yourself with. I envisioned that you are with a lot of these these elite performers in whatever might be, whether it be business, sports, whatever, And and that might be a tip right there, which is I've always heard that you know, you are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. I'm curious maybe that's partially true for you if you try to surround yourself with people that that that forced you to grow and involve and become a better version of yourself. But put them the backburner, because my my main question is, of all these people you're around, what's one more trait or quality or or habit or process or anything. What's one more life half or something that you see consistently across those high achievers, those people that have have figured it out. Those people have done the very best they can possibly do in their space. Is there anything that you see consistently or that stands out to you as admirable or important that that we should leave this conversation with, UM, Yeah, maybe you always You always answer questions with a bias, So of course I'm gonna answer this question with a bias. But one of the things that I noticed about high performance more than anything else is their ability to um B. I don't want to say easy going because I don't want it to be I don't want to sound like it's like, oh, there's no big deal that it doesn't it doesn't matter. But one thing I noticed about really affected people is that no matter how hard things get, they react the same way. They are consistent across the board, whether it's things are going exactly right where things are going exactly wrong. They execute their tasks in the same way with the same mentality. And maybe that comes down to have it. Maybe that comes down to programming or ritual or whatever it is. But I've noticed that, um they don't freak out and worry or anxiety. I think have has a tendency. First of all, it's a natural it's it's a natural reaction to difficult circumstances, like, man, this is hard, I don't know what's gonna happen. And you get uncertain and then you start, your heart rate goes up, you get stressed out, and all of a sudden, your actions are not optimal. They're they're not as good as they would have been if you had stayed cool commonplex. That's one thing I noticed about really affective people is that they h they're really task oriented. So rather than rather than stare at the problem so that arises, they stare at the task that they have to do to come to combat that problem. Whatever the situation is, whether you know your business is tanking or um, you're failing on the stock of a lifetime um. Rather than saying, oh, the stock is falling apart, the deer is blah blah blah, say where am I in this space and what can I do next? And just really focusing on the next step, saying in the moment, because it's really easy to live your life. Uh. And it's either it's it's easy to live your life either in the future or in the past. Uh. And you can spend too much time beating yourself up for your past mistakes, or you can spend too much time dreaming about the future and fantasizing and saying, oh, man, when I get in on that deer, this stock, when this stock goes perfectly and I get it on that deer and I shoot it, that's gonna be the biggest buck I've ever shot. All of a sudden, you're not acting in the moment. You're not you're not you're not focused, you're not you're not living where you are. So um, that's one thing that I know is about really really a to people like like you said in All Realms is um that they are really good at staying very present here I am what do I do next? And they're still dreamers. I'm not discouraging dreaming. Trust me, I'm a dreamer, man. I I set lofty goals and I essentially try to shoot for the stars and everything that I do because I figured that way, I won't be disappointed. Uh if I if I tried something that was too hard and I don't make it, I won't be nearly as disappointed as if I didn't try enough. Um. So I'm not I'm not discouraging dreaming, but I also think it's super important to stay tied at the moment and and what can I do next in this next moment? Yeah, I want to ask you another question what something you just said, But I feel like I should try to wrap this up, so don't keep you too well. I feel I feel to blame for this, So if you want to ask me another question, I'm all for it. Okay, Well, I'm gonna ask two questions then to what you just said about goals. That's something that I was just recently talking about, and I really I think about goals a lot when it comes to each hunting season. And again, this might just be because of how goal oriented am. Some people maybe go into a hunting season and just like hey, I want a good time and that's fine. Um, but for those that all that are more goal oriented, Um, how do you and you you alluded to this a little bit, but can you share this a little bit about how you go through the goal setting process, whether it be skiing or hunting, and any advice to those of us for how to either better set goals or better execute on them, because that's a big thing, right. We all have these New Year's resolutions or these yearly goals. And then for a lot of folks and I'm guilty of this sometimes too, it's a lot of stuff falls by the wayside. So how do you make sure that you're checking in on it, that you're actually executing on it. Yeah, oh man, that's a that's an excellent question that I would love to answer because it's something I feel like I can I can speak to from personal experience. So, um, I have a really simple, but I feel elegant system of setting goals. And I can't take credit for it. I didn't come up with somebody else did, but I heard it and I was like, yep, I'm gonna do that. So, um, I set goals in three stages. I have my lofty goals, I have mid range goals, and then I have daily goals, and um there, I mean there's a there's a million stages in between. But if I'm just trying to give you a good way to visualize it, it's, yeah, the long term goals, you know, the future goals, the mid range goals, and then what are you gonna do tomorrow to get there? And I think that that's a really effective way to go about achieving your goals, because um, everybody has, like you said, new Year's resolutions. I want to be twenty pounds skinnier by the summer, or whatever it is, by by bow hunting season. I want to be you know, I want to be able to run an eight minute mile or whatever it is. And um, that's great to have that goal. That's a great starting place. So for me, it starts with the lofty goals. And I said, it was where do I want to be in the future, whether it's a year from now or ten years from now. I tell myself where do I want to be in the future, and then I try to pick a midpoint that I feel like fits that trajectory. So, UM, I think I feel like it's it's better to speak through examples. So I'll use a personal example. And and this is gonna sound cocky to some people, Soviet. Um. I have a long term goal of competing in the summer Olympic Games. So I've been to two Olympics uh in the winter obviously had a pretty good run at it. I'm going for another one in Beijing. In Beijing. In um, those are those are all part of my my skiing goals. But as a super long term goal, I want to shoot archery in the Olympic Games. That's first of all, it's obviously it's super locked goal. Like I said, it sounds cocky for me to even say that out loud. I n percent admit that. But why not shoot for the stars? So that's a ten year goal. Say I call it a ten year goal, twelve year goal, whatever it is. It's it's a long it's a long term goal. And so but I'm fascinated with this, this um sort of the this ability that I've stumbled upon to take the mental toughness that I've developed for skiing and applied to being the best skier that can be in being the most effective competitor I can be in skiing and applying it to a different sport. So I personally think this is maybeing cocky Again, I personally think that the skills that I've developed in skiing will actually apply to archery. Uh. If I can learn the technique on the archery side, then I already possess the mental fortitude to compete well. So um, so there's a long the long term goal compete in the summer games in the Olympics. Now, I'll pick a mid range goal for that, and my mid range goal for that would be to be able to shoot professionally. Uh, shoot a boat professionally. So if we're talking Olympics, it has to be traditional, a traditional style bow. You can't use a release mechanism. Um. You can. You can put stabilizers in sights, but there's there's a lot. It's a different type of different style of archery than what I currently do with the amount of time that I have. So right now, I shoot compound bow. Um, I'll shoot two or three tournaments a year. I feel like most of the time I'm just shooting the tournaments because I'm trying to get ready for boss for hunting. But my mid range goal and then you know, to to combat or to to line me up for this long term goal is can I make a little bit of money shooting a boat? So that for me is a compound boat goal. It's like, can I take my compound bow and make a little money shooting tournaments? Um, So that's the mid range goal. And then the daily goal is obviously my daily practice and it and then it comes down to and then like I said, there's a million goals in between. So obviously I know if I want to be a be a quote unquote professional archer, I have to practice quite a bit, so daily goal is to practice. But surrounding myself with guys who are really good at shooting bows and know a lot more about technique than I do is obviously a really good stepping stone towards those two longer lofty goals. So, um, there's the short term goals, the mid range goals, and then the lofty goals. That's that's if if if you call it, you want to call it a life hack, that's what I've stumbled into for skiing, and so that's to make it relatable to my skiing goals. Um, I will set like I'll make say we're timeing with the Olympics in I'll set a a run that I want to do. I want to be able to do this this many rotations in this number of tricks by two thousand fourteen, alright, And so then I'll say, okay, what's the mid range point there? Okay, so maybe the X Games two years before that or a year and a half before that or whatever, and I'll say, okay, in order to be able to do this run by then, I need to be able to do a run that's at least uh you know of that by you know one. So there's my mid range bowl and then I break it all down into dai legals. Okay, I need to start working towards this trick. I need to get my I need to get my takeoffs better on that trick, because if I want to add a rotation to that, I'm getting away with a with a mediocre takeoff now, but if I want to do that with an extra rotation, I gotta really tune that that take off up and get it to be almost flawless. So um, yeah, there we go. Another long way to answer, a long way to answer to a short question. It's fascinating, um. And it's something I've been thinking about a lot myself, and the challenge being I do something kind of similar to this, but inevitably I find that, you know you either what am I trying to stay here? It's easy to lose track of some of that in between stuff like you might have this big lofty thing you know you want to do, but and maybe the daily things really easy. But then you get like life happens, right, stuff happens, All sorts of things come up, and it seems like the crux for me at least is the the assessment of goals, like how do you check in on or how do you stay accountable to them? And so I've been like thinking about trying to trying to find like an accountability partner or something like somebody who can you know, call me out on this stuff or that that I have to be accountable to and talk about my progress. So far, my wife and I've kind of done this a little bit, like on an annual basis, but with like my career and and hunting related things, I've thought about maybe I need a I don't want to call it coach, but just like someone who who who can be kind of aware of what I'm trying to do and and check me on it. Um, do you do anything like that or how do you think about assessing and tracking your goal process? Yeah? I mean obviously I have I'm fortunate enough to have more tools than other people do because I'm on I'm on the US Free Scheme team, So I have a couple of people. I have a sports psychologists I chat with once in a while. Obviously, my my main coach, Andy h He and I are constantly checking in about strategy and I'm like, oh, what do you think about this strategy? You think that's a good way way to go? Or am I dreaming too much? Am I dreaming too little? And so I'm constantly checking that assessment with him, and then I'm constantly I try to constantly check in with him about am I getting closer to this goal at the right rate? Because I don't want to get there actually too fast? Ironically, Uh, part of skiing is strategy for me. It's like, I don't want to get there too quickly because if I reached this apex too soon, everybody else is going to have a chance to match it. So I want to reach it just at the right time. So we have to strategically plan these long term goals, and that's what makes it fun. That's what Andy and I enjoy doing. It's like, Okay, what where are we going next? Are we getting there at the right rate? How are we going to overcome this? This challenge is setback. Obviously, I'm supposed to be down not I'm supposed to be not sitting here with the broken femur training right now, So how are we gonna overcome that? So personally I am visualizing I have these tricks that I want to work towards, and since I can't ski right now, I'm visualizing that over and over and over again. And part of this mandatory break that I'm taking, I'm using as an opportunity to dream. I'm like, Okay, that dream that I had, maybe it is, maybe it's cool, maybe it's not enough, or maybe by the time I get there it will have changed. Um, So why not taking an opportunity to dream up some new things or some different things or each see different runs in my head? And um I think that that that ability to adapt is important too, because I'm probably never gotten to a lofty goal in terms of my goal setting structure. I just talked about, I've never gotten to a lofty goal in the way that I anticipated game. A lot of times I have gotten there, but it was totally different than I expected. So being able to adapt your method while retaining the same goal is important. And I think I think an accountability of partners is super key for that. Finding somebody who understands what you want to do and just checking in with them once in a while is super super effective. Yeah, yeah, I think that mcent agree with you, and definitely trying to find some ways to incorporate that into my life, both hunting in non hunting related. I think that would be very beneficial. And if you can't, I'll just throw into not everybody's sportsnate enough to have a buddy who they can have as an accountability partner. But the reality is we all own the paper. And if you start a goal journal and you write down those journals, you write down those goals, lofty goals, midrange goals, daily goals, you just write them down. All of a sudden, you have something to check two weeks from now, or a month from now, or a year from now, and you can go back and say, Okay, what was my goal a year ago? It maybe has changed and I need to I need to adapt it. But um, that's that's another super effective range tool. That's something that I do. That's something I do on top of all the other things I described, is I have a goal setting journal and I'm constantly just reading my own words. What did I think I wanted to do by this time last year? And I'll oftentimes laugh at what I wanted to do by this time last year. Um, and other times I'll be like, dang man, I thought I was gonna be wait further long. How often do you update that or going there and create new goals or write this stuff? Is that like an annual practice or how often are you are you going on that dream journal? It depends on the time of year. Um, that's like that. My goal journal and my competition journal are kind of the same for me. So during the ski season it's weekly. Um, during the off season it's more probably monthly, but I wouldn't ever I wouldn't say it's ever less than monthly because it needs to be part of your practice, an easy part of your habits for it to be really effective. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Well, this, uh, this has been one of my favorite conversations. Like, I've really enjoyed this. It's got me excited to try to do more of this. This is so interesting to see how different people's ways of of excelling in life and other areas can be applied to what we do as hunters. Um, it's it just fascinates me. And um, you had so much to share, David. So I'm bummed that I've talked so much because I wanted to hear from you more. I feel like we just scratched the service, so maybe I can maybe I can convince you to come back for her own two sometimes soon? Yeah? Why not? Man, thanks for having me. Yeah, one last thing, I want to make sure to let folks know about what you've got going on out there and how they can fall along with what you're up to. I have been watching a number of YouTube videos leading them to this conversation and really enjoying them. Um, can you give folks just a quick heads up on on what you're doing and where they can find it? Yeah? In terms of um, the best way currently to follow my journey is is through YouTube. So UM, I have my Mr David Wise channel, which is just my lifestyle as a skier and as a family man, a little bit of everything. And then we have a subchannel on there called Wise Off the Grid and why is off the grid as us embracing my My wife and I both have this dream of being off the grid completely. That means eating game, me, growing our own food, and um, you know, doing solar power and as much as much as we can while remaining practical and being part of this world we live in. So we're not going to just completely check out and turn our cell phones off and not have the Internet, but we do want to work towards this tenure goal of being off the grid. So why is off the grid is where you can watch all of my hunting endeavors or our hunting endeavors, I should say, because the only hunt that's up on there right now is actually my wife's hunt. But I have some content that I have been sitting on for a really long time. Uh, I've been basically solo filming all of my hunts from about two thousand fifteen on and I was actually going to use that content for another show that fell through. So now I have all this banger content that I'm excited to share with the world. So you guys can keep you guys can tune into that and you'll be seeing some of my old hunts, some of my some of my favorite hunts, and uh, moving forward, some of the new hunts. So that's the best way to follow my hunting stuff is through YouTube, my instagram personally my skiing Instagram page Mr Davil Wise and then we have a Wise off the grade wise Wise at wise o t G is our Instagram page that goes along with Wise, not the grid. So those are the easiest ways to follow me very cool. Well, like I said, really have enjoyed everything I've seen on there so far and highly recommend everyone check it out. So, David, thank you so much. Thanks man, Let's talk again soon. Yeah, and that is the end. Like I just said, this was a very very fun conversation for me and it inspired me to maybe see if we can do more episodes like this. I'd be curious to hear what you think. This is definitely not like our average show or we just dive deep with one hunter about how he hunts. This is a lot more high level, but man, I think it can be just as useful, if not more so, then the typical show we have. So let me think what you Let me know what you think by sending me a message or a comment on Instagram or over at the wire done face foot page, or hit me up on Twitter. Would love to get your feedback. And with that, I will just leave you with a big thank you for spending your time with me here today and until next time, stay Wired to Hunt.

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