you lead and I shall follow.
Yeah, I think pressure is something that is,
it's ubiquitous throughout life.
It doesn't matter what we're doing
or in what roles we find ourselves.
We experience pressure in some form or fashion.
And so I hear all the time in the realm
of sport performance psychology
and just performance in general,
you gotta learn how to perform under pressure.
You gotta figure out how to deal with pressure.
And the more I thought about it,
the more I read about it, I really,
I've come to the conclusion at least now,
at this point in my life, that pressure's an illusion.
It's something that, it's not that it's not real,
it's an illusion in the sense that
if we look at the situation we're in in one way,
then we experience pressure.
But if we look at that situation in a different way,
the pressure goes away.
So for example, if I'm in a situation that really matters,
I mean, the consequences are important.
It's truly a big deal.
If I'm in that situation and I'm focused on the consequences,
and particularly the potential bad consequences
of me screwing up, well now that's where pressure lives.
Pressure exists in that moment.
Whereas if I'm thinking about the consequences
and the good things that might happen,
that may alleviate pressure a little bit,
but pressure still exists.
So the bottom line with pressure is that if we're focused on,
if our attention is placed on the consequences,
the potential outcomes of the performance,
then we are very, very likely to experience pressure,
particularly if those consequences, again, good or bad.
It could be if I screw this up, then I'm gonna lose my job,
I'm not gonna be able to pay my bills,
or it could be if I do this right, I'm set.
My career is gonna take off.
I'm gonna be the next biggest thing.
Either way, there's a lot of pressure
when we're focused on the end state, the consequence.
But when we shift our perspective,
when we shift our attention to the moment,
to what needs to happen right now
in order to move us closer to that end state,
to set the conditions for the success that we want,
when we're focused on those things,
particularly those things that we can control,
pressure disappears.
And so again, the situation doesn't change.
That's why I say it's an illusion,
because the situation itself is not different.
Everything is identical.
It's just how we're choosing to look at the situation
and where we're choosing to place our attention
that will determine whether we experience pressure
or we don't.
And you know, it's interesting you say that Dr. Height,
because I'm thinking about your career as in stunt, right?
And the pressure that it takes
to actually just go and do it, right?
And I know that you're more than likely protected doing that.
However, I couldn't imagine the type of pressure
you would feel in order to have to do some of the things
that you are called to do or you are hired to do.
So I think that that's where that brought me to.
Plus I was thinking, do pressure and fear
live in the same environment?
Yeah, I think that they're different,
but they can exist.
Yeah, there's a lot of overlap.
Fear is the emotion that we experience
when we perceive an immediate threat.
If we believe that we are likely to be harmed
in some kind of way, then we will experience fear.
And if we're focused on the consequences
and the potential outcomes of this thing going wrong,
well, then yeah, that fear can be there.
We can experience pressure,
because we don't want to have that consequence be realized.
And it's interesting that you talk about the stunts,
because that's a perfect example
of how situations themselves do not determine pressure.
Because one of the examples that I give
when I do talks on this is,
there was a show that I was working on,
and the stunt was, there was a truck,
it's like a U-Haul truck,
driving down the road at about 15 miles an hour,
and I was supposed to come out the back of it,
looking like I'd been thrown out,
hit the ground and roll.
And that was fairly early in my career,
and there were a bunch of really big,
important stuntmen, stunt coordinators
who were standing around watching,
in addition to the other 50 to 100 people
who were always standing around watching.
And I felt a lot of pressure in that situation.
It really was something where my attention,
now that I look back on it, was on,
oh my God, if I do this right,
these big stunt coordinators are gonna know who I am,
I'm gonna be able to work for them.
Or if I do it wrong, my career may be over.
I don't know if I'm gonna work again.
That's where my attention was,
and I experienced a lot of pressure.
Cut to a month ago, I was working on a show
called The Righteous Gemstones,
and I was in the same situation.
I was in a truck, it was an SUV this time,
driving down a road at about 15 miles an hour,
and when it hits a bump, the back of it pops up,
and I come flying out the back of it,
hit the ground roll, and then, and so,
but in that situation, again, I had big actors,
big directors, all the people standing around watching,
but there was no pressure.
My attention was just simply on where do I,
because my hands were tied to.
So, like, how do I grab the latch
that's gonna pop this hood, or the back of the truck,
and how am I gonna come out and land?
What do I need to do with my body?
And then once I do, how long am I gonna stay?
All the things that I needed to do
in order to execute the stunt,
that's where my attention was.
I felt zero pressure.
So again, same identical situation,
on the set of a big show,
getting ready to come out the back of a moving truck.
One, a lot of pressure.
Second, no pressure.
So, yeah.
I think that is the coolest thing,
and when it comes to that,
what strategies do you recommend for staying motivated
and performing well under pressure?
I mean, you have the experience for that entire question.
So, what do you suggest?
Like, I don't know, I'm in awe, Dr. Hyatt.
Like, I'm in awe, totally.
Well, it's fine,
because those are two very, very different questions.
Motivation's a whole different animal
that if you look at it, really exists over the long haul.
It's not necessarily about being motivated in the moment,
although that can be a problem for people.
Usually, though, motivation is more,
how do I continue day to day,
doing all the things that I need to do,
as not fun as they might be,
but as necessary as they might be
to get me to where I wanna go?
That's typically a motivation discussion.
Whereas, the pressure, if we're in a moment
and we're experiencing pressure, what can we do?
Again, what can you control?
What is the most important thing right now?
There was a quote,
the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.
I don't know who said it, but I like it,
because that's really what it comes down to.
What is the most important thing right now
for me to focus on, that if I can control it,
if I can leverage it, if I can keep my attention on it,
and I can execute it, will set me up for success.
Now, nothing's gonna guarantee success,
but certainly, the future is determined by the present.
What we do now is going to dictate what the future is.
So rather than focusing on the future
and paying so much attention
and giving so much weight to the future,
where our attention needs to be is in the present moment.
What now can I do that's going to create those conditions
for the success that I want?
So that's my advice for people,
is if you start feeling that pressure,
just allow that to be a red flag,
that your attention's probably in the wrong spot,
and that you need to just shift that attention,
number one, to those controllable factors
that exist right now that you can do.
And it may not even be,
it might just simply be rehearsing something in your mind,
or it might be something physical like stretching,
because there's a, I mean,
I say there's a connection between the mind and the body,
I don't even know that there's a difference
between the mind and the body,
because when you move the needle on one,
you're moving the needle on the other.
So what can I do right now to create
the holistic conditions, physical, mental, emotional, social,
who can I go talk to for support?
Like, what are the things I can do
that are gonna make it more likely that I'll succeed?
And are those, the four phases that you were speaking about,
are they related to pressure?
And if so, please explain.
Well, I think the four-phase approach, that's different.
The four phases of a performance, any performance,
literally any performance,
has a before, a right before, a during, and an after.
And the before, during, after, that's not new,
that's been around for a long time,
people have examined and talked about performance
in those terms.
But it's that right before
that I think people miss a lot of times.
And that insight really did come out of stunts.
I mean, that was something that,
as I was thinking about it,
when I get on set to do a job, I'm there.
There's a before, I'm actually there.
We rehearse, and then we hang out, and whatever.
But I can't keep the same energy activation level
throughout the whole day.
I mean, it might be 12 hours before I do what I do.
So I can't keep that energy activation level
and that attentional focus just the same way the whole time
at a performance level.
So there's a before phase.
But then there's the time when they say,
okay, Brian, it's time to come to set
and we're getting ready to do it.
Well, now we're in the right before.
Now it's time for me to shift
from my regular walking around state to go state.
It's my time to put myself in what I call the bubble.
You can call it the zone or flow state or whatever it is.
I just think of it as a bubble.
I put myself in the bubble.
Everything else is gone, everything else is out.
It's not that I don't see it, it's not,
but it's a clear bubble.
But my focus is on what's inside that bubble.
That's where I exist.
And so that's the right before.
And then obviously the during is they call action
and then I do the thing.
How do I keep my attention where it needs to be?
How do I maintain my energy activation level?
How do I keep track where I need to be at any given moment?
And then there's the after phase.
And this has really two purposes.
And it's, again, it's another one that I think people
either don't do or gloss over,
really don't give it the justice it needs.
And that is, one is recovery.
Because after a performance, we need to recover.
We need to, we're gonna be in a heightened state,
depending on what the performance is that we're doing,
we're gonna be in a different state than we could be.
So we have just expended energy, we need to recover.
So how do we do that?
The second part is learning.
So after we take the time to recover,
after we take the time to just sit with our emotions,
whether things went well or whether things didn't,
we sit with those emotions, we accept what is,
and then we do a little analysis of what went right,
that's important, and what went wrong.
Not just what went wrong and how do we fix it,
but also what went right and how do we keep it?
How do we make sure we sustain it
and let that carry over into the next performance?
Because typically, what we're doing, we're gonna do again.
It might be immediately, like on set, if I do take one,
we're doing take two, normally.
So it might be immediately, or if you're doing
a presentation at a conference or something,
maybe it's next month, maybe it's next year,
but we're gonna do whatever it is again.
So we wanna keep those sustains,
we wanna know what we did right
and let them transfer over to the next time.
But obviously, we also wanna examine what didn't go right
and see what we can do to fix that.
So those are the four phases of performance.
And I think that when people think about performance
in those terms, to get back to your question about pressure,
it allows people to structure and to plan
and to feel less overwhelmed by the performance
that they have because they can prepare for
and really intentionally choose how to prepare
in the begin phase and what they're going to do
to transition into their performance state
in the right before phase and where their attention
is going to be in order to be maximally effective
in the during stage and their strategy for how to recover
as well as learn in the after phase.
So that's the four phase approach.
And if we do have that grounding,
that framework to leverage, then again,
we're keeping our focus and attention where it needs to be,
which means pressure is not gonna be there.
When you mentioned, so of course I look down
because I'm writing the four phases
and I really like the after phase,
the recovery, the learning, the analysis.
Like you said, I do believe that people,
and I'll even say we, tend to live in the,
if it went great, we stay in this high.
There's this great high that we have never recovering,
not really learning from the experience,
like to keep it consistent, right?
Because if it was something that went well
and never really analyzing, if I had to do this the same way,
do I have the ability to do it again,
just like that, to stay at that level?
So I really, really like the after phase.
And when you mentioned that not too many people live in it,
where did that thought process come from?
Well, I mean, it's just, it's like you said,
if things go well, then we just move on.
We don't really take that time to sit in what happened
and to experience the emotions
that we're having good or bad.
Again, either way, we're experiencing something.
So let's sit in that, let's allow that to happen
and then turn a little bit more analytical of,
all right, now let's break things down
and see what went right and what went wrong.
And it does take some time,
but it doesn't have to be
an incredibly time consuming process.
It really doesn't.
And even the time that it does take is typically helpful.
And I'll tell you, just an example from the stunt world,
is it's well known that a lot of injuries
and badness happens on take two.
And the reason for that is because take one,
we haven't done it yet.
And so everybody's amped up, everybody's,
the attention's really high, oh, are we gonna do it?
What's the safety?
Do we have all the precautions in place?
Or what's going on?
And then we do it, it's all great
and everybody's cheering, we get up and it's great.
All right, well, let's do it again.
Well, now there's kind of a, I don't know,
like a, I don't wanna say a let down, but it kind of is.
Cause it's like that release that happens
when things go right.
And then you gotta amp it back up again
to where you were to do it right in the first place.
And sometimes that doesn't happen.
And as a result, injuries can occur.
That happens too often in the stunt world.
I tell you, I am still in awe.
It's funny as I sit here and I continue to keep smiling
because as you go back to the stunt world,
I'm like, this is something that really, really,
really happens, you know?
And when you talk about pressure and then the four steps,
it all just really truly goes together.
And with that being said,
what was your most significant learning experience
while doing all of this
and then getting into the four phases?
I don't know that I have a single most
impactful learning experience.
I mean, part of me and part of what I have learned
over time to embrace is the love of learning.
I didn't know that I had that as a kid
and into early adulthood.
I just wanted to know, I wanted things quickly.
And then I don't know where I happened along,
mid-20s into 30s, maybe I started to realize,
huh, I really enjoy the growth process.
I enjoy new things.
If I've, I don't even say mastered
because I don't know that that's even possible
to master something.
But even when I get really good at something
and I just, I wanna move on to something else.
I wanna get into a different area
and experience that improvement and growth.
So I guess for me, maybe that's the learning experience
is just a learning that I like to learn is part of it.
I think that is so cool because as you were saying,
and of course I was still reading it,
I was like, he loves to learn.
And you're doing so many things.
And I believe as I look at your shirt,
it says that Brian Hyte Global.
Global means that there's so many other things
apart of you and what you do.
Is that correct?
Yeah, I've been playing around,
I'm kind of working through a rebrand at the moment.
I'm playing around with Renaissance Man
just from two standpoints.
One is, yeah, I do a lot of things.
I'm a stunt man, I'm a college faculty member,
I'm an author, I'm a keynote speaker,
I'm a parent, you know, I mean, I'm all these things.
So from that standpoint, Renaissance,
but also because of what I was just talking about.
I love to challenge assumptions and status quo.
I love creativity and innovation and thinking differently,
thinking outside the box.
And that's really, I don't know,
those are the things that get me jazzed up.
When I start, like I said, about pressure.
When we just assume that pressure's going to exist.
Pressure doesn't exist in the situation.
Pressure exists in the mind, not in the moment.
And that's really thinking about that again,
it just challenges that assumption
that by definition, a priori,
from the beginning, pressure's gonna be there.
If you're gonna do this thing,
you're gonna experience pressure.
So what you need to do is figure out
how to deal with pressure.
And I don't believe that.
I think, no, pressure doesn't have to exist.
And so we just think about it differently.
So yeah, so that's kind of the,
so yes, the global piece, the, I don't know,
I just, like I said, I don't like getting it tunneled into
or pigeonholed into any one area.
And it's funny because throughout my career in business,
this whole two and a half year process
of getting my business up and going,
trying to figure out what I'm gonna do,
I am constantly, constantly, by everybody I talk to,
marketing people, podcasts, all kinds of people,
you need to niche down.
You need to make sure everybody knows what you are
and who you are and what you do.
If you're gonna be an author, then be this or be,
like, yeah, I don't wanna be that.
So I've been pushing back on that.
I don't know, for better or worse,
we'll see how it all plays out in a few years,
but I just don't, I don't want that.
I want the bigger picture.
I wanna do it all.
And I like that, and that helps me to understand
the global piece to it.
That also helps me to understand
why you're still jumping out of moving things.
And then flying off.
I mean, at that point, when you do have such experience
and you're not, and I hear the word niche all the time
because I'm a real estate agent full-time.
And so it's like, pick your niche, pick your niche.
And there you'll be able to, and that's, I feel that.
I can understand that totally.
But as you start to rebrand and brand yourself,
I'm gonna end with this last statement and question.
Tell me about your vision in it all.
My vision, you know, it morphs daily at this point.
But what I would really like to do, I mean, truly,
what I would love to do is to speak to audiences,
at least a half dozen times a year.
I really, really enjoy being in front of large audiences
and engaging with people.
And for select people, I'd like to do some workshops too,
where we get more one-on-one, more hands-on.
I would like to put out a book, maybe every two years,
maybe, I think is probably realistic.
Put out a different book every two years.
I love writing.
That was, again, something I had no idea,
maybe five years ago, if you'd have told me,
yeah, you're gonna be writing books.
I'd have told you you were crazy, but here we are.
So I would like to be writing books.
And I would like to still be doing stunts
in some kind of capacity until either my body gives out
or stunt coordinators just quit hiring me,
because it's something I love.
I love the people, I love the industry,
I love the energy.
It really is just my home.
It's something I've done for 30 years.
It's where I feel most comfortable being on set
and in those environments.
So I don't wanna lose that.
But honestly, I get a little bit of that from the speaking,
which maybe why it is that I enjoy that,
just being able to stand on stage and talk.
So that's my vision, being able to give some talks,
write some books, do some workshops,
and then maybe create some classes that are online
for people who aren't in the room when I'm talking
or can't attend the workshops.
They're there too, because I do enjoy passing on information
that I think might help people.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is gonna get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show
and thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.