Brad Stulberg
Performance/behavior author; shares high-quality insights on consistency, recovery, resilience, and sustainable excellence.
Show Up Anyway: Embrace the Imperfect Growth Slog
One of the most important skills for excellent performance (and really, for an excellent life) is showing up even, and perhaps especially, when you don’t really want to. You’ve got to get beyond all this optimization stuff. Things aren’t going to be perfect. Growth and progress is a beautiful slog.
Fun Beats Anger: The Real Edge for Top Performers
Podcast bros say that you’ve got to be angry all the time, that if you’re not suffering, you’re doing it wrong. Y’all—these “alphas” are unserious clowns. The best performers in the world are focused, determined, a little bit crazy, at...
Choose Real, Meaningful Work over AI‑driven Zombification
oing hard, meaningful, and real things is increasingly important in the age of AI and automation for everything. Don’t let yourself become a zombie.
You’re the Awareness, Not the Thoughts Inside
One of the hardest but most important practices is to realize you are not the stuff inside your head; you are the awareness that decides what to do with the stuff inside your head. The ability to choose which thoughts...
Consistency Is the Key to Winning Everything Else
Winning at consistency is showing up, getting started, playing the game in front of you, giving what you’ve got to give, coming back tomorrow, and doing this over and over again. And when you win at consistency you give yourself...
Athletes Prioritize Training over Clean‑eating Hype
All these longevity and performance bros talking about clean eating and toxins and yet all the serious athletes who actually train hard…
Best‑selling Book Praised by Steve Kerr, Now 23% Off
Over 25,000 readers in less than three months. Steve Kerr called it “an absolutely beautiful book.” Hundreds of five star reviews. And currently 23% off for a start of Spring promotion. If you’ve been on the edge, today is a...
Resist the Pixelated Conveyor: Protect Your Agency
Perhaps the greatest risk of the modern world is that we go wherever the current takes us, like automatons floating along a pixelated conveyor belt to nowhere. The only thing that separates us from this dystopia is ourselves. Our agency—our...
Excellence Comes From Growth, Not Goal Achievement
6 important ideas on actual excellence: 1. There is no greater illusion than thinking the accomplishment of some goal will change your life. What will change your life is who you become in the process of going for it. 2. Caring is...
Excellence Is a Disciplined Journey, Not Perfection
Excellence is not perfectionism. Excellence is not happiness. Excellence is not obsession. Excellence is not optimization. Excellence is not flow. Excellence is: caring deeply, it gives rise to mastery and mattering, it requires focus, discipline, consistency, prioritization, goals, patience, resilience, struggle, joy, gumption, routine,...
Curiosity Beats Fear: Top Performers Embrace the Unknown
The best performers in the world aren't fearless. They're curious. When you're standing at the edge of something hard—a big project, a difficult conversation, a new challenge—the default is to tense up. But if you can shift from What if...
Greatness Comes From Showing Up, Not Perfect Conditions
The greats aren’t great because they always have perfect conditions to do meaningful work. They are great because they show up and give it their best shot even when they don’t.
Greatness Thrives without Constant Suffering
There’s this notion that greatness requires nonstop suffering; it couldn’t be further from the truth:
True Greatness Is Readiness, Not Guaranteed Victory
When the greats are ready, it doesn’t mean they know they’ll win or get it right. It means they are prepared to face whatever comes up when they step into the arena. They are rugged and flexible. They respond not...
Embrace Struggle and Joy for a Meaningful Life
On “fun-maxxing,” “struggle-maxxing,” and what Alysa Liu’s extraordinary story can teach us about not just sport, but living a good and meaningful life too. I’m biased but I think everyone should read this: https://open.substack.com/pub/bradstulberg/p/struggle-joy-and-the-meaning-of-life?r=1z3bk6&utm_medium=ios