MKJ (00:00.784)
Hey, hey, CEO, Mischief Makers, MKJ here, Mary Kathryn Johnson. You can just call me MKJ. And I get to chat with someone I was introduced to from a very dear person to me, Laban Ditchburn, introduced me to Chris Doris. Chris, you ready to have a conversation today with me?

Chris Dorris (00:19.022)
Most definitely, Mary. Thank you.

MKJ (00:21.791)
Awesome. All right, well, start off. I know who you are and what you do, but start off kind of letting people know who you are and what you do.

Chris Dorris (00:29.054)
Well, I refer to myself as a mental toughness coach. And I think it could be helpful for me to define what mental toughness is. This is my definition and I doubt that you’ll find this anywhere. Mental toughness is a superpower. It’s a human skill that’s developed through diligent inner world work. Training. Specifically, it’s the ability to respond rapidly to all of life. Not some of it, not most of it, but all of life.

with grace, mastery, creative genius and enthusiasm so that we can get to the creation of excellence faster and with least effort. And I’ll repeat that in a little more summarized way. Mental toughness is the ability that is earned through diligent inner world work that most of us have not had exposure to ever. It’s the ability to respond rapidly to all of life with grace, mastery, creative genius and

and enthusiasm so that we can get to the creation of excellence faster and with least effort. So that’s what I do is I help people train their brains.

MKJ (01:38.086)
How did you do that? What started you on this path? Bring me back to a time when you didn’t have that mental toughness and had to, because most of us are accidental in what we do in the sense that we typically have to do it for ourselves before we do it for someone else, whatever it is. So take me back to why you landed where you landed. What mindset shifts did you have to go through to get to where you are?

Chris Dorris (01:54.59)
Hmm.

Chris Dorris (02:04.082)
Well, growing up, my father died when he was very young and I was nine and we struggled. So our house was characterized by scarcity, a lot of fear, and a lot of unpleasantness. Now, in contrast, my neighbors, who were really close, really, really good friends with my dads, theirs, the Canes, their last name was Kane, Dan and Mame Kane.

Retired railroad workers from the Philadelphia Railroad. Kane was their last name. They had one child, a daughter. Guess what they named her? Candy.

MKJ (02:45.025)
my goodness, at least they had a sense of humor.

Chris Dorris (02:45.64)
Yeah, it was great. And she was super sweet. So anyway, I love the Canes. I love them. And they have such a beautiful vibe. My bedroom faced their house. So I’d be in my room in the evening reading hearty boys books or something. And then I would hear they would always be on their back patio having cocktails and laughing. So loud and so hard. You know how laughter is contagious. And I would find myself, it was just I was catching their joy.

MKJ (03:11.664)
Yes.

Chris Dorris (03:15.496)
I was literally catching their joy. And I didn’t have clarity like I do now in hindsight, but I realize now that what was going on in me was I was observing a stark contrast between the vibe in my home and the vibe in theirs, and obviously theirs was a heck of a lot more appealing. And it was during those formative years where I didn’t, again, didn’t know it at the time, but it’s so obvious to me now.

I was so curious that why is it that some people choose such elevated states and some don’t? And the elevated states are so much more appealing to me. So I studied psychology and then I became a social worker and then it evolved. Everything just evolved. I stayed on one path for my entire life. I stayed with the one thing and it’s taken on many different iterations, but that really is the origin.

MKJ (04:07.418)
Yeah. So what was the answer to that curiosity of why do some people choose joy and others don’t? Because I hear you. I come from a family of three girls, difficult environment. I chose the path I chose to not take on the drama, to look for the positives, to look for a different way of doing things. And my two sisters did not. So what, why? What is that? What is the answer?

if it can be encapsulated into a statement or into a five minute conversation.

Chris Dorris (04:38.324)
I put it into one word. I’ll give you my response in one word, conditioning. But I’m gonna need to explain that. So you can also make the argument that the work that I do, mental toughness training, mental mastery training, is about unlearning.

MKJ (04:49.712)
Yes.

Chris Dorris (05:00.956)
It’s freeing ourselves from the conditioning of our past so that we can experience reality as it is, as opposed to through the thick lenses of our conditioned past and living in the prisons of the conditioned mind. Like, for example, we all grow up and we learn that when you don’t get what you want, that sucks. But that’s just like a rule. When you don’t get what you want, that’s bad. We’ve also all been conditioned to permit the outer world to govern the inner world, to let what happens in life really govern my inner state. So I like to use a lot of mantras.

and one of them that I’m thinking of right now is the outer world is a reflection of the inner world. What I’ve got going on in my life is the direct result of what I’ve got going on in my mind and if I haven’t strengthened the way I use my mind then I’m have chaos. So my answer to the question is why do some people choose joy and others don’t, I believe I’m really convinced that it’s because

of the conditioning. We’ve been conditioned to shift away from experiencing life opportunistically and enthusiastically to experiencing life problematically. If we don’t do the work to get back, then we’re going to stay there.

MKJ (06:09.176)
see more of it more of the the the scarcity yeah yeah I hear you I get it so I’m sure that took a path it wasn’t just all of sudden one day you realized all of this right so like an onion I’m sure that analogy has been used it peeled back a little by little by little is that true or was there more of a defining moment for you when your your mindset shifted to that that non -condition

Chris Dorris (06:32.414)
There were a bunch of defining, well, okay, so there’s one thing, I’ve always been, I just, love humans. I love people, I believe in people, and I love joy, I love celebration. And I also love badassery. I like peak performance, I love sports. I love sports, sports is governed, I mean, it’s been a major influence in my life. And there was a long period of time where I was a sports psychologist. I was working exclusively with competitive athletes on.

performing well by strengthening the mind. And Mary, one of the coolest observations I’ve ever made of human beings is that we’re at our best when we feel our best. So I became really fascinated in that. When I was doing social work, I was working with tough populations. That was my first job out of college. Except for the quick job I had on a scallop boat, but we will have to talk about that another day. That was a mistake. Great learnings, but whew, that was rough.

MKJ (07:26.736)
Thank

Chris Dorris (07:31.872)
Yeah, so I, you know, worked with homeless people and drug addicts and chronic schizophrenics on the streets in Atlantic City, New Jersey. And it was a hell of a, that was hard. Whew, that was tough stuff, tough work, people with a lot of suffering, right? Great foundation for the rest of my life, vocationally speaking. But one of the observations that I made is these people that have nothing. When, for whatever reasons, the ones who chose, and it’s a real operative word in our conversation here.

MKJ (07:40.07)
you

Chris Dorris (08:01.672)
The ones that chose to believe in themselves and in life, they seem to get the breaks, which I thought I was very fascinated with. I very, very fascinated by that. It’s the ones who put in some effort seem to get rewards. You know? So that was, right, yeah. Well, it’s like the ones who chose not to be victim -y, even though they had every reason to.

MKJ (08:19.961)
concept.

you

MKJ (08:30.404)
Yes, yes, yes.

Chris Dorris (08:31.218)
Right? So that was pivotal for me. But then there was certain dip in this stuff. Like I was playing, I was a basketball player all my life. I played in college and after work I would go as a social worker at the Jersey Shore. I would go play pickup games at night. One night I shattered my leg, really bad compound fracture. And it was, I got an infection. got a fatty embolism. I got pneumonia. I almost died from it, from this infection. So was a really serious, like,

freak accident, right? Freak. And thank God for it. Because, and I thank God for it because it took that. Then I stopped playing hoops, I started playing golf. I got really, really, really into that game. And if you ever played golf, you know how mental it is. It’s so incredibly psychological. And that’s when I had a real another discovery, which, and that’s obviously something that you just can’t predict. You know, I realized, wow, maybe my ticket, here’s my next step.

is I’m going to marry my passion for psychology and the human spirit and human potential with sports. My other most favorite thing. So then that was the next iteration. Starting a sports psychology practice and then working with all these golfers and these golfers, some of them are amateurs and they’re business people and they’re sales teams and kept evolving. I was a licensed therapist, then a sports psychologist, then an executive coach.

MKJ (09:54.202)
build over into all other places. I mindset does that. Go ahead. Yeah.

Chris Dorris (09:56.382)
But there is a through line. The through line is the same. The backbone of this vocation remains the same, which is helping people experience life more beautifully, more powerfully.

MKJ (10:06.17)
Yes, yes, yes. And to be able to take that that peace and that joy into other areas where they obviously are seeing they aren’t feeling that way. Yes, I hear you. I had a similar not a not a almost dying, but a funny situation when I was eight months pregnant with my second son. I fell and broke both my legs.

Chris Dorris (10:31.399)
MKJ (10:32.742)
both legs and casts up to the knee and couldn’t take a shower couldn’t take a bath could barely stand on one leg for any length of time so I was I had a bedside commode I didn’t even know what one of those was didn’t even know it existed and yeah it made me sit and sitting was not comfortable and similar serendipitous

Chris Dorris (10:49.106)
Hmm.

MKJ (11:01.978)
This was the second pregnancy. first pregnancy, I also went into early labor and was in the hospital for a week to stop the labor. So there was my first opportunity to sit. I didn’t take it. And so now this was the second one. It was basically like, OK, this isn’t this isn’t an option anymore. You will sit because you can’t move hardly at all without the use of a walker and you’re going to sit. And I was the first and only time in my life I was depressed.

Chris Dorris (11:11.518)
Hmm.

Chris Dorris (11:22.905)
Yeah.

Hmm.

MKJ (11:30.09)
Never before and never since have I been depressed. Just like all consuming of me, right? How terrible this is for me and all this. And it was my my son, my older one, who was three years old at the time, wanted me to play cars because I always used to play cars and things with him on the on the floor. And he’s like, Mommy can play cars. And I snapped at him. What are you talking about? Look at me. How can I you know, how could how could I how dare you? And the look on his face.

Chris Dorris (11:33.374)
Mmm. Mmm.

Chris Dorris (11:39.015)
Mmm.

MKJ (11:59.086)
snapped me right out. I’m like, okay, this is ridiculous. You are not, you are not permanently disabled. Why are you acting like you are? Why are you embodying this, this disability?

Chris Dorris (12:04.541)
Mmm.

MKJ (12:17.786)
rolled my belly big, big, huge baby hotel over and got on my knees and got on the carpet and started playing and, and was amazing until I of course had to go to the bathroom again next and had to figure out how I was going to get off the floor to go get to that bedside commode. But that’s another story. I mean, looking back on that, it’s so funny now the things that I had to do and the way life was. But at the time in it, boy, it was like, you’re going to stop and you’re going to think about the hard charging, go getting main bread winner.

Chris Dorris (12:36.382)
Yes.

MKJ (12:47.942)
person that you you are showing the world and and you’re gonna have to think and that is what’s allowed me to feel like if I’m going to if I can get through this with my sense of humor intact I can do anything and I started my first business 18 months later so it’s it’s completely a shift so take me through after you

Chris Dorris (13:04.114)
Hmph.

MKJ (13:15.882)
You went to mental toughness with sports. You’ve, think, ventured beyond mental toughness with sports. What was that next iteration, the next mindset shift after all the wonderful golfers that got your help?

Chris Dorris (13:29.294)
Well, so this is There was you know, there was a point where I was doing work with I was working with professional golfers I was also working with junior golfers Because I wanted to work with youth and you know get them working on their minds to you know so they take these tools to help them play better golf but out into life and

was at a junior golf clinic one day and I noticed there were some familiar faces in the room. I said, how many you kids have been to one of these before? And bunch of their hands went up. And I said, so what did you guys take from the last ones?

Chris Dorris (14:07.102)
crickets. So I thought, that’s not a good business model. And so afterwards I went back to the drawing board. I went back to my office and started thinking, how can we improve the value here? And that was an important question. That question actually, asking that question changed my life. Thank God for that. I came up with two ideas. One was I’m going to do less content and go deeper. And I’ve done that for the rest of my life. And that’s a good idea. Less is more thing.

MKJ (14:07.631)
Anything?

Chris Dorris (14:37.406)
But the other idea that was absolutely life altering was I’m going to invite a parent to join the kid for free. So maybe the parent will retain some of stuff, be able to reinforce it. So the first time I did that, a bunch of parents came and one of the guys after the workshop came up to me and said, man, you gotta come do this. I run sales at a company over here in Tempe, Arizona called Insight, a huge company.

And I said, yeah, I’m familiar with that company that’s their own I -10 and they sponsor one of the college FBS bowls. It a big, deal. says, yeah, well, I run sales there and my sales team’s struggling pretty hard. They can use, this is exactly what they need. And I said, all right. And we did that, turned it into be a great gig. The guy, Dave Canham is his name. We’ve become great. He’s like a brother to me now. This is like 20 years ago, more than that even. And great golfer too.

And he said, know, we force a relationship and he said, listen, man, this is so important on so many levels, the work that you’re bringing here. If our transcends sales and business in general, wherever I go, I’m bringing you with me, man. And he kept that pledge. So decades, a couple of decades later, he’s moved on and up and he’s brought me into these companies and introduced me and it just grew like that.

But I can really trace it back to Dave Kahneman, but the reason I even know Dave is because I thought, how can I increase my value? That was the question that I reflected upon, and that reflection was life altering. How can I improve what I’m bringing? How can I make it better? How can I serve more effectively?

MKJ (16:22.104)
And in that.

That’s it. But in that process, it wasn’t what I hear you saying is it wasn’t just what other program can I create or what other module can I add or anything like that in terms of value. You looked at the individual and said there are sound. I don’t know whether this was conscious or unconscious, but there are other people in this individual’s life that can also help me impact them.

if they come and hear what I’m saying, especially parents, obviously, children are not isolated little islands. If they go home and there’s no, no support of what you’re trying to help them with. It’s that’s why you got the example the answer of crickets when you asked what did you take from the last one? Because there was no there was it’s a whole I mean, you know, you don’t want to use the word holistic, but it is a whole unit it is there are other people in all of our lives.

Chris Dorris (17:05.65)
Yeah.

MKJ (17:16.89)
that if they are involved in this process of mindset shifts and mental toughness and all the things you’ve been talking about, then we have a support, we have a reminder, we have something beyond just our own heads where we can actually impact deeper and stronger. That’s what I hear you saying. Was that conscious or unconscious?

Chris Dorris (17:39.476)
I was very conscious about bringing, keeping it simple. I just wanted it to be more valuable. felt like these kids, golf is a tough sport. And I’ve played a lot of sports in my life, of all the ones that I’ve participated in, golf is more of a mirror for the soul. And golf is also a very neurotic culture. It’s an amazing game and it’s got a strange culture. It’s like the opposite of like surfing.

You know, you ask golfers how to go and there’s pretty negative answers unless it was an unusually good scoring round. Or unless you’re a little kid or an old, old person. Everybody in between gets miserable. But then you ask a surfer after a mediocre wave day, like, it was rad. It was epic. Yeah.

MKJ (18:27.13)
doesn’t

Chris Dorris (18:30.246)
So there’s enough negativity, the sport’s hard and kids are learning fast to be really negative, like smashing their, when the ball doesn’t go where they wanted it to go, they feel like I gotta show the world that I’m pissed, that I’m better than that, and it’s just all this weird learning. So I just wanna, I want humans to not suffer. And I was using, in a divinely selfish way, using sport because I love it, but.

I mean, think about golf is such a privileged sport. So few people ever get to do that. And then, and these kids are learning to ruin the experience, this privilege, this amazing sport where outside and this, know, manicured grasslands, which scientists say is like the most soothing of environments. And they’re acting like jackasses because they learned to. So the question was very conscious is how can I help these kids play PLY?

play better and experience intrinsic reward and discover their excellence. Because if they’re walking out of this workshop and they can’t remember Jack, well, that ain’t going to get it done.