Jim Murphy is a performance coach, author, and speaker who helps elite athletes and high performers unlock what he calls “inner excellence”. Through his work with professional athletes in the PGA, MLB, and Olympic sports, Jim has helped competitors transcend fear and anxiety to perform at their highest level. His book, Inner Excellence, blends spirituality, psychology, and performance science into a practical framework for mastering the inner game, and it recently gained widespread attention after Philadelphia Eagles star AJ Brown was spotted reading the book on the sidelines during an NFL game.
Jim joined host Robert Glazer on the Elevate Podcast to discuss the overnight success of Inner Excellence, his coaching career, high performance and much more.
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Jim Murphy On AJ Brown And Finding Inner Excellence
The Space Between Stimulus And Response
Welcome to the show. Our quote is from Viktor Frankl. “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space, our power is to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Our guest is Jim Murphy. Jim is a performance coach, author, and speaker who helps elite athletes and high performers unlock what he calls Inner Excellence.
Through his work with professional athletes in the PGA, MLB, and Olympic sports, Jim has helped competitors transcend fear and anxiety to perform at their highest level. His book, Inner Excellence, blends spirituality, psychology, and performance science into a practical framework for mastering the inner game. It recently gained widespread attention after Philadelphia Eagles star AJ Brown was spotted reading the book on the sidelines during an NFL playoff game in the US.
Jim, thank you for joining us on the show.
Thanks for having me, Robert.
I always find it interesting to start with childhood. What first sparked your passion for athletic training and performance? Were you an athlete as a kid?
The first thing that comes to mind is recess, about 3rd or 4th grade. The bell had just rung, we were playing football, and it was the last play. Todd Anderson was this little guy, but he had good arms, and he was our quarterback. Last play means we are going for a touchdown, long bomb. Why would you not? We are going for a long bomb, and I am in the end zone.
That is a playground, our zone. Someone tips it, and I dive, and I catch it, and we win. It was very exhilarating. One of the memorable things was sitting in Miss Glaze’s class. We ran in because we were a little bit late. She just starts talking like it is a normal day. She is talking about math or whatever, and I just caught this game-winning touchdown. It was an incredible dive and catch, and she is oblivious. That is what came to mind first.
Did you play competitive athletics throughout high school, or what were your sports?
Six sports in elementary through grade ten, and then football and baseball in high school and college.
From Pro Baseball To Performance Coaching: The Path To Inner Excellence
Eventually, I know you transitioned to coaching elite athletes in golf, baseball, and some other sports. What drew you to mental performance coaching, and how did that evolve into eventually writing Inner Excellence?
I was a pro baseball player, and I got injured and had to retire in my early twenties and I was devastated. It was my entire identity. I get asked to coach a high school baseball team. I had never considered it. I was driving a truck for FedEx downtown Seattle to the LKE station. O’Dea High School, my teammate was coaching for O’Dea, and he is leaving and said, “Jim, can you take over?”
I did, and we went undefeated and just had so much fun. That started my coaching journey. Having an obsessive personality, I thought, “My destiny obviously was to be a Major League Baseball manager and win the World Series, not as a player, but as a manager.” Right away, I thought, “How do I go about managing the New York Yankees from coaching fifteen-year-olds?”
Start small.
That is how I have always approached things since I was little. I ended up doing my master’s at the University of British Columbia, and played football there. I had not played for eight years. I was 24. I started a baseball team there. I got a job with the Texas Rangers two weeks after graduation. I did my master’s in coaching science.
I coached half a season and then left mid-season, devastated. It just was not a good fit. I thought I was a total failure at the time, but looking back, I realized it was a box that I was not fitting into. For good reason, God had much bigger plans for me. I leave the Rangers. I get asked to coach and be the hitting coach for South Africa for their Olympic trials in the 2000 Sydney Olympics. I fly to South Africa. It was an extraordinary experience. The complete opposite of the experience I had with Texas.
I was able to coach, and they said, “They are your hitters, do what you want.” Just such great guys. I am still on a WhatsApp thread with them 25 years later. Amazing group of guys. We had one of the biggest upset victories in Olympic baseball history. We won the trials, went to the Sydney Olympics, and had an amazing victory there. I got to meet Nelson Mandela and march in the opening ceremonies. It was incredible. That was 2000. In 2003, I left for the desert to live a life of solitude, and that is where Inner Excellence was born.
What did living a life of solitude involve?
It involved my laptop, which was back in the days of screensavers, and it said, “Those destined for greatness must first walk alone in the desert.” I would see that every day as it goes across my screen. I was getting restless. I went back to personal training after the Olympics and was unsure what to do with my life. It was good, and I enjoyed it. I wanted to make a much bigger difference. I realized that as a personal trainer, people come to me to lose 10 pounds or something like that.
If I really want to help them, it goes much deeper than the physical. If I do want to help them in the physical, the best way, then we have got to get to the mental, emotional, and spiritual anyway. A lot of people who are overweight have a mental, emotional, or just unhealthy aspect to it. They may be fit physically, look fit, but be unhealthy mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
I wanted to make a bigger difference. I was not sure what to do with my life, and I actually got offered to have my own facility by a client, which I turned down. I also got offered to be on a late-night infomercial as a personal trainer, which I turned down. I was just starting to think I do not want to get pegged as a personal trainer and not be able to escape that when I wanted to get into coaching.
My teammate, Ricky Scruggs, a former teammate with the Surrey Glaciers, calls me and says, “I am starting a baseball academy in Tucson, Arizona. Can you come down for the weekend and help me out?” The timing was that I was looking to figure out what to do with my life, and decided to give away over half my possessions, including my TV, and move to the desert and live a life of relative solitude. I wanted to find out if I could find something that I was willing to die for.
Is that when you wrote the book?
Yes.
How long did it take to write?
It was quick, depending on what you call quick. Five years of full-time writing and research, 50 to 60 hours a week.
When was the book released?
It came out. McGraw-Hill published it in December 2009.
It had been out for a long time. Did you consider it successful? Did it sell a lot of copies, or was it finding its way into niche communities?
I wrote the book because I wanted to be a personal coach to pro baseball players, teach them how to have peace and confidence under pressure. For that reason, it did great. It was like a solid business card. It did amazing. People had asked me how well it was selling.
I heard somewhere it was selling 10 to 50 a month. Is that right, up until last year?
Something like that. I would say in the 15 years or 16 years since it has been out, before January 12th, it sold 7,000 or 8,000. I would tell people all I know is that it is not a New York Times bestseller yet. That is all I know.
The PALMS Acronym: Redefining Freedom, Joy, And Success
You describe Inner Excellence as a way to live and perform in the present moment with freedom and joy. That is a little different from the definitions I have heard. What inspired you to develop that philosophy?
It was based on my own experience as a pro baseball player and the five years of writing and research, realizing that what I thought was the best possible life. My personality is I have always wanted to maximize every moment of every day since I was little. It led me to some places that were not good, taking shortcuts in class and everything else, because why would I spend time in something that does not matter when I could be having fun? Sorry, what was your question?
On the definition of the present moment with freedom and joy.
I have always obsessed over maximizing every moment. As you get older, say you are a high school senior, now you are starting to think about your life and your goals and dreams, and you want to go out every night and meet the girls and have fun and drink beer, whatever you’d like to do. If you have talent and a dream, now you’ve got to start correlating the two.
If I do not study, I am not going to get good grades, and how am I going to get into a good university? If I do not train hard, whether it is baseball or tennis, or violin, how will I ever be successful? I have this dream that I want to be extraordinary, but I also want to maximize the moment and have the most pleasure. I have always had this obsession with maximizing the moment, but then I started to realize, “What does that really mean?”
It is like freedom. When I ask people what they want most, the most common answer, when we boil it down, is more than millions of dollars or millions of followers. “I want to be able to do what I want, when I want, how I want, with who I want.” This is the most common answer. My role as a coach is to help people clarify what they want most and help them get it. I do not think that is what they want.
Does the moment just get too big for some people? Is Inner Excellence a philosophy around your entire approach?
It is a way of life. For freedom, what people really want is to have a meaningful, fulfilling life with amazing experiences and deep, enriching relationships where they are learning and growing and making a difference in the world. That is what everybody wants, some version of that. They get caught up, as I did, in these superficial transactions. “I just want the trophies and the girls and the moments. I just want the world to love me.” What I found in the desert is that our deepest need is for unconditional love and our greatest fear is rejection.
Everything that humans do if they are not feeling their love is that they are going to try and get it. It is generally through what I call the acronym PALMS, Possessions, Achievements, Looks, Money, or Status. It is this chase your tail, endless treadmill pursuit that never fulfills. Inner Excellence is a way of life to help you optimize yourself as a person, and then you are better at everything else. You can live your life with meaning and joy.
The AJ Brown Effect: How A Sideline Book Turned Into A New York Times Bestseller
Let us talk about this transition point, because it is interesting, particularly with wide receivers, who I would say, if we had to stereotype, are some of the more flashy materialistic players in the game. Everything changed for you and this book when A.J. Brown was seen reading it on the sidelines of a playoff game, initially. It was not the Super Bowl, was it the NFC championship game?
He had been reading it all season. The first time he was filmed was in the wild card game, and then they won, and then they won every game, including the Super Bowl, and so they filmed him with it.
Did you know before it was filmed that he had been reading this book? Had you been in touch with him? Do you know how he got the book?
No. I had seen a picture of him reading the book, a picture of him in uniform with the book in his hands, but I had no context. That was about a month earlier, so I just did not know. It turns out that his teammate, Moro Ojomo, who is now a good friend of mine, had given him the book. He read the book. He got the book from DJ Giaritelli, who runs the Athletes in Action over there at Texas. Moro gave it to AJ.
Our deepest need is for unconditional love and our greatest fear is rejection.
He is reading this book on the side of the field on national television. They show him reading this book in between plays. What happens afterwards?
I look at my phone, I am watching a different football game that had already happened to try and catch up, and I see all these texts. The barrage of media just came like a fire hose, nonstop. I could not keep up with all the interviews.
I know it became a bestseller on Amazon. How many books did you go on to sell in that next month?
Somewhere about 100,000 in a week and 200,000 in three weeks.
I read you said somewhere you were set up for print on demand because obviously you were not warehousing that many books. How did they scale up to get that many out there?
It is amazing. This would not have happened twenty years ago. God timed it all perfectly. McGraw-Hill published it in 2009. As I said, it sold 7,000 or 8,000 in 15 or 16 years. I got the rights to it in 2018. I spent two years part-time revising it.
Did you buy that from them?
Yes. Same concepts, new stories. I self-published on Amazon in 2020. That is the book that AJ is reading, the self-published version. That was only available on Amazon at the time. Now it is available in bookstores all over the world. It is in 25 languages.
Did you go back to a publisher after that? I assume you had a lot of people coming after you.
After it hit number one on the New York Times, my agent held an auction, and we signed with Hachette. Three-book deal.
From Overnight Success To Global Movement: The Ripple Effect
You have had this once-in-a-lifetime thing. Tell us a little bit about the ripple effect. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in books, speaking requests. Do you have athletes reaching out for coaching? I assume everything has changed.
My life is very different now. The biggest thing is really processing what has happened. How did it happen, and what happened? Obviously, I had very little to do with it. It probably does not look that way. God orchestrated it. He has been orchestrating this for many years since I was born. There is no way you could have scripted how it worked, the timing, the person, and even the city.
The fans are the most intense fans in the NFL, maybe in the world. I have Shane Claiborne, a Christian activist, lives in inner-city Philly, who has been my hero for decades, and now I get to work with him and do some great things in Philadelphia. It is hard to put into words to be given the gift to be able to be a small part of someone’s heart.
I am curious. You have talked to AJ Brown since then, right?
Yes.
Do you know what part of the book resonated with him or influenced his mindset on the field? A big part of this is that the Eagles went on to win the Super Bowl, and he was a big part of that.
AJ is an amazing guy. Obviously, he is a superstar, the best receiver in the world in the NFL. He has shared a few of these online, some of the things that he highlighted. There is a page where three-fourths of it is highlighted, and it is early in chapter one, talking about this pursuit of freedom and having a clear mind and unburdened heart.
The general idea in Western culture is that we live in a very individualized country if which is the most individualized country in the world. I have been to 50-something countries. It is a product of its success. We are very much individual-focused, and that can lead to fear. What resonates with AJ and why he is reading it during the games is that it helps him stay centered and focused on who he wants to become and how he wants to feel and live.
Do you think it encouraged him to think about how he showed up as a teammate differently?
I sure hope so. The essence of Inner Excellence is it is a way of life. It is a way of walking in love instead of fear. Fear is the default way to live because self-centeredness leads to fear, and self-centeredness is our natural human tendency. To live self-referentially is the default and important, so we can survive. We have to breathe and eat, and look both ways when we cross the street, but it leads to comparison and fear. If you do not have a system for getting out of that default, you are going to end up in that comparison frustration cycle.
I assume the book has gone into places and communities, and countries where you did not even expect it. Where has it developed a following that you have been really surprised and amazed by?
This is recorded from July 14th to July 17th is when it gets into the Spanish language in Spain. Super excited about that. It is 25 languages we are at right now. They are all coming. It is only in Russia right now. That is the only other country besides English so far. Spanish will be in a couple of days, and then a lot of other languages soon. It is very exciting to share this selfless is fearless message around the world.
Performance Over Results: How To Be Fully Engaged And Unattached To Winning
Professional sports is a results-driven business. How do you help athletes reframe their success beyond winning or performance metrics? It would seem they have to reach this level of contentment, but this is a tough business. This is a win-now or a go-home business.
Coaching a pro athlete or an AJ Brown, or an Olympic athlete is extremely similar to coaching a 7-year-old or 10-year-old. It is really about optimizing your life. If you have a big event coming up, if this is your career, if you are a professional athlete, for example, or a professional musician, it is really important to figure out a system for getting you to perform your best. That is what Inner Excellence is a way of being fully engaged, heart, mind, and body, unattached to the results of what you are trying to do.
We live in Western culture, where it is an obsession with the end result, which is not in your control. When you are focused on the future and something that you cannot control, then that brings fear and poor performance. The only way to be your best consistently is to learn how do I develop a lifestyle that gets me fully engaged in the moment, unattached to all the ups and downs in life and all the things out of my control.
It seems a lot of it is very holistic and not something obviously it is obviously about the moment, but I am curious if he was really reading it on the sidelines. I understand reading it before the games or studying, but he was reading them in between plays. Was that helping him recenter himself for each play so he could enjoy the moment and just forget about how big it was?
I would not say forget about how big it was. I would say to help him fully experience the moment. It is like going on vacation. I wrote an article called “How to be on Vacation.” Most people go on vacation to escape their lives. That is a big mistake. You should go on vacation to maximize your life. It is like going to a party. Many people go to a party to escape their lives. They are just going to drink and forget about their life. “I do not want to talk about work.”
I get it. I would not want to do it either. The problem with going to a regular party where you are just drinking and having fun is that now you have to wake up and face your life again. If you really want to go on a great vacation, figure out how I can use this to maximize my life, not to escape from it. That is the same thing with Inner Excellence. How do we fully experience our lives and not run from those feelings?
The Fear Of Mistakes: Jim’s Biggest Lesson For Courage And Resilience
Jim, last question, I like to ask everyone. What is a personal or professional mistake that you have made that you have learned the most from?
The biggest thing that comes to my mind is not one mistake, but the fear of mistakes. When I think about the most successful people, I have been coaching professional Olympic athletes and CEOs for many years. What they have in common, the most successful people in any walk of life, is courage and resilience.
It’s like the Hall of Fame linebacker for the Bears, Brian Urlacher, told me at a Pro-Am golf tournament what the difference is between him and other guys, or the best NFL players and the rest. He said it is the ability to not get caught up in mistakes and to have as much aggression and belief after you make a mistake as before the mistake. That is what the greatest people do.
Much of my life was fear of making mistakes. That is why Inner Excellence took five years of full-time writing and research. There is a fear of not being good enough. Fear can be helpful. It can push you to work hard, but it also has problems. The willingness to fail and the willingness to make mistakes are so crucial because the path laid out for your life is likely different than the one you are picturing.
The willingness to fail and make mistakes is so crucial because the path laid out for your life is likely different than the one you are picturing.
Most of us only have a narrow picture of what we think our life should be like. Most likely, the very best path for you is not the exact path that you have in your mind. We need to be able to try multiple things and have these very uncomfortable feelings where we are at the edge of our beliefs, so we can expand what we believe is possible. Do things we have never done before.
Connect With Jim: Book, Newsletter, And Social Media
Jim, where can people learn about you and your work and get the book?
You can get the book in most places that sell books. If you go to InnerExcellence.com, you can sign up for my newsletter. We also have a Facebook group, and I am on social media @InnerExcellenceJimMurphy on Instagram.
Jim, thanks for joining the show, and congrats on your fifteen-year overnight success at this point.
Thanks so much, Robert. I really appreciate you having me.
To our audience, thanks for tuning into the show. We will include links to Jim’s site, his book, and the content on the detailed episode page at RobertGlazer.com. If you enjoyed our episode, I hope you will sign up for Friday Forward if you are not already a subscriber. It is my weekly newsletter giving you the inspiration and tools to become a better leader. Thanks again for your support. Until next time, keep elevating.
