593: New York Times Bestselling Author on How to Overcome Fear & Build Emotional Resilience (with Jim Murphy)

593: New York Times Bestselling Author on How to Overcome Fear & Build Emotional Resilience (with Jim Murphy)

In this episode, Jim Murphy, New York Times bestselling author, shares how leaders can build resilience, reframe fear, and operate at their highest level under pressure. His approach blends performance psychology, neuroscience, and spiritual discipline.

1. Identity Beyond Roles

Murphy emphasizes the risk of anchoring identity in professional roles or achievements:

“When I lost baseball due to injury, I felt like I lost everything. My whole identity was wrapped up in that role.”

For executives and consultants, this is a reminder: leadership requires identity that outlasts titles, deals, or short-term wins. Anchoring in deeper values creates long-term stability.

2. Fear as a Performance Constraint

Murphy defines fear as “a byproduct of self-centeredness.” The executive cost is high: constant comparison, judgment, and anxiety undermine decision-making.

He identifies three key obstacles to peak performance:

  1. Excessive, scattered thoughts

  2. Negative or judgmental self-talk

  3. Concern with others’ opinions

“When you’re at your very best … there’s no concern for self. You’re totally caught up in the moment.”

This mirrors what elite consultants and CEOs must practice: focus on the work, not the ego.

3. Rewiring Fear and Trauma

Murphy reframes fear and phobias:

“Phobias are your subconscious working perfectly to protect you.”

Through structured methods and neuroplasticity, leaders can “rewire” how they respond to past failures and pressure.

“You can have a phobia for 50 years, and it can be gone in less than an hour.”

For executives, the takeaway is clear: performance limits are rarely permanent, they can be retrained.

4. Freedom Through Surrender and Detachment

Murphy shares a practical mantra he learned from an athlete he trained:

“I expect nothing. I can handle anything.”

This principle strips away attachment to outcomes, freeing leaders to make bolder, less ego-driven decisions. As he puts it:

“The most powerful thing anyone can do is surrender their little strength for the power that grows the grass and spins the earth.”

For leaders, this translates into resilience, the ability to operate under uncertainty without fear of reputational or financial loss clouding judgment.

5. The Best Possible Life (and Career)

Murphy notes:

“The best possible life has one foot in joy and one foot in suffering. We can’t gain wisdom without going through hard things.”

For high performers, this is a critical leadership principle: growth requires discomfort. A career without setbacks yields little wisdom.

6. Practical Tools Leaders Can Use

Murphy provides several techniques executives can adopt immediately:

  • Breath control: slowing to 5–6 breaths per minute to stabilize thought patterns under pressure.

  • Structured reflection: gratitude, presence, and visualization as part of a daily routine.

  • Ego discipline: exercises that reduce the need for external validation and increase clarity in communication.

Here are some free gifts for you:

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139: The six tools of successful leaders (Monday Morning 8 a.m. #20)

139: The six tools of successful leaders (Monday Morning 8 a.m. #20)

Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.    To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

22 Mars 202134min

138: Mothering a strategy (Monday Morning 8 a.m. #19)

138: Mothering a strategy (Monday Morning 8 a.m. #19)

Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.    To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

15 Mars 202141min

137: Blair Sheppard, PwC global strategy head and author. On four urgent global crises and their strategic solutions

137: Blair Sheppard, PwC global strategy head and author. On four urgent global crises and their strategic solutions

In today's episode of the Strategy Skills podcast, we have a conversation with Blair Sheppard, Global Head of Strategy and Leadership for PWC. Blair shares his views of looming global crises driven by wealth disparity, technological disruption, the polarization of people, and declining trust in society’s institutions. Blair Sheppard is also the Dean Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, where he taught for thirty-three years. He was the principal force behind opening Duke's campus in China, and the founder and CEO of Duke Corporate Education. Blair is a regular speaker at high-caliber international forums including the Global Solutions Summit, the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, and Slush. He was born in Hamilton, Ontario (Canada) and lives in Durham, North Carolina (US). In his new book, TEN YEARS TO MIDNIGHT: Four Urgent Global Crises and Their Strategic Solutions, Blair sets out why that timeline is so crucial, what the most urgent challenges are and the key elements of a solution. The world faces four crises: A crisis of prosperity, with rising inequality, poor life choices for young people, the squeezed middle class and a mass of people on the brink of retirement but lacking the savings to sustain them;  A crisis of technology, as our economic system drives innovation but fails to manage unintended negative consequences which pollute key elements of life support, from our atmosphere to our news; A crisis of institutional legitimacy, as traditional institutions try to maintain their existing structures in the face of major global forces, and find themselves buckling and warping rather than adapting; and, A crisis of leadership, as those who should help us manage these crises instead focus on narrow priorities rather than leading the world towards holistic solutions. Get access to sample training from our advanced programs here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo We use affiliate links whenever possible (if you purchase items listed above using our affiliate links, we will get a bonus).

11 Mars 20211h 10min

136: Rethinking M&A (Monday Morning 8 a.m. #18)

136: Rethinking M&A (Monday Morning 8 a.m. #18)

Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m., a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.    To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

9 Mars 202138min

135: Apple disrupts a decades-old value chain migration (Monday Morning 8 a.m. #17)

135: Apple disrupts a decades-old value chain migration (Monday Morning 8 a.m. #17)

Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m. (#17), a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.    To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

1 Mars 202138min

134: How to stop blaming Covid and start building revenue growth, with Kent Billingsley

134: How to stop blaming Covid and start building revenue growth, with Kent Billingsley

Welcome to the Strategy Skills podcast, from FIRMSconsulting.com. Today we have a very interesting guest, Kent Billingsley, who is going to talk about sales and the revenue side of management consulting. And about using the tools and techniques that he developed in his consulting career which he now applies in almost any kind of industry. We rarely talk about sales. So we thought it will be nice to do a podcast where we dive into this topic. Get Kent's book "ENTREPRENEUR TO MILLIONAIRE: How to Build a Highly Profitable, Fast-Growth Company and Become Embarrassingly Rich Doing It": https://amzn.to/3dU6aPN

26 Feb 202158min

133: The single biggest strategy shift for the next few decades (Monday Morning 8 a.m. #16)

133: The single biggest strategy shift for the next few decades (Monday Morning 8 a.m. #16)

Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m. (#16), a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.    To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

22 Feb 202140min

132: Apple car & Amazon's core strategy (Monday Morning 8 a.m. #15)

132: Apple car & Amazon's core strategy (Monday Morning 8 a.m. #15)

Hello everyone! This is Monday Morning 8 a.m. (#15), a weekly newsletter where we distill the insights from all of the distractions, articles, and emails that you receive in your inbox every day. In this newsletter, we’re going to focus on four major themes from last week’s news.    To listen to the audio version of this newsletter, search for “Strategy Skills” in any podcast app. To get a written copy with links to mentioned articles sign up here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

15 Feb 202135min

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