Surviving the Side Hustle

E134 - Lessons from Gary Chupik: Hesitation Has a Price

• Coach Rob • Season 1 • Episode 134

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What if the gap between where you are and where you want to be isn’t talent, time, or hacks—but the courage to move without hesitation? We unpack that bold idea with insights from mental performance coach Gary Chupik—whose journey from reluctant leader to sought-after mentor began with a hard reset after burnout and a decision to build a different kind of excellence.

We walk through a simple, durable formula for confidence: prepare, then prove. Preparation builds competence; proof builds belief. When you ship work, make the decision, or take the shot, you generate earned optimism—evidence your brain can trust. You’ll hear how overconsumption masquerades as progress, why indecision is the most expensive choice you can make, and how small, frequent actions create compounding feedback that reshapes your identity faster than any pep talk.

Gary’s mental health bridge—crisis, coping, thriving, transcendence—offers a practical map for athletes, entrepreneurs, and leaders. Most of us stop at coping because the noise quiets down. We challenge that ceiling by aligning mindset, leadership, relationships, and purpose so you can perform under pressure without losing yourself. We also get candid about decisiveness: setting boundaries, making calls that won’t please everyone, and reframing nerves as the same energy as excitement so you can speak, launch, and lead with clarity.

If you’re stuck on the sidelines, take one step today: pick one area to prepare deeper and one action to prove it to yourself. Then tell us what you learned. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs a push, and leave a quick review so more people can turn hesitation into forward motion.

SPEAKER_00:

What's going on, everybody, and welcome back to a Friday recap episode. Um, and for this week's question I've got for you is what if the difference between staying stuck and reaching your next level wasn't more talent, but learning how to trust yourself enough to move without hesitation? That was the biggest takeaway I had from my conversation with Gary Chupik, a mental performance coach with nearly 30 years of leadership and coaching experience. Gary's path is fascinating. He was telling me how he spent decades as a reluctant leader, stepping into roles that he didn't chase but grew into because others saw potential in him. After burning out in 2017, he hit the reset button on life. Instead of buying that Camaro, he leaned into coaching and sports psychology, even being mentored by Russell Wilson's own mental performance coach. Now, Gary runs Elite Mindset Nation, helping athletes, entrepreneurs, and leaders bridge the gap between coping and thriving by building what he calls whole life excellence. In our conversation, I had three major takeaways. And the first thing that I want you guys to remember from our conversation was that hesitation has a cost. Powerful stuff there. In sports and in life, hesitation is expensive. So, so true. Athletes miss plays when they second guess themselves. Entrepreneurs miss opportunities when they wait too long to decide. Gary's a reminder was clear. Indecision is still a decision. And it usually costs you more than choosing and course correcting. So think about that, guys. Where in your life are you hesitating right now? And what opportunity is in that hesitation costing you? Think about that. And the second takeaway that I had with my conversation was that confidence comes from preparation and proof. Gary broke it down. He said, There are only two real ways to build confidence. You prepare and then you prove it to yourself. Preparation builds competence, and proving it through action builds belief. That's how optimism gets created. Not through empty positivity, but by giving yourself real reasons to trust your abilities. So thinking back on yourself now, what's one area where you could prepare a little bit more? And one area where you need to stop preparing and finally prove it through action. This makes me think of when I was transitioning out of strength and conditioning, and I wasn't quite sure exactly what I wanted to be doing. I knew I was in wanting to help people get better, like personal development, high performance. So what I did was I just started consuming so much content. I was listening to so like book after book after book, sometimes repeating the book like four or five times. I signed up for multiple coaching courses. I'm learning as many different ways to create a coaching program. And I was paying all this money for to go see speakers and conferences and things and just consuming all the podcasts and pretty much everything. If I wasn't, if it wasn't benefiting me or teaching me something, then I wasn't consuming it. But that's also slowed me down because I couldn't make a decision on what I actually wanted to do and what I wanted to be creating. Instead, I just kept consuming, consuming, consuming, and and through that in action, it took me so much longer to finally create prime performance coaching and really get aligned with what I want to do. So again, question for you is what's one area where you could prepare a little bit more, or one area where you need to stop preparing and finally prove it through action. And the final takeaway from my conversation with Gary was whole life excellence is the goal. Too many people settle for just coping. Gary's mental health bridge framework shows the four stages, going from crisis to coping to thriving to finally transcendence. Most people stop at coping, but what if we aimed for thriving? What if we built lives where mindset, leadership, relationships, and purpose all worked together? And thinking about this, where are you currently? Which pillar are you living in right now? Crisis? Coping? Thriving? Or are you all the way over in transcendence? And what would it take to move just one step further? Finally, what really struck me most with Gary's honest was it was Gary's honesty, especially around his own growth. He admitted he used to be so agreeable, he didn't even know who he was. To fix it, he did something crazy. He forced himself to start making decisions, even ones that really upset other people. And that experiment that he went through, it really taught him a lot. It taught him the power of decisiveness. And it reminded me of my own shift into speaking. Early on, I treated nerves as a problem until I realized that they were the same sensation as excitement. That reframe let me lean in, really trust myself, and move forward without hesitation. It's exactly what Gary's teaching. So if you're listening and you've been stuck in indecision, take this with you. Confidence isn't about never feeling doubt, it's about preparing, proving it, and moving forward anyway. Also, make sure you connect with Gary on Instagram over at Elite Mindset, or you can check out his website, ElitemindsetNation.com, to dig deeper into his playbook for the mind and his game plan for life. Because at the end of the day, success isn't just about thriving in one area, it's about pursuing whole life excellence. Until next time, guys, I'll catch you later. Peace, peace, peace.