Ben Newman’s driving narrative began at age 7, when his mom died.
“I’ve discovered a lot power in my story and my mother,” he says. “Though she had this uncommon muscle illness referred to as amyloidosis, she fought, and he or she had this wonderful journal that turned a spot the place she unleashed her optimistic psychological angle. She’d write issues in her journal akin to, ’Beat the statistics,’ ’Beat the percentages,’ ’Reside with a illness that’s power and deadly.’”
Whereas his mom wanted 24-hour nursing care the final yr of her life, she nonetheless insisted on coming to the dinner desk with an IV stand to ask Newman about his day. Newman watched his mother battle the sickness till the day she died, 11 days earlier than his eighth birthday. “I’ve at all times felt that, at the moment, she handed the pen that she was writing with in that journal on to me,” he says.
The “Burn“ is born
As an grownup, Newman realized the best power in his life comes from the ache he endured after his mother’s demise and the teachings she left him. His story—what Newman calls his “Burn”—is what evokes him to assist others discover their very own as a efficiency coach, writer and motivational speaker. “It’s [about] encouraging folks in our work, serving to folks discover that Burn—that keenness that can give them the power to battle via the issues that oftentimes maintain them again,” he says.
However Newman didn’t begin his profession as a efficiency coach. Earlier than he was paid to talk for the primary time in 2006 and coach somebody professionally in 2008, Newman was a profitable monetary adviser for 10 years. “Once I left [my job in finance], my managing associate tried to induce me with cash, and he was mainly telling me I used to be loopy,“ he says. “Like, ‘How might you permit this profession?’ However I consider in some unspecified time in the future in time, we’ve got to chase what we had been destined to do and assault what we had been destined to do, not be held again by what’s comfy.”
How Newman rose to the highest
Over the previous 20 years, Newman has written eight books (The Standard: Winning Every Day at Your Highest Level is his most up-to-date, revealed in 2023) and hosts a podcast referred to as The Burn Podcast, the place he chats with excessive performers in enterprise and sports activities. Via the Ben Newman Corporations, he and his crew of efficiency coaches have labored with athletes and groups within the NFL, NBA, PGA, MLB and different sports activities entities.
Along with teaming up with coaches and gamers from a number of Tremendous Bowl–profitable groups, Newman at present serves because the longtime efficiency coach for head coach Chris Klieman and the Huge 12 Champion Kansas State soccer crew. He was additionally a efficiency coach for 5 years for the College of Alabama’s Crimson Tide soccer crew beneath former head coach Nick Saban.
He’s additionally introduced his teachings to locker rooms and fields throughout the nation, together with these of the Miami Dolphins, Minnesota Vikings, Wake Forest College and a number of other highschool groups in his hometown of St. Louis, Missouri.
How the Burn motivates high performers
By empowering shoppers with “mental toughness” coaching instruments—suppose: find out how to establish your Burn, consider in your self, and study to beat adversities and challenges by reframing your perspective—Newman helps them obtain objectives and carry out at their finest utilizing their pure skills and talents.
“When you perceive your underlying Burn, that fireside within you, that’s really what ignites your why and function and causes you to indicate up on the times you don’t really feel prefer it,” Newman says. “So the frequent denominator I’ve discovered with Corridor of Famers, Tremendous Bowl champions, NCAA champions, a few of the high Fortune 100 corporations on the planet… is leaders and the excessive performers [who know] what that Burn is.”
The Burn might be something from a life-changing expertise, akin to dropping a caregiver or changing into a dad or mum, to the need to show your self to a bunch of naysayers.
Along with recognizing their Burn, Newman says profitable people are additionally extremely disciplined and prepared to decide to good long-term practices. “[They’re] disciplined to not give attention to the outcomes,” Newman says, “however disciplined to the habits and the work each day, realizing that the byproduct of nice self-discipline is profitable at excessive ranges.”
Who advantages from the Burn?
Whereas roughly 30% of BNC shoppers are within the sports activities world, 70% are company professionals at corporations and organizations like Microsoft, Wells Fargo Advisors, The Canada Life Assurance Firm, Boys & Women Golf equipment of America and New York Life. Whether or not you’re a embellished athlete, monetary adviser or working mother, although, anybody who needs to be extra profitable of their private or skilled lives can profit from discovering their Burn.
“Don’t be held again by what society or adversity or problem tells us,” Newman says. “You wish to write a guide? Go write a guide. You wish to go communicate? Go communicate. You wish to turn out to be the vp of an organization or personal an organization sooner or later? Go do it. Put the motion behind it that’s going to trigger you to do these issues.”
Tips on how to construct your ”Prizefighter Day”
In Your Mental Toughness Playbook, which has been bought or downloaded greater than 1 million instances, Newman shares recommendation that helps you establish and assault the on a regular basis actions that can empower you to fulfill your objectives like a prizefighter.
“Nothing in a ‘Prizefighter Day,’ if constructed accurately, is predicated on outcomes. It’s all based mostly on the alternatives we all know we have to make in an effort to drive success,” Newman says. “And after we’re not feeling profitable, it’s sometimes as a result of we’re selecting to not do the issues we all know we have to do to achieve success…. It’s manageable after we handle it sooner or later at a time.”
To have a Prizefighter Day, one the place you are feeling like your finest self, Newman recommends establishing a day by day routine that features the next three actions:
1. Private exercise
Newman’s instance: This consists of “waking up each morning and getting in your morning exercise (as a result of it releases endorphins and builds confidence).”
2. Enterprise or skilled exercise
Newman’s instance: You’ll be able to “[set] a selected purpose for the variety of telephone calls, follow-ups, reps [or] exercises that you need to make day by day, realizing that can additional your success, whatever the outcomes.”
3. Service to others exercise
Newman’s instance: “This might be lending an ear to a pal, giving compliments to a stranger [or] calling your dad and mom…. What exercise are you able to persistently do within the service of others?”
This text initially appeared within the July/August 2025 challenge of SUCCESS® magazine.
Photograph by ©Sam Limon
