Majicman Notes

“The way you speak to yourself, the way you walk, the way you carry your shoulders matters.”

I got a fabulous opportunity to interview one of Spain’s most famous bullfighters, Martín Vázquez. I wanted to know how a matador controls fear when they know that there’s this massive bull who is going to do everything possible to kill them, and to subdue this potential threat that the bull is seeing. How do you control fear? How do you keep from being paralyzed? Because when you choke, you’re very likely going to get gored and can very possibly die. And he smiles and he says, “Is it not obvious, Jim?” And I said, “No, I came all this way. It’s not that obvious.” And he said, “Have you ever seen a bullfighter in the ring show anything but supreme confidence? Have you ever seen them mope around with rounded shoulders, saying, ‘Oh, I’m having a bad day. I don’t feel like I’m on my game today,’ being negative or a little bit pessimistic and irritated at the bull because the bull is just not cooperating or whatever?” He said, “We start training as a young boy at a very early age on how to walk, how to turn, how to carry our shoulders, where to put our eyes. Every single detail is done meticulously.” And he said, “The bull can see that and knows that you have no fear, and that you dominate the bull by your presence. We control fear by our physical presence.”

Dr. Jim Loehr

One of the world’s foremost experts on mental toughness and performance psychology