Look for signs of ‘Inner Excellence’ during the Super Bowl

Are we still allowed to watch the Super Bowl? I imagine there might still be a few Canadians watching the big show, even though President Trump will be in attendance.

And there is a very encouraging Canadian connection which might assuage some consciences. One player on the Philadelphia Eagles – who will be facing off against the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday – has caused a dramatic boost in sales of a book by an author with strong ties to Vancouver.

Meg Mittelstedt wrote January 18 on her Substack site about Eagles wide receiver A.J. Brown, local author Jim Murphy (who for years attended Tenth Church and now lives just across the border in Washington State) and the book that is so important to both of them (and to her).

The book is dog-eared, frayed, its cover curled up from being bent backwards during reading. The camera captures this detail even from a great distance away, as it zooms in onto the book resting on NFL player A.J. Brown’s knee.

I recognized the book’s cover before I even read the video’s caption. It’s performance coach Jim Murphy’s book, Inner Excellence.

Knowing that Murphy was one of my book coaching clients, my son has sent me this clip from the January 12, 2025, NFL playoff game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Green Bay Packers that he is currently in the middle of watching.

Camera crews caught wide receiver Brown calmly reading a book between drives in Sunday’s match, looking for all the world like he was checked out of the game. But far from it, Brown was intently checked into his mental game – which is where, in Inner Excellence, Murphy says that such contests are won.

Within seconds, internet sleuths discover the book’s title and author. Reporters interview Brown about the book after the game. Eagles fans start snatching up copies of Inner Excellence and leaving positive reviews. Murphy is inundated all evening with interview requests from broadcasters and media outlets from around the world. Literary agents and publishers reach out to him as well.

By the next morning, Murphy’s book had become the number one overall bestseller on Amazon, moving up from the 565,268 sales rank position to number one. It held this place for half of this past week, and at the time of writing, it still sits at #2 Bestseller overall. Murphy says that he went from selling five to around 10,000 copies per day.

While Jim is busy fielding calls from networks and newspapers across the country, The Best Possible Life – the book I just finished working on with him in November – also crawls slowly up the charts, reaching number one bestseller in half a dozen categories. At one point, I noted that The Best Possible Life stood at 150^th bestseller overall, though it has not maintained that position.

So that’s cool. I’m happy to have had a small role in a book that has reached bestseller status. But I’m even happier because The Best Possible Life’s content is worthwhile and will help many.

While Murphy is glad for the attention Brown drew to his Inner Excellence book, he remains even-keeled about it. “I don’t want to be a distraction,” he told reporters on Monday. “I’m just a messenger. . . . I’m just so grateful that A.J. is bringing attention to the idea of what’s possible when you focus on a purpose greater than yourself and realize that selfless is fearless,” Murphy said.

I’ve been fascinated this past week by Murphy’s story, not because it looked like the quintessential overnight American success story, but because I knew how much it was not.

Jim is what I might call a 15-year overnight success. In fact, it might be better to call him a  20-year overnight success: 15 since the initial publishing of Inner Excellence, but 20 years since he first began researching it.

In 2003, Jim went down to Tucson, Arizona to work with performance coach Ricky Scruggs (who is also a current book coaching client of mine). While in Tucson, Murphy spent several years living in solitude in the desert, researching 50 to 60 hours per week on what would become the book Inner Excellence.

He interviewed more than 40 sports psychologists to answer the questions: How can a baseball player stand at the plate in Game 7 of the World Series and find peace and confidence? And, how can an Olympic athlete who has spent four years training for an event that will last less than 60 seconds be filled with peace and confidence – when so much is out of their control?

When the book was eventually published in 2010, Murphy found himself $90,000 in debt, with only a $100 cash advance on a maxed-out credit card to his name. Overwhelmed with anxiety, Murphy called up Scruggs to ask him what to do. Scruggs told him to find a person in need and help them out.

Murphy walked out the door of the Starbucks where he’d been sitting and found an unhoused man directly around the corner – playing a full-size harp.

How many unhoused people have you seen carrying around full-sized harps?

Murphy gave this man his last hundred-dollar bill and went back to where he was staying.

I know this story well, not only because Murphy is a friend and client, but because he wrote about this incident in the first chapter of The Best Possible Life, the book I worked with him on this past year. I suggest you pick up a copy and read the story there for the full effect.

Long story short, this harp-playing man later reveals that his name is Zoe.

Okay, I’m thinking. An unhoused man playing a harp, of all things, whose name means ‘fullness of life’ – a subject that just happens to be the very subject of the book Jim has just written. What are the chances?

I floated the idea to Murphy that many legends feature a king, an angel or Christ Himself dressed in the disguise of the poor, yet who comes bearing a message or lesson. He’s intrigued, but this detail doesn’t make it into The Best Possible Life.

After this meeting with Zoe, Murphy’s life begins to completely change. Through a unique series of events, he surrenders his life fully to the God who reveals Himself as the poorest of the poor.

Murphy begins to see miraculous answers to prayer. One of these was a call from PGA golfer Tiger Woods’ coach, Sean Foley. He had read Inner Excellence and wondered if Murphy would come work with another of his clients, Hunter Mahan. A few months after Mahan and Murphy began working together, Mahan won a PGA Tour event, and then went on to win the World Championship (Match Play) a few months later.

The rest, as they say, is history. However, you should read the full story in the first chapter of his new book.

Not only did Murphy put in the hard work to get his first book out to the world, but he has continued to do the same hard work over the past 15 years. The result is that at the moment his book suddenly became a viral success and bestseller – an event outside of his control – he was well-placed to take advantage of the boost.

Don’t get me wrong, Jim had a successful performance coaching business before this moment. He routinely travels around the world to work with professional athletes in the PGA, LIV Golf League and the NFL, as well as with numerous Olympic athletes.

Jim has never changed the subject over all those years and has kept developing both himself and his content. He’s now in incredible demand – and well-situated to be able to meet it. I admire Jim’s perseverance.

He’s currently in Philadelphia where he met A.J. Brown yesterday. Tomorrow he’ll be part of the pre-game show for the Eagles playoff game against the L.A. Rams. Not only that, there are plans in the works between himself, his mentor Shane Claiborne who lives in inner-city Philadelphia and the A.J. Brown Foundation to potentially develop a literacy program for inner-city children.

“So often I’ve prayed for more opportunities, but I think it’s more powerful to pray to be prepared for opportunities when they come,” Murphy said in a post on X from April 2017.

Looks like he was.

Go here for the full comment.

Meg Mittelstedt describes herself on Substack as a “life-long writer and editor, trained old-school journalist at UBC Graduate School of Journalism (MJ ’14), book coach, lover of the Book of Creation, person of the Book, warrior poet.”

She just emailed some other interesting points about Jim Murphy:

On a (somewhat) related note: Clemente Lisi of Religion Unplugged wrote this article February 3: ‘Super Bowl Quarterbacks Jalen Hurts and Patrick Mahomes Both Playing for Christ.’