Mindfulness and Coaching Mental Skills with Micha Shaw

welcome to the Nick Stanley show today we're talking about mindfulness today I'm talking to M Shaw she's a mindfulness coach for elite athletes M was a incredible athlete herself and we're going to get into the story of her competing in the Olympic trials for the United States of America but in line with the subject that we're discussing today I don't want to talk too much about M's past experiences or what we're going to talk about in the future of this episode I want to keep it right here in the present moment okay enjoy this conversation with Mika [Music] Shaw mindfulness is the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose in the present moment and non-judgmentally to the unfolding of experience Moment by moment John kavat Zen y that's my favorite quote and definition of mindfulness because I think it's so simple but there's so much in that one sentence yeah so many people think mindfulness is just being present um but it's so much more than that it's see awareness aspect the focus and then the non-judgmental part which I think is what maybe people have the hardest time with right is just accepting that's what I always remind myself myself when I'm practicing or just living my life is accepting the present moment for what it is without trying to push it away if it's not a great moment or when we're in a joyful moment and everything's great trying to hold on to it and make it last and forcing that sort of joy to continue even though it's run its course and we're on to the next moment right yeah John non-judgmental I feel like is more accessible than the don't worry about the things you can't control focus on the things you can like sometimes people get frustrated with that because we all worry about things we can't control we're always worried about outcomes and I find it's helpful to come back to that just try not to have judgment about it and then suddenly you stop worrying about the things you can't control just by focusing on being non-judgmental just being aware we're just here yeah this is happening we're just having a conversation exactly I think it helps set the foundation though like I use control the controllables all the time I feel like it's one of the most I shouldn't say overused because it is really important like we freak out about things that have no bearing in reality or are never going to happen and it's like is that helping you no okay so what can you focus on instead but when you start to practice mindfulness and you practice being non judgmental because I think it is a practice it's not something you just achieve or you're really good at it's okay that you're not good at it but you set that foundation and then when you are having these thoughts and noticing these things that are outside of your control you can notice them without taking them on as like your identity MH you can let them sort of be and have their space and be like okay I see you I'm just going to let you be and I'm going to focus on something else so I think it helps with the control the controllables it's like a good foundation to start from yeah expand on that a little bit more control the controllables well I always think in terms of working with athletes so when or just in my own experience so I did Open Water Swimming there's a lot of things in Open Water Swimming that are completely out of your control mostly not mostly but the weather is a big one the conditions that you're in so if I freak out over the conditions and let that affect my race I have no control over the weather I have no control over the conditions but I do have control over how I prepare for that race how I practice and the attitude and effort that I show up on race day so if I'm hyperfocused on the conditions and I don't like them and they're not ideal for me I'm most likely not going to show up and perform at my best because my mind's focus on something completely like out there that's not helping me right but if I can accept the fact that these conditions are not ideal for me but I'm going to give my best effort anyways so that gives me like a place to move forward yeah and then if I can take it a step further and look at those horrible conditions and say this is where I thrive like even if it's not really where I thrive but if I'm like this is like everybody's in this the same conditions we're all going to be struggling but like I have that inner drive or you know I'm going to let I'm going to be competitive I'm going to this is where I thrive and I'm going to make this potential weakness like one of my strengths do you find it helpful to reframe things in terms of defining success around the controllables um I think defining defining success is a hard one um I think of like process versus outcome when we come to defining success because I think and that is control the controllables right you can do everything in your power to be the best person athlete parent you can be or whatever um to be but you're not always in control of the outcome so I could show up on race day I could have trained you know to the best of my ability eaten all of the nutritious foods to fuel my body slept 10 hours a day like done everything I could to be the best I can be but I can still show up and give my best effort and not win but if my whole focus is on in order for me to have value I have to win I'm going to be really disappointed but if I'm really focus on the process and the fact that and being able to acknowledge like I've done my absolute best I showed up I gave 100% of the effort that I had today and I'm proud of myself because I did the best I could and it just wasn't unfortunately good enough for first place I think a lot of athletes are competitive people in general it's that outcome like I have to be first but you can't control you can't control that right and that's what I mean by defining success uccess so if we define success as the process and the preparation did you actually do everything you could to be the best you could be on that particular day if we Define that as success yes eventually if you keep doing that results will take care of themselves but they're not always under your control so it's dangerous to define success by the results yes agree 100% all right let's get into your background a little bit so you you coach athletes now in their mindfulness practice let's start with how your athletic experience and then build up to how you became a coach and and decided to do this and why mindfulness is important to you especially with athletes okay yeah so I grew up all over the place I grew up in South Africa Washington Alaska in England and swimming I actually diving was my first sport that I loved um but then we moved to Alas Alaska and I was in junior high and they didn't have diving so I stuck with swimming and um the only reason I say that is that I grew up in like a really small competitive bubble Alaska is not like the swimming Mecca right of the United States um so when I I was good in Alaska I was competitive but I didn't really have a lot of experience with like people outside of the state especially I never went to Nationals I wasn't like a nationally ranked athlete um then I transferred to Golden West College and swam and played water polo there and then I transferred to Cal okay and that was kind of where my uh Cal Berkeley just to be yeah and Golden West which is in California and then to Cal Berkeley yeah um so when I transferred to Berkeley I was so intimidated cuz it was the first time that I really was like outside of bubble I was some of my teammates were Olympians world record holders we were competing against other national champions Olympians um and I just felt like totally out of my element um for the first time I've always been like a very nervous person a very nervous athlete but when I went to Cal it just felt like I didn't know how to control it it just seemed like this really big problem and that's sort of when my mental skills Journey began not from a place of like understanding what I could do but just from this awareness of I'm getting in my own way and I don't know what to do to get out of out of my way but I always felt like I could be better but I didn't really see that I mean I improved when I was in college but when I graduated I had no real reason to swim professionally I wasn't nationally ranked I needed to make money um so I was done with swimming like most people and but I felt like I wish I could have got kept going I felt like I still had a lot of room for improvement so I didn't feel most people most of my teammates were really excited to be to retire and move on they were like yes I can't wait to you know not wake up at 5:00 in the morning and swim 5 hours a day and just like live my life uh but I didn't feel that way I still felt like there was still something there for me to explore um but I moved down here back down to Southern California to be with Logan and um I your husband great guy give a little shout out to Logan um I moved back down here and had no clue what I wanted to do professionally I was lifeguarding I did all the Lifeguard competitions when I was in college I did ocean water Open Water swimming races and I loved it um just for fun and I started going to nursing school because my father-in-law actually and Logan's dad was like you should be a nurse and I had no clue what to do and I was like okay I'll be a nurse okay I didn't really think it through uh which I laugh about now cuz I would be a horrible nurse because you're not a nurse no I'm not a nurse and the moment so I I was swimming Masters and one of the guys that I was swimming with was like hey did you know that Open Water Swimming is now an Olympic event for ' 08 it was the first time it was in the Olympics and and what is masters um it's just like anybody that wants to swim outside of college oh okay so master sing they have Masters tennis water polo like any sports I guess it's just people that aren't competitive in college or Elite athletes just anybody that wants to be in a sport and so it's still a high level but not no not necessarily Ian you could just show up and swim like once a week you're part of like a team okay and you get to have a coach tell you what to do which I always like it's not you're just not showing up by yourself and doing it alone so you have a little bit of a community and if you want to be competitive with it you can um so I was doing Masters and this guyy is like oh open Waters an Olympic event and I think I told my dad um and he was like you should do it I'll support you and I did I stopped taking classes for nursing school dropped that as fast as I could yeah um but I guess what was unique about my journey up until that point is that but I didn't really have the resume to quit everything and become a professional athlete I in college I swam the 2500 I don't know how familiar you are with swimming I was mid distance yeah yeah I I know that's somewhere in the middle I I'm not definitely not an expert on swim races okay uh I also swim the H like my my senior year at Cal I s200 so I was more of a sprinter right to m swimmer then I was a pure distance swimmer so I went from doing mid distance in a pool to training full time to make the Olympics in an event I'd never done before which is a 10K which is 6 miles and takes about two hours um and so it's almost like switching from sprinting to a marathon yeah yeah okay that's a fair assessment okay so but I loved being the had this idea that I was going to be like a mermaid like I was going to train at in Huntington every day like body surfing swimming around the pier just doing long swims and was me really great uh and I ended up joining uh the Mission Vio nador which is in Mission Vio and they're a very well-known swim team um and their coach there was well known for training distant swimmers and he had sort of a a group of Open Water swimmers there too okay um so I started training there and I knew that I had to work on the mental side more just as much as the physical so but back then there wasn't that much information especially within like college no one ever talked about like the mental side or I mean most my coaches were really verging on the side of abusive and not very nice so any type of yeah there just wasn't any mental health support or talk about that or like it was just work harder that was what learned just work harder and all your problems will go away um which didn't work uh so when I started swimming professionally I bought all the book I went to Barnes & Noble I remember this vividly I bought like every book on sports psychology and started reading all the books and I one of the books that I really liked was called the mental Edge by Ken bomb and I read the book I really liked it in the back it was like for more resources call this number and I called the number and he answered whoa and he was like oh why do want more resources and I was like well I'm training for the Olympics in an event I've never done before right and um he was like oh where are you and I was like well I'm in mimo he's like I'm in St clini yeah so I ended up going down there and meeting him and I worked with him for two years he trained me for free yeah wow and it changed my life in a very positive way um so I worked I was able to dedicate just as much time to the mental is the physical and I made a lot of improvements and I I don't know I'm already kind of long long-winded on this story but I ended up winning the US the qualifications to make the Olympics is kind of confusing I won the first stage which was the US trials so I got first um which gave me the opportunity to go to the World Championships okay where at the World Championships if I was in the top 10 I would automatically qualify for the Olympics okay but only 25 people in the world qualified for the Olympics so there was sort of a a selection process after that to fill in the rest of the athletes okay whereas in pulsing two people per event make it from the US um so it was a little different CU you're not guaranteed a spot based on your country unless you're the host country so in 08 it was it was Beijing so China would get one spot okay um automatically so I made it to the World Championships and I did not make it but you won for the US yes I so you were the top female swimmer for the US yes and then in the world championships basically the US did not get a slot then so no so we it was the most in the best learning experience at the wrong time it just broke my heart I I don't remember what place I got I think there was something like 75 athletes which was a lot for Open Water swimming and Open Water Swimming is kind of like cycling where you swim in a pelaton or you swim in a pack but like cycling in a pelaton um but you're in the water so it can be very aggressive and people are swimming over you pulling on your legs you can get into like if you're not in a good position in the pack it can make or break your race mhm and I'm not the most um physically intimidating person my skill set was not uh beating people up in the water right I worked really hard on like controlling my emotional response so if someone did hit me instead of trying to retaliate I would like just try to like not have any reaction to it right um and I was able to build that skill up quite well um but that was a very trying day it just was like a constant battle the whole time I think I I don't even remember any place I think I was like 30 in the 30s and the other American I think was in the like 20s so we didn't do particularly well a lot of people didn't do particularly well it was just an insane insane day and it all came down to that one day yeah okay well for me it did okay so um because it was a new sport a new event at the Olympics and it wasn't the selection process was kind of confusing and it got a little political um so the two of us were the top two and we didn't make it so we should have gone on to the next one which was a race in Beijing where I think one person could qualify so it would have been sort of a race between the two of us but ultimately USA swimming sent someone else instead of me um where was this person at the trials and the they got third and I mean they're amazing swimmer so still third yeah not first or second that seems a strange choice I mean and they just got to pick one it wasn't it wasn't a merit based system it was a subjective choice they just said hey we think this is the person we want to put in there and that was that I don't really know I honestly it was the most heartbreaking experience for me yeah um and it took I mean I feel like even now when I talk about it it's like I don't want it like it um she had the better resume than I did um but and apparent and the the hard thing is that my coach was coach for both of us so he was in kind of a hard situation and I didn't really want to know what his perspective on it was cuz I didn't want to know that maybe he said she should go instead of me um and I heard things that were going on behind the scenes that were really hurtful and that was hard to process uh and then years later someone came they were like oh um they changed the rules they're not allowed to do that anymore so it was like kind of like the precedent of I got to be the presedent which doesn't feel good either yeah um in that regard but that was the reality of the situation that I had to work on accepting right which took a while that's a tough one yeah you did win the the USA trial though yes and that nobody can take that away I mean that's a pretty big one yeah like that's a really big deal especially that whole journey in a event that wasn't your event through college it was this dramatic change and then wow the uh very if it was a movie they wouldn't end it that way no no or there would be like some good comeback story you know yeah um and I tried to come back and I just I end I started assuming I I the race was in Spain I came home Logan proposed like the day I came home okay so um it was the most emotional roller coaster I think I've ever been on I literally would be falling my eyes out and then like laughing his like oh my God I'm engaged falling my eyes out and I I remember I went to practice I think the next day and my and I was like I'm getting married and my coach just sat there and he was like uhhuh and he just like waited and didn't say anything and then I was just ball I was like my life's over so this is right after you found out you were not going to yeah Advance yeah and Logan thought well it's a perfect time to pop the question yeah okay okay and what happens after that well um I guess I should say when at the world champion I so I swam two 25ks in my life I know when you interviewed Hank and he talked about swimming to Catalina I was listening to the episode and I was like oh my gosh I almost feel like I need to swim to Catalina to maybe with Hank to feel the joy of doing a s like that because I did 225 K and felt like utter sadness and the first 25k I did was at the national championships and I think my coach wanted me to do it because he wanted he didn't think I would win the trials and he wanted to like prolong my career a little bit okay so he was like at Nationals you should swim the 25k if you get top two you got to go to the world championships and I was like I don't want to swim the 25k there's a big difference between a 10K and a 25k okay 10K is 2 hours a 25k is 6 hours and you should train for a 25k I was not I was training for a 10K there's a big difference um but I swam the first 25k and I got second so I qualified to swim the 25k at the World Championships too and I didn't like that race uh Logan was on the boat it was around an island in Florida and he literally just swim around the entire Island and I think it took me like 6 and 1/2 hours yeah um and it's a weird thing it's like sensory deprivation you just start slow and you just get slower that was my experience at least is that there wasn't a lot of like Pace like oh I'm going to pick up my Pace now it's just like your body just starts to shut down and after 6 hours it's just like the only thing I could hear was water in my ears and Logan was on the boat and he had like a little whiteboard and he would send messages to me but I felt like I was trapped in my head I could see him but I couldn't really talk and when I did stop and try to like feed or take liquid I felt like I couldn't say anything like I was just trapped in my head yeah uh so that was my first experience and then the second one was at the world championships and it was the 10K was the first event and then it was the 5K and then the 25k and as soon as the 10K was done I heard people talking like not as soon but like that day the next day about maybe I wasn't going to be the person that that was going to get to go to Beijing for the next qualifier and I knew that how I did on the 25k mattered because you did well because I did no like the next 25k which was a couple days after the 10K okay so I knew that I was going to be judged how I swam on this 25k and it felt so frustrating and hopeless because from the day that I did the first 25k I was like I'm not acknowledging that I'm swimming 25k like I'm not thinking about it I'm only focused on the 10K I want to make the Olympics the 25 it doesn't matter I never trained for the 25k so then to have to swiit again and for it to matter Beyond just like trying to you know being able to represent your country at the World Championships which is an amazing experience and wanting to do the best you can because you're a competitive athlete but knowing that if I did well I might get picked to move on but if I don't do well they're not going to pick me and it's like an event that's like completely out of my whe house and very different from the 10K very different the 10K you can have like a little bit of speed and you can race and at the end it's like a Sprint and so you can conserve your energy I think a 2hour race like from an endurance standpoint I love that like you can settle into kind of a faster Pace whereas for the 25k it's just like hold on mhm and everybody goes really slow and then the people that train for it are able to like switch their speed up and like make a run for it but it's hard to go really slow it sounds like it would be easy it's hard go really slow for a long time and then to switch to to going fast at least it was for me no that makes sense and yeah I I think you should do a calina swim with Han and we should take some cameras out there and document the whole experience know I mean he's very optimistic and like it would probably be good now I feel like if I were to do it after all the work that I've done I would choose to do it from a place of joy and want to and I think it would be a different experience I didn't have that mindset then I just felt like I felt very hopeless so when I swam it at the World Championships I did I don't think I did poorly I just didn't do great MH um but it was I got hypothermic like halfway through so I was shivering for 3 hours um all by myself I could see my coach it was the same thing it was like once I was just like trapped in my head and I was like you're in a prison Celler you just can't get out and there's like no like you can't say to someone across from you like I'm struggling right now I like really need help you're just stuck there it's a really it's a really weird experience 6 hours face down in the Black Velvet yeah as Hank says yeah yeah and it's just you yeah yeah and almost like your B like not your body though because you're my body your body is like so it's just past this point of exhaustion when your body is just like really slow and like you're swimming through syrup or something so it's really weird I got out of the race and one of the coaches are like are you okay and I I couldn't talk like I don't think I could talk for like an hour she came I just remember she walked me to the hotel and I had to like get I was super cold and I just sat in the bathtub and she just sat in the bathroom with me and I just just s like I couldn't I was like I should say something to her I couldn't I couldn't like open my mouth just say like hi or I'm not happy right now I just was like all inside my head well there's a immense amount of pressure throughout that whole experience which has something to do with it I mean it's not like you're doing a Catalina to Long Beach Swim for the joy of it as you said I mean you're at the world championships in the in a hyper competitive environment against the top athletes in the world in this Sport and you're playing for a spot at the Olympics I mean that's just going to be a very different experience and you throw into the mix all the stuff you're dealing with in terms of having to do this long race that for some strange reason that I don't completely understand impacts your chance to go in this other race that's not even half as long yeah that's a lot to deal with all at once that would deal with some that that would cause some mindfulness challenges yes I did not have mindfulness back then so I definitely didn't have the I think I I did a lot of work on our traditional sports psychology practices which were very helpful and I think I wouldn't have been able to improve and to get to the point that I did without them right um but coming back to mind like I discovered mindfulness after my swimming career after I finally went to therapy for the first time after I had kids um and started to actually like talk about my experience cuz I just held everything inside like I didn't I think the first time I was on a podcast and talked about it Logan was like I didn't realize you were so that you felt that way because I just pretend that that was my coping mechanism growing up is just hold it in and pretend everything's fine so that's what I did after after I stopped swimming I was just like everything's fine but it wasn't inside well it's it sounds like it's modeling some of the behavior that you were taught by your coaches throughout swimming which was well it's fine just work harder yes absolutely all that mumbo jumbo of what's going on upstairs that doesn't matter it's about just get in there and get it get more reps yeah and I think anybody that's been in an athletic environment when it gets serious has dealt with coaches like that and I love the work that you're doing now because what's interesting to me about mindfulness for athletes in particular is that it's not just that it's good for your mental health and to help you be a better person it also improves performance M and it is this win-win although I think it's difficult for a lot of Old School coaches and trainers to wrap their head around it and so they kind of ignore it absolutely yeah I always think that's interesting with like talking with coaches cuz some of them like really buy into the mental side some of them buy into it but they don't really want to like train it they're like oh it's so important but we're not going to do anything about it which is confusing and then you know more Old School coaches of just like shut up put your head down work hard um talking about your emotions is weakness being nice to yourself is weakness right um so and I think things are changing obviously there's like more of a spotlight on mental health and just all the different aspects of mindset when it comes to competing so I think we're going in the right direction so if you were the mindfulness coach for Mika Shaw yeah at that time yeah what would you how would you coach yourself oh that's a good question I've never actually thought of it that way um so when you practice mindfulness or meditation a lot of times people think they can't meditate because their mind's too active and they are supposed to turn off their thoughts but that's not not the case so every time we meditate we go through this cycle we focus on something in the present moment so you might hear it like a present moment anchor objective meditation a lot of times you use your breath which is my favorite way because you always have your breath and your breath is also a power powerful tool for athletes and just anybody in general um so you focus on your breath and you try to watch your breath without controlling it or judging it but your mind is going to wander and it's that magic little moment where you notice like oh my mind is wandered I'm thinking about lunch or I'm thinking about my next training session or whatever or that mistake I made four months ago um and you notice it and then you choose to let it be and then come back to your breath so you go through this cycle you focus you get distracted you notice you're distracted you refocus and you do that over and over again and then when you practice it consistently you start to see that cycle show up in your life that you're doing something you get distracted and you can let that be and let it go and come back to the present moment I hate saying let it go cuz it feels that's always like marketed as being like this easy process and it's not uh at least not for me um so I like to say let it be like it can just be there you can acknowledge it without trying to like push it away or whatnot so I think if I were to look back on my experience if I were able to see that cycle play out more um I think I would have been able to give myself a lot more credit for the accomplish this accomplishments that I made um I think I would have been able to articulate how I felt and said something sooner um I think I would have been able to stand up for myself so I think a lot of things would be different yeah yeah I think that's why when I started meditating I originally started because I had two really young kids and I felt desperate for a moment to myself and I'm an introvert so I like need some quiet time to recharge um and I started meditating and I when I started practicing consistently I was like wow just little moment really changes how I feel throughout the day I just feel like a little bit more patient and capable to like handle motherhood and then I started thinking what would it have been like if I would have known this when I was swimming what would the difference have been like and the big difference that I think of a lot is just how horrible I was to myself but I didn't have any awareness around it so I didn't realize how destructive my thoughts were how mean I was I said I thought like well I set this really high standard for myself and that's what's helping me be a better athlete but I think had I been able to compete with this more like openness of not being so rigid and hard on myself all the time I would have performed a lot better um and that that's something that I'm like really curious about exploring now and I just also like for other athletes like I think so much of the time where're we're told like that we have to we kind of have to be mean to ourselves to perform well and I don't think that's the case anymore yeah it's interesting you mentioned you would give yourself more credit for your accomplishments because I noticed that even when you were telling your story you're like well I swam a cow but there were most people were better than me or had stronger resumés just being able to make the team and stay on the team for four years of college at a huge college like Berkeley is a really big deal yeah and then it takes a long time in your story to get to oh yeah I I I won the Olympic trials and then you zipped on to the next thing and I was like whoa could we pause on that for a second that's a really big deal yeah and then you're competing I mean you qualified for the World Championships that's a those are Monumental accomplishments and it's great to be humble of course and it's charming and and everybody likes that but I noticed I I thought we could take a beat here to just appreciate what a big deal that is yeah how does that tie back to like your reluctance to really acknowledge those huge accomplishments how does that tie back to those negative thoughts that you had back then and kind of your journey up until now yeah well I'll start by saying I'm a work in progress so I've improved a lot but I'm still working on it aren we all yeah um I think I always I know I'm not alone in this I always had like these really high goals but then if I achieved it I felt like well I've achieved it it's not so impressive anymore on to the next and so if I did well I was like whatever moving on goal set higher let's keep achieving um did not give myself credit for it but what I did like to do but I wasn't super aware of was hold on to all of my mistakes and failures and continuously be myself up for them so the success was short-lived I enjoyed it I mean I remember vividly winning the US trials it was like an amazing day of my life um Logan unfortunately wasn't there but his dad was there and he squeezed me so hard when I got out of the water and I just remember like just being like shocked that that I had done it um and very happy uh but then it was like on to the next so it was shortlived that part of it is there an element there of well if I can do it then it must not be that big of an achievement absolutely yeah and I still struggle with that I'm working on it but it's still really hard yeah when I went through graduate school and everyone's like that's such a big accomplishment I'm like is it um cuz I'm doing it and it's not like I'm intentionally saying well you're doing it so it's not a big deal um I just think that's like an it's an ingrained habit Within Myself and it's not something that I've I when I did graduate from grad school I threw myself a party and I was like I'm really proud of myself so I there's definitely improvements along the way um but I think in general I'm still not very good at giving myself credit I think it's for accomplishments common for a lot of high performers absolutely and it's great that you're doing the work to sort this stuff out out I am thinking of one of my other good friends who just finished a 50k race and I called him afterwards and he was like yeah what's up and I was like well maybe we should take a second to celebrate this because you're in your 50s and you just knocked out a 50k and did really well at it like let's just uh acknowledge that and celebrate that for a second and he was like yeah that's something other people do yeah and I yeah just to say that I think that's a that's a common struggle for a lot of super high performers because you are always because you're always looking at the next thing you're highly motivated to push on to bigger and better you're not going to rest on your Laurel so it's it's like this double-edged sword yeah and probably the healthiest place is to find a little balance with acknowledging badass accomplishments like the one we've gone over here swimming wise or finishing graduate school and and always still looking towards the future and what's going to come next you don't want to just sit back on the couch be like man I was really good 20 years ago at that one thing and never move on to something new so it's it's a balance right I don't know if balance exists I don't know I think it's a struggle now that I've worked with like more athletes and and then more research and just like practice in life a lot of the things I experienced are so common and I think with high Achievers some of the aspects that make us High Achievers are also kind of problematic um and that's where I kind of Wonder like because I do stress sometimes I'm like okay I could be more kind to myself you know I think that's really important and I work with that with athletes um but you also have to do the work like you also have to work really hard and some of the things that make us successful might not always be the best coping skill so what do you do with that you know like and I think there that's it's like a very fine line of um acceptance curiosity kindness and that we're human we're not always going to get everything right um some things are not helpful and I think like me being really mean to myself and never giving myself credit like I think I could be a high performer and not do that right right so maybe I can learn to sort of like let that go um but there's probably other aspects of my personality and like how I work that are still somewhat problematic and am I going to be able to sort of like weed out all of those things I don't know like not anytime soon probably well and maybe you don't want to weed those things out I mean I've come to a new understanding of anxiety as it's it's really a matter of degree with anxiety if it is a good force or a negative Force yeah because a little bit of anxiety means you are concerned simply concerned about something in the future and it can motivate you to take steps towards something that you want to accomplish in the future which is a net positive for most people but if the anxiety meter starts to get to too high of a degree it becomes paralyzing it become then there are all these negative aspects to it and so may you're I think you're right balance is probably not the right word but finding finding where to adjust the dials yeah I like that because I I think for a lot of things it is like a r you're on like a Razor's Edge MH it's not this clear path that's easy to Define right it's really easy to tip over either way mhm and that sort of Journey of understanding I I I go through that a lot with like athletes that are injured or burnt out it's like you have to learn when it's okay to rest and to take that rest but then sometimes you're going to be tired and you're going to have to push through but you have to know what's the difference like is this are you tired and you need to push through this is like a learning moment a growth moment or are you going to are you pushing throughout a stubborness and you're going to injure yourself right and they're very fine differences Razor's Edge is a good description yeah yeah I've been I was toying with this idea this morning that when people talk about mindfulness we're often trying to find the optimal setting for ourselves I mean I think uh I found this when lau and this is like a famous quote about mindfulness if you are depressed you're living in the past if you anxious you were living in the future if you are at peace you were living in the present and so we hear something like that and go oh that's a that's a piece of knowledge I need to live in the present that's the right setting yeah and that thinking of mindfulness as being static is probably not helpful because none of us can be fully in the present moment all the time nor would we want to be it's difficult to F that way all the time and I was thinking that maybe mindfulness is more like having three sliders that you would adjust up and down one for the past and how much we're going to think about it and then one for the present and how dialed into the present moment we're going to be and one for the future because all three of those things need to happen to some degree throughout our lives we can't ignore the past completely because we have to learn from those mistakes and we can't ignore the future because we want to goals that we're moving towards and I thought that might be an interesting way to think about mindfulness where it's it's it's it never ends you never have like figured out the optimal setting you're just adjusting these things all the time and if you're an athlete there sometimes we got to really turn up the past to examine those past performances what can I learn from it and then when you're in competition you want to shut down the past and the future and we're going to jack up the present and if we if it all really goes well we're going to enter into a flow state where we lose completely lose any sort of conscious awareness of ourselves because we're so involved in what we're doing in the moment how's that for an idea uh yeah I agree I think when you um when you start to practice mindfulness and your awareness is sort of growing and improving you start to see the patterns that your mind makes and then you can be more intentional about it I live in like I can live in a completely imaginary world my mind is like ready to go on an adventure at any moment hopefully it's a good one but you know sometimes it's not so great so it's knowing when that is helpful and when it's not and also when we're creative sometimes we don't need to be super in the present right like it's to let your mind wander and you can come up with that's when I come up with like really good ideas and I sort through how I'm feeling and um I can feel really inspired but I think it's understanding that there's a little bit of a choice there that maybe now I have a playlist on Spotify that I named imagination playlist and when I want to let my mind wander I like put this playlist on and I'm just like go for it like this I'm going to be I'm either going to be in the future I'm going to be in the past I'm going to be in a completely madeup World whatever it is like I'm not present I'm not mindful right now but I'm choosing this like time for myself um and then other times if I'm meditating that's not super helpful for for that moment so I am choosing to try as best I can to bring my attention to the present moment when I'm having a conversation working you know whatever it is I think it's making that choice um which comes back to the John kabon quote that you said earlier is that choosing to bring your awareness to the present moment you don't always have to choose that maybe sometimes it is thinking about the future going over the past learning from it growing like we can't live 100% of the time in the present moment it's definitely not going to happen for me in this life let's talk about meditation a little bit more so how do you coach athletes with meditation and then what role does it play for them on a competitive level so I usually start with breath work I think having some type of breath work practice and a meditation practice sets a really strong foundation so um some of the most unhelpful advice that kids get athletes get just people people in general is calm down just relax Let It Go um and then when you think about it it's like well how do I calm down how do I relax how do I let it go um and I think breath work and mindfulness or meditation can help with those three things so I usually start with the breath because I think if you can start to bring awareness to your breath it will make meditation a little bit easier to understand because it's challenging to sort of conceptually get like what am I actually doing right now where when you're changing your breath and controlling your breath you can be like Oh I'm I understand what I'm doing right I'm breathing deeper I'm breathing into my belly I'm holding my breath for like a tiny little moment whatever it is you can especially for athletes because they want to do what you're telling them they want to do it and they want to do it right and they want to be good at it right um which is the like opposite of meditation you're never going to be there but with breath work you can say like yes I did inhale for 4 seconds hold for 4 seconds exhale for 4 seconds hold you know like I did complete that cycle um so it gives you a little bit more confidence I think to move on um and then just your breath can be such a powerful tool in the moment to use so I start with that I start with one minute a day because no one has ever said they don't have time time for 1 minute and what what happens in that minute just breathe deeply okay just if you like to have your hand on your belly so you can just put your hand on your belly and then direct your breath into your belly so when you inhale you feel your hand move away from your spine when you exhale your hand moves back and that's it you don't have to do anything fancy it's nice just breathe into your belly yeah um so you start to bring awareness that like oh I'm I like usually breathe high up in my chest but it feels nice I feel more relaxed when I breathe deep into my belly and then when you practice it consistently when you're feeling maybe a little bit anxious or nervous and you say oh I feel I'm feeling a little anxious I feel my breath high up in my chest I'm going to bring my breath deep into my belly and then your body is like oh I know what happens now and you start to feel like oh I feel a little bit more calm I feel a little bit more grounded because you practice consistently and your body knows because it's done the work your mind knows as well because you've practiced so let's say we've got an athlete or a team of athletes that are in a hyper competitive moment it is an anxiety inducing moment oh we've never made it to the semifinal or the final of whatever that big tournament or event or competition is what's the practice leading up to that and then what is the practice the day of the hour before the minute before or during the competition when we feel this anxiety rising up especially for those of us who know that either the kids were coaching or if you're an athlete yourself you know that that anxiety is not helpful to your performance yeah uh well I would say the foundation would be that you started with doing a little bit of breath work you bumped up the amount of time to maybe 3 minutes and then once you get to 3 minutes you add a little bit of a meditation on there too so you change your breath for the first couple moments minutes and then you watch your breath for the first for the rest of the practice and then you slowly over time build that up to a comfortable habit for you mhm but not I always want it to feel sustainable so it's almost like this is so easy there's no reason why I can't do this so that's why I start with a minute cuz even if you start with five then all of a sudden people are like oh I ran out of time I forgot and it's like really but a minute so far no excuses that pretty easy to start um so that would be the the foundation and then along the way we would be talking about like how do you bring this into training how do you bring it into into competition and I think individually it matters cuz people are different and unique right so a team I think it's a little bit more challenging it's not going to be a this is going to work for everybody right um I think feelings of like anxiousness is at nerves and then for nerves which is like my favorite topic because I was such a nervous athlete it's can you shift your perspective to I'm really excited right now cuz it's basically the same feeling in our body right like I feel butterflies in my stomach my throat gets really tight my hands get tingly but am I going to perceive this is like a really bad thing or that it's going to get in way of my performance or am I going to perceive this is oh my God I'm so excited right now my body is like ready to go out of a threat mindset into an opportunity mindset your body communicates in a way that maybe isn't always this how I always try to to remind to think of it and it's been helpful for me and I try to explain this to athletes too that it's ready and it's excited and it's good to go but it doesn't feel good it's not like communicating in a way that maybe your mind would be like thank you for that and now I see we're really we're really ready so if you can kind of acknowledge those feelings in your body and say like oh this is this is it like I'm this is what I worked for I'm excited like my body knows exactly what to do I'm going to trust my body right right now and and let it do it let it do its thing um and then if you know that you're like a little overactivated and you're a little bit past that point of like nervous excitement and you're to the point of like tunnel vision uh I'm going to throw up I can't like I'm going to hyperventilate then um that's where you can use your breath to like intentionally slow your breathing down to elicit a little bit more of your repair sympathetic nervous system um to sort of bring you down a little bit um but you don't want to go like fully relaxed mode right right cuz you still want to have that like energy and to be ready to go you're trying to find the goldilock Zone yeah not too high not too low just in the focused performance Zone yeah which applies to many things besides Athletics it could apply to an adult giving a big presentation at work or being in the school play or a big test for any kid that goes to school yeah I use it in the the context of sports but it's like you take you could take this and use it in any any domain that you're in it's the same concept it's just how you articulate it like the words you use I'm not very good with like business vocabulary but it is the same it's the same thing it's like how do you perform Under Pressure you know how do you prepare how do you perceive your mistakes how do you learn from your mistakes well even the SAT I mean this was 10 years ago but at test prep gurus we discovered that physiologically the threat mindset is the same as the opportunity mindset so being anxious and nervous about something physiologically looks the exact same as being excited about it and when you change that anxiety into excitement Which is far easier than going from excite from anxiety to calm yes it's all in fact when anxiety gets too high it's nearly impossible to move to the the calm area of the chart if it's mapped out anxiety is right next to excitement um because it's all those same physiological markers with the you mentioned them sweaty palms and butterflies in the stomach and a lot of athletes professional athletes I should say know that that's a hack that you've got they find different reframing tricks to move from nervous to excited yeah um what are what are some reframing tricks you found to help make that jump I don't think there's any tricks or hacks I think it's it's really Just sh changing your perspective and I think it takes a little bit of time you can hear something it's with like mindfulness mental skills in general you can hear something a hundred times and be like yeah yeah I know I know I know and then that 101 time you're like I get it now right um and I think that was it for me I mean I was so nervous all the time I perceived it as a really bad thing so I would tell my I would like start to feel nervous and I'm like I don't like this I I wanted to run away and hide that was like I wanted to run I wanted to hide and I just was like this is really bad this I should not be feeling this way I should be feeling calm and confident and it actually was years later after I was finished swimming I was taking um I retired from swimming and I got into sports modeling because of swimming to try to make money for traveling and so I kind of kept that going and then from Sports modeling I got into commercial acting and when I first did that I told my agent I won't do anything where I have to talk because I got so nervous and I already have a high voice and I'd go into these auditions and then I just like could I was a deer in headlights they would be like say your name and I'd be like M just and then I would like freak out and I be like I'm never doing that again and then finally I was like if I'm going to do this why don't I just like put a little effort into it so I took some commercial acting classes and I took this class in LA and the guy was terrifying he just would like yell at you all the time and I think he was trying to elicit that like mean casting director Vibe or he was really that way I don't know but yeah um I was terrified of him the entire time and it was like when it was your turn you know he just like was so mean to you and I knew it was like I was like don't take this seriously cuz it's fine um it's not personal but he was like yelling at us and he was like all of you want to be here because this is your dream to be an actor and I was like oh shoot this is not my dream to be an actor but he was like next time you next time you go audition and you're feeling nervous just say I'm [ __ ] excited right now sorry can I say that oh yeah okay yeah um and we even got a California state assemblyman to say [ __ ] on the air which was really excited he was like we can curse okay yeah so far away okay cool I'll try to make that my only one but um it was like a someone like threw a bucket of ice cold water on me for some reason that was a moment for me that acting coach in La outside of my swimming career that was like it is the same thing like I feel the same and in fact every time I've raced well I felt really nervous like it's part of the process and once I kind of made that shift I was able to look at it I still get really nervous and I still don't like it do it still doesn't feel good but rather than going through this worm like Spiral of this is bad I shouldn't feel this way I'm like okay here I am I'm nervous and my hands are sweaty butterflies in my stomach and it's harder to talk or something but I'm not scared about it anymore and I'm like this means I care I'm never nervous if I don't care about something I'm also not nervous if I haven't put in the work and tried right so it's an indicator of being ready yep um so I think I don't think there's a hack to it I think for people you have to like work through it yeah you're going through a practice in order to improve these mental skills yes which will help you to develop a little some awareness that has a little distance from what's Happening yes and then you can just look at it and it's not that you suddenly feel better and everything's fine and oh man I just I'm in my optimal State and I'm going to go kick ass out in the competition you can just step back and say oh these are some of the things that happen and they might feel a little bit uncomfortable and not good but this is part of the process of getting ready and I am ready and it allows you to focus on that Optimal Performance rather than optimal feelings yeah uh because they are they are different right a little bit of being uncomfortable and some negative feelings might be part of your process towards Optimal Performance and as long as it's not too extreme yeah there's nothing wrong with that yeah if it's helpful I think that's always like is it helpful or is it not helpful if you can look at your past performances and when I said like you have to work through it not in a way of like just accept that you're nervous and it's going to get in your way and be like you can practice certain things to feel more confident in your ability to experience those nervous feelings and have it not be something that's going to get in your way so whether that's and how can you build awareness around that you can Journal about your experience maybe you'll see the same pattern that I did that well actually like when I perform really well I I feel nervous how can I shift my perspective on this like write that down what comes up for you yeah like maybe you know better than anyone else what you need so it's like tapping into your intuition on that well I know from personal experience I have to do a lot of public speaking and I remember this was a few years ago but there came a point where and I no longer felt nervous about it it was like I've done a version of this talk more than a hundred times I've got it down cold I'm ready to go and afterwards I remember and which I thought was such a great moment of progress for myself the first time that ever happened and I remember afterwards going like I was a little flat I kind of sucked and it took a couple more of not being nervous and just going it's not like it was bad but it wasn't my best and I suddenly realized I need to be a little nervous to be at my best to deliver the best I'm able yeah to deliver and so again I think it's fine in that goldilock zone but I know I know for me being a little bit nervous is a good thing yeah and if it's something that means something to you and you're working towards a goal you want to achieve then I say lean into what leads you to that Optimal Performance yeah absolutely and I think it's that awareness piece right and then it's the acceptance piece or like the perspective shift because I think with nerves that's a big one it's it's not even that you have to change change the way you're feeling it's changed the way you're perceiving that moment yes and that gives you so much power and the feeling of control more because it then it goes from something that feels really bad and out out of your control to something that's like part of your process that's helping you perform at your best and that shift that you just discussed probably helps minimize some of the an negatives that can come with nervousness that's out of your control right like when you were talking about your athletic experiences it sounds like it had some negative spillover into other areas of your life where outside of Athletics you weren't able to give yourself credit for these massive achievements and that shift in Awareness makes you more able to do that like oh that was kind of an awesome thing I did there I could I could feel good about that yeah being one of the best swimmers in the United States at this moment it's so funny because even even when you mention the the modeling thing I'm just thinking gosh from the outside like that's a really interesting thing for you to say that right because you go okay super successful athletic career move into sports modeling it sounds like almost accidentally it just falls into your lap and it's just happening and that you have success in both of those areas for someone else looking on the outside and going like and you're nervous when you're up there to say your name into the camera but I think it's great that you're being vulnerable and revealing that because lots of people feel that way I mean I guess all of us feel that way no matter how whatever the accomplishments are in the past or lack of accomplishments there's we can all get stuck in that yeah I think that's something that has been a re curring theme for me throughout my entire journey into like working with athletes is so many of the things that I thought were unique and like oh I'm just like I'm freaking out over here by myself now I'm like no everybody's freaking out uh and you're it's normal to feel like you don't belong it's normal to be nervous it's normal to get distracted and make easy mistakes in a com you know it's like these things happen um and you're not alone like a couple years ago I heard a podcast with this uh person that I used to swim with who was a world record holder so she was the fastest person in the world at the time and she was talking about her Olympic experience and how she felt like she didn't belong and I was like if you don't belong then who does you literally were the best person by a mile like yeah if and that just opened my perspective to it is if if she could feel that way and be so successful like it's such a normal human experience I'm not saying everybody feels that way but if you do feel that way like I just had that reoccurring sort of statement in my mind like everybody's better than me I don't belong here and I listen to athletes tell me that all the time and I'm like but you are there like I I went to Cal I got a scholarship but somehow so if I didn't belong like what about the other people that went there you know like we all deserve a spot there but I didn't have the sort of awareness or perspective to give myself credit for that but I think that now I can look back on it and be like nothing's wrong with me that I felt that way this is a very normal human experience absolutely and the Dunning Krueger effect I'm a big fan and believer of this these psychologist found this that there's a disproportionate number of people at both ends of the bell curve when it comes to almost any type of performance but they originally uncovered it with IQ so people with there's a disproportionate number of people with really high IQs that refuse to they can't see themselves as being intelligent and they might win a Nobel Prize and think they didn't deserve it and if they won one well then it probably must not be that hard to get one and at the other end the exact same effect happens except it's in Reverse where the IQ is not there and yet they can't understand why the world isn't handing them everything on a platter because they are smarter than everyone else on Earth they are and it happened same they found the same effect in and again it's not everybody but a disproportionate number of athletes really low performers and really high performers they're seeing each other on the other end of the scale it's a fascinating warping of your self-perception versus reality yeah cuz what is that mean that the people like that's a trait within High performers to think that you don't belong and you suck amongst some some yeah yes I'm blanking on the guy's name of the podcast um Tom Bilu this guy Tom Bilu had someone on who had written a book on high performers and he said nearly all of them have this Push Pull effect where something is always pulling them forward in life and then something's always chasing them and so he said it's a this rare combination where the thing that's pulling them forward is seeing greatness in themselves when there's not really any reason for somebody from the outside to see it but they they have this inkling of that and so they're going to keep moving towards that and working towards it kind of like making the crazy decision to be like I'm a 100 meter swimmer so I'm going to switch to ocean swimming and I could probably make the Olympics like that would be a crazy thing he's like but the key is that it's also combined with being chased by this anxiety that you're not good enough yeah oh okay that resonates yeah I can see that I've always thought that is my one of my strengths is to like imagine what if it works out I think a lot of time like I still have the the visions of like what if I fail but the the image I had the dream I had of being an Olympian was so vivid to me and I thought about it every single day so it's like you can it's not an either or like yes yes I'm really positive or no I'm I'm really negative you can be a big dreamer and see your potential and you can also have these negative thoughts um that cannot be so helpful and kind but then when you start to do the work on the mental side you can start to see those two sort of sides of yourself and you can choose like it's actually more helpful when I am thinking these inspiring thoughts and I'm moving in that direction and when I'm having these negative thoughts it's not really helpful and rather than trying to just being able to see it for what it is rather than I think in more traditional like old school sports psychology is like oh if you have a negative thought stop it was a thought stoppage so like you have the negative thought you stop it and then you replace it with a positive one it's really hard to do that and you kind of setting yourself up for failure because your mind is just coming up with I mean I have the craziest thoughts to just like pop into my head and I'm like where does that come from you know so if you are trying to stop all of those and replace them um it's really easy to feel like a failure but when you practice from more of like a mindfulness perspective of like oh I have these thoughts popping up all over the time all over the place and some of them are helpful and inspiring and some of them are not so I'm just going to see those unhelpful thoughts and I'm going to choose to focus on the on the positive ones or the neutral ones cuz that's a great place to settle your mind too if you're having a hard time jumping to the positive is hang out in neutral territory I love this meditation exercise that Patrick will a teacher told it to him when he was like a little kid and it was a sleeping meditation which was that your brain is always just generating thoughts and ideas the mind is always pumping out stuff and sometimes we can't sleep because the mind is just firing and we can't ignore it and trying to stop it is an exercise in futility because that's what the Mind does it just pops out thoughts and she said I want you to visualize each thought is a little paper sailboat and there's a river going by and you're just going to take that thought put it on the river and it's going to sail on down the way and we just keep taking them and keep doing that and you'll just fall asleep doing that it really helped him to fall asleep apparently but I think it's a wonderful meditation of any kind whether you're trying to fall asleep or not for me it gives me that distance from my thoughts I am not my mind which is just this Thought Machine and I think that's helpful for performance for athletics any any type of performance situation yeah I love that I actually do that meditation oh and Lead that with what my athletes L too for that reason is because it's like you can create this really Vivid picture your mind of like beautiful mountain river you know you're sitting on a rock and it's like using all your senses and then it's like oh what are like you have a thought and you just watch it float by on that little leaf yeah and it is it's that creating that distance that like you are not your thoughts you don't have to believe everything that you think which is powerful thank goodness I have a lot of terrible thoughts yeah me too just just just not that they're bad they're just not useful in any way air bad or mean yeah I mean would you ever talk to someone the way that you talk to yourself I don't have a problem with the negative selft talk I just when I meditate though and notice things coming up I'm like man I have a lot of just dumb thoughts yeah like that is just huh that's that's not one to pay attention to yeah it's almost like giving up a little bit of agency because you got to step back and go yeah that thing's all always running and you're actually not in control of it yeah the only thing you're in control of is what you are going to pay attention to where your awareness is going to be directed and if 90% of your thoughts are not useful that's fine just pay attention to the 10% that are and deal with those those are the ones what will lead you towards your long-term goals and good things will happen from there the stories we tell ourselves are really important and sometimes we tell ourselves very unhelpful stories if you can acknowledge those stories and see them then you can kind of distance yourself from them be like all right I I've read in some book which I haven't used a lot but I I like I like the imagery um she talked about like creating a name for your inner voice like your mean voice and for some reason I named mine Rhonda okay and I don't do it all the time it's something I'm like okay Rhonda that it's not helpful and it just gives you that little bit of distance and for me it makes me laugh cuz I think I don't know why it just sounds kind of funny I'm like oh Rhonda you're being so mean right now and it's not me it's not like a personal attack like oh I'm being mean this is like a hit on me as a person just like no I have these like random thoughts that are just ridiculous yeah there goes Frank again yeah trying to knock me down not going to let him do I think I just named mine Frank the Frank's a good one too yeah why not just got to go with it yeah Frank it makes me laugh a little bit too which is good in those moments yeah right if you have a moment of doubt it's good to just be able to laugh yeah I mean I think of PK's in soccer right at the end of a soccer match cuz I was a soccer athlete like those are it's some of one of the most intense pressure-filled moments in sports when you got to step up there by yourself and it's one strike of the ball and it's all writing on this it's kind of an arbitrary way to decide a match but that's yeah how it's done and anything that can make it like bring you back to hey we're just we're just playing a game we're just having fun here I know how to do this for me at least it was helpful to gamify that situation a little bit and I like the idea of giving it the negative voice a funny name because you can be like oh Frank it's not time for you right now yeah takes a little of the edge off uhhuh yeah and for some people I think that's the thing it's like for you it was gamifying right so it's like finding what it is to take the pressure off like for me I use the Rhonda like super randomly it's not really a practice but for some people it might be a really helpful practice that they do all the time that they that voice they've named it even maybe created like an image of what that person looks like and they're like not today you and they practice it consistently um so I think it's really figuring out what works for you and that's the hard part I think is that people want like a fix you know they like tell me what to do right like how to fix this right now and I'm like well you got to put in the work consistently and it takes a while and you're on a constant journey of discovery because it's there's not like a destination well just like with any sport if you're a basketball player it's not like Phil Jackson who I or John Wooden who whoever you want to fill in there for your greatest ever basketball coach Phils could come in and one day and be like okay let's examine you you need to do a b and c and then you will be the greatest player you can be yeah and the end right like the only way Phil Jackson can help you become the optimal player is to coach you yeah and the process doesn't ever end right they're always growing changing discovering new things about yourself about the game and it's a practice not a decision or something that you can be told I mean that's what I'm getting from youday absolutely I mean I would say like you're training your brain just like you're training your body you don't go to practice for 15 minutes once a month and expect to be the best athlete you show up every day and you do the work so why would you think that doing one meditation in January is going to hold you through the year or that you did five years ago it's like you have to do the work every day and it doesn't have to be the same amount you find ways to incorporate it into your training but you have to be intentional and it's just like anything you have to be consistent to build that strength yeah people get that with their body they're like well yeah absolutely and if you stop for six months you get out of shape yeah and you got to kind of build it back up again yeah yeah I find that that's the frustrating thing I I don't work with young athletes I just don't have the capacity for it but I I I I know it's like such an important time that in a person's life where they could build those skills I really struggle with the parent aspect of the parents expectations wanting someone to come in and like fix their kid and and like have a Band-Aid or something that's just going to make their kid resilient and the best athlete possible when maybe the kid doesn't even care and doesn't want to do it um because you have to want it like the coach can buy into it and with the team I think if the coach buys into it the team's going to buy into it um but for athletes in general it's they have to make the decision this is something I value and this is something I want to work towards because there's nothing I can do to help you if you don't want to do it yourself if you don't want to do the work yeah yeah I mean that is a very tough situation for all coaches of younger athletes when the parent wants it more than the kid does kids are have a hard go of it now I think there's so much pressure from such a young age to be an elite athlete and it's taking away the joy of learning to use your body and play and have fun and grow and there's so much value in sports Beyond being getting a scholarship in college or being a pro athlete well there's value in those things too and obviously I love them but it's not for everybody and that's okay and it seems that a lot there's a lot of research going on I mean whether we see it in the that book The anxious generation or Never Enough is another really good one where it's pervasive throughout childhood now to be moving towards greatness on one level or another we've got to in school do everything in terms of activities and grades and what you do with your free time everything's got to be oriented towards getting into a top 25 college and if you're going to be in athletics well then we better be moving towards being a professional yeah and if you're going to get into music who wants to be someone who can just play the piano like you better be moving towards being a professional musician when in fact there is all kinds of value in being someone who can play the piano or just play the guitar and you don't have to go be a professional and being able to enjoy physical activity with your body for your whole life that's a that's a gift and I hate the idea that kids miss out on that because they're not good enough to be moving towards the college scholarship track well that's by definition what one less than 1% of athletes so what are we what are we doing for the other 99.8% I know we're doing a disservice to them and how do we fix that I think parents we have to take accept responsibility for the culture we created the Little League World Series has been around since 1947 okay and only 64 of those athletes have gone on to be major league baseball players that's interesting they have this like moment where everybody's like you're this amazing athlete and you know a celebrity and it's just like this huge moment they're so young they haven't even gone through puberty yet right and I think it's a like you're setting them up for like what are you setting them up for because they're most likely going to go through puberty and their body's going to change they're going to get into high school and it's hard to get through high school as a athlete because you start getting more Independence your friends are going and doing fun things and you have to go to bed early because you have Saturday morning practice it's not easy to get through those stages and it's really hard to go from high school to college and to swim or to be an athlete all four years of college so to set kids up for success I feel like we have to shift our perspective on why are they doing sports at a young age it's not to be a professional athlete it's to gain body awareness it's to learn teamwork it's to learn how to fail over and over and over again and get back up there's so much value to sports that's not winning and there has to be some joy in it at a young age if you're going to stick with it like it can't feel like a job yeah no think it is now like I like kids they're like 10 and they're doing like two hour practices five days a week a day of one sport they're not exploring different sports anymore yeah and that's actually a wonderful way to help your kids be resilient is to Foster their love of their sport because when things get tough if you love what you do you'll find a way but if you're forced into a sport because your parents telling you you're going to be the next Tiger Woods or you know Simone biles or whatever it is and you don't want to be like it's going to be harder to get up after you fail because it's not something you really want to do the sports Gene is up here somewhere um oh I see it yeah great great book and they talk about there's a chapter in there on Youth Sports and to your point about the Little League World Series so a vast majority of players in the major leagues have 2010 Visions what I can see at 10 feet one of these guys can see at 20 feet Okay the reason behind that is because at a certain point the pitchers are throwing the ball so fast that you have to have exceptional eyesight to be able to read the seams on the ball to fractions of a second decipher how that ball is moving and where it's going to end up in fractions of a second so that you can hit it yeah and there is no way if you have 2020 eyesight which is great we would all love to have 2020 eyesight but you have to have better than that which is extremely rare and if you don't have it there's no way to train it and develop it you just don't have it it doesn't mean you can't ever be a major league baseball player it's just extremely unlikely W I've never heard of that before that is interesting though cuz that's I don't know that much about it like you just there's nothing you can do like when you're first talking I'm like can is that something from playing when you were younger that you developed this ability to like see you know that's something you're practicing all the time so are you better at it because you've been practicing or is it just a gift that you have my understanding of it from the book was that you could move the needle tiny tiny bits you know a couple couple percentage points but the difference between somebody who's 2020 2010 or 25 some of these guys I mean right so I can only see it at 5T away and they can see it at 20 which is really exceptional eyesight you can't move the needle like that yeah or in the NBA another example was it's not just being tall it's this particular raaco with your limbs so they he described as the opposite of the VR man right where the he's got his arms and legs out and there's the circle and it's all perfectly symmetrical like if we were looking at NBA players their arms would extend way out of that Circle and so with their legs the so it's not just tall it's having disproportionately long legs and long arms is the key physical factor to have and so again these things are out of your control and point being in the book was there better be some joy in it especially as a kid because so many of these major things that lead to either winning a scholarship to play in college or the tiny fraction of a scholarship winning athletes to go be a professional they're out of your control they weren't they weren't actually things you could develop granted there's all kinds of hard work involved and nobody's going to downplay that but I just want to point out something okay that's the majority it's not all of them so within every sport or every profession there's people that do not fit the mold sure that that make it despite that right and I like to focus on that because I think we all have so much potential and when you hear something like that and you're like oh well I love basketball but I'm not going to play it anymore cuz my arms are short right I'm not tall it's like well you know I'm not saying that obviously sometimes those things are deciding factors but but there are outliers oh of course yeah so you're saying I've got a chance yeah that's what I saying got a I think you have to is it Dumb and Dumber when he says like so what are my chances here like one and 10 just like we're like one in a million so you're saying I've got a chance I I'm not saying you can't make it if you don't have those things to whatever and you never want to put a limit on anybody prematurely of of course but maybe the goal just like where we started this conversation if the goal is I'm going to get involved in you Sports so I can go be a professional and if I don't hit professional I have failed yeah which is the message sometimes parents are inadvertently sending even if they don't know they're sending it or coaches are inadvertently sending it without really thinking it through we could define success differently yeah and if you happen to have the right factors and the right work ethic and all that all of it comes together at the right moment and you don't get unlucky like in your example which happens you could be good enough to go be a professional player and you don't get the right look from the right Scout on the right day there's so many things that have to come together so maybe it would be healthier to define success in terms of preparation doing the right things adding a mindfulness practice to your Athletics in order to what was your control the controllables yeah yeah focus on controlling the controllables yeah and define success that way because that's something you can build on no matter what the end outcomes are yeah I think also when you're talking about parents now that I am on the path that I'm on and I've like read the research and I know this to be true but it's interesting because it backed up just to my own experiences when I was after I was swimming and people would hear about that I swim professionally and they' be like oh my you know my daughter's nine and she's like the best right now and what's your advice you know I always came him the same answer and no parent ever liked it yeah and I would say my mom Lov she supported me she didn't really know what was going like she didn't know my best times she didn't show up to every swim meet she was always just proud and happy for me and I did it cuz I wanted to I kept going because I wanted to and I chose to and that never is the advice I think they want it's like my mom pushed me I don't know what what the advice they want but I just can tell as soon as I start saying it their eyes kind of like GL they're like oh and I'm I'm done like new conversation there is a lot of evidence to that is when you are Health when you are happy and you choose to do something and you choose to do it on your own terms and you're intrinsically motivated like you're going to perform better and so how can we as parents help our kids do that I think would be really helpful well sure and they we have to check ourselves too on what are like why do we want our kid to be a professional athlete why do we want them to go to college and be an athlete maybe it's because financially you need them to get a scholarship and that's understandable um but it's also putting a lot of pressure on them since it's like it really is like 1% or I don't know the number I know you can look on the NCAA website and it tells you the percentage per sport of of getting in you know what we're going to pull it up just to have exact numbers here it is it is really Slim and you need to ask yourself is it worth your child possibly resenting you through all of their adult life if you're pushing them towards a goal that they're not really choosing yeah if they choose it win or lose however it shakes out if it was something you decided to do for yourself you're going to be okay with that yeah yeah if you decide for yourself yeah but if you're feel like your love your parents love is tied to your success it can be a really heartbreaking experience to not live up to the expectations that have been set for you mhm I someone just said recently and I really liked his that you know when you are a parent of an athlete to remember that they only have one two parents but they're going to have a lot of coaches so let the coaches do the coaching and just be the parent like the best thing you can say to your kid is like I loved watching you play I loved watching you perform or dance or whatever it is just like let the coach be the coach yeah just don't coach them in the car on the we that's like one of the top reasons kids don't want to do Sports is because the drive home well and I'm gonna I'm goingon to look at that percentage but the you just made me think of there next door to me is a gentleman Eric Berg who's coached water polo I think he had a 30 40 Years of maybe not 40 but 30 years 25 plus years of coaching excellent coach super successful program his youngest son walked on at UCLA for water polo and became a star and they won a national championship and I asked him the other day because he had given me a piece of advice when my son was really little and he was invited to go play in this I mean he was like 7 years old 6 years old and invited to play in the soccer tournament down in San Diego and it was like a big deal like came up in conversation and he said why are you doing that I I was a little bit taken aback by him I cuz I thought if anybody was going to be pumped it'd be him yeah and and it had just come up cuz we were like getting in the car and I said I I don't I don't know the opportunity came he wants to do it that's why we're doing it and he immediately was just like just be careful be careful you want him to love this your job is to keep an eye on the long term yeah and it was like it was so on his radar whereas I wasn't thinking anything about it but that was a really good piece of advice so recently I asked him I said what what other coaching gems do you have cuz you're that was a good one yeah yeah I was like that was several years ago and what what else have you got and he said well I would tell the parents at the beginning of every season you're in charge of the first 60 seconds after the competitive event competitive event and you should think about it beforehand what do you want that 60 seconds to be like do you want it to be a situation where you're going to be reprimanding your kid for things they could have done and didn't do and turning this into this really negative experience between parent and child or do you want it to be a moment where you tell them hey it's just a joy to watch you play or do you want it to just be a quiet moment where you just let them decompress with you there and you don't even need to say anything said he like my only advice to all of you parents is don't let the Heat of the Moment decide how you're going to treat that think about it right now before we're going to have any games what do you want it to be that's going to help you execute that yeah when you actually get there oh I like that that's really good because even little kids know when they make a mistake I mean they know when they when they messed up they don't need to be told from their coach and then come back to their parents we told again over and over again like they're they're learning that on their own yeah sure all right let's look up that stat uh what are the chances of me winning a scholarship try the percentage of high school athletes who receive a full or partial athletic scholarship is 1.3% overall and then it's broken down sport by sport some of them are lower than 1% some are a little bit higher but your average is about 1.3% of all the high school athletes and that is a full or partial scholarship because not everybody realizes there are a lot of little partial scholarships that go around I me just get books paid for that's a scholarship that's right yeah that's right that does put it in perspective though I mean you're 1% uh or when people went there I mean the how many there's 800 players in Major League Baseball total right I mean that's not very many right you think your kid has a way better chance of getting into law school med school uh I mean whatever other hard things there are out there sure sure well Scott Galloway who I I really like author and podcaster and he talks about how your know him what's the book uh let's see the algebra of happiness is the latest one okay but he's got several the algebra of wealth the algebra of Fillin the blank they're all really great books but he said he he has a breakdown on if you're in the top 10% of high school athletes you probably won't make the bench in college said but you're in the top 10% of kids that want to study accounting you will make a ton of money when you get out of college yeah and if and he was just talking about the the point of there's so many things out there you can go and do and some of those things that aren't considered sexy in one version or another I'm going to be a pro athlete I'm going to be a pro musician I'm going to be a fashion designer said it's it's okay to pursue those if you have objective feedback that you're really good at those things so but there are a lot of easy wins yeah at the same time do you want to be a top level student who then goes to work in the movies and you might be a PA making kind of minimum wage for most of your career or you could go be a above average Bank y attorney and you get to fly first class for the rest of your life and take amazing trips and not ever worry about money yeah and I just thought it was an interesting perspective it doesn't mean we need to not follow things that we're passionate about in competitive Industries but a nice thought to just throw into the mix just to keep all of our options open yeah there are I mean I think it's good to the doing it for money part I feel a little resistance too cuz I'm like well maybe money is not your main motive Mo Ator right so I'm sure I could make a lot of money if I picked any other profession um you're probably killing it as a nurse right now yeah but I have never been motivated by that and I think the thrill of trying something really hard and maybe failing is really exciting like not very many people have done it what if you're the one that makes it you know it's why sports are so fun to watch because you just it's like the whole Human Experience out there we were watching the Dodgers last night and I mean they're the best I'm not going to say the world because it's not the world I know it's but they're messing up and you're seeing them in real time make silly mistakes that you think like why why' you do that you know yeah shouldn't that be easy for you but they're also at the World Series and there's no greater pressure and they're human and they make these mistakes and then you get a see them you know go through the emotions all the emotions and then the excitement of winning it's just all of it it's just so captivating well and to your point I I think there is also huge value in striving to do something that's insanely competitive and yeah the odds are against you if it's something that you intrinsically really want to do yes that's the key and win or lose you will gain from that as a person you would not be the human being you are if you hadn't pursued that Olympic dream yeah and the fact that you didn't compete in the Olympics me standing from the outside is like well so what you achieved insane things on your own and you've got a lot of amazing knowledge to share because of that experience and as many ion people have said before we often learn more from our failures than we do from our successes absolutely yeah I agree with that wholeheartedly and I think I was just having a conversation with an athlete the other day and he was talking he was like why am I on this journey I'm not making any money you know he has this like dream um that he's chasing and he was like when I graduated from school I had all these like opportunities like I could be making so much money right now people like really thought I was special at you know whatever he majored in and and he was like now I'm just grinding every day for this goal but he's still doing it because there's that drive that like it's that excitement of chasing the unknown this is what I said to you about podcasting no did I say that no no I'm kidding when you said that I was like yeah we're doing this insane thing and grinding every day and even when good things are happening it's like you're working hard at it to make because you have this drive to go do this thing but I didn't mean to disrupt your story going probably because you're a high achiever too is that those successes come in and you're like that's really exciting but on to the next like what's the I still got to figure this problem out and it's like there's so much to take in beside you know besides just acknowledging the success along the way yeah well for me it's like we're throwing just just like we been talking about throw the quote unquote success out the window I'm really enjoying this present moment experience having these conversations is worth it all by itself and there have been a number of those now where it's like I don't really care if this thing makes me famous or not I learned and grew as a person because of that conversation and I wouldn't have had it if there wasn't an excuse to sit down and do it and that's worth it all by itself and if other people end up coming along for the ride and finding meaning in it too well then that's that's all just gravy and and goodness but I can't I can't control any of that yeah so hey let's be mindful and enjoy this present moment yeah it's easy right now yeah yeah yeah all right we've hit the let's see meditation MH breath work mindfulness these are all things that will help us to perform better in these competitive situations are there any that we haven't gotten to I think it comes down to what you gravitate towards and what you can make sustainable so journaling for one can be a really helpful practice to be honest I really find resistance with journaling even though I have found it very helpful and it's a struggle for me still is just sitting down and like writing it out I'm much I feel more comfortable thinking about it but it's not the same thing right getting your words down on paper writing it instead of typing it um there's so much value there and that can help build awareness and I think sometimes when you ask yourself a question and then you just start freewriting it you come up with a really interesting answers when you let sort of your subconscious mind just like go for it and and spill it out and you can have a lot of important insights that way surprise yourself yeah um but I said it's not like I find resistance with it I still do it like sometimes I'm not as consistent um but I think if you find resistance with one thing and you think or you try meditation one time or breath work one time and you're like oh I don't like this it's not for me try something else journaling mental imagery but maybe come back to you know sometimes I think of planting seeds like maybe meditation isn't right for you right now maybe you're really resistant to I can't turn my mind off and that's what I need to do um maybe you stick with breath work for a little while and then build up to it you so it's you really got to go on the journey yeah and figure out what works for you like what is the is not the issue but like what's getting in your way of showing up on a daily basis to be the best version of you possible um you really have to be brave to go on that Journey because you're going to have to acknowledge parts of yourself that maybe are uncomfortable and you don't want to deal with I feel like with meditation you call it Insight Meditation and you have like insights as your awareness grows and every time I've sort of go through this phase where I've had an insight about myself and I don't like it and I don't want to go through the process I'm like I could just stay here and I could be comfortable and ignore this for a little while longer but I know that the only way to move past it is to go through it and like sit with that uncomfortable feeling or reflect on that part of myself that I I'm meeting with resistance and then once you kind of experience that for a little bit and go through it then you can lessen that resistance and hold and and find yourself on the other side what's an example of that um this will not Shock you but um when I started to teach so I went from swimming I retired and got pregnant immediately um and then I was like I didn't really know what I wanted to do I was like oh I got my Pilates certification I got two yoga certifications and then I was running in my treadmill in the garage staring at the wall and I thought I don't really want to teach yoga Pilates I just love being an athlete I love thinking about the mindset and like I started meditating at that point and I was like What if I work with athletes and teach them mindfulness and mental skills and um so I went out I was I didn't really know how to start like I was like I don't know how to do this so I'm just going to like start I reached out to a couple coaches and I was like can I come talk to your team about my experience and my fullness and I had the coach who's my friend he swam at cow too he's like yeah come on up I went up and talked to his team and I had never done public speaking before I had a lot I wanted to share and it was just like an hour of me spewing everything I wanted to tell them about mindful like I had no I like told them my whole life story I went into like all these different aspects of mindful like just they probably were like brain dead by the time I was done and um I was really nervous by the time I drove home I had convinced myself that I would never public speak again because I was so embarrassing and I did such to poor job around that same time I also ran my first marathon like within the first couple weeks and I told my Logan I go I just want to run this race for fun not be competitive I just want to like run a marathon I run the marathon it did not go well my hip started really hurting and I started like limping at like 18 miles and I like cried for the last six miles and then continued to completely beat myself up over my marathan experience and that it was so embarrassing and that I should have been better and like all the blah blah blah and Logan was like didn't you just want to run a marathon for fun and I was like yeah he was like well then what's the problem like why are you doing this to yourself and I was like what do you mean he's like why are you being so hard on yourself and I was like oh it was like a SL ball moment like oh I don't have to be so hard on myself and then I realized like oh I've been really like I do this all the time this like cycle of me doing something scary for me or new or you know setting this goal for myself achieving it or maybe like slightly underperforming of where I think I should be which is always like way too high and then completely annihilating myself for for attempting it and then I'd go and do the same you know then like a week later doing something else and then beating myself up over again and that was a huge insight for me I was like oh I'm really mean to myself and it felt really uncomfortable like I had to look back on my whole my whole athletic experience and think oh I didn't have to do that like that's not the way like the only way that you can do that right what would it have been like if I would have been nice to myself you know what would have been like if I showed up on the for the day of a marathon and just thought like hey I have two little kids I did the best I could in training I never did speed work so I have no I should not have a go time but I did cuz I'm competitive um like what would it have been like if I just ran and looked around La and like the LA Marathon is an awesome Marathon because you run through LA and it's all closed down so it's just like a really cool perspective everybody's cheering for you it's it's a really cool experience like I was just in my head beating myself up the whole time I didn't even realize it was a cool thing right so so that was a huge insight for me and the original goal was to just run a marathon yeah and the original goal with speaking to the team was just to get experien public speaking because I'd never done it before and I learned a lot from that experience like one you don't have to tell everybody everything in an hour like come up with one thing that you want them to walk away with keep it really simple I actually had to make that mistake several times before I like figured it out like you don't have to share everything that you want to tell them in an hour you know just give them a little tiny nugget of information to sit with um the funny thing is though when you said the told the story of how bad that speaking engagement went I thought I don't know if it actually was bad or not though because no matter how well it went you would probably have it in your head that it didn't go well yeah I don't think it I actually I don't think it didn't go well the coach was very compliment right but you know what I got really excited and I said the f word a couple times and because that is like my go-to word when I'm really excited or when I'm really like in pain like giving birth to children or you know a six- hour race like it just that's the word for me that comes up a lot and I got in the car and I had the thought like that was really unprofessional I shouldn't have said that in front of college kids and that was it the floodgates opened and I was like oh my gosh this is so embarrassing and it just like the I just kept going with it and then the 2-hour drive home turned into just all kinds of Lies I told myself well don't beat yourself up today cuz you cursed on this podcast and or for anything else I'm sure there's a there's an athlete that was in that audience that day who's like and this lady came in she used to went there and she said this one thing and it changed how I looked at all of this I would just love to get some actual like other perspectives on how well that thing went cuz I bet it went pretty well you seem like a natural speaker to me thank you I don't I mean I can look back on it and I know that it was not horrible and that it was my thought process and perspective afterwards that was the problem and of course you can get better at it and improve but cuz that is what they wanted I just wanted like a easy opportunity I wasn't getting paid like I didn't know what I was doing I didn't really have like my voice sound or exactly like how I wanted to go about talking about mindfulness and how it could be helpful so it was it was a learning experience and that's what I did as I went from there um and now I should say from that and this is another practice that if you're really hard on yourself you can try this I some people have resistance to this so I'll just go ahead and say it out loud it's okay if you find resistance to this um is that after that experience I started writing myself love notes I call them love notes you can call them whatever you want you can just write yourself a Post-It note or you don't have to name it and I just say like dear Ma you were scared and nervous but you did it anyways you prepared you did everything that you could to show up ready and I'm really proud of you that's it like I put that little bit of positivity or loving kindness like before the onslaught of potential negative thoughts and it kind just giving yourself that little break for me helps because it's like oh then my mind's not actively looking for the spiral if that makes sense yeah quiets Rhonda down yeah quiets Rhonda down she's like damn I don't have this opportunity to run my mouth right now um and I don't do it all the time but more so so when I'm doing speaking events I found that helpful for me so and I've told other people too and sometimes they're like I'm not doing that I think CU I called it a love note they're like absolutely not but it's just acknowledging like I am proud of myself and did I do the best I could yeah okay well there's no magic bullet that works for everybody no but if you have a problem with your your Rhonda or your Frank or your the negative self talk gets ramped up too high to a point where it's warping The Experience from what it was and it's not helping you to move forward and be better at whatever you're trying to achieve then maybe you need a love note whereas somebody who I'm trying to think of the example but if they they naturally give themselves love notes right because you can have the opposite experience somebody that goes up there and gives a horrible talk and clearly nobody liked it or got any value from it and it was really self-indulgent from the person who was up there speaking and afterwards they're like man you know those people are so lucky to see me I am so awesome now that person might need to get in touch with their inner Rhonda or their inner Frank yeah that says hey maybe we should look back on that and examine what wasn't perfect about it maybe they need to write themselves a note that says like what could I learn from that experience what mistakes did I make and what could be improved for next time so I think there's different strategies for different people based on their wiring and you got to find what works for you I think a consistency is King like you need to do it consistently that one I pull out when it's something that I know is going to be more activating for me like that feels really scary um and I'm feeling all the feels for then I can kind of bring it in and be like okay just that's helpful um but it's all the other things that you do consistently I think that have the the biggest impact but like you said like writing what could I have done better or what did I do well right depending on what you need yeah and we were talking about this before we went on air but I think all of this mindfulness training an interesting idea is that you're setting the groundwork it's almost like you're planting the seeds to be able to enter a flow State more often and oh it's a great time to read a little quote from Mike Che sent high on mindfulness and flow because I I think that's a that's something that can get people excited about mindfulness is if you can increase your odds of getting into a flow State well that feels amazing when you get there and it's Optimal Performance and so it's really this win-win Human Experience let's see what Mike had to say okay to live fully means to experience each moment with the same Clarity of Purpose with complete awareness of both our external surroundings and our internal states true engagement requires us to harness our attention directing it towards activities that bring enjoyment and purpose no matter how simple or complex they may seem this mindful engagement transforms ordinary experiences into profound moments of flow where time Fades self-consciousness recedes and we are left with the purest essence of what it means to live in harmony with the present I love that he was that gives me the chills I I miss him yeah what an amazing opportunity to learn from him yeah yeah yeah I was I mentioned this to Hank like I was in graduate school at that time business school but working every day alongside him and all the brilliant people that were at that research center and people he brought in I mean that was the real education that was where the real learning was happening and he would say amazing stuff like that all the time like throwa away comments and like is this guy real like yeah yeah yeah how have you experienced FL sometimes with speaking when it completely goes off a script and it's just happening and there's some weird resonance between the message and the audience it can happen there certainly with soccer back in the day and I would say now with writing would be the most common place to get into it and it certainly doesn't happen every day but along the lines of what we're talking about so the war of art which is my favorite book on Creative Pursuits and overcoming resistance he talks about the idea in there and he talks about writing specifically quite a bit that a good practice is to sit down every day ideally at the same time but that's not always practical whatever it is you're going to sit down every single day and you're going to a lot some time and that might be let's say two hours you go I'm going to write during that time but the faucet doesn't always turn on yeah when you write and if you're going to do that there's no phone there's no YouTube you're going to sit there and you could stare out the window or just look at that blinking cursor on the screen but that's it you got to just sit there with it until it happens and it's really painful and really difficult because there are days where you actually sit there for two hours and nothing of any quality comes out at all but if you do that for a sustained period of time just like he says in the book eventually you train your brain to be like it's writing time there are I don't get any excuses I don't get to have any distractions I don't get to do this endlessly to be like oh this doesn't feel good so I'm just gonna I'm just going to scroll for a while it doesn't feel good well it doesn't feel good to sit there and be bored that is the phone doesn't feel good being bored I love being bored but then you're in a great place when you can love being bored I think you're in a especially in this day and age and I then this is what this sort of writing training taught me to do is to love to be bored because that's when the ideas come and eventually once you break through that the resistance and the struggle with not wanting to sit there and stare at the blinking cursor then things start coming out and some of it's good some of it's bad and you can go sort that out the next day yeah and eventually it builds up two moments of flow while you're writing and now I find it's very easy to get into those moments of flow while writing um but it took a lot of like anything consist a lot of consistency a lot of hard work a lot of uncomfortable tough moments yeah to get there yeah which is the key like that perspective like being able to hold that like it's going to be uncomfortable like you're were talking about that it makes me think of when I do a longer meditation there's that resistance like my mind is like no I don't I don't want to do this yeah and it's just like all these ideas and then I'll start thinking like oh this is taking a long time it's going to be over soon and then I always tell myself it's going to be a lot longer you have a lot longer to go so just hang on and then my mind kind of settles and I accept it and then it's very brief but there's like that little moment where you're like okay and then my mind starts going like again but it's like you have to sit through that uncomfortable you have to commit to the that not everything's going to feel good and sometimes you just have to sit there and be uncomfortable and bored and and without distractions do you think that's also Rhonda like the same voice that steps in there and says he this is going to take longer than you think it will and you got to sit there through it no that's not Rhonda it's a different voice it's a different voice okay yeah it's it's like a accepting voice it's like just just be here it's going to be longer cuz there is that I don't know like the sometimes I'm like maybe I should just look at the clock you know I think it's been 15 minutes oh I should look at the clock 100% And I'm like no don't look at the clock you don't and that's the where I started like it's just going to if you think it's going to be a lot longer than it is you're like oh just sit back and relax you're going to be here for a while then you're kind like oh okay it is going to be I am going to be here for a little while and it takes that sort of like edge off of maybe I should just look at the clock and then I'm kind of guessing you know I think it's been 16 minutes now and then if I do peek it's like 2 minutes in yeah when when meditating the trick my mind will always play cuz I usually will have like a bell or something go off at the end of the time I always think like I probably turned the phone off so it can't make the noise it's already been 10 minutes or whatever the time limit is the volume's off exactly yeah and it is so hard to not go check it yeah but I feel like that's an athlete trick to that's part of the training you get from Athletics whether you're somebody who wins US Olympic trials or not like if you if you're in a competitive environment for a long time and there's hard training involved you do learn the lesson there's some uncomfortable things you have to sit through cuz you know it's good for you in the long run and that's that voice that's talking that that moment that's like just settle in it's probably going to be worse than you think and that's okay yeah it's going to be longer it's going to be harder yeah I hear that voice a lot while cold plunging oh gosh yeah I just don't want to do that's actually I made two two goals when I well the first goal when I graduated college I was like I'll never hold my breath again unless I want to which is not like the interest uh an interesting goal and then when I finished Open Water Swimming I was like I will also I will still not hold my breath unless I want to and I will never be cold again I'll never go in cold water again uh and both of them I have realized over time are not very like great goals to make or very realist realistic and the cold water one I feel like I realized oh this is keeping me from Adventure which was one of my core values so I was like this is keeping me from doing fun things and I should probably embrace it a little bit more but man do I still feel that resistance about getting in the cold water don't love the cold water I just don't want to do it but I do when we're on like a trip and it's like we go in the ocean or I mean because Logan will stop and go in like any body of water no matter how cold it is and I don't want to but now i' I do realize that it is a fun part of our adventures is like oh there's a ever let's go jump in it um it adds to the to the experience it does it does it's a it's the best example though of go do this thing that sucks for two to five minutes yeah so you can feel really great afterwards for a very long period of time yeah we're going to get I think you and Logan we got to get get you guys in the in The Plunge at the house sometime yeah well I mean that's a a high priority list for him is to get one in the house and I think he's been looking up making one and uh we have our pool which isn't heated so right now it's actually quite chilly but I haven't gotten it yet I took a break from it so I feel like I need to get my mind set on it again like I haven't I'm in the indecisive zone right now which is always problem for me it's like do I want to do this and if I do then I need to commit to it but I also part of me is like maybe I don't need to do this like I don't know how much of a benefit I I feel like it is I think that's why I'm not so super sold on it like when I do it I'm like okay now I'm cold I don't feel like a surge in like productivity or like mental SP like Clarity well then I just feel cold so he not everything works for everybody yeah I feel like it's one that really works for me but that certainly doesn't mean that it works for anybody else like a lot of this stuff yeah maybe I don't need as many love notes yeah and you don't need to be cold as often and we'll both be just fine that's true I like when my I have a lot of confidence in my ability to endure pain and be tough and I feel like with the cold water it's like I don't need to prove that set to myself right so there's a little like I understand the discipline part I understand the like doing hard things consistently part um but I feel like that's not what I need I like this cuz you know I bring up the cold plunging so often in these podcasts and it's always aing and you're the first that's pushing back on it a little bit and I think you're making a lot of sense I really like that let's have some different perspectives on this yeah well you know I think now there's like all of like especially on social media it's like do all the things right it's like a little overwhelming I feel like do the things that you can do what you can also do what like feels like we have a sauna and I really do like the sauna it feels uncomfortable and I don't like that so much and sometimes it makes me feel anxious and I want to hop out um but generally like I value it and I like it and I enjoy having it be part of my day and there's other things I really like to do I've also read like conflicting information about like the benefits of cold plunge for women like the difference between men and women and I'm not an expert on it so I'm not like but it's just put like seeds of Doubt for me it's like is this important for me like is this what I need to focus on there's so many other things I think I'd rather give my attention to well we've all got to pick the things we're going to give attention to and there's only so much willpower to go around yeah so it should be whatever you pick moving you towards where you want to go and if it's not why do it I think the massive beneficial claims made online by people who are selling cold plunges should be taken with a huge huge grain of salt yeah I have seen stuff that it is benef official uh in in small ways it's a little additive thing but the big benefit is really the getting in the habit of doing hard things just like you said and if you're going well I don't need that then that's fine you don't need that I mean there's a mutual friend of our who I mentioned the book uh Tim Ferris is tools of the Titans which I thought was a really good book because each chapter is really short and focuses on one little thing that he learned from a different podcast guest oh cool and Jim said yeah there's so I feel like there's so much stuff and I'm being hit with that all the time like here's 8 million things you need to do to be an optimal human being like there's a chapter on the Marine who he makes his bed everying single morning and makes it just perfect that gets his day off to the right start and for me that was one that I was just like you know I don't really care about that I find I did it for a month and found no benefit from that yeah and I don't necessarily care if the bed is perfect or not um but I think you're hitting on something that's important there with especially with what social media does these days it's you don't want to get to a point where you're like okay I have 20 things I have to do in order to be an optimized person and be the best version of myself it's much better to pick one or two and do those really well and run with them totally like I'm going to listen to my mindfulness coach and do that breath work that she assigned and be really good at that oh yeah I think it's also good to have so I feel like everybody goes towards the like I'm going to ruin my nervous system and do everything that puts me in sympathetic overdrive it's like Co plunge sauna super gnarly hit workout followed by like crazy strength training I don't know whm Hoff breath work you know it's like all these things and but you also need to like train your body to hang out in the parasympathetic Zone and like maybe take some nice deep breaths like drink a cup of tea and read a good book like do something calm and like those things have just the same amount of value but we value the hard things all the time and like it's not interesting on social media to see how someone went to bed early isn't drinking alcohol every day you know but it is interesting to see someone wake up at 4: and run 14 miles and then lift weights and then coal plunge Ona holotropic breathing I don't know just like all the things it's like oh okay like now I feel really lazy because I you know got up and drank my cup of tea and meditated well that's why it's good to Define your own goals what you want your life to look like and take steps towards that and not spend an excess amount of time with social media where you are being force-fed whether you want to or not where if you're going to scroll you're going to be force-fed goals other people's goals yeah they're not yours I mean it's just like the coach Berg said don't decide how you want the 60 seconds with your kid to be after the match In the Heat of the Moment decide a month in advance you're much more likely to have it actually be what you wanted it to be if you decide on your own for yourself what you want these moments to be yeah don't decide you're going to be a cold plunger because you saw 50 people on Instagram doing it it yeah yeah I do find the a big value in doing hard things so yeah and it's interesting we're talking about coold punching and my resistance to getting in cold water for 2 minutes but then I look up like o maybe I should do an Ultra Iron Man and like torture myself for 12 hours straight or whatever it is like that's the kind of hard thing that I'd like to do right see I have no interest in that which is one takes two minutes like yeah yes yes or I'm like the marathon training no wait I have so many friends who've done it and they Rave about it and we can all train together and it's a blast and I'm sure they do have a really good time but I'm like I the amount of time that it would take plus I just don't get the I probably would get some rewards from it but it does I have no drive to go run the marathon or the especially the Ultram Marathon um it's just not my jam yeah and that's okay yeah I think that's the thing is finding out like what are the hard things that I'm interested in in trying out what are the not soft but like what are the little practices I can bring in that will be the opposite of that that will help me recover and show up ready the next day to put in the hard work um and it comes down to sustainability like what can you do consistently and for some people adding 2 minutes of cold water a day seems insurmountable but running two hours a day seems like yeah that could be fun I'd like to build up to that so I really like the cup of tea and read a book though that's a good goal yeah because it's not anybody who is an athlete gets jammed down their throat athletic stuff on by the algorithms yeah I don't know how they identify that stuff but everybody I I mean these could be people that are like no longer in great shape but they were a college athlete they still get hit with it all day long and you know everybody gets what they get from the algorithms and they are so incredibly sophisticated at figuring out your personal history and sending stuff that will create engagement for good or bad yeah it will engage you and maybe there are people that get hit by the algorithm with like you should read more it's really good for your brain and your well-being and you will grow as a person I have never seen it once on any of these platforms which I try to not spend hardly any time on yeah um but I I don't ever see it and I I I find it's one of the best I mean for me like I the unplug and sit down and read for an hour you have something interesting to say the next day it's only upside for me me too I am after this past year I've been on like a huge uh fiction kick and I just devour books and I love it and there is a whole area on Instagram for people that read okay uh all kinds of books but yeah it's out there I'm sure I mean there's the I don't know if it's like necessarily like this is good for your mental health like let's make this relaxing you know it's like all the different books people are reading and then critiquing but um and knowing Instagram is probably like these are the 10 books I'm reading right now yeah and it's it's always the humble brag and the high performance and the yeah a warping of just good things we all know we should do for ourselves yeah yeah brilliant insights from the Nick Stanley show go read and you don't have to cold plune even though I really like it you could read about cold plunging and then decide for yourself whether it's something you want to try out or not yes yes although that it's an experience all by itself I think that's one you got to feel not talk about yeah same with meditation you got to do it you can't like you can talk about it all day long but until you actually do it my best friend from college lives in trucky and every we visit her at least once a year and we've gone the last couple years during the winter and that is a we always go with her in Lake Tahoe in the middle of winter uh and that is very painful well see you're doing it I mean I do do it that though is like an adventure it like adds to experience and the camaraderie and of course Logan like walks out and he's in there for like 3 minutes and puts his head under and I have my hands the whole time counts clinging onto the ladder um but I do it yeah that does sound more exciting than like the barrel full of freezing water in Nick's backyard yeah that's good for consistency oh yeah mine's more mine's more just like random Adventure cold punching okay I forgot this one earlier from brne Brown owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it yeah that's a good one I'm working with an athlete right now where we talk a lot about like the story that we tell ourselves like I'm good at this I'm bad at this it's like are you really bad at that or is that just a story you're telling yourself and what happens when you start to change that story or tell yourself a different one entirely that is a powerful practice when done right I think especially with the coach yeah this young gentleman came in here I didn't put this on the on the podcast but it's up on the test prep gurus YouTube channel we worked with him for SAT prep six years ago he had emailed me and just said hey I just wanted to tell you how much all of the stuff I learned then helped me all through college and now it's helping me me at USC Law School and it's just changed my life the stuff I learned studying for the SAT and I said well I don't want to do this over email like you got to come in we got to talk about this yeah and I asked him what were those things he said the self-fulfilling prophecy was the biggest one I said what uh can you expand on that like what what does that mean and he said well I was in this mindset of there were certain parts of the test that I couldn't do I wasn't good at certain math skills it's just that's how it was and the teacher said to me if you tell yourself you can't do it repeatedly that's going to become a self-fulfilling prophecy yeah and if you just start telling yourself you can yeah that could be a different kind of self-fulfilling prophecy eventually is there any reason you actually can't do it can't learn this stuff and it sounds so simple but to hear this kid his own words he's like this was i' never thought about it that way and he said it was really hard work and it took months and months of telling myself this different story he's like I kind of did it begrudgingly at the beginning he like but once I saw it work just a little bit Yeah suddenly I didn't even feel like I was telling myself the different story I was living a different story yeah and he liked to call it he was living a different self-fulfilling prophecy he was really big on that turn of phrase but to use your language he was telling himself a different story and the reason the test prep thing that piece of the test prep puzzle was transformative for him was he said then he got to college and he said and sure there were classes I had to take that I wasn't naturally good at but I knew the trick now yeah just tell myself it's a matter of hard work and time and I'll get there and he said I never thought I could apply to law school and he's like let alone USC uh but after this had all worked through college then he was very practiced at telling himself the right story in order to get the result he wanted to get oh yeah because he shifted from I can't do this till like I'm capable of figuring it out and then that opens it up to well yeah you can figure out all kinds of things sure it just it's not as many limits right yeah none of us were born knowing how to walk no yeah and we failed a lot before we started doing it yeah yeah I think that does speak to the value of like working with a coach though is that when you have to speak things out loud they can pick up on the things that the way that you're saying things and hold you accountable to them just like today when I'm talking about my experience and you're like well hold up a minute you know then I already have that awareness about myself but it adds to it right and it's like I can grow and improve from that whereas if I'm only in my head about it it's harder to like understand the impact of my thoughts or my words that I'm saying out loud yeah if you're by yourself you can trick yourself into justifying continuing with a pattern that has existed for a long period of time you can trick yourself into that listening to Rhonda is okay or whatever that thing might be that you're dealing with I think that to your idea about journaling and writing things down that is almost like a step of giving yourself someone else that you're talking to and then you're reading back what you wrote and it's not quite as powerful as a excellent coach but it's a step in that direction well and they can be complimentary too I think absolutely yeah I think that's the thing too thinking about like working on your mindset is that we like I'm big on practices right breath work uh visualization journaling you mental imagery but there's also a lot of value in talking to someone sharing how you feel working through your emotions and that is working on your mind too that is working on your performance and I think like I was taught to be tough and just put my head down and work and not like I shouldn't be feeling emotions right and just to suppress them but then as I got older I was like well this is actually like my superpowers I am a really sensitive person I think about things a lot and that helps me work with athletes because I think about their situation and I can kind of be this I really value curiosity I know you do too because this your whole podcast is on curiosity curious oh but that's one of my core values that I like come back to all the time it's like can you be curious about your experience and like now I get the opportunity to work with athletes and like I can lend them my curiosity at first and help them like grow that skill for themselves as well and once you can really turn your perspective to this sense of curiosity for like it just opens up so much of your life and navigate like resilience in navigating problems because rather than something being like a failure you're like oh this is a problem to be solved like it almost makes it exciting like how am I going to take this mistake and like catapult to the next level yeah you start FOC on that how do you figure it out not can you or not yeah it's like back to the the guy is like well now I know I'm capable of figuring it out and then that opened up a whole world to him of like yeah maybe I can go to USC Law School like what can I do from here like I there's so much potential there sure have you read the book quiet um it sounds familiar but I don't think I've read it oh you should definitely check it out you would love it I mean if you think if sensitivity is your super superpower and you describ yourself as an introvert that's what the book is about oh okay so it's called quiet because for people that are naturally quiet and initially I think she was going to call it sensitive okay but then the publisher was like quiet has a little more like juice to it and it became a bestseller and was huge I mean maybe like I don't know 10 12 years ago but the entire book is about taking sensitivity and naturally being quiet they're like if you're quiet well then you're a great listener and then and you think about other people's experiences and these can all be turned into an array of superpowers It's a Wonderful book for anybody whether they're introverted or extroverted yeah introverts find it an easy read and extroverts it's more like a oh I could learn something from this yeah I'm going to buy that immediately because I actually it was very empowering for me when I learned about introvert extrovert and then I was an introvert it felt like very um like I understood myself better and I was better able to take care of myself but not from a place of judgment just like it's okay that I need Logan as you know is like very extroverted his family is so social and when I first started dating him I was like why do I feel so like anxious over the 7-Day Christmas Extravaganza that never ends and it's wonderful and I love it it's like family everybody's together good food but it just does not it's like you wake up in the morning the party started and you go to bed late and then you wake up the next day and oh no it's another party and I would be so exhausted by the end of it and my friend same one that lives in Trey she was like I think you're an introvert and you know just means your battery you just need to refill your battery and quiet I was like my gosh yes yeah and it was s like I think about that t actually Logan actually started sending me things on like introverted marketing he he sent me this thing on introverted marketing and I was like I feel so seene right now oh this book is going to make you feel seene for sure I mean I love it and I subscribe to that same definition of extrovert versus introvert it it doesn't mean you can't be extroverted it just means you need These Quiet Moments of recharging the batteries yeah that it's and some people a true extrovert their batteries are recharged by being around a bunch of people and having all this social interaction and that's great for them I personally consider myself even though I am super extroverted to be an introvert because as much as I love a huge party and talking to lots of interesting people I do need These Quiet Moments of reflection afterwards to recharge the batteries like I will go to empty if it's all just social social repeat ad nauseum yeah and Jim loves to to introduce me at parties as Nick the introvert because he thinks it's hilarious that I describe myself that way he's like you're the most extroverted person here but yeah I don't think it's about like do you mix it up at the party it's really about those energy levels and I had a professor in uh it was in business school actually that defined it for me that way and I was like he's on to something there yeah and it is it's just really helpful cuz then you're like oh if I just give myself I'm going to go walk around the block by myself or I'm going to go read for 20 minutes I'm just going to do something quiet and then cuz I'm the same like I do love socializing and I am a social person but I have an expiration date I I feel it coming on and I can just go I'm like I'm good to go now where Logan is like fomo like no one experiences fomo like he's like I need every moment of fun before I can leave and know that no one else is going to have any fun without me where I'm the opposite I'm like this is time for me to go now you guys have fun I'll see you later right yeah he is so much fun he is a lot fun at a party when he is on when he's on it oh gosh I mean it is a good time yeah it is it's a special gift he has yes but he also I think on the spectrum because it is a spectrum right it's not like oh you're introverted extroverted it's like he is cuz PE I remember during wedding season when we were younger we went to a lot of weddings and people would come up to me and they're like like how do you live with him like he is just so on and I was like this is not how he behaves every day like he's not going to talk for a week after right he's quiet and he's calm like he's so calm M um and so he needs his quiet time too but if there if he's really tired and you know you and Jim call him he's like oh all of a sudden I have a little bit of energy I think I could do it whereas I'd be like I'm already in bed I can't right right yeah let's wind this down with a final thoughts here on this note from Martin Seligman the author of flourish which is another really good book I think I might have that book but I haven't read it I do have a book buying problem so I have a lot of books I haven't read yet I just go for quiet that's that's G to be a home run for that's like an easy win Prett much immediately yeah yeah I feel like we just set up the ball on the tea now you're you're going to be like ah such an it's just a perfect fit but from Seligman mindfulness can foster a unique form of well-being one that isn't merely about momentary pleasure or fleeting happiness but rooted in a profound engagement with our thoughts emotions and actions in real time it's the ability to step back to see thoughts as passing mental events rather than as definitive truths about ourselves by practicing mindfulness we enhance our capacity for self-compassion resilience and acceptance ultimately shaping a life where we can find meaning and joy in the here and now I love that it's a pretty good way to end yeah yeah yeah all right thank you um tell everyone hello the kids Logan what just happened okay everybody until next time ask questions don't accept the status quo well and be curious [Music]