Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Day 13 - Faster, Higher, Stronger... Happier? Summer Sanders on The New Era of Athletes | The Game Inside the Games

Episode Date: August 7, 2024

It’s moments before the biggest competition of your life… you’re rattled by something your coach just said… you have one minute alone to yourself before go time. You look in the mirror… What do you say to yourself to get in the zone – to ground yourself – before the race begins?On Day 13 of The Game Inside The Games, Nastia Liukin and Dr. Michael Gervais sit down with Summer Sanders, a two-time gold medalist and renowned television commentator. They delve into the evolution of the Olympic experience from Summer's 1992 games to the present, exploring the impact of social media, technology, and mental health awareness on athletes today. Summer reflects on the pivotal moments that defined her career, including the three powerful questions she asked herself in the mirror before her gold medal race. They also dig into what makes a great coach, the crucial role of parenting in shaping an athlete’s journey, and what Summer believes is the real “game inside The Games” for Olympians today. Having been to 13 Olympic games, Summer has a unique inside perspective on the state of The Games today, and what it takes for an athlete to excel. This episode is brought to you by Capgemini and Microsoft.Capgemini is building a human-centric AI-driven workplace with Copilot for Microsoft 365._________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Day 13 in Paris. Summer Sanders joins us in studio as we chat about how the games have changed over the years and how athletes handle it differently now. Welcome back, or welcome to The Game Inside the Games on Finding Mastery. I'm Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training, a high-performance psychologist.

And I'm Nastia Lukin, Olympic gold medalist. And we are here in Paris, and in this special series, we unlock the psychology of pivotal often unseen moments that can make or break an athlete's dream. What's it like to focus a lifetime of experience into one performance a single moment? What goes on inside the minds of the brightest stars while the whole world is watching? Welcome back to Paris and let's dive into The Game Inside the Games. Welcome back to Paris and The Game dive into the game inside the games. Welcome back to Paris and the game inside the games presented by Microsoft co-pilot joining us now is the incredible Summer Sanders, two-time

Olympic gold medalist, commentator, television host, the list goes on bringing her insight and wisdom to the game inside the games. Summer, we are so excited to have you here. Well, you know, I'm thrilled. You know, I like sought you out. I wasn't going to wait for you to get in touch with me. I was like, let's talk about this. So I'm thrilled to be here. Awesome. We're so excited to have you. So how many Olympics have you been to? Obviously you compete on the Olympics, but now on the other side of things. So between all of them combined. Yeah. I counted them up. It's 13. Wow. So I was a spectator in 84. That was like the dream maker. My Olympics was 92. And then since then I've either been working, I was cheering for my husband, eight months pregnant

in Torino in 2006. Been working or cheering. And this one is kind of like a work cheer situation. My kids are at that like, awesome. I love the Olympics age, 18 and 16. So I'm trying to soak it up through them. It's been really fun. Oh, very cool. Yeah. What have you seen? And, and over the last three decades, what have you noticed? Yeah. That's different now. That's kind of been part of the evolution of sport at the games. Well, I mean the beat, since we are talking about mental health, I think the beautiful part about these games is now it is just sort of um it's kind of blended into every every single venue we're not just looking at the athlete but we're thinking what are they going through um we're careful with our words maybe a little more careful i think

that's been the biggest change i thought what you were going to say what did you see here and i was going to talk about your venues those volleyball venues are amazing and it's like monster block monster like everybody knows the cheers that you're supposed to do and so on the mental side of things i just think that makes um the athletes really excited to compete when they have a venue that's going off like that um but yeah i think that's the the biggest change is just sort of the conversation. Everybody's a bit more comfortable being more vulnerable, right? Like shedding a few of those layers to really let people know who they are, which helps if you want to have a social following, which seems to be the way to have a career. Well, and that's, you know, even for me, I didn't have social media. So we talked about it a little bit a few days ago just when we saw each other.

But talk a little bit about how maybe for you, if you would be in this situation now with social media, do you think that would have affected you, changed you? So I'm rolling my eyes specifically because I'm so old. Nastia, my Olympic Games, the internet wasn't invented. People did not have cell phones. I mean, the people around us are laughing right now. That's how long ago it was. And also when you look back on it, it was 32 years ago and we didn't have any of this, not even the internet. If you wanted to look where things were, you had to ask someone in Spanish and try to get to the

venue from there. So I don't know. How did the times travel? Meaning that, you know, not time travel, but how did, I'll tell you what I'm, what I'm asking in surfing during those years, we had to wait for like every four months to see for a video drop, a cassette, VHS to drop to see like what people are doing around the planet. And then that was the inspiration. So the inspiration had a lag time. And how fast did times in the pool travel so that you could be inspired by what somebody else might be doing? Interesting. Because now it's instant. Now now it's instant we had fax machines back then i remember getting an announcement that i got a job on mtv through fax like that old fax paper that's like so rough and stuff and i wish i kept it um i don't think they traveled fast and also

but i don't think we lived and breathed by other people's what they were doing. We were more in our head, like in our moment, in our own head, which might not be good for some people, but also we focused on what was the here and the now. And we didn't even think to wonder what other people were kind of doing. We talk a lot about that here. And, you know, are we trying to be the best version of you? Are you trying to be just number one for you know are we trying to be the best version of you are you trying to be just number one for you or are you trying to beat somebody else you know and i think like with what you're saying it's we were less worried about almost everybody else around us and really actually focused on ourselves is that how you felt when you were racing in 92 that was part of the

prescription literally if my doctor was like how are you going to win the gold medal only concentrate on what's going on in between your two lane lines it's just way too complicated and honestly in my final moment before i won my gold medal i was out of my head i just was i was so tired i was angry at my coach and I- Why were you angry? Because he, it was right before the final, it was the final day. I had swum like seven different events. I'd won a bronze, a silver and a gold and a relay and then got in a sixth place. And I tend to joke with my friends. I tend to laugh even in really high stress moments.

And so I was giggling with my girlfriend as I was about to dive in for finals warmup. And he came over to me and I love him. He's the greatest coach. It wasn't his finest moment. And he said, I don't think you're taking this seriously. And I just looked at him and if I could have punched him in the face, I would have. But instead, I swallowed it and I dove in. And then I thought to myself, well, I can't swim like this.

So I have to get my head straight. So I found a room, bathroom by myself and a mirror. And I asked myself three questions in the mirror. I knew nothing of psychology. I just knew I needed to talk to myself. My dad calls it a come to Jesus. And that's what I had. And I said, why do you do it? And then I answered to myself, I do this because I love it. I said, what are you doing it for? Or who are you doing it for? And the answer was selfish and simple. I do it for myself. And then who loves you? And that was the foundation. That was like, nothing's going to change. And maybe going back to your answer of social media and how I would have done with that if I'd always answered with who loves me, who really loves me, who's going to really be there and go out with me afterwards if

I get eighth place out there, right? And that was five people and they were in the stands. It was my mom, my dad, my aunt, my brother, my best girlfriend. And then I went out and swam the most imperfect race and somehow won. But I was happy. I was happy. Yeah. The idea that you could go from, that you could recognize or have the awareness that I'm in two-tenths of a state and have a mechanism to go release and become more clear,

that really is what a good psychological base is about. High awareness and then a set of processes or skills or tactics, in this case mentally to be able to get back to or to find your very best very cool that's a lesson that i would hope most people could hear right now and be like if you're a parent go oh i'm gonna teach that or if you're a coach wait this is great and sometimes let me go back to the coach perspective or if you're a performer in some respect go that I need to answer those three questions. Coaches sometimes get in their own way, as you would recognize. Maybe that wasn't his finest moment to your language. Sometimes they

need to try something. And there's risk there as well. And that's their, and that's their job is to like, try to help us find, you know, how to be in a great state. But if, if he missed the mark that you were, you're casual and you're funny and you're silly or goofy, and that helps you that that would be a pretty big miss in that moment. But maybe for the first time ever, I'm thinking, did he do it on purpose to get me angry enough to then go and get my head in the right space? I just got the chills. I have no idea. He passed away years ago, so I'll never know. But he was so clever and outside the box that I wouldn't put it past him. Yeah. And you wouldn't have necessarily gotten out and looked at yourself in the mirror had that not happened. Oh, no, definitely wouldn't have necessarily gotten out and looked at yourself in the mirror right that not happened right oh no definitely wouldn't have yeah so there's an

experience that i'll share with you is that there was there was a um an athlete a set of athletes that were struggling as a pair and they're really struggling and they couldn't get loose and then prior to having a conversation the two coaches and myself were like, okay, how do we approach this? They're in the ready room or in the post room by themselves. And how do we go in and address this? And the question was, while they're playing tight, do we help open them up and have some space, some freedom? Like, look, you're good. You're okay. People here love you. You know why you're doing this. You know know like open it up that way those questions for them or just sometimes you just need to like rattle the cage a little

bit like knock off the calcium knock the rust off the nail yeah right not of course not physically but like hey this is not you i've watched this okay figure out. You know how to fix this. So coaches tend, I think, go more that direction, but it can work. I needed that when I was doing an ultra. I needed exactly that type of coaching. If you would have come to me and said, or if the coach would have come to me and said, Mike, it's okay. You're going to be okay. I'd be like, I can't hear any of that.

I don't care about that right now. Yeah, that's what I would say too. So when you have a relationship, in this case, you had a relationship with yourself, your three questions. But when you have a relationship with others and yourself, it is materially important to get to the honesty of like, how am I going to move forward?

And when somebody really cares about you, they can help get to that honest place. He could have been the best coach ever in that moment. And here I was like, he missed the mark and it's amazing. But it did work. And there wasn't scar tissue. He didn't do it in a way. Right. That's not acceptable. Yeah. No, no, no. He just tapped me on the shoulder as I was laughing with my friend and simply said, I don't think you're taking this seriously. That was it. And then I dove in the water. And then the rest is history.

You know, I mean, I had my reaction to that and then what I chose to do. But, you know, it's really fun to have you explain it to me that way. Because for the first time ever, I'm thinking of it differently. And I always applaud coaches. You've now explained coaching. And I'm like, being a coach is so complicated. It really is. And, you know, beautifully more complicated now than it was in 92.

My coach was kind of on the cutting edge of recognizing you have to change your coaching for each individual athlete, as opposed to this is the way I coach you all my athletes, you need to conform to me. So he recognized that. I mean, yeah. So that's treating each person as an individual yes and that is somebody who is masterful at the emotional and psychological the relational yeah it's like steve kerr it's like that's why they have a harvard business review

on him and the way he coaches yeah exactly yeah it's pretty cool it's really cool so his whole foundation this is the warrior nba warriors coach is on love and joy it's pretty cool. It's really cool. So his whole foundation, this is the NBA Warriors coach, is on love and joy. It's those two core principles. So he has to animate them to do that. And I do think the best coaches, they need to know technical and tactical, and they need to have a deep understanding of how the person works to know how to support and challenge them. I always say that my dad was my coach.

So to that point, he got to know me more as you know, my dad was my coach. So, you know, to that point, like he got to know me more as an athlete, but just as a person. So it's almost like you trust, I understand my situation was so different than just a normal coach, but you trust that they truly are doing, you know, maybe tapping you on your shoulder or whatever it is because they want the best for you. And especially for me, you know, like I for sure knew, even if I didn't want to do five more beam routines, like I knew that he was telling me to do that because of, you know, he knew what my, you know, final goal was.

Right. So yeah, it's so interesting like hearing that perspective and for you to like just be like eye-opening, you know, for you in this moment. Well, also like, come on, Summer, give coaches some credit. It's not as if my coach, Richard quick who'd coached many olympians just showed up that day and then it was spontaneous like he may have had a plan in place he may have really thought this through and tried to figure out how can i help summer win her individual gold medal that she wants so install the potential that you absolutely had obviously so what was it

that yeah and he may put a lot of work and effort into that one moment and that tiny tap on my shoulder it is amazing hello i'm such a high regard for coaches oh i do too yeah i do i've learned so much from them yeah the ones that are really thoughtful i'm super inspired by yes yeah so you have kids they're in sports correct both correct? Both of them. Yes. So what was that like? And what is it like, I guess, for you now knowing, you know, you know exactly what it takes to be the best at a sport. How do you kind of navigate that on the side as a parent, but also as a former athlete kind of watching them? Nastia, I say this with all honesty and I've said it many times. I never wished athletic greatness on my kids.

I loved my journey. I just never wished it. I wanted to raise Renaissance kids. I wanted them to travel and be able to do study abroad and take all the classes that they want to take no matter time frame. Because when you're a D1 athlete, you can only take certain classes in the morning. I just didn't want them to feel the pressure and the stress. I wanted them to live without that for as long as they possibly could. Possibly that's because of what maybe some of my mental

scar tissue from my Olympic games, but kids are kids and they will find what they want to do and they will push themselves the way they want to. My mom always said her goal as a parent when she saw that I had natural talent was to match my commitment. That's all she ever did. And so that's what we've done. We purposely lived abroad in Spain for a year when they were 10, they turned 11. My son turned 11. My daughter turned 13. Everyone said, you'll never do it. You know why? Sports. And we were like, I can't even imagine that that would keep us from living abroad. And it didn't.

But my son found sports. So my daughter was a rugby player. She loved rugby. She was actually recruited by Harvard, but has chosen to go to the University of Utah. And she's going to do club sports, which I love club sports. and intramural, right? And those communities and the connection that way. And my son is all in on ski racing. He really, really loves it. And of course, the first question I get, my husband's a three-time Olympian in Alpine skiing, is, oh my God, is he going to go to the Olympics? And I try to like downplay it because I don't want to say um like no chance right because he

does have he is really good at skiing but I try to teach people there's really good at skiing and then there's the like I don't know what the percentage is you probably know we call them the freaks they're they're like everybody here like pretty much everybody here is a freak and they're so good just to get here for the let's call it the i don't know the big 15 countries or something like you know they're freaks like what they can do and what how they've committed themselves but mentally yeah yeah and i'm not saying they're born that way but the commitment matched you know to their talent yeah is an extraordinary think uh extraordinary model yes it's very rare that people push this far in you have to be so

vulnerable to take most of your chips and say this is where i'm going to put them and you're putting them at a very young age so the risk is really high when you've chipped all in and you know what if it's not enough yeah and so and what i think the real risk is that you arrive at the games you have chipped in that you might not be able to find your best it's not necessarily about meddling when when athletes are really honest it's like i came up short. I couldn't get it done, whether it was a medal or not. I tightened up. I was scared. I let the stress run the show rather than me run the stress. And you guys have both talked about how stressful the games are. How was your stress? Oh, my stress was off the charts. It was back in the day.

I just have to revisit really quickly with my son just to say he loves his sport. And every year I ask him, is this what you want to do? Is this what you want? I check in with him and he just loves it. And there's disappointment, but he's in it, right? So I just support that. And whatever he chooses to do, I'm all in. This is great.

Stress level in 92 was off the charts. I qualified in four individual events and a relay. And therefore, they said I have the chance to win five gold medals. Right? How sweet of them. You just have to be on deck. Yeah. Just be perfect.

And you've got it. I have to be like above perfect, exceptional. And everybody else has to have like their worst day. Right. In all five. Right. So, yeah, so I think I started to listen to it. I was 19.

And, you know, back then I think 19 is a little different than 19 of today. Meaning that 19 then was older or younger? I think it was a little bit younger maybe. We just didn't have. Yeah, I was 18. So very similar. Yeah. It wasn't like like i feel like kids

grow up like so much quicker maybe these days i don't know or they see like now these kids see all these athletes and what they're doing and every year maybe they have a better understanding i don't know social media yes yes yes so i started to hear it and listen to it and i think it sunk in i thought oh maybe i can and so with my first medal, it was bronze. And the reporter afterwards said, you must be so disappointed. And I really loved my bronze. And I broke an American record. It was Tracy Calkins' American record, who was my hero.

So yeah, the stress built up with each kind of- How did the way she framed it, before you keep going on the stress, how did the way she framed it impact your narrative? How did the question, how it impact your narrative how how did the question how it was her answer you must be yeah the question you must be so disappointed with a bronze yes um yes i felt at that time so the first time it happened this is a great question because i do feel like the first time it happened i almost didn't even hear him i was like uh and i felt bad for him too because I thought oh they must have said that in his ear ask her if she's disappointed you had that awareness at 19 I did

because I wanted to get into television so I knew all about TV yeah so I thought you're playing two games he was a swimmer and so I thought oh well he probably just didn't know what else to ask and so I told him to say that right yeah and so I authentically was like oh no no no I need to share this with you this This feeling of like, no, bronze is so great. I just, you know, Tracy

Coggins. But then it went to my silver and then it was, again, you must be so disappointed. And that's when it kind of stung a little bit. And I thought, oh, wait a second. Do people, are people disappointed? Because, you know, know no news back home no newspapers back home um so that's when the stress kind of piled on and also i took my mental game very seriously i really refocused as a team in that time in the 90s with our competition knowing that there was nothing you could do to your body um that would make you stronger once you got on the blocks because we felt like 90% of it was mental. And at that point, I didn't think you could take anything that would make you like stronger mentally. We just had to work on it. So I worked

so hard mentally that I found I was mentally exhausted more than physically exhausted. And I think that's what made it more stressful. There you go. Yeah. Similar story. Like when we, it's so interesting when you win a silver medal and how it's such a disappointment. And to your point, it's, you feel almost not enough. You feel like you're not loved. You feel like you're not supported because you missed out on the gold. And then I think when you do win the gold, you know, and you see the praise and you feel the love and you feel that. So that's what feels like success, you know? And I think that's the difference with, you know, at least for me and not to put words

in your mouth, but it still is winning a silver medal. Like a medal will never, and that's what we talk about. A medal will never like justify or, you know, solidify who you are as a human. But because like that is our goal and like the Olympics, it's so special. what we talk about a medal will never like justify or you know solidify who you are as a human but because like that is our goal and like the olympics it's so special and so when you're able to do that and you feel the praise and you see that then moving on in that transition too you almost feel like you're never quite going to be you know quote unquote good enough because wait i can't ever win the olympical medal anymore because i don't do that anymore. Right. So yeah. I purposefully bring my bronze and my silver out to show people and I tell them how special

they are to me. And going back to your very first question, what's the biggest change I've seen? I'm going to change the answer. I think now we celebrate, we just celebrate Olympism. We celebrate these athletes being at the Olympics and we celebrate a bronze and we celebrate a silver. I don't think we will ever see. You must be so disappointed after somebody wins any color of a medal. Last night I was talking to an athlete from the Netherlands and I asked, how are the games going?

Or how did the games go? Because they had just wrapped up in her sport. And she says, amazing. And I said said how to go for you for your sport and she said amazing i took a fourth i did so well it's awesome so i maybe you can get this done i can't get this done i would love to see a pr next to everyone's time so you come in eighth in the world right but you pr yeah right at the olympic games That's to celebrate. Yeah. Big time to celebrate.

Let's do that. Let's make that happen. I would love to see that. Because I personally would too. I'm obsessed with canoe and kayak. And I want to know, I mean, I know every run is different, but I want to know, I can kind of see where they've messed up, but I want to know if that time was good. Was that a great time for you?

Did you really leave it out on the mat or wherever it was? Let's do that. Okay. Two part question as we wrap up here. time for you did you really leave it out you know on the mat or wherever it was yeah okay uh two part question as we wrap up here the first is um what is what is really um stood out for you above everything else at the games at this particular games maybe it was a storyline maybe it was something that you personally experienced i have loved the crowd i always get worried um i don't want people to be so offended that there are a lot of americans over here we love the olympic games we travel like we are from the university of nebraska we are a

traveling country um so we show up and i i i've seen so many french people that have gotten into the spirit more and more and more. And I think one of my favorite moments was just watching people in the stands who, when the athletics shut down, when Leon Marchand was winning his final gold medal, because everyone in the stands was watching it on their phone and they were cheering. So did you know this? No. They had to stop the meet. There was a track competition. The gun was ready to go off they couldn't get the crowd silent because everyone was cheering for leon marchand i i mean it gives me the goosebumps i

just love when the home country gets the fever i saw it in london they weren't really excited when we showed up in the beginning but boy mo farah went off and all of a sudden they had their Olympic hero. And now we've got this. And so that's one of my takeaways. And one of always my favorite things is when the home country becomes so in love with their Olympians. Very cool. Part two. What does the game inside the games mean to you oh i'd have to think about that one that's a tough one the game inside the games the first thing i think of is i worry that some of these athletes are wondering that the game inside the game is how to monetize what they've done at the games am i the only one to say that no um yes oh gosh i've when i hear you say it i go yeah i see that nobody's brought that no one's brought it up but that's it's that's the game inside the game and i worry for them so i say to every single olympian and brian boitano and i thought of this

but you will go through the olympic blues and it is very real whether you won seven golds or you didn't even finish your heats whatever sorry to interrupt but even if you're just here yes part of it because going home you know it's you're in the system and this energy and the crowds and all that so no matter what your participation is you will have a downer absolutely and it's probably going to happen around six weeks from now so it's sort of like that injury where it doesn't really hurt the next day. It's like two days later. So it's sort of just this extended period. Make sure you have people to call.

Make sure to check in with people and have that route, that focus. I'm working with this company called Guild, which teamed up with Team USA, and they do online education and that's just a great way like get some classes under your belt start to focus on something else so um yeah i like that answer great wisdom great insight well done thank you this is like a real treat for me to sit down with two of you olympic gold medalists that have won at the highest level and have great insights care about being a global citizen and are giving back to the next generation i want to say thank you both thank you my pleasure yeah awesome my pleasure

love you nastia today's ai insights are brought to you by capgemini and microsoft capgemini is building a human-centric ai AI-driven workplace with Copilot for Microsoft 365. We talked to Summer Sanders about how different the games and the world were when she competed in 1992. Hey, Copilot, to help paint the picture, can you outline some of the main differences in the world between 1992 and now? Sure, Nastia. To set the scene in 1992, people communicated through landlines, letters, and fax machines. The Cold War had just ended. Michael Jordan led the Dream Team to a gold medal in the 1992 Games. Those are great reference points. Certainly two of them that were out of my mind.

So those are great. And what strikes me is that there's so much more distraction and how important it is right now for these games to work from the inside out, to train your mind, to be able to be in the present moment with all the noise of the world, all the access that we have to information, to know which information is going to serve you well and how to trust your body of work and focus your mind in the present moment. Maybe now more than ever. Yeah, I completely agree. The noise is louder than perhaps it's ever been.

Thanks, Mike. And we will see all of you tomorrow from Paris on the game inside the games.