High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 102: The Mental Athlete with Dr. Kay Porter, Porter Performance Systems

Episode Date: April 20, 2017

Dr. Kay Porter owns Porter Performance Systems, a sports and organizational counseling firm in Eugene, Oregon. She teaches mental training techniques to athletes, teams, businesses, and school districts. She has also worked as a sport psychology consultant to the University of Oregon Athletic Department, USA Track and Field, and the U.S. Tennis Association. She is the author of The Mental Athlete: Inner Training for Peak Performance and Visual Athletics (my favorite imagery book!). In this interview, she talks extensively about her philosophy of using energy psychology within the framework of mental training. She also shares her refocusing technique which includes 3 parts: 1) blinking, 2) 3 deep breaths, and 3) looking left to right. You can follow Kay on Twitter @KayPorter or find her at thementalathlete.com.

Welcome to High Performance Mindset with Dr. Sindra Kampoff. Do you want to reach your full potential, live a life of passion, go after your dreams? Each week we bring you strategies and interviews to help you ignite your mindset. Let's bring on Sindra. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. This is your host, Sindra Kampoff, and I'm grateful that you're here ready to listen to an interview with Dr. Kay Porter. Now, first, I want to thank all of you who reached out to me on Monday. On Monday, I had the incredible privilege of running the 121st Boston Marathon. It was actually my fifth Boston Marathon, my 15th marathon overall. But I got really choked up after this race. I think, you know,

this is something so incredibly special about the Boston Marathon, the way that the community comes together, the way the state comes together. And there's so many times throughout the race where three or four people deep just cheering as loudly as they can, supporting you, giving you ice, water, popsicles, anything that you need. And my favorite point of this race in particular was Wellesley College. And I always love Wellesley, but this time I really tried to savor it and just take it all in. And there were probably 500 college girls just outside along the course near Wellesley. They all had their hands out with these signs. I probably slept 150 hands through Wellesley College.

That helped me just fuel me for three or four miles later. So I just want to thank all of the volunteers, 9,000 volunteers for 30,000 runners. An incredible, incredible race. So if you have an opportunity to go and watch, be a spectator, or if you have the awesome opportunity to run, it's definitely something that you should take in. And I have a new respect for the distance, even though I ran this 15 times. But afterwards, I'm having a hard time walking today.

Having to go through going downstairs sideways, actually. So just want to thank again, all of those people out there at the Bossa Marathon on Monday. Congratulations to those runners who are listening who finished it. So let's move on to the interview with Dr. Kay Porter. I'm going to start with an iTunes review. And this iTunes review is from The Running Pastor. The Running Pastor said this, Dr. Cinder Kampoff is passionate about helping her listeners grow to be the best possible version of themselves. You know it, Running Pastor.

And she provides very down-to-earth and practical advice to help you grow and become the person that you want yourself to be. Her podcasts help me focus on the little things that I can do each day to be ready to face any challenge that comes my way. As a dad of two teenage girls, I'm also putting these tools into practice that she provides in that way. So Running Pastor, I just want to thank you so much for heading over to iTunes and for giving us a five-star review over there. It helps us reach more and more people each week. So grateful for you, the running pastor. Now I shared with you on the last couple of interviews that my goal is to

double the downloads of this podcast in 100 days. I so appreciate all of your help in helping us achieve that goal so that we can reach more and more people each and every week. So if you could do this for us, one of three things. If you could tweet about the podcast or post it on social media, maybe an episode that you found particularly helpful, that would be awesome. Maybe post a quote that you liked. Or you could head over to iTunes or Stitcher Radio and provide us a review over there. Or tell a friend about a podcast.

So we'd really be grateful if you could do one of those three things to help grow the podcast and help us keep these amazing interviews free. So today we're celebrating 102 episodes. Wow, pretty amazing. And today's interview is with Dr. Kay Porter, who owns Porter Performance Systems, a sport and organizational counseling firm in Eugene, Oregon. She teaches mental training techniques to athletes, teams, businesses, and school districts.

And she's also worked as a sports psychology consultant to the University of Oregon Athletic Department, USA Track and Field, and the U.S. Tennis Association. She is the author of The Mental Athlete and Visual Athletics, which is actually one of my favorite imagery books that provides incredible imagery scripts. So in this interview, she talks about several different things. She talks extensively about her philosophy of using energy psychology within her framework of mental training. So that's really interesting.

And then there are three things that I encourage you to listen for. She talked about what three things to do after performance. She also shares the different refocusing techniques you can use to get your attention on what really matters most. And then she talks about how there is no such thing as failure-only feedback. We'd love to hear from you. If you head over to Twitter, you can send us a tweet. Kay's Twitter handle is DrKayPorter and mine is at Mentally underscore Strong. So love to hear

from you in terms of what stood out to you about this interview. So without further ado, let's bring on Kay. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. I'd like to welcome k porter here she's joining us from eugene oregon how are you doing k great raining as usual here and it's windy here we got like 30 mile an hour winds so lots of things we can't control so i'm excited to interview you today on the podcast and to get us started can you just tell us a little bit about your passion and what you do? Yes. You know, I love what I do. And I've been doing sports psychology consulting and business consulting for like 30 years. And it's the first thing, I've been a lot of other things. I was a computer programmer, systems analyst. I did all this weird stuff and I got tired of things and this is my last career. I love it and it's always interesting and I love the athletes and the business people

that I work with and it's very invigorating. So I love it a lot. Well, tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are in your career. I mean, 30 years of doing this in terms of performance psychology. So how'd you get there? Weirdly, I was a gerontology professor at the University of Oregon, for goodness sakes. And I was a distance runner. And so I had a bunch of coaches that I knew and they, and I was even back then into visualization and imagery and they wanted me to work with their teams and so I worked with a bunch of the teams at the UFO before they had anybody in their athletic department or anything like that so that's how I got started then I quit being a professor and I went into private practice and so that's what I've done ever since. Oh, that's awesome. So 30 years in private practice? Yep, 32 now.

32 years. Yep. And always in Eugene? Yes. Yes. I love Oregon very much, and I love hiking here, and it's a gorgeous place. So I've been here since 1970, actually. 1970.

Wow, that sounds awesome. Well, you know, Kay, I know you have an opportunity to work with some of the nation's best. And so I'm thinking about your work with USA Track and Field and even U.S. Tennis Association. What do you see distinguishes the best athletes from others? And I know you've done some work with businesses and at school districts. So we could maybe even make this a little bit more broader. What do you see that the best do differently? Well, I think that sometimes the best do these things automatically. Nobody has taught them how to do it. They just automatically visualize or

image things. Very interesting. You know, they're not schooled in it, but they know how to do it. And it just sort of comes naturally to them. The good news is that people who don't do it naturally can be taught and they can learn these techniques. And that's what's so cool about it. Yeah. And so you see that the best use visualization, they've just learned it on their own. Do you think that it's just something innate within them?

Or tell us a little bit more about your perspective on that. What I find interesting is that most of them have a pretty positive attitude. They're able to let go of mistakes easily and refocus. And that's one of the most important things is when you screw up, you let it go and you refocus and you do it again. I've never met Tiger Woods, but I was always fascinated in his early career how he could hit the worst shot in the world and recover from it and i think you know there was a really interesting book a long time ago about it was called think like tiger and it was about how he was trained by his father and a psychologist, actually, that was his father's friend.

And he went and meditated with monks because his mom was a Thai Buddhist. And so he had that training early on, and you could really see it in his golf game and the focus and concentration and letting go that he was able to do. Absolutely. So the best use visualization to imagine success and have a positive attitude. And the third, they let go of mistakes. They can move on really quickly. Yes. Yeah. You know, I think of those three things. I think letting go of mistakes quickly

is something that I see people really struggle with. You give us a little insight in how you might work with somebody in terms of letting go of the mistake. Well, you know, I do something called energy psychology, which is certainly not taught in universities. And most professors would go, oh, weird stuff. But in private practice, you do a lot of weird stuff to see if it works or not. Absolutely. So I've been doing energy psychology for a long time which includes imagery and visualization but it also includes something called eft which is emotional freedom technique and there are these techniques that you can do where you tap different meridians in the body, which is another discussion altogether, but they're energy

fields in the body. You tap those, you blink. I do rapid eye therapy to release trauma or obsessive thoughts, et cetera. And so this is, I believe, the cutting edge, certainly in psychotherapy, but also the cutting edge in sports psychology. And I just don't think that many people are doing it yet. One of the things that was interesting, I haven't worked with a guy named Devin Allen who is, let's see, he won the NCAAs and the U.S. trials in the 110 hurdles and he's from the University of Oregon and at the Olympics he was standing in the tunnel and I saw him tapping his chest I wondered who taught him how to do that and so he was a guest speaker for the Oregon Track Club last month and so I asked him afterwards where'd you learn?

What were you doing? And he said, my coach in high school taught me to do that. I'm going, awesome. Teach it really here at the university as far as I know. Well, and I've been to a few events. A guy named Brendan Burchard, I went to one of his events and he had us like tap above our eyes and below our eyes. Yes. And then around our ears. Is this the kind of tapping you're talking about? Yeah.

Yeah. I've seen his things online. I've never looked at any of his videos. But yes, that's emotional freedom technique. EFT is what he was teaching. Nice. I just learned something there. EFT, that's what it's called.

Well, Kay, what do you see your clients struggle with mentally? Letting go of the mistakes and refocusing, getting nervous. It depends on, you know, it really depends on the sport, the age of the client, a lot of different things. But mostly it's nervousness either before an event or during an event, letting go of mistakes, learning how to visualize the course, and like golf course, what you want to do, how to do that. But mostly the first two, just the nervousness, pre-competition, anxiety is what I would call it, and letting go of mistakes, refocusing and moving on. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And when you think about how you might help your clients with anxiety or pre-competition

anxiety, and I'm sure if some people are listening and saying, oh yeah, you know, I have some people on my team if they're coaches who struggle with anxiety or they might struggle with it themselves, what kind of advice or tips would you give them? Well, one of the things that I do with people is some of the tapping stuff and the blinking stuff. And so something that I use is a refocusing technique, which is blinking and breathing and balancing the left and right brain. And so what that basically is, is looking, and I tell people never to do this in front of other people because it looks so weird. And don't do it in front of your teammates. I mean, when I work with a team, they laugh and, you know, they make fun of me and stuff, but it's

like some of them actually use it. But, you know, I say, go in the restroom and do it in the stall or something. But anyway, the refocusing technique is basically maybe three to four seconds of rapid blinking, eye blinking, and then squeezing your eyes shut and wide open three or four times, and then three deep breaths, and then looking left to right and so what that does is the blinking releases this is all based on rapid eye movement from sleep cycles actually but it's artificially created when we're awake by doing these techniques so it releases the thoughts or the images then you oxygenate your system with the deep breaths. And then looking side to side, keeping your head straight, you're balancing your left and right

brain. It's awesome. It's super simple. And I teach it to every one of my clients, just about, whether they're athletes or business people or students or whoever. And tell us a few success stories about using this technique. Let's see. Well, golf, for one thing, I can think of one guy, when he made mistakes, this is quite current, when he made mistakes, he would just do that and be able to refocus completely and let go of it.

Also, I used it with a pole va fog altar who would stand at the end of the runway and he would blink a little bit and then he would breathe into his solar plexus, which is above your waist and below your heart center. And he'd just breathe in there three times and then he'd look at the runway and then, because it was just like clearing his mind and then he'd look at the runway and then because it was just like clearing his mind and they'd look at the runway and then take off that's awesome and you know i'm thinking i'm just putting my mind and visualizing actually you know him standing on the runway and that's something that you can easily do on the golf course or on the runway and you don't look crazy you know you just you're blinking

and breathing and looking left or right it looks pretty natural it does yeah for sure yeah golf or anything you know one of the books that I found rather interesting it's it's pretty I don't remember what year it came out it's sort of old but it's's by Bob Rotella, and it's called The Unstoppable Golfer, and I really liked what he said. I like the book because he's a very applied guy, and so it's mostly stories and what he tells people and so forth, but it was like he told the golfer to stop obsessing about, no, he didn't't use that word but stop worrying about his technique and everything like that it was mainly you know look at the hole or look where you're going to hit it and hit it and let it roll you know i mean and your body takes over because you have all that

training and if you can get out of your own way with all those technique thoughts and just let your body take over, then, and guy won British Open or whatever it was, 2011, I think it was, that he was talking about. His books are really good and really helpful. So if anybody listening wants to check those out, they're Bob Rotello's books. Hey, I'm thinking about, you know, is there a topic or a technique you've always covered? And you've shared a few of those today, but one that you haven't really talked a lot about is visualization. I know you wrote a book, Visual Athletics. I was telling you before we started recording the call, I have two copies. That's how much I love the book. And I know there are some used copies on Amazon right now, but tell us about imagery and the power that you

see of imagery. Oh, it's so powerful. Yeah, that's a cult classic. That's what I call it, a cult classic. The book? I never promote it, so I don't know how many copies are out there, but I have no idea. Maybe a thousand or two. I don't know. Not very many. I might be the only one that has two copies huh well except me but uh it was what it is is a bunch of scripts for a lot of different um sports and what i did with those scripts is actually i went into sound studio and i recorded all of them and they're on my website. You can download them. They're MP3 files and they're about 10 to 15 minutes a piece. And I have a very relaxing voice.

And so when you listen to them, you need to sit in a chair as opposed to lie down because I promise you, you'll be asleep in five minutes because part of visualization, at least when you're sitting and visualizing your sport or whatever you're doing one of the aspects is relaxation and that way it goes in deeper so and imagery really visualization is sort of a catch word but what it really is is imagery where you have all all your senses your your kinesthetic senses you know your feelings your thoughts um your images your sounds whatever they are one of the things that and i worked a lot i actually am starting to work with golfers again but uh one kid years ago that i worked with at the U of O was on the golf team

and we're out there and I, I like to go out on the golf course with him and we're out there and I'm having him close his eyes and tell me what he sees. And he goes gray. It's like, and I found out, I mean, usually I test people for this,

but I, he slipped by me for some reason. He was totally auditory. Oh, sure. You know, so something like that. You have to use the auditory and kinesthetic cues as opposed to visual cues because he didn't have any. It was just too funny.

And so the MP3 files that you have on your website could help just in terms of hearing the auditory and being able to give you some direction in terms of what you should do. Oh, yes. Yeah. And they're in detail in terms of the sport, whatever it is. There's a couple, well, there's maybe four or five that are general, like goal achievement, which can be for any sport, healing injury and dealing with pain. Those are sort of general. There's one about going to sleep.

There's one about stress reduction. But most of them are specific sports. And I consulted with a bunch of the coaches who coach these different things you know so they're they're quite helpful i think one of the best golf um visualizations i've ever seen is much better than mine actually because bob rotel is in that book in the unstoppable golfer it's really nicely written and uh it's excellent so so so the the thing about that you want to do about having an mp3 file you can write your own visualization and record it now it's so easy um some people don't like to hear their own voices but some people do but what it's good for

is that you just close your eyes and you're just listening to it and you're imaging you're feeling you're going through this whole thing with the coolest thing that I didn't have any idea when I first started doing visualizations is that it actually trains your mind to concentrate and focus because if you think about 25 different things in 10 minutes, you know that you're not focusing and concentrating. Your mind is flying around. And so one of the things about listening to these is that when you go,

oh, I'm off somewhere, you know, thinking about what I'm going to have for dinner, you bring your mind back to my voice. And so that's how people train themselves to focus and concentrate too, which was a byproduct. I had no idea until people kept saying that. And then some of the kids that I worked with early on would go, is this supposed to change my life or help in my life too? I'm going, well, why do you ask that? And he says, oh, because I'm getting along better with my parents and my girlfriend and I feel better. And I was just stunned, you know,

it's like, yes, awesome. Yeah. That shows you the power of your work. Kate, how often would you say that we should listen to the MP3s or just, you know, use imagery on our own? Like how often would you say, you know know that you do you encourage your clients to do that a couple times a week and i don't want them to do it well it depends on how involved they get um i certainly don't want them to do it the day of necessarily to listen to it um because when we listen to a lot of times we get pretty energetically involved. And so I would rather they do it, you know, the day before, the night before, preferably the day before and not the day of.

And one of the things I've had tennis players do, and not necessarily listening to the MP3s, but just, and this is what I did when i was growing up before visualization was ever coined a term or anything but my coach had me lie in bed uh at night before i went to sleep for maybe 10 minutes and just because i'm a really good visualizer i visual uh kinesthetic mostly and i would visualize the court, and I would imagine hitting my back hand in different places, because that's what I was trying to strengthen, you know, and 10 minutes maybe, or five minutes, because you do go to sleep, you know, when you start doing that, but anybody can do it. It's a little short verse, and you can do it on the golf course looking where you want to hit

that ball. How does this relate to business leaders or entrepreneurs? And I'm thinking about perhaps your MP3 imagery script on just goal attainment, you know, that could apply. But just tell us how you might encourage a business leader or entrepreneur to use imagery. I'll tell you how I've used it. Okay, that's perfect. But I had a talk in Boston one time for 1,500 people, and I was the dinner speaker, which is always hard to do because people have been drinking and they're not listening and all that stuff. But what I did was I had all my, you know, what I was going to say, and I had, I don't memorize what I'm going to say.

I just speak extemporaneously. But I knew what I'm going to say. I just speak extemporaneously, but I knew what I was going to say. And so my visualization was about eating dinner, talking to my seat mates, not, you know, and being in my, being in the moment. Oh, that's one of the things that I didn't mention at all, hardly, but being in the moment, being in the moment, being in the moment. And so I just visualized myself, you know, being strong and people wanting to hear what I had to say. And then when I got there, I just made myself be in the moment. So I never got nervous. I didn't even get nervous when I stood up in front of, you know, at the podium in front of all those people. But that being in the moment is one of the most powerful things for not getting nervous.

Absolutely. Yeah, what would you tell people who are like, well, yeah, that's pretty hard to stay in the moment, you know, how did you train yourself to do that? Well, you know, being a therapist has helped me a lot because I am present for that person. I'm not thinking about what I'm going to do later. I'm not thinking about dinner. I'm not thinking about what I'm going to do later. I'm not thinking about dinner. I'm not thinking about anything except what they're telling me. And maybe I'll think about it.

Okay, let's see. I wonder if I can do this with them. But I am totally present. And so, I mean, that's why mindfulness is such a hot topic right now in sports psychology and just in general for the general population is mindfulness. You know, being present is part of mindfulness and paying attention. And instead of looking at your phone as you're walking across campus or in my Pilates class, and I actually take one at the university with a friend of mine, and she's always telling the people,

stand up straight. I mean, everybody's going around as a question mark looking down at their phone it's killing their necks they're young and they don't notice but i mean it's really important to be aware of your surroundings be present yeah and there's a lot of ways that we can use mindfulness and one of those exactly like you're just saying is just being where your feet are and noticing what's going on around you and so many times we're distracted or into our phones or thinking about what we have to do next or yes exactly instead of just being where we are i mean you know you don't have to do it 24 7 but i mean you know for five minutes when you're walking

walking down the street you know breathing hopefully breathing the fresh air or, you know, looking at the flowers or whatever. It's just being here now, which was a very old book years ago. Be here now. Are there any other ways that you help your clients train mindfulness or use a mindful approach? Right now, I have a bunch of kids in high school that I'm working with, golfers and tennis players, individually. It's pretty hard to get them to do any kind of mindfulness stuff.

But, you know, I mean, I can get them on, get them on the golf course or get them on the tennis court. And the mindfulness part is letting go mainly of that mistake or letting go of a good point go you know feel good about it and then refocus so that's the closest we come actually it is it is sometimes really hard to train and sometimes maybe it might not seem as cool or new age, you know. I know, that's a bad rap. Even in Pilates class, you know, when my friend gets a little woo-woo,

you know, the kids roll their eyes and laugh. Sure, sure. New agey. New agey. Well, okay, tell us a little bit about why you do what you do. I mean, you've given us some good strategies and tips in terms of, you know, how you do it. But, you know, we know that just in performance psychology in general, knowing why you do what you do is a really powerful motivator. So why do you keep on doing this after 35 years? Oh, because it's always new and different. You know, even if it's with regular clients who have i i see people who are what what i would call the worried well who you know they don't have any kind of diagnosis fortunately i mean they're getting divorced or they're going back

to school they lost their job or whatever it is it's just you know natural problems but it's very uplifting to work with people and i don't know a lot about positive psychology i've never really studied that or anything but what i do in the sports psychology techniques is positive and the kids are positive you know i mean uh well kids i mean athletes are positive and if they're not i teach them how to be, you know, that negative mindset. One thing that you asked me is about things people struggle with. Part of it is the verbal negative things that they say to themselves, you know, just putting themselves down all the time. So definitely breaking that habit.

You know, I'm sort of the queen of reframing. And I think that's a really good thing to do because what it is, is it adopts a learning mindfulness, I think of, what am I supposed to be learning from this? Like if somebody has a horrible round of golf and we look for what worked, what didn't, and what did he learn from that? Or what did she learn from that? And what would they do differently if they had it to do over again? So it's very uplifting. I love the people I work with. They're interesting. They want to change. They want to get better. And so it's infinitely fascinating to me to work with people. I just love it still. That's excellent. That's excellent. I liked what you said in terms of after the performance,

thinking about three things, you know, what worked, what didn't, and what can I learn? Kay, you were just talking a little bit about reframing and addressing the verbal negative self-talk. And you're right that, you know, like we wouldn't typically say what, you know, what we say in our mind, we wouldn't say it out loud, right? Exactly. We can be our own worst critic.

So can you tell us a little bit about like how you might teach your clients how to address that negative voice in your head? Yeah. Part of it, what I call, I mean, you know, because, and the kids laugh, you know, because I'm like, oh, you probably say, oh, you suck, or you're stupid, blah, blah, blah, you know, or whatever. And they go, yes. What I tell them to do is to imagine a positive coach internally. So they have this inner coach.

But the inner coach only motivates them or encourages them. So that's one way of breaking it. You know, I mean, in the mental athlete, there's a section about affirmations and the negative things we say to ourselves and then rewriting something in a positive frame like that. So that helps. It's, you know, it's mainly just them breaking a bad habit of putting themselves down all the time and, you know, throwing your rackets or throwing your golf club or something like that. I mean, I break that really quick.

Yeah. So self-talk you see is a negative, bad habit. And one way to address that is to imagine a positive coach internally. Yes. It's motivating you or only giving you positive instructions. Yes. So it's like, come on, you can do it. You know, you can do it. You've trained hard for this. And so sometimes people have a better ability to imagine somebody else saying that to them than them saying that to themselves. I mean, you can say it to yourself. My PR in the marathon many years ago when I was running was 329 in San Francisco. And unfortunately, my affirmation that i used was keep on motoring on or something i don't know it wasn't the best positive affirmation i could think of but it kept me moving and i never stopped

walking to walk so that's excellent it's like whatever works i i have several mantras or affirmations when i run as well and one of of the times I remember running the Omaha marathon and, and I was like, you know, I knew it was going to be hard. So I actually had four statements written on my arm and marker six miles. I only repeated those to myself and that's all. Yeah, that's good. Whatever works. Yeah, it worked. I actually won the race. And there was a point where right before I started doing that, I wanted to give up.

So it does work. It keeps you going for sure. For sure. It keeps you going. So, Kay, let's talk about yourself, the next few questions. And one of the questions I want to ask you is about a time that you failed. And the reason I want you to share that story is because just to normalize failure and so that we can see failure in terms of having a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset. So tell us about a time that didn't go so well for you personally, or you can think of one of your clients, but you know, tell us about a time that you failed and what you learned from it. Oh my, well, i can think of three or four mostly the failures i

can think of are bomb talks it didn't go over very well horrifying humiliating and like it's oh well move on one of them was and the hardest was it wasn't uh sports peers, but it was a local talk that I gave to, gosh, what were they? They were like psychologists and counselors and things. They were very, you know, they're a hard group. Mainly, I just thought, well, what I learned was I had to, I was too disconnected from them, the way the thing was set up, and I was too disconnected from them the way the thing was set up and I was too far away and so I should have you know gotten off of uh being so disconnected and and been you know within the group and in front of it closer that would have helped and I it's been too long now I

can't remember all the content that it was but that was horrible and then let's see one of the things that i learned how to do um i used to do some stuff at the forest service and i was would go to different western states and do things and i remember there was some heckler and it's a huge bunch of people there are four or five hundred of them um and there was some guy that was just giving me a huge bunch of people. There were 400 or 500 of them. And there was some guy that was just giving me such a hard time. He was asking me all these questions. And I just, this should be self-evident, but anyway, it occurred to me to say, that's a really good question, and I'd like to answer it in detail. Could you come up to me after we finish talking and and talk to me they

never do by the way sure sometimes they do but i thought man that's that was really and this was you know i never had any really training in how to give presentations i mean as a professor so i just you know learned how to do stuff but one of the things about failure that I would call it, in a personal growth workshop that I took years ago, one of the statements was, there is no failure, only feedback. I thought that was one of the best statements or affirmations that I have ever heard, because it takes away the stigma of failure, and it is feedback. And so that's what I have ever heard because it takes away the stigma of failure and it is feedback. And so that's what I have these kids, you know, what did you learn? How would you do it differently? You take advantage of that feedback. Absolutely. I heard somebody else

refer to it today is that we should approach new things that we're doing as an experiment so that, you know, that we don't see failure even as a possibility. So I like that idea. There's not failure, but only feedback. All right. So Kay, one question I have for you is, I know you're looking at the top 10 traits of high performers in front of you. Tell us about which one you think is most related to high performance. And I'm sure that it's probably tough because all of them are supported in our field in some way. But is there anything that really sticks out to you in terms of the people that you've worked with, you know, the pro athletes, the elite athletes, the business leaders, anything that you see that

they do really well? Yeah. Three and seven, both. Three is they master their thinking patterns. And we've been talking about that a lot, of how they change their thinking patterns. In fact, currently, I'm working with an executive who's working with this and trying to be more positive in the way that he's working with his staff and so forth. So I think that's a really important thing. I mean, he realized that he kept saying in his mind, not out loud, oh, we can't do that. That's not a good thing to think all the time. And so three would be one. And seven, they are comfortable being uncomfortable. And I think that's really an interesting concept of impersonal growth, of creating comfort wherever you are. And when I first started in the field and I was uncomfortable with

professional women sometimes that I was working with in groups. And let's see, what was my affirmation? I am comfortable in any social situation. Well, the universe served up some really horrible things for me, but it made me comfortable anywhere. One of the times I was giving a talk at the Pittsburgh Marathon and so I had taken my run and I went to the I think it was a Pittsburgh plate glass building or something and the buzzer goes off and all these people dressed to the hilt were coming out it was 12 o'clock and they were all coming

out of the building and I was in my I was sweaty sweaty. I was in my running tights and shirt. And I kept saying that affirmation over and over again. So I get up to the office and I talked to the race director and he had somebody with him who I had been talking to on the phone for several months about trying to get on some program or something. I'm going, hi, glad to meet you. But you feel comfortable because that was your affirmation. I know. It's too funny. It's like, be careful what you ask for, honestly. That's excellent. All right. So Kay, let's go to a few quick questions. We know that you have the visual athletics book that we've already mentioned that has guided visualizations.

The mental athletes, another book that you wrote, no, both of those are still available on Amazon. And then you also mentioned the unstoppable golfer by Barbara Tella. Is there any other book or resource that you'd recommend the audience check out? But actually the middle athlete in his lifetime,

it's had four, three or four incarnations publishing-wise, and it's sold about 90,000 copies altogether, which is for a teeny little sports psychology niche, is quite a few.

Yeah, that's excellent. And it's been out of print for a while now. It's quite a few. Yeah, that's excellent. You know, and it's been out of print for a while now. It's probably, I don't know how people see it, you know, but I was really happy that it's sort of one of my legacies of leaving something behind in addition to just working with people, you know. So I'm really proud of that. Visual Athletics is a really great book but it just never got printed much it's too bad yeah it is a great book and if anybody's interested in the

the written visualizations um that's the book that has that again the mental athlete is an excellent book as well and you know athlete actually has uh probably about 20 visualizations in it it's got quite a few. Excellent. Excellent. And then you mentioned the MP3s that people can find on your website. A few quick questions before we close up. And then what advice would you have for those high performers who are listening? So those people who are working to reach their best more often, do you have a final message for them, Kay?

Yes. Trust yourself. Trust your training. Let go of mistakes. Refocus. And enjoy your successes before you go on to the next goal. Acknowledge yourself. Acknowledge those successes. Acknowledge if you're physically an athlete athlete you know thank your body in fact thank your anybody thank your body mind and spirit for its health vitality strength and power you know we take it for granted and i think it's really important to acknowledge all those things you know one thing that you just said that it made me think about you had mentioned earlier but i didn't ask you a follow-up question about that.

You kind of said when people make mistakes, the key is to let go and then refocus. Can you tell us a little bit about how you might help somebody refocus? Well, first of all, I teach them that refocusing technique, which is the blinking, breathing, and it literally wipes your mind clean, honestly, because you're focusing on blinking, you're focusing, breathing, and it literally wipes your mind clean, honestly,

because you're focusing on blinking, you're focusing on breathing, and then you're looking side to side. So the side to side is if you're too much in your left brain and analyzing too much, then it balances that. It makes you less analytical. If you're too emotional, it makes you less emotional. So it balances your, you know, those two modalities. So that's the first thing that I teach any athlete or actually business person. If we're going that direction in practically the first session I do with them

because it gives them something they can take away and do and have success with you know and it becomes a habit and it's something that you can easily do no matter where you are yes yeah but you're not looking you know you're not listening to something that i've said or reading a book or anything it's something physical you can do and it's really powerful. This stuff is, the energy psychology stuff is very powerful, and it really works. I can't wait to check it out. So for those people who are interested in contacting Kay,

you can head over to TheMentalAthlete.com. That's where you can find the books and her MP3 files that she talked about. Is there any other way that you would encourage the listeners to reach out to you k my um email address which is on the website but it's k porter one at comcast.net and it's just k-a-y-p-o-r-t-e-r the number one at comcast.net and are there any social media sites that you're oh yeah let's see. I'm on Facebook and Twitter. And let's see. Well, I have also the Mental Athlete and the Spirit of Walkers,

which is a walking group that I coach. Both have pages on Facebook. But Facebook, you can find me. And then it's under Dr. Kate Porter on Twitter. So that's pretty easy to find. DR. Excellent. Excellent, Kate. Well, thank you so much for your time and your energy. Yeah, it was super fun. And you know, the things that I really got out of the interview in terms of my takeaways is I

love the refocusing technique that you shared, the blinking, the three deep breaths and then looking left to right. Are there any other, is that, is that what you refer to it as, as refocusing technique, or do you use any other titles? Okay. No, that's what I call it. Yeah. There's something else I teach people, too, that's too complicated to go into, but it's called the Daily Energy Routine,

and it's a tapping and breathing technique that comes out of an old book called Energy Medicine by a woman named Donna Eden, E-D-E-N. And it's really great stuff. And I've sort of adapted that and teach people how to do that. What it does is it gets you in your own energy field so you're not affected by other people energetically. And that's very, very nice to do. And so I teach my athletes that or my clients that. Well, that sounds excellent. So if you're interested in that, you should go connect with Kay over at The Mental Athlete. So the three takeaways I'm taking, Kay,

is the refocusing technique. I thought that was interesting, and you're right, cutting edge in performance and sports psychology. The second thing I'm taking away is the three things that you have athletes think about after a performance. What worked, what didn't, and what did I learn? Love that.

And then your quote in terms of, there is not failure, only feedback. So I just want to thank you so much, Kay, for joining us and sharing your quote in terms of there is not failure-only feedback. So I just want to thank you so much, Kay, for joining us and sharing your wisdom and your advice with those listeners. Well, I appreciate it. One thing I didn't mention is I do phone sessions, and so I can talk to somebody, you know, even in another country if they want to do something like that.

But thank you so much for having me. It's been really fun. I really appreciate it. It's been awesome talking with you. So thank you so much for joining us. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for listening to High Performance Mindset. If you like today's podcast, make a comment, share it with a friend, and join the conversation on Twitter at Mentally Underscore Strong. For more inspiration and to receive Sindra's free weekly videos, check out DrSindra.com.