High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 133: Choose Empowering Emotions

Episode Date: September 18, 2017

High performers intentionally practice gratitude daily. They know gratitude is the perfect antidote to negative emotions because it’s impossible to feel gratitude and fear, anxiety, worry, envy or anger at the same time. They use tools to increase their gratitude and express gratitude even despite difficulties. Power Phrase today: I choose to intentionally practice gratitude daily. I focus on what I am grateful for to stay fueled and excited for my life, sport and business.

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. Time to dive into high performance mindset this morning with Dr. Sindra Kampoff, who has been very busy here the last couple of weeks, and she's in studio with us now. Good morning, Sindra. Good morning. It's great to be here. We didn't have you in last week because, obviously, the holiday, but we're back here and back down to business.

And if anybody follows along with you on social media, you've been out there getting the book out to people. They are loving it. It's just every day I see post after post after post. So can't say congratulations enough to you on that. And I know that we'll be taking some pieces out of the book along the way here to talk about certain things. So today's topic is choose empowering emotions. Yes. So we're going to start with a quote by Tony Robbins. He said, when you're grateful, fear disappears and abundance appears.

I like it. Yep. And I thought I would share a few highlights over the last couple weeks. So we had the launch party August 31st. Lisa was there and was the emcee and she was amazing. What a great event that was. And thank you for having me involved because it was just really cool to see all of your hard work come to a room full of people with so many people supporting you. Yeah, it was phenomenal. And I think the coolest thing was, you know, there were times where, like, you know Yeah, it was phenomenal. And I think the coolest thing was, you know, there were times where, like, you know, the book was hard, but then I now realize like, why I did it and how, you know, this amazing, motivational and inspiring and strategy packed information is in the hands of other people. So that was pretty awesome. There's a few things

that happened at the event. Elaine, who is a longtime listener of your show, came. She was the first guest. Hi, Elaine, if you're listening. And she said, Sindra, you know, you changed my life because one time on the radio, I was talking about how you can choose empowering emotions and just how you're in charge of your emotions and you can choose how you feel.

And then a few other things that happened. I did a Facebook Live event this week with Maddie Maruska, which I'll talk about. She's the feature of Chapter 15. And in general, what people are saying when I ask them their favorite parts of the book, they say, you know, like finding your fight is helpful, choosing empowering emotions, intentionally practicing gratitude every day. And one other person said, grit is the answer.

Like, okay, I like all that. Very cool. That's cool. So you had the Facebook Live event with Maddie. And is that a story that we're going to start with today? Or what is the story that you want to begin with? Yeah, let's start with that. So we had a Facebook Live event.

And she's the feature of Chapter 15. And let me give you a little bit of background. So I worked with her. She was a high school athlete here in town. And she had an ACL injury after gymnastics. And she got back. She made it to the state meet in the vault and beam. And so she overcame the ACL injury and she competed at the state meet. Well, like during

that time, you know, she's learning all these mental skills and she was really open about this on the Facebook live event. And then the night of the state meet, she was hit in her car and, you know, fatal accident. The other person didn't survive. And she was, she was telling, she was kind of describing to me the scene. And she said, you know, it was minus 41 degree windshield. And I was telling her, like, what was your immediate reaction, Maddie? And, you know, and she kind of talked about how these mental skills that she learned as an athlete helped her in that moment. And she said, this is what she said. And so instead of choosing anger or fear, she chose gratitude. And this is

what she said. You know, I was just lucky I had fear, she chose gratitude. And this is what she said. You know, I was just lucky I had a car that protected me. I was just lucky I had a cell phone charged. You know, I was just lucky that the rescue person held my hand. She said I was just lucky that I was a gymnast and had arm strength to get out of the car. Wow. And I'm listening to her and you know, I still got goosebumps right now, you know, just because it's like she could be so upset and choose anger. And I say choose because we are in charge of that. And she's young.

Yeah, yeah. She's now a college student. She couldn't compete in track and field and gymnastics later. And so her life has changed, but she's still choosing this perspective of gratitude. And that's what's phenomenal to me. It's got to be hard to do as a youngster too. And I would imagine at any age in a situation like that, you know, most people would automatically default

to the why me, right? Amazing for her to be able to do that. So gratitude is something we want to practice every day then, right? And it helps us kind of be more like her, right? So why do we intentionally practice it every day? And that's what really today, what the message is about is choosing gratitude.

It's really easy. Sometimes it's easy to notice the things around us that are good, right? And really gratitude is just noticing the gifts around you, appreciating what you have, small things, big things, but also appreciating the difficulties. And I think that's Maddie's story really demonstrates. It's about appreciating

experiences, even if they're difficult and seeing difficulties as opportunities and even the problems that we have as gifts. So just think about a difficulty that you might be having right now. Maybe it's a difficulty at work or with your family on your team. And just seeing it as a problem, seeing it as an opportunity for us to learn can help us perform at our best, but also be happier. And this isn't something that we automatically do. So that's why we have to intentionally practice it. I find that interesting because a lot of times I think people kind of automatically just dish out thank yous without thinking about it. But are they consciously thinking about being grateful?

So how do you intentionally, what do you mean by that? Intentionally practice gratitude each day? Yeah. So the reason we want to do it is, you know, just being grateful is the perfect antidote to like negative emotions, fear, anxiety, worry, anger, maybe even jealousy or envy. Right. And so, you know, we increase our happiness by intentionally being grateful. And you're right. I don't mean just TJ like to sing.

Thank you. Right. I mean, like really the practice of, of deep gratitude also helps us be more optimistic for our future, decreases depression and stress, helps us just cope better. And I think it helps us tap into like what makes us tick as people. So how do we improve our own gratitude? How do we how do we see that and work on it? Yeah. So this is something that we should intentionally do every day. And it's, again, so easy to focus on the negative. I even find myself doing that, you know, focusing on the things that are going wrong instead of what's going right. And so here, as you're listening, I'd like you to

choose one of these ways that you're going to intentionally practice gratitude today. Okay, so the first way could be, I'm going to call it tool number one, you could take a gratitude visit. So sometime throughout the day, write a note or an email to someone letting them know that you appreciate them or something they did for them, did for you. But really like, you know, be intentional with that. And so write a letter or email. The second thing you could do is tool number two is like just appreciate the difficulties. And I think one way to do that is just write the thing that's difficult down on a piece of paper because when you write it down, it just gets more clear.

And then write next to it the opportunity. And that will help you process it and help you see this more grateful perspective. And then number three, you could start a gratitude journal where just in the morning or at night, you just write down one or two or three things that you're grateful for. And this will, I mean, why do you want to do it? Because you're going to have more positive emotions and you're gonna be able to choose empowering emotions, which is what we're talking about today. So what kind of things are you grateful for today? How do you start? I would say, well, you know, when I think about the book, I'm very grateful

for my husband who gave me the opportunity to finish this. And there's a lot of sacrifices I had to make, you know, and so he did other things in our family to help me do this I'm grateful for the both of you for allowing me to share a positive message each week and I'm particularly grateful for Adam Thielen who wrote the foreword of my book because it's pretty awesome yeah yeah what are you both grateful for kind of funny I was thinking about that while you were talking because I was at a concert last night and I ran into a man that over the years has really been influential for one of my sons in one of his sports that he plays. And I told myself, I'm like, I don't see him very often, but I'm going to tell him how grateful I am as a mother that he has helped my son. And so I made sure to do that.

But I thought about it beforehand. I said, I'm intentionally going to tell him. Awesome. And what was his reaction But I thought about it beforehand. I said, I'm intentionally going to tell him because. And what was his reaction? I think he was thankful to hear that. I guess I don't know what else, you know, how else one could react. But for me, it was more like I didn't really care about his reaction. I needed to get that out.

I needed to let him know. That's cool. Cool. So it just shows you that it impacted you. And just by sharing it was positive for you. It impacted me as a mother and my child. So it just shows you that it impacted you. And just by sharing it was positive for you. It impacted me as a mother and my child. So thank you. And if you're listening, you know who you are. Nice, nice, nice.

Now you're all staring at me. Yeah. All right. Well, I'm definitely grateful that the hurricane chose a different path and that my family that is in Florida appears as though they will be very, very safe as long as they stay inside while the tropical storm passes through now. So grateful for that, for sure. Grateful for the healing powers of the body because I haven't been able to run for a couple of weeks.

And I think today I'll finally get a run in. It's going to be detoxing and amazing. And I can't wait to get out and sweat a little bit. So I could choose so many things to be grateful for. But like you said, it's a matter of practicing it every day. Absolutely. Thanks for making me come up with a couple. Yeah, for sure.

How do we summarize today? High performers, those people who are working to reach their greater potential, they intentionally practice gratitude every day and they know it's the perfect antidote to negative emotions like fear, anxiety, worry, anger. And they use tools to increase their gratitude and express gratitude despite difficulties. We've called it an affirmation in the past that we've started the week with. And I know it goes out on social media, but I like the word power phrase or the two words that we've been using lately for that. So what is today's power phrase?

I choose to intentionally practice gratitude daily. I focus on what I'm grateful for to stay fueled and excited for my life. We have several people that have gotten their hands on your book already, but others that have not. And if they're thinking, yeah, got to get mine. Got to get going through these chapters, which are nice because I like the way they're broken down. And at the end, it kind of summarizes. There's a little bit of a worksheet for you there or at least a few questions to ponder. And it can be just a quick one chapter read, put it down, come back to it later. Or you may end up just mowing through the whole thing and highlighting along the way as you go.

It's a really, really awesome book. So if we want to get a hold of it, how do we do it? Best place right now is to go to beyondgrit.com. If you're listening and you're in town, you can also pick up a copy at the River Valley Running Store. They have that there. And then maybe next week I'll give you more updates on where else it'll be. Those guys are awesome, by the way. Aren't they?

They are. For sure. They are awesome. So beyondgrit.com. Awesome. All right. Well, we'll get people out, get the book, get through it. And then when you listen, you'll be like, I remember reading about that chapter they're talking about right there.

Nice. Good stuff going on with Cinder Kampoff all the time. Thank you. Get in touch and follow along. The podcasts are really good, too. And more and more of those are coming up. Dr. Cinder Kampoff with us today for High Performance Mindset. Thank you very much.

Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. I'm grateful. 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.