High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 145: How the Best in the World Excel with Dr. Graig Chow, Florida State University

Episode Date: December 4, 2017

Dr. Graig Chow is an Assistant Professor of Sport Psychology at Florida State University where he is the Program Coordinator and Director of Supervision and Practicum. Dr. Chow is a Certified Mental Performance Consultant, and Research & Practice Division Head of the Association for Applied Sport Psychology. In this episode, Graig and Cindra discuss: How the best in the world stay excel and stay driven The best way to reflect post event How to identify your core values How he uses mindfulness and motivational interviewing in his practice How he helps athletes address the yips You can find a full description and contact information for Graig at cindrakamphoff.com/graig.

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 episode 144 with Greg Chow. Now, the goal of these interviews is to learn from the world's best leaders, athletes, coaches, and consultants, all about the topic of mindset so that we can reach our potential or be high performers in our field or sport.

Now, in today's episode, I interviewed Greg Chow, who's assistant professor of sports psychology at Florida State University, where he's the program coordinator and director of supervision and practicum. He is also a certified mental performance consultant and research and practice division head of the Association for Applied Sports Psychology. Now in his position at Florida State, he teaches courses in supervision, in sports psychology, as well as group dynamics in sport. And he's published articles in various journals, including the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology and the Journal of Clinical Sports Psychology.

He has a PhD in kinesiology with a concentration in sports psychology from Michigan State University. Now there's several things that we talk about. I'm just going to give you a little bit of highlight of the interview. We talk about his four components of his practice in sport and performance psychology, how he sees the best in the world stay driven and how they excel, how the best reflect on their event post-event, and he talks about how to do that, how we can identify our core values, how he uses motivational interviewing and mindfulness in his own practice, and probably my favorite part of this interview was our discussion about how he

helps athletes with the yips, and he defines what the yips really is for us. So my favorite quotes from this interview come towards the end of this interview. So it gives you something to look forward to. He said that failure is the ultimate motivator. We define how we see failure. And then he says, you know, the sign of an opportunity is really discomfort and excitement.

Before we head over to the interview, let's go over to iTunes and read a rating and review. This is from Harold He. Harold says, This show really pumps me up to improve myself in many ways. Cinder has a lot of knowledge and knows how to apply it in our lives. One of the best motivational podcasts. Thank you so much, Harold He.

I super appreciated it. And if you enjoyed today's interview, I encourage you to do a few things. If you could head over to iTunes and provide a rating and comment like Harold He did, that'd be awesome. Or if you could share the podcast on social media, somewhere that you go often, such as Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook, that would be amazing. Or you could also share the podcast with a friend. Tell them about how useful it is. That just helps us reach more and more people each week and spread the message of mindset.

So without further ado, let's bring on Greg. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset. I am so pumped that you are here, just ready to share your wisdom with the world. So I want to thank you so much for joining me to start off. Yeah, Sindra, thank you so much for having me. It's quite an honor to be with you today. I'm just looking forward to talking to you about sport and performance psychology. And I know you have so much wisdom and information to share. So I thought what we'd do is maybe you could just start and tell us a little bit about how you would define what you're passionate about and tell us a little bit about what you're doing right now.

Yeah, that sounds great. Well, I'm passionate about sport and performance psychology. And I have been from quite a long time, even back when I first found out about the field as an undergraduate student at UCLA, I was always quite interested in how the best in the world excel at what they do from a mental standpoint. And that's always been something that's been really interesting to me, as well as, you know, how do teams that might have less talent and abilities than others outperform other teams that might be more talented or have more resources. And I think a lot of that comes to, you know, kind of those mental attributes and core strengths that teams and individuals have. Nice, nice. Yeah, in my current work right now, I'm an assistant professor of sports psychology at Florida State where I kind of have three major roles. So one is that I do research

both in mental health in athletes as well as in more performance enhancement related interventions. I teach courses there in a number of sports psychology courses and then I'm also a supervisor of students applying sports psychology service delivery and I guess I'd add on to that my own consulting work as well, working with co-edited professional athletes. So you have many different hats that you put on throughout your week, I could only imagine. So tell us a little bit about UCLA. What was it at UCLA? Do you remember the point where you became interested in this area? And then maybe tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are from that point. Yeah, yeah. So I had just finished up my soccer career. I'd played fairly

competitively throughout my youth and adolescence and into college and a little bit of semi-pro. And my career kind of came to an end, like most athletes do, because of injury and so forth, and enrolled in psychology at UCLA. And I just planned on, you know, forth and enrolled in psychology at UCLA and I just planned on you know doing an undergraduate in psychology and kind of seeing what went from there no real plans in terms of what my career might be and I started looking through the schedule of courses and I saw a class called sports psychology and that was like like automatically I was always interested in of course sport and also the mental side of sport. So it felt like such a natural fit. And the professor teaching

that class was Tara Scanlon. And, and, you know, she, it was just amazing to kind of be in a course where, you know, I had always thought of psychology being more of, you know, working with people that have, you know, fairly severe problems, whether that be in the clinical or counseling sense. And to be in a class where they're talking about, you know, motivation and confidence and team cohesion, all these like really positive attributes. I was hooked from the get go and never really turned back, you know, took her other class on applied sports psychology, joined her lab where she was doing research with the New Zealand All Blacks on sport commitment. And so to be able to read, you know, these 30 page transcripts of New Zealand All Blacks talking about, you know, why they're so committed to their sport and to their team was fascinating. And I was hooked right then and continued my studies into Michigan State, where I was really focused on group dynamics

and leadership as well. And yeah, that's really kind of what got me started, I think, on this track to sports psychology. And I've had a number of kind of experiences since then in clinical sports psychology And now as my role as at Florida State University What an amazing way to be introduced to the field from Tara Scanlon You know like Researchers in the field and how cool is that? When you know and really like love to talk to you a

little bit more about what did you learn when you're reading the transcripts about the all blacks I think in the field we learn we hear a lot about you know how they do things a little bit differently so tell us you know what did you learn from reading those transcripts or the other research that she did yeah and I think the central question she was really getting after is you know not just how do you know elite level athletes know, who are the best in their sport the things she found, I don't think were surprising necessarily, like these individuals are highly passionate. There's a lot of opportunities that they have in their sport that they would really miss and not have if they were no longer a New Zealand All Black, you know, both in terms of the camaraderie with their teammates,

but also some of the perks of being at that elite level of status as well. The social support at all levels, you know, not just teammates, but staff and coaches was really a driving factor. And I would say just the pride. I mean, the New Zealand All Blacks, that's the team, you know, to be on in New Zealand and just the pride that they had for wearing the jersey and, you know, representing a team that New Zealand and just the pride that they had for, for wearing the jersey and, you know, representing a team that's striving to be the best in the world, uh, was really something that kept them committed, uh, to their sport. Um, but like anything, they also had things that, you know, took away from their sport as well. Um, you know, as athletes are, uh, going towards

the end of their career, they might have other opportunities that are kind of pulling them away, you know, even from a high status team like the All Blacks. There is stress, you know, and negative performance outcomes that can pull away somebody's motivation and commitment as well. And so it's just really interesting to read about and learn, you know, how such great athletes can be committed to their sport. Absolutely. And when you think about how that, you know, that early experience, like learning more about this research and being introduced to the field, how do you think that now that impacts your consulting practice, which is something that I really want to kind of dive in

with you. And, and I think about how really there's, there's three parts that I think we can go into the questions here is, you know, your consulting practice, your research, and then your supervision. So let's kind of start with your consulting and tell us how you think that research with the All Blacks, how you think that shapes your consulting right now. Yeah, it's a really good point. And I often don't think that far back, you know, of that shaping my consulting. But as I'm thinking about the central practices that I adopt in my consulting, I think it hits on it really well. So whether I was completely self-aware of that or not, I think it had a big influence. I mean, I think one thing, you know, not just in my own approach, but kind of what we do at Florida State University is what would be considered the scientist practitioner approach, right? So using, of course, science and research to guide your practice, but also conducting research that's very applied in nature. I think that's an important part as well. And then

being in the field and coming up with new research questions. And so I would say kind of my first central practice is helping athletes identify and become more aware of what their core strengths are. And so I kind of do this in a number of ways. One thing I developed is called a post-event reflection. And this is something that athletes complete after competitions and practices. And it helps them reflect on what they did well today, what they didn't do so well, what adjustments they need to make, and how they're going to make the adjustments. And they do this across different domains. So they do it not just for the mental

domain, but also for technical and tactical as well. They also become more aware of their kind of mental attributes and strengths. So I'll often list a number of mental attributes like confidence, commitment, mindfulness, and they'd actually like provide a rating of that for that particular day and then elaborate on that. And then there's other parts of this reflection as well, but those are the ones that really hit on helping athletes become more self-aware of what they did well and kind of what they didn't do well and how to make those necessary changes. I often think that athletes and performers, they have the answers to their concerns somewhere deep with inside of them. And so it's not always a mental skill that we have to apply. Sometimes it's

guiding the athlete to uncover their own solutions to overcome any type of concern that they might have. And so I think any type of self-reflection activity is really powerful in that regard. The other thing I use quite a bit is called the revised performance profile technique. And that's helping athletes identify what are really the key qualities of an elite athlete in their sport and across, again, mental, technical, tactical domains. And how would they rate themselves on those different domains? And that often helps athletes identify again, okay, this is what I'm really strong in. And these are the areas I might need to improve. And I think helping athletes understand their core strengths is really vital for overcoming so many different issues that

come up in sport. Because sometimes athletes think that they need something new in order to solve a new issue. But sometimes it's something that they already have with inside of them that they can do that. Absolutely. You know, there's so many ways that I'm thinking about applying that. First of all, I think self-awareness is so key to us just being at our best. Because if we're not in tune with our thoughts or our feelings or our behaviors,

you know, like how can we intervene with ourselves anyway? So I think that's, I agree with you for what we do. And, you know, one of the things I'm thinking about, Greg, as I'm listening is, so I do a lot of keynote speaking and sometimes I just nail it, right? And sometimes it's like good, but I don't nail it. And I think, you know, that even if you're not an athlete and you're listening, some, like you could apply the same thing of a post-event reflection where, you know, every time you perform whatever your performance is, you can reflect on, you know, what went well, what didn't, and then what adjustments you needed to make. And even if you crushed it, like I think reflecting on that

and thinking about what led to you crushing it. So I can see how there's lots of ways that we can apply this. Yeah, absolutely. And I've actually used this same technique with somebody in sales before. And so he was making sales calls to kind of, you know, nail the pitch and try to get the purchase. And so reflecting after he kind of made these series of calls, I think enabled him to uncover, you know, what's really working well when I have great performances, you know, or even when it doesn't work out well in terms of the objective outcome. So whether that's in sport or in other performance endeavors, like maybe you didn't get the client or maybe you didn't get the win, still reflecting on strengths, even in those particular situations, right? Because often there's a lot of things that the

athlete or performer did well, that's important to reinforce, because we don't always have full control over the outcome. We have more control kind of over, you know, our process and kind of the mental strengths we decide to use in different activities. So yeah, I think it's definitely applicable to both sport and performers in life. Well, tell us a little bit more about how you use the revised performance profile and like what kind of qualities, you know, are on that and just tell us a bit more, maybe give us an example of how that's really helped someone that you've worked with. Yeah, and maybe I'll combine that with kind of my next principle. And so I think goal setting is always important for athletes, especially, you know, we have different types of athletes who we might work with. We have athletes who come to us with a very distinct concern that they might have, whether that be pre-competitive anxiety or trying to improve

communication skills. But as you know, Sindra, we also have athletes that just want to get a little bit better, you know, and whatever that might be. And so there might not be, you know, a concern that they actually have, but it's still important to identify kind of what that target area is that you're going to work on them with. And so in my work, I use this combination of the revised performance profile technique to identify some of the more sports specific areas that we might work on together. And by sports specific, I mean mental performance. And then I also use kind of a core values intervention as well. And I think it's really important to broaden athletes definition of success so that when they're reflecting back on a competition or a practice, it's not just based on how they perform from a statistical standpoint, but it could be how

they perform from a mental standpoint, how they perform from a strategical standpoint, how they perform from a technical standpoint. And so by doing the revised performance profile technique, it helps athletes really set goals, whether this is kind of written down or something that they kind of have a plan for in the upcoming events, is identify what they want to work on in order to just get a little bit better from either a mental, technical, or tactical standpoint, and how that kind of compares to really those qualities that are most important for elite athlete in their sport. And so if they've identified something like self-belief or self-confidence as, you know, the number one attribute that an elite athlete has to have in their sport, and then they

rate themselves on that, maybe they rate themselves like a three out of seven. And so it might be an area that we might focus on together. One thing I often like to use, and this comes from motivational interviewing actually, is called the scaling technique. So if they scored like a four out of seven, I first might ask them, why a four and not a three? And that automatically pushes them to think about some of those strengths that they used in order to have that level of confidence, right? It's not just about like, how do you get better? But it's also like, what could have been different in that situation where maybe your confidence would have been lower? And what did you actually have in that moment that led you to that least

moderate level of confidence? And then I might ask them, okay, what would it take for you to go from a four to a five? So it's always kind of reinforcing strengths, but then kind of making those adjustments. And a lot of those adjustments might be things that we would work on together. I might need to image more of my mastery experiences in my sport. I might need to watch other elite performers executing this particular skill so I can refine my technique. And so I think this revised performance profile is effective not just for self-awareness of where the athlete's at, but really leading to some type of action planning in terms of making those improvements. And then the other part with the

core values is really helping athletes identify the things that are most important in their life. And this actually comes from motivational interviewing as well. Bill Miller has this thing called a card sort where there's, I believe, over 70 different values cards. Each card has a value and a definition of that value. And so you go through this kind of values card sort and you start to put aside those values that are really important to you in your life. So notice I didn't say in your sport, but in your life, because that's what core values are. And so then after they have that stack of the most important things in their life, the hard process is I force them to think about what their top five is. And sometimes they might have a stack of 15 and that can be tough to go from 15 to five.

Then I have them even go down one step lower to three and to really process that. So why are these things important in your life? And the most powerful part of it is exploring discrepancy. So once they've identified their three core values, and let's say one of them is family. So, you know, one of your core values is family. How often do you spend time with your teammates? And that often creates that aha moment where, wow, my core value is family, but I barely ever spend time with my teammates outside of practicing competitions. And it's usually that discrepancy either between your values and your goals or your values and your behaviors that cause behavior change. And then we work towards, okay, how can you behave in your sport or act in your sport in a way that's congruent with your values? because after kind of the combination of the revised performance profile technique and the values exercise, they now have a broad range of kind of target areas

that they're looking to achieve in their sport. And we might call those goals or action planning or something like that. And what I like about that is that it's not just sport related, right? It's a life too. Tell us a little bit more about like how we might find more information about motivational interviewing or the values card sort. I know, I know you've had some training in that. So for those people who might be interested. So I was first exposed to, to motivational interviewing during my postdoc in clinical sports psychology. And it was originally developed as a technique to change behavior in more

problematic behaviors like smoking or substance use. But recently, and I think Jonathan Fader's done a great job with this, is really showing how the technique associated skills and just the process is applicable to athletes as well. Because many athletes have kind of reasons to change and reasons not to change. And it's typically that ambivalence that's focused on in motivational interviewing. And it could be as simple as just utilizing a sports psychology technique that we've worked on. You know, part of those reasons to change is, okay, maybe I can be more confident if I use this. Part of the reasons not to change is, I don't really have time to work on that today. There's other things to do, right?

And so I think, you know, motivational interviewing can be quite helpful for practitioners, whether that be in counseling psychology or sports psychology. Some of the resources that I really like, Bill Miller and Rolnick have a book on, it's called Motivational Interviewing. I think that's a good kind of place to start. There's also a group called Mint, and these are motivational interviewing trainers. And there's often a number of trainers in different states, and they can come out and actually provide like a day-long training. And that's something that we do at Florida State is actually bring in trainers to teach our students

and our faculty as well how to use motivational interviewing kind of with clients. Nice, that's excellent. All right, so I go back to kind of you're talking about the core principles of your consulting practice. What I've heard so far is awareness, goal setting. I'm guessing motivational interview is one of those core principles. Do you have any others? I want to make sure that we've kind of covered those because I believe maybe at the beginning you said you had four. So I want to make sure we didn't move on too quickly. Yeah, definitely. I would say there's two other ones. For some reason, I've developed a little bit of a niche for working with baseball players who have the yips. I'm not sure why that is necessarily, but I found it fascinating. And so I don't typically call it the yips when I'm working with an athlete. I'll call

it like a throwing issue because I think yips can be quite a stigmatizing term and and often in baseball you know they've called it terms like the thing and so it kind of has this very negative connotation but why I was fascinated by it was obviously it's it's for the listeners that don't know so it's typically not being able to do a relatively automatic motor task like throwing that you used to be able to do with high proficiency. And so a couple of the examples I'm thinking about is I worked with a catcher and he could throw runners out at second, he could pick players off at first, but he couldn't throw the ball back to the pitcher, which is something you need to do quite a bit when you're a catcher, right?

And so that was fascinating that, you know, you could have this kind of general skill that you used to be able to do fine that you can no longer do. And so it's not just a performance issue, but it can be quite distressful as well because of the embarrassment right so it's not common to see a catcher you know land a ball 10 yards short and to the right of them on kind of frequent occasions and so I'm always motivated to work with clients who you know aren't it's just performance, but it's also having some effect on their overall sport experience and enjoyment. And it was also a challenge because there's not a lot of literature on the technique as compared to some of the other issues that athletes might

have. And so one thing I really like to use, and this is not just necessarily with the yips and throwing issues, but I like to use kind of this technique that's both mindfulness-based and exposure to distress with an external focus. And so I'll kind of walk you through that a little bit. And so, you know, mindfulness, mindfulness being about self-awareness, non-judgment and refocusing. And really, you know, the epiphany I had recently was you really need all three in order to be mindful because athletes who have the yips or throwing issues, they have a high level of self-awareness, right? They're very self-aware of the embarrassment that they feel, the negative sensations that they might feel in their arm, the self-doubt, but they have a

high level of judgment and they can't refocus. So we often think about refocusing from kind of this broad and narrow perspective, right? Narrow and internal being that the athletes are really consumed by those negative thoughts and they might ruminate on the embarrassment that they're experiencing. And mindfulness is really powerful. And, you know, a lot of it originated not in sports psychology, but for, you know, stress management and those types of things. But the one thing that's really different, I feel like in sport is, okay, it's good to have the awareness. It's good to not be too judgmental of what you're experiencing, whether that be thoughts, emotions, or sensations. But eventually, you need to refocus on some external task, right? It's not like we can just

kind of sit and meditate. We have to then do something in terms of our performance and so one kind of strategy I've used quite a bit with athletes is first just teaching them mindfulness through some type of meditation experiences then we kind of intensify that so it's more of a mindfulness of distress that they're experiencing. So I might ask an athlete to think about the time that they had this YIPS experience. Think about the emotions you were experiencing. Think about the thoughts where you're having. Think about the physical sensations you were having. And don't try to resist that.

Don't try to kind of shy away from that, but really connect and accept. And so that's kind of the exposure part of it. And then once they get kind of used to, okay, maybe having these distressful thoughts and distressful emotions aren't as scary as I originally thought, because I'm kind of exposing them more to that on a frequent basis. But then take an external focus point. This is actually a technique that I learned from Gardner and Moore in their Mac approach. And so once they've gone through this kind of exposure of kind of distress, then have them focus on something external. So it can be a point in the room. It can be a water bottle that I set up. It can be any particular object and just stay deeply focused on that particular object for 10 seconds, for 20 seconds, for 30 seconds. And we keep on increasing it. So what that trains is

having this really distressful internal experience, being aware of that, not judging that, and then quickly refocusing. So the refocus point for like a catcher might be, you know, the name of the team on the pitcher's chest. So I try to train that very deliberately from going internal to external. But again, going internal, like really distressful to something external. And I think that's been quite effective in my work with baseball players. That's awesome. I love how you kind of piece together just different techniques and made it your own. Tell us about how that has helped the athletes with the yips. And maybe you can, you know, tell us about the catcher and how the catcher is doing now and maybe other examples because I think people are are fascinated by things like this I remember

hearing a story last year of a professional baseball player right that had the yips you know and and tell us about a few of the success stories that you've had using this technique yeah and I think you know the fascinating thing about the YIPS is, is sometimes you can identify kind of the root of the problem, you know, maybe why it occurred. And so there is some literature that talks about, you know, if you had like a really embarrassing situation happen to you at a particular location, and then you go to perform at that location, you know, months later, you might have like a YIPS experience. Well, that doesn't apply to a lot of the athletes I work with. There could be things that were distressful in that person's life that may have caused the YIPS. And so, but some of

those things you can't fix either, right? Because they happened so long ago and so my focus has always been so this catcher that I was working with he would have like what we consider a yips throw throughout the whole seven innings of his game and so imagine you know going through that inning by inning and just consistently not being able to throw it back to the pitcher. You know, the looks that you're getting from your teammates, your coaches, and sometimes it would turn out fine in terms of the performance. Sometimes the ball would get back to the pitcher, but he always felt the same. And so, you know, a lot of my focus with this particular athlete was, okay, can we reduce the amount of times that he has these throwing issues? So can we reduce it from seven innings to five innings and then five innings to three innings?

And just to be able to tolerate that a little bit more, because if you're experiencing that the whole entire game, I think it's going to be to the point where you're not going to want to play that sport anymore, right? It's not going to be enjoyable. And it often affects, yeah, so stressful. And often it also affects their hitting performance because so much of their thoughts are consumed by the throwing concerns. And that's whether they're catching, whether they're in the dugout, or whether they're

hitting. And so we were able to do this kind of this mindfulness exposure, external focus training over the course of several weeks. But I started to notice a big change at about week four. And kind of what I would expect where, okay, he would have the yips throw, but then he would go back to kind of the strategies that we worked on. Okay, I had that yips throw. I'm aware of how I'm feeling in this particular moment. I'm not going to judge it. Like I've felt

this before, not just like on the field, but also, you know, when working with Dr. Chow in his office, I've also been exposed to this and I'm going to pick out my refocus point on the pitcher's chest. And so I think by having that go-to strategy, it wasn't just to prevent the yips, it was also how to respond when the yips occurred. And I think that's what really defines elite athletes and sports psychology is not just, we're not just using strategy and techniques to prevent something from happening. Athletes are going to have doubt. They're going to feel anxious, right? It's when you do have those feelings, how do you respond in that moment? Do you have something to go to? And I think this strategy was really something that was economical and something that he can do like really quickly in the moment, even when he was experiencing these

really distressful thoughts and emotions. But I think they also became less distressful because he was being exposed to them more often too in sessions. Absolutely. And how often did he practice, you know, the mindfulness meditation that you kind of seemed like was at the base of kind of the intervention? It was, yeah. It was really the base was the mindfulness and then later on, you know, adding the external refocus point. And like anything, you know, I think athletes when they're working with sports psychology practitioners, they're going to show much more improvement when they kind of adhere to the exercises that we recommend. And I think this particular client that I'm thinking about was was the model client, right? You tell him to do mindfulness for 15 minutes a day, and he was on top of it. And so I think that was something that was really helpful because, you know, we can teach the techniques and suggest strategies, but if they're not practiced and practiced well and automatized, they're really difficult to use, especially in the moment of performance when it's so distressful. And maybe one of the reasons that he was willing to do it is because he was really

struggling and he needed something. What are your thoughts on just the mindfulness practice? And do most athletes and performers that you work with, do they adhere to it? Do they like it? What's your thoughts on that? Yeah, so I've used it quite a bit in my own practice, and I also have some students that are using it in their research projects as well. I think it's a bit abstract at first. You know, it might sound like a technique that they're not used to. Often athletes are kind of looking for these concrete strategies, and so this idea of, I think self-awareness is something that's always, you know, athletes buy into well, and the refocusing part athletes buy into as well.

But, you know, sitting there and meditating for five minutes or 10 minutes, I think at first they see that they don't see the application to their sport performance. And so I think when you start to add in more of those kind of refocusing tools, then they can see how going from internal to external can be really valuable because everybody's experienced that, right? You just had a horrible at bat and right away you go to yourself, you close up, all you're thinking about is how bad your at bat was, but eventually you need to go out back out in the field and have an external focus. So it's training that switch. And I think mindfulness can be really powerful in being able to do that so that when you're

first for mindfulness, when you're having these, you know, distressful thoughts and emotions, they're just thoughts and emotions. You know, we don't have to put extra weight on them. We don't have to necessarily judge them. Often, we have to tolerate them in order to. We don't have to necessarily judge them. Often we have to tolerate them in order to kind of pursue our performance or focus on the task. But it's not as scary as we originally thought when we start to think of, you know, I can't have this thought. I shouldn't be having this thought. When you're exposed to mindfulness, you start to realize that

thoughts kind of come and go, right? And if we give them too much weight, they'll persist. But if we, you know, accept and not judge them too harshly, then they eventually pass. Isn't that so good? I'm thinking that if you haven't written up this piece about the yips, I think you definitely should. I think people would find it fascinating. Yeah, it's been, I think, for me, quite rewarding to think about how, you know, these different kind of components, external cue. So that's pretty cool. So I know we've talked about three of your core principles, self-awareness, goal setting, mindfulness. What's the fourth one? Yeah, so the fourth one, and this one probably won't take as long to explain, and it's something I think that kind of permeates throughout different techniques I use,

but barriers identification and a plan to overcome those barriers. So I think it's always important that athletes have kind of a plan going into a competition, a plan going into an event, but also being aware that there might be certain things that might come up, right, that you don't have complete control over. And so first, identifying what those things might be. And those barriers can be internal barriers, so things like self-doubt or your anxiety or your frustration, but it can also be external things in terms of not getting your ankles taped on time or weather concerns. And now, I'm not trying to get athletes to identify every possible barrier that exists because that could be quite a long list. But, you know, what are those things that are going to prevent you from getting in the way of performing at your best? And if those things do come up, what are you going to do to overcome that? And so it's

kind of that like if-then type of technique where if this occurs, then I'm going to do to overcome that and so it's kind of that like if then type of technique where if this occurs then I'm going to do this and I think it's always important to help athletes have that plan because things aren't always going to go smoothly they're typically not going to go smoothly but the more they think about okay if this comes up I'm going to do this, it gives them more control over kind of these novel situations. And so I like, I often like to use this with athletes in many aspects of their performance. And more confidence, they plan what they're going to do, you know, that their reaction time is quicker, you know, that they know exactly what they're going to do. And so they don't maybe question what to do in the moment when things go wrong. Yeah, it was always fascinating. I saw this

video of Michael Phelps. And he kind of does a similar strategy where he imagines himself, he imagines that like his goggles have fallen off when he's swimming. And he rehearsed that mentally, like so many times that he knows, like, even though this hasn't happened to him many times, that he knows that if that was to happen, he's already mentally rehearsed how he's going to deal with that should it come up. And so it becomes so automatic in the moment, because he's played it over and over and over again. And that's where I think a lot of this kind of comes from is really getting athletes to think about, okay, if this thing comes up, how do I respond to it? And how do I respond to it in the most efficient manner? Excellent. Well, tell us a little bit about, you know,

maybe I should have started with this, but I think about your core, your four core kind of principles of your consulting practice. And you gave us an example of some baseball players you work with. Maybe tell us a little bit more about who else you work with and a success story. Yeah, so I think most of my work has been with collegiate athletes. I started a lot of my consulting work when I was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and worked with quite a few teams there as well. I've worked with, you know, sports such as golf and swimming, soccer, football, baseball, softball, really, really most of the sports out there. And I've worked with some professional athletes in water skiing, equestrian, and so quite a range of experiences but I always think my my success stories are

when I've worked with athletes who might be contemplating quitting their sport and that occurs more often than I thought I didn't really originally think that you know so many college athletes contemplate quitting their sport and many college athletes contemplate quitting their sport, and many actually do end up quitting their sport. And so I can think back to when I was working with a particular collegiate golfer, and really kind of struggling in her sport. She was a senior, there was a lot of younger athletes on the team that they had recruited and brought in to kind of be the primary golfers that particular year. She was kind of having some identity issues with that because she always saw herself as a

golfer, but now she's kind of contemplating whether she wants to be involved with the team this particular season. And actually that's where I think the core values has its most impact because athletes aren't always going to be getting playing time in their sport, right? They might not be a starter. They might not be selected at the top five for golf. And so one thing we know from the research is if you are acting in a way that's consistent with your core values, you're typically going to be more satisfied and committed in the activity that you're in because you're really living out what's true to you. And so that was something we did was, okay, maybe you're not going to be getting as much playing time this year. Maybe you don't feel like as much a part of the team, but how can we make this last year count? You know, how can we

start to think about the things that are really important in your life? How can we have those translate to golf this season? Because people don't often think that way. Often they think that, okay, I'm in this situation. I'm not getting playing time. This is horrible. I'm not performing well, but how can we change that situation? How can you kind of live out these things that are really important to you? And so one thing she noticed was that something that was really important to her in her life was mentoring. And so I had asked her, I said, so, you know, what type of mentoring do you have on this particular team that you're on? She's like, none. And so we talked about, you know, if you were to mentor one of these freshmen athletes, would that be something that would be consistent with your core values? And she said,

yeah. And so what I thought was fascinating about this is here's somebody who's taking her position on the team, you know, from a talent standpoint. And now she's thinking about mentoring this person, but it's also something that's consistent with who she is. And what the success story was in this is that was what we worked on pretty much in all of our work together, because she wasn't, you know, playing in competitions and tournaments. She was practicing, of course, but it was really, okay, how can you engage in these different behaviors in golf that are consistent with your core values? And throughout time, she actually started making the cuts. So for this particular team, they would play these like pre-events and whoever like finished in the top five of these pre-events would then get to go to the competition as one of the top five. And so over time, she started to qualify for these events,

even though we weren't working on necessarily things that were directly related to, you know, her golf technique or, or mental factors that were interfering with her golf technique. It was really about, you know, engaging in these actions that, you know, felt true to her. And I think that also relieved the stress for her and the pressure that she felt, and maybe probably allowed her to play a little bit more free than she usually did. And so I think that was quite a success story of going from almost quitting the team to, you know, now a mentoring role, to that mentoring role actually having an impact potentially on her performance. Nice. And I think one of the most important things I heard you just say was that, you know,

if we act in a way that's reflective of our core values, we're more satisfied and more committed. And I think what you just helped her do was just be more on purpose. And I like the example of core values you're talking about. So I have at least two more questions that I want to ask you. So I want to explore a little bit about your research. So let's kind of dive into that a little bit. Tell us a little about what you're doing right now. We spend a lot of time on your consulting practice, but I want to hear a little bit about what you're doing related to your research and performance in sports psychology? Yeah, and so I alluded to this, I think, earlier in the conversation. And so I did a year and a half postdoc in clinical sports psychology at UNLV. And so I was originally, you know, trained in sports psychology, more

performance consultation, but I really wanted to get experience working with athletes who had mental health and substance use concerns. And so this postdoctoral fellowship really allowed me to do it. And so we were involved in a externally funded grant, working with collegiate athletes there on depression and anxiety, adjustment disorder, and then substance use as well. And one thing I kind of noticed was, it's really hard to get athletes into treatment or into the services that they need from a mental health perspective. And so, you know, I'm not a licensed psychologist, but in terms of research, one thing that I can be really helpful for in terms of helping these athletes is, you know, how do we design interventions and

programs that help athletes who have mental health struggles seek the assistance that they need? And so the work that we're doing right now at Florida State, and this is a collaborative project with one of my other colleagues in sports psychology and then a colleague in counseling psychology, developing stigma reduction interventions to help seeking behaviors in athletes. And so there's a lot of different techniques that have been used, not just in sport or just in psychology, but also like in police as well, right? Police officers sometimes have a bias that might affect how they interact with segments of the population. Stigma is also a bias. It's a bias that you might hold towards somebody in a particular group, in this case, somebody with a mental health concern. And so we're developing this program that has four components. The first is mental health literacy.

That tends to be the most common intervention used. But this is really providing athletes and coaches with education about the signs and symptoms of different mental health disorders, how to recognize those, what type of services are available on campus that athletes could use, what are some of the risk factors that you need to watch out for? And then finally, how could you help somebody who you suspect might be having a mental health concern? How can you talk to them? How can you make sure that they get referred to the appropriate place? place. The other component is perspective taking. And so this is a really powerful technique to improve somebody's empathy. We know as we improve somebody's empathy, they're typically going to hold less stigma towards a particular group. And so actually imagining that you were somebody that had a mental health disorder in terms of the struggles that they might experience, as well as receiving that type of help

and getting better and really putting yourself in that person's shoes. The other is counter stereotyping. And so really providing information or evidence about things that are counter to the stereotypes that we typically think of when somebody has a mental health concern. And so, you know, often a typical stereotype is that people with depression are mental health concern. And so, you know, often a typical stereotype is that people with depression are weak or lazy. And so providing some evidence that, no, this is a mental illness. They want to get out of bed. They're trying to be more productive in their particular sport, but there are these factors that are kind of holding them back. And so providing some of that counter evidence that might even involve providing examples of professional athletes,

Brandon Marshall comes to mind where, okay, this person has a mental disorder, but they're a pretty high performing athlete. And that goes counter to a lot of the stereotypes that people hold about individuals with mental illness. And then lastly, contact. So some of the research suggests that when somebody who holds stigma towards a particular group is put in contact with somebody who might have a mental health concern and they interact with each other, either through conversation or doing a particular project together, that often reduces stigma. And so we've designed this kind of four-component intervention to use with both athletes and coaches to help reduce the stigma that often exists in collegiate athletes about mental health and really helping to ensure that

athletes who might be experiencing mental health concerns get the help that they need. Excellent. And so would you recommend, I'm sure, you know, you're already doing the research right now, so you probably don't have any preliminary results, but when I think about athletes or coaches who are listening, you know, would you suggest that they, you know, follow these four steps or, you know, what's your recommendation for maybe coaches or other athletes who are in contact with somebody who might have a mental health issue? Yeah, so I think of it on kind of two phases. One is the education and one is the training. And so I would say the first step is just education. And the NCAA has done a pretty nice job of providing resources for coaches that outline kind of the most prevalent mental health disorders for collegiate athletes. And so it's very educational based in terms of like these are the signs that you would look out for for somebody that might have depression.

Here are some of the symptoms for somebody that might have a substance use disorder. Because, again, just like in sports psychology consulting, that initial awareness is key to identification. And so I think that's always kind of the first place to start is just to become more educated about, you know, what types of services are available on campus and also knowing like you don't have to you're not treating the athlete right you're not solving this you're just kind of a facilitator in this process and so of course coaches have so many responsibilities you know not just from the the win to losses but also recruiting and other things and so it's often hard right to become educated in kind of mental health topics and substance use topics. But I think that's a really good place to start. Because, again, you don't have to have all the answers. But if you can, you know, identify a potential athlete and get that athlete help,

that could be really powerful. And the other I think is training. And I think that's what the literature is lacking the most. And so those other three that I mentioned, perspective taking, counter-stereotyping, and contact, those are more like training-based interventions where I think it's a higher level of intervention to be able to help coaches and athletes better understand mental health, try to reduce some of the stigma that they hold, and then make those appropriate referrals when necessary. Oh, wow. Excellent. Excellent. So, you know, we've talked about your four principles in your consulting practice. We've talked about a little bit of research that you do. Tell us about any resources or, you know, books that you might recommend for the topics that you talked about today?

Yeah. So I mentioned one, I think I might've mentioned two of these already, but, and I'll kind of put my academic hat on with this because I think many of the things that I'm doing in terms of both the consulting work and the research as well has some great books that I think are user-friendly for both practitioners, but also performers in general. So the one I mentioned about motivational interviewing by Miller and Rolnick, I was really influenced by the psychology of enhancing human performance by Garger and Moore. That's where I picked up a lot of my ideas about mindfulness and different types of mindfulness interventions that can be impactful. And then, of course, being a UCLA alumni, I think any book by the great John Wooden is a valuable resource. And so I really like A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections on and

off the court, and also the Pyramid of Success. I think those are great principles to live by, both in sport and everyday life. And so, yeah, those were some of the resources I might recommend. Well, the last question that I want to ask you is actually about, I usually ask everybody this. I mean, it's about a time that failed and it didn't go so great for you. And I'd love for you to share a little bit of a vulnerable moment and how you think that led you to where you are today.

So let's end with that question. Yeah, that's a really good question. And I've definitely had a lot of failures in my life. And I think failure is often the ultimate motivator, though, at the same time. And so I can also think about it across, you know, being in academia, being an athlete or being a practitioner. I think I'd like to go more on the vulnerable side of this. So I would say early on in my career, and this is both probably in graduate school and then progressing through postdoc and, and even, even like maybe my first year at Florida State,

I think kind of the biggest failure, or maybe first how I define failure is kind of when I let myself down, you know, when I feel like I can do something really well, and I don't perform as I should. And so I think early on in my career, I really let anxiety and discomfort affect the decision of whether or not to participate in something. And so I'll give a couple examples. So maybe there's this opportunity to present at a conference, and it's like a big keynote. Or maybe there's this opportunity to discuss my work with somebody on campus that seemed to be really important. And so while I've done those things lately, when I first started out, I think it was that initial discomfort

kind of like shutting me out a little bit, right? So sometimes we don't want to do things that might feel novel or uncertain, or sometimes just the anxiety gets in the way and then we avoid different activities. And so I think that was a big failure because it's completely inconsistent with what I believe in. Yet, I kind of let that guide my decision-making process and actions. And so I think, you know, what I've learned from that is when there's an opportunity that's presented to me and it feels uncomfortable,

but there's also some level of excitement in there, man, that's the sign of opportunity right there. And I've had to learn that, yeah, I've had to learn that the hard way was it wasn't, you know, obviously there's things that get presented to you that you just don't have time to do, of course. But, you know, that's how I felt in these moments where I was excited I was getting this opportunity, but it was also really uncomfortable. And so like we talked about with values, sometimes you need to tolerate anxiety in the pursuit of values-driven behavior. And so that's what I think I've learned over time. So when a new opportunity arises where I feel this uncomfort, I try to say yes really quickly so that I don't even have time because I know from my previous experiences that this is a really good opportunity,

but it's the anxiety that might be getting in the way, but I can tolerate the anxiety. I've been there before. And so, yeah, for me, failure was really letting kind of these mental factors get in the way of these wonderful opportunities and chances to really demonstrate like who I am and the work that I do. Oh, wow. That's excellent. Two things that I just heard you say that I'm going to repeat that were really powerful is

when you experience discomfort plus excitement, that's actually the sign of an opportunity and how we need to tolerate anxiety in the pursuit of value-driven behavior. And I like what you said is just that you just, you just say yes quickly. So you're, you know, I think about how it's like you're in your heart, you know, it's something you want to do. And it's like your head that can get in your way when you experience the anxiety. So I so appreciate your time and your energy. How can people follow up with you if they have any questions or comments or want to contact you more about your work? Yeah, I'd say Twitter's a great place for that. So at Dr. Greg Chow,

my email address is gchow at fsu.edu. So either one is a great place to get in contact. And I'm always interested in hearing about from other practitioners, prospective students about any of the topics we discussed today, or anything else related to sport and performance psychology. And I'll make sure that I have those up on the show notes. So if people need the actual links, you can just go over to cindracampoff.com. And then Greg, and we're going to make sure that we pronounce or you spell it right. So G-R-A-I-G. So make sure that you're spelling it right when you head over to drcinder.com.

And you know what I want to make sure that I do is kind of summarize what you talked about today and just repeat back a few things that you mentioned today that I thought were really powerful as a way to kind of wrap up and also just to, you know, show you how appreciative I am for you to share your wisdom on the podcast today. So we started with talking about how you use the post-event reflection. We talked about how that you can use it for athletes, but any type of performance. And then you also shared with us this importance of understanding your values and perhaps even using the card sort, which you used. And then

you said something really powerful about values. And if we act in a way that is reflective of our core values, we're going to be more satisfied and committed. And then we talked about the importance of mindfulness. And there's three really important parts, awareness, refocusing, and non-judgment. And I loved our discussion about the yips, super good, and how you shared with us kind of just a way of using different interventions to really help an athlete be more satisfied and perform to their potential. And there's a few things that I thought anybody can take from our discussion about mindfulness. And you said, you know, that it's just a thought or emotion. We don't need to judge it. And really, you know, the importance of it is just

letting it come and go and accepting it. So I'm so appreciative of your time and your energy. At the end, you know, we talked about failure, which you said failure is the ultimate motivator. So you know what? We could tweet all of these. So I just appreciate your time and your energy. And thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. Yeah, so much fun. Thank you, Sindra. 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.