High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 164: Your Belief Must Be Greater Than Your Doubt with Katherine Reutter-Adamek, Olympian, World Champion, and American Record Holder

Episode Date: March 8, 2018

Katherine Reutter-Adamek is an American record holder, World Champion, and two-time Olympic medalist in short track speedskating. She is an Olympic Silver and Bronze Medalist. After several injuries and surgeries following the 2011 season Katherine was forced to retire. She moved to Milwaukee to coach for three years before deciding to make a comeback for the 2018 Olympia Games. Coaching, along with a few great sports psychology consultants, has widened her perspective and helped her embrace a growth mindset. Through out the next two seasons she learned lessons from both triumph and failure that led her to pursue a career in public speaking and share her experiences about the mental game. In this interview, Katherine and Cindra talk about: Her journey to the Olympic Games How the best handle failure What her sport psychology consultants taught her about the mental game How you can fight pressure with gratitude Why she applies concepts like SEE and Expect the Expected (see Episode 162) How to handle disappointments You can find a full description of the Podcast and contact information for Katherine at cindrakamphoff.com/katherine. You can find Katherine at katherinereutter.us and on Twitter at @katreutter.

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. My name is Sindra Kampoff and I'm the founder and host of the podcast. I'm excited that you're here ready to listen to episode 164. Now today's podcast is brought to you by the Beyond Grit book. I'm not going to say too much about the book because I really want to get straight to our guest expert, but I do want to let you know that it's really helping people and teams move forward with a bigger vision of themselves. A sales team who recently bought copies

of each person on their team said it really helped them level up their performance and get more out of their people. The goal of these interviews is to learn from the world's best leaders, athletes, coaches, and consultants, all about the topic of mindset to help us reach our potential or be high performers in our field or sport. And before heading over to listen to Catherine, I'm going to read a rating and review on iTunes. This is from Mark Russell Phillips, who said practical, polished, and applicable advice. You know, he said it's really amazing how practical information that Sindra provides in every episode. And her advice is based on both life experience and solid research.

This is a great podcast to help each of us improve our performance in every facet of our lives. Thank you so much, Mark. I really appreciate the comments. And I do work to make it really practical and inspiring. So I appreciate that. So if you enjoyed today's podcast, I'd ask you to do one of three things. If you could head over to iTunes or Stitcher Radio and provide a rating and a review like Mark did, or you can share your favorite part about the

podcast, perhaps a quote, on social media. You can tag myself at Mentally Underscore Strong on Twitter. And I'm at Dr. Cinder Campoff on Facebook. Or you could tell a friend or a colleague about the podcast. That would help these incredible interviews stay free. Now, once again today, we're talking about something to help you gain the high performance edge and particularly helping you follow your dreams with excitement and passion. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. I'm excited to be joined today by Katherine Ruder-Adamick. So, Katherine, welcome to the High Performance Mindset. Hi, thanks for having me. You know, I'm really excited to talk with you today about your

experience at the Olympics and kind of what we can learn from what it takes to perform at a world class level and as well as the mental training that you did kind of leading up to that and that you even do now. So just to kind of get us started, Catherine, tell us about what you're passionate about it and what you're doing right now. Well, what I'm doing right now is actually I'm trying to take all of the incredible lessons I learned from my time in speed skating and transition those into a message that really relates and hits home with everyday people to help them understand like, you know, Olympians, we're not special. Training for a gold medal is special, but our struggles are the exact same struggle as everyone else's. And we're just really lucky because part of our job is to have a strong mental.

So we get to train the mental strategies around like how to make sure you have a good day, how to, you know, defeat anxiety or stress or frustration. So currently, my passion is taking those lessons and trying to help other people just, you know, become aware and even learn and apply them for themselves. But my second great passion in life, which is probably maybe the answer you're expecting, is short track speed skating. So, you know, you've been highly accomplished in terms of speed skating. I could list all of your accomplishments. four-time US 1000 champion, you're a 2010 Olympic medalist, a silver in the women's 1000 and a bronze in women's 3000 meter relay. Just tell us about your start in speed skating and how were you introduced to speed skating? So I got started when I was pretty young, when I was I think five. My mom and I took a learn to skate class together at the University of Illinois Ice Arena

and I started in figure skating but it really didn't take long before we figured out that speed skating was warm was more my thing and um and I loved it from the very first day I did it um I remember coaches telling me that I looked like a figure skater and that I skated like a figure skater and I remember being my five a figure skater. And I remember being my five-year-old spunky self and being mad and, you know, thinking in my head, well, I'll show you, I'm going to be a figure skater. And I swear, I do remember it plain as day. And so like really my love for the sport started on day one. Love it. I read about how Bonnie Blair, you know, five-time Olympic gold medalist,

actually, you came to your high school to speak. And that was kind of like a kind of a way to help you kind of step up your commitment in your game. Tell us about what that was like. And she's such an amazing role model in the sport. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So Bonnie and I actually went to the same high school. We grew up in obviously the same town. And she came back to give a speech. It was like a leadership conference for athletes, student athletes in our school. And speed skating is not a school sport, but I knew enough people in the school that I like somehow a teacher, you know, got me an invite. And so I got to go listen to her speak. And so much of her story that I remember

from that day was how from a young age, she was driving up to Milwaukee and she was training full time and she was training with the boys and she was pushing herself to achieve great things. And she, at the time that she was 16. And so me being in the audience and being 16 and being right at that same point in my life where I either need to move away and join a development team so that I can train every single day with a stronger group of people, or I need to start applying to school and figure out like, what else am I going to do with my life? And I knew that speed skating was what I wanted to do with my life. But there's so much, you know, fear around, I don't have any friends, I'll have to leave my family,

I'll be going to a whole new, I'll be graduating from a different high school. At the time, the student, the athletes on this program that I was trying to qualify for lived in college dorms. So there was the idea that I could be a high school kid in college dorms. There was so much fear around all of those things. And so hearing her story and that she went through similar issues, plus then the fact that she came out on the other side of that with five gold medals, to me, that was like, well, this is it then. I mean, if she can do it, I can do it. And that was kind of what I needed to just push those fears aside.

That's awesome. So it helped you just really embrace the unknown and gave you a role model of somebody that you could look up to and someone really close in terms of like the same location where you grew up. Like there's a lot of similarities between you and Bonnie. Yeah. And we actually both live in Milwaukee now. So I get to see her several days a week at the Pettit. She and her husband and her daughter. Yeah, they're all out there speed skating pretty often. Her son actually played hockey for the program that my husband coaches. So it's totally weird and random how life just works in circles, you know, it just keeps bringing you back around to see your progress every time you get back to the start line. That's super cool. So then, you know, kind of fill in the blanks between, you know, you're in high school and then you go and you decide to train. Is that when you moved to Utah? That's when I moved to Marquette, Michigan. So I spent two years training on the U.S. development team in Marquette. And then I qualified to go to my first world championships, which was, you know, a completely eye-opening experience.

And qualifying for that team then is what allowed me to go to Utah and train with national team full time. And that was in 2007. Nice, nice. And most of your success, 2010, 2011, you know, just tell us about, you know, what do you think it takes kind of from a mental standpoint to perform at this world-class level, you know, in terms of the world championships or the Olympics? What do you think the mental attributes are that you need to be able to do that? Oh, I think some of the things that you need to handle the pressure at that level is, first of all, just this never ending belief that you can do what you set out to do. And doubt creeps into everyone's mind. I don't care who you are. I don't care how confident you are. Doubt creeps in. And so, but your, your belief in yourself has to be greater than every ounce of doubt that comes, whether it's coming from others or whether it's coming a little bit from inside

you, you have to have the belief in yourself to overcome that. And I think something else that, that it takes, I mean, you know, perseverance, hard work, dedication. Those are, those are kind of the obvious ones, but I think what not everybody considers is the mindset that it takes to deal with failure. And really making sure that you're creating an environment where failure is an opportunity to learn and grow. Failure is not a punishment. Failure does not speak to who you are as a person. Failure is just, you know, it's unfortunate that you didn't get what you want right now but you got experience and you have the chance to learn and let's not let's not waste that chance to learn by taking failure personally yeah that's really well said so you know let's kind of dive into that a little bit more and Catherine can you tell us about a

time that you know you would consider a failure and what you learned from it and what we can learn from that as well yeah um you know I've been thinking about this because I I kind of knew that this question would be coming and my first thought is that oh there's so many to choose from there's so many chances to choose from but I think the biggest one that stands out in my mind right now is I was at a world cup in November of this past year so 2017 and I was my first world cup coming off of a major concussion and I was out like not able to train even at all for six months. And so it took me a long time to get back to the point where I was skating and competing to a level where I could go race internationally.

And when I got there, my first round, I think that I actually as for a fact I raced better at my first world cup as an 18 year old without no experience not knowing what I was doing I raced better then than I did at this world cup where I was coming back from this major injury and just dealing with the anxiety of like what if I'm not good anymore? And so that was a huge failure on two parts. One, because my performance was terrible. But the other because I really I did define myself by my failure. I did take my failure very personally in that moment. And but what I learned from it was, because I'd done so poorly on day one, I actually didn't get to race at all on day two.

So I had kind of an off day in the middle of my weekend. And I took that off day to read the book Mindset by Carol Dweck. And it was this opportunity to totally open my eyes to the fact that I was living in a fixed mindset and that I had not been living in a growth mindset. And that if I wanted to, you know, race at the caliber that I had been capable of racing at before, I needed to get my mind back into that place of growing and learning. And then on the next day of the competition, day three, I finished seventh in the thousand, which was probably the second best finish that I've had in that distance in a two-year period. So, I mean, went from being at my worst to having this chance to gain some perspective and then being back to, I wouldn't quite say my best,

but at least back in the ballpark of like, okay, this is what it feels like when I'm on, you know? Yeah, that's cool. That's amazing that you could do that so quickly, you know, with that day in between. So just awareness of kind of what you're experiencing. It's kind of one thing I'm hearing. And then, you know, the Carol Dweck's book helped you realize that I have to continue to grow and learn. And, you know, when you think, Catherine, I know you've done work with two different sports psychology professionals in Knoll, as well as Nicole Detling. So what do you think their training and their work with you, how did that lead you? Or like, what did you learn from that that helped you in that moment? Right. Where, you know, like I think to be able to turn it around so quickly,

you need to have a lot of awareness of yourself and awareness of what's going on with you mentally or emotionally. So how did that help you in that moment? Yeah. so a story stands out for each of them. And the first one is with Nicole Detling. I remember at the day of the 1000 meter final in the 2010 Olympics, and I was freaking out. I was so nervous. And I was just, you know, really kind of losing my mind a little bit. And she sat me down and she said, you know, the Olympics are going to be over. Whether, as a matter of fact, they'll be over tonight, whether you're ready for them to be over or not. The only thing that you can control is how you carry yourself between now and then. And yeah, so oftentimes when I'm really, really stressed out or have a lot of anxiety over something,

I remember that this situation will be over. It's only a matter of time. But when that time is up, will I be proud of how I managed myself? So I was very aware of like, I have to be in charge. I have to manage my time properly so I can turn this around. Wow. Was that like a wake-up call? You know, like that sounds like, you know, like in terms of someone sitting you down and saying, hey, you know, gain control. You know, what was that like in the moment? Did we be able to take that feedback and run with it? Or how was that for you?

Yeah, it was very eye-opening because she didn't say it like this, but kind of what I took from it was, hey, you're self-sabotaging. Sure. You know, you watch people do this to themselves all the time. And as an outsider, you can see like, well, if they just, you know, get back in the game or get their mental right or push harder, whatever it is that someone's missing. It's easy when you're on the outside to see it.

When you're on the inside, you don't really know what you're doing, but you're trying to do something, but you don't, is it working? I don't know. And then anxiety builds up and you, and that's how people start to self-sabotage things that they've worked their whole lives for. And she really brought my attention to the fact that if I don't turn this around, I will be responsible for sabotaging my, my own experience at the Olympics. So that was a huge eye-opener. And thank goodness I was in the right mindset to hear that and to take that feedback to heart and not be offended by it. Absolutely. And then what happened, you know, from there? Because was that at the beginning when you got to the Olympics? Or just tell us when that happened and, you know, what happened

from there for you? That was about an hour before races started. That was like the make or break moment of you either need to reel it in and go win the U.S. a medal or you're going to be a complete wreck today. And thank God, yeah, her advice really helped me reel it in and go and perform at pretty much the best I was capable of and bring the U.S. home a medal that day. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, that's amazing. And so I think you're going to share another story. I didn't mean to cut you off. No, no problem. Well, I was just going to share another one about Ian Canole. So if both of those two psychologists have played the biggest role in my ability to have some idea of mindset and mental toughness. Nicole is a huge part of that.

Ian is another huge part of that. And I would say that the big thing I took away from Ian that helped me learn from that failure with that, that world cup was the ability to create space and to separate yourself from whatever's causing you a ton of emotion in the moment and to just everything feels hard when you're right up against it even if it's just trying to get the dishes done as you're rushing out because you don't want to be late to this meeting you know things that are all things that are simple, feel hard when you're pushed right up against the max of your timeframe or your like emotional ability to handle your stress right now. But when you can take a step back and look at it as if you're an outsider,

things make a lot more sense. And so when I was too close to that failure, when I was feeling like, man, I'm really, I'm really not good enough. And I'm not as good as I was before my concussion. And I may never be, you know, quote unquote, good enough again. That's really heavy. And that is nearly impossible to deal with when you're feeling like that. But when you can take a step back and create space between, you know, your feelings and the reality, reality is it just had a bad race. I had like three minutes of time that didn't go the way I wanted them to go. And now those three minutes are over and I can create a better experience for next time. And Ian kind of taught me the mental strategies that it takes to be able to do that.

Because that's not easy. It's not easy to unwind yourself from the emotion of whatever you're going through. It does take a little bit of work and some repetition and some strategy. And Ian really made me aware of those things. That's great. And so like when you're talking about this space, I'm thinking that what you mean is like that day in between, or you could just like really reflect and better understand what was happening for you. Tell me if I'm accurate and then kind of like, how did you do that? Right. So I think one of the things that we can really teach people here is, okay, you know,

what does that mean to create this space? And like, how did you do it? You know, I'm actually, I don't mean having that day in racing because sometimes, sometimes you don't have a day to get your mind back. Right. You know, sometimes you only have 10 minutes, 30 seconds, you know, whatever. So what I mean by creating space is for me, I kind of imagine that if whatever problem I'm having right now if I could just put it in a box and push it across the table and look at it from an outsider's perspective so almost if I could from a far distance kind of peer into that box and look at the problem and what would I see and I had a huge advantage during this past season of skating because I took several years off after 2010 to coach. So I can look into that box and imagine what if this wasn't

me? What if this was a skater who I had been in charge of coaching? So I've created space by first of all like pushing the the heavy emotions kind of away out of my mind and then I've also created space by imagining if this was someone who I cared about a good friend or an athlete whose process I was a part of how would I see their experience differently from how I'm seeing my experience and And so if I imagine someone else in my same experience, I would look at that and I would say, man, this girl took five years off from international competition, came back for less than a year before she got a massive concussion. She's off the ice for six months, has been back on the ice for a little less than six months. She's already racing international and she just had a really

bad day. Love it. That sucks, but I fully understand her process and I actually think it's kind of courageous what she's doing. She knows that she's not in a good opportunity to succeed, but she's still moving forward in spite of the chance that she might fail. And it's easy to see that when you think about someone else. But when I was, when you're living that experience and you're all, you always judge yourself infinitely harder than you would judge anyone else. Living that experience, I literally felt like I should quit. I don't belong here. I should just go home. I can't believe that I think I'm going to the Olympics in three months. I should just go home. I was literally like, why don't I just go online and try to book a flight? I should go home. I was so incredibly discouraged. The 1500 used to be my best distance. I'm world

champion at that distance. And I would I had just I didn't even check my finish that day because it was so bad. It was way out of even the top 20. Not even close to where I needed to be. So when it's happening to you, it just feels so devastating and it's so easy to let that record player go on repeat and you start thinking those same negative thoughts over and over again. And then you believe that they're true. And that's like, that's trouble. You're really getting into like a mental death spiral and that's trouble.

Um, but like I said, you know, taking that situation and not only just really imagining that I'm pushing it out of my mind onto a table, onto something that's concrete and objective, just that in itself forces me to be objective about the situation. But then going a step further and imagining like, what would I say in the instance of someone else? Wouldn't I be more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt? Now, why don't I apply that same benefit of the doubt to myself and try to be productive out of this, you know, avoid the death spiral and just learn the lesson without all of the pain. And the lesson was that I went, I fought too early in the race. I was fighting for position with like seven to go.

By four to go, I was tired. And by two to go, I was toasted. So the lesson is your legs aren't fresh. That's not surprising. You're coming back from a long injury. So change your strategy to save your legs for later in the race. Nice. I never would have learned that lesson if I'd

continued on that feeling of, I suck, I'm awful, I'll never be good at this. Then you just, you self-sabotage. You defeat yourself before you've really even tried to learn how to be better. And then you're not really thinking about the tactical things that you need to change about the race or maybe your warmup or kind of the way you're describing and you're taking it more about yourself and seeing yourself as a failure. So what I hear is like incredible growth mindset in that, Catherine. You know, one of the things, Catherine, you said when I asked you about like, what does it take to compete at this level? And you said, you know, this incredible belief in yourself and that you can go after your goals and that, you know, that doubt, you know,

is will creep in. When you think about like just observing some of the world's best at the Olympics, competing against them, you being one of the world's best, like, can you tell us what that was like at the Olympics? And, you know, for you, what did it take for you to really be present in the moment and crush your goals in 2010? In 2010, I would not say that I was mentally as tough as I am now. 2010 and the years after 2010 taught me some of the hardest lessons that I've learned so far, which have given me this awareness now. Back in 2010, and I think we see this every day, and this is what the Olympics is fantastic for showcasing,

is that pure grit and determination and spirit can lead to absolutely incredible things. And that was kind of my strategy in 2010. I was just, my plan was just to want it more and to work harder for it and be willing to sacrifice more for it than everyone else. And I wouldn't say that I was very aware or present at that time.

I was just really good at doing whatever it took, no matter what. And so that worked. That definitely worked. It also, you know, it's not incredibly sustainable. It's exhausting. It leads to a lot of emotional ups and downs. But it does work. And again, like I said, I've had so many lessons in the last year that I've last several years that I've learned in that most people can dig down and grit through something hard for a for a within a finite timeframe, as long as you know, there's an end, even if it's six months or a year or four years from now, you can say, hey, I only have to do everything that it takes until this point and then I can relax. And I think most people can do that. The secret to finding the

sustainability of like, how do I push myself to that limit every day and also enjoy my life, that's not something that I learned until this comeback for 2018. Cool. So, you know, just for people who don't necessarily know as much about your story, you retired in 2013, were coaching, like you mentioned, and then came back for this year and around it making the Olympic team in 2018. So, you know, when you think about like how you've learned now to, you know, keep that maybe grit and determination, but be more, maybe you'd use the word balanced or mindful, you know, how has that kind of evolved for you over the last couple of years? At first, at first it evolved slowly. And at first, I was still really full of judgment and emotion over if something didn't go my way. And again, I just felt like I was missing the chances to learn lessons.

And an example would be if I got gapped in a training session. So I would, again, I like to train with boys because I just think that makes you better. So I have a couple of boys on my team who I would train with and every once in a while they could pull a gap on me and I wouldn't be able to finish the set at the speed we needed to go. And so what I started to notice in myself is that on these days where I would get beat or for whatever reason I didn't perform like I wanted to I didn't feel like I was learning I felt like I was just oh man another bad day and this is I have to make up for it I got to do 10 extra sets on the bike or you know what I'm just not gonna eat dinner tonight because I must be overweight and that's why I can't finish my sets these things

that are just ridiculous they're not they're rational thoughts. And when I started to go back and look at my training cycles and say like, what am I missing? What's, what's the issue here? I started to realize, you know, it has nothing to do with making upsets on the bike or with losing weight or with, you know, be just being hard on myself in general and everything to do with their boys, which means that I need to change my strategy when I skate with them. And if they take their second cross, I'm gonna use a little bit of technical jargon,

but if they're taking, if they're only taking one cross out of the corner, one crossover out of the corner, but they're boys, they can accelerate a bit faster than I can. They're a little more twitchy. So why don't I start my corner exit acceleration a little sooner? Or why don't I carry it a little longer? And I started as soon as the day that I did that, the lap that I made that adjustment, I stayed with the boys. And it was very eye-opening to me like how much time have I been wasting with like judgment of

why I'm not doing you know quote-unquote good enough instead of just learning the lesson which is I need to change my strategy in order to achieve the goal why don't I just be aware and present and figure out what the answer is and then do that awesome you know and what I'm hearing is like just looking at what's happening more objectively than taking it really personally. You know, Catherine, when you were coming back to compete in 2017 and then make your run for the Olympics, you know, what was that like being retired after a couple of years and then, you know, stepping back into competition at international level? Like what was it like and what did it take mentally to do that?

Coming back to competition was a wonderful, wonderful gift. I had an interview with Andrea Joyce actually at NBC and when I told her this story, she said, oh, you're a born again speed skater. And that was the perfect way to put it that I had kind of taken for granted how incredible speed skating was in 2010 when I could do it. And then in 2011 I got hurt and I, I,

that's what led me to retire in 2013 as I just couldn't get over these injuries. And so to feel like I had something taken away from me in 2013 and then to be able to be back mastering my craft doing what I love that was an incredible gift for me um and I don't remember the second part of your question but I hope that answers at least the first part yeah well I just asked like you know what did it take mentally and kind of what I'm hearing just even from that response is like this gratitude that you were there competing and I don't hear pressure you know I just hear like you know excited to be back at the

world stage yeah I mean I did have pressure because I because I was I was very good in 2010 and 2011 and I I had high expectations for myself coming back so I did have a lot of pressure, but I found that I could, I could fight pressure with gratitude and I can use, yeah, I could use that when I was feeling, you know, stressed or, you know, pressure just in general, not good. I could find something to be grateful for or someone who I could, I could reach out to and help. And inadvertently, then I would end up helping myself because just getting myself out of my own head, unraveled in what my problems are today,

and then contributing to those around me. Between gratitude and contribution, that really was a great strategy for getting rid of any pressure I was feeling. That's awesome. You know, and I know after talking to you when we connected before this is, you know, you use the app Vision Pursue and had Russ, who is the co-founder, the founder of Vision Pursue on the podcast. And it's an app. Tell us about like how you got introduced to that and how did that help you just

in terms of, you know, your performance the last couple of years? So Ian is actually the sports who introduced me to the app. And my initial response was like, I don't know. I mean, I'm an app really like, is this going to solve all my problems? And I was a little in disbelief at first, but Ian assured me that just give it a try. Like, promise it's not going to hurt you. Just give it a try. And I trusted Ian so much that I thought, heck yes, of course, I'll give it a try. And what I found was that having a daily regimen of mindfulness and meditation exercises

really took my mental game to the next level. Because I think you've referenced it a little bit, even in this conversation, that it takes a lot of awareness to notice when you need space or to notice when you're feeling pressure and then instead choose gratitude. That takes a really open mindset and a very wide perspective. And the way that I trained that was through the VP app using mindfulness and meditation. So, you know, I know that the VP app does many things. Like there's something you can, like three or four things

you can do on the app every day, right? Starts with a quote, then it gives you something to like a meditation practice and then something for you to learn. You know, a few of the things that Russ talked about on the podcast, Catherine, I'm wondering if maybe you could expand on one of these or maybe there's something else you want to expand on, you know, like what helped you, but he talked about the C acronym, you know, what to do when you're experiencing negative emotions. He talked about expect the expected. And then he also talked about another concept called new eyes. So, you know, maybe you can tell us about maybe perhaps one of those, how that helped you, or, you know, maybe there's something else that you'd like to share from that experience.

Yeah, I mean, I can, if you don't mind, I'll do just a little bit of both um because i think the c kind of goes back to what i was saying before about creating space and so when you see an event or an emotion you separate from it so you put space between you and the emotion and then you embrace the emotion and all the feelings that it's causing you to cause but you don't with you know without judgment you just let your body feel them. And then you evaluate the situation. And instead of, you know, staying on that repeat, you look back and you say, Okay, how can I fix this? And from there, then you should be able to move on. And then so that the second part of that question is that I'll actually share what I share one thing that really helped me in the VP process, which I'm not sure if it's actually a lesson, but it is something that Russ taught to me.

It's that there's no such thing as good or bad. I'll give you an example in myself. It's easy to get wrapped up in the ups and downs of things when everything feels like, you know, this is great or this is awful. But there's no such thing because, you know, when I was 16, I moved away from home and was dealing with all this fear and anxiety and that feels bad. But then when, you know, thanks to going away from home and working as hard as I did, I got to go to national team and that's really good. And then national team led to Olympics, which is really good. Had an injury that ended what I thought was, you know, ending my career and that's really bad. But then I got to become a coach and I got to learn. And when I got to skate again, I was even, I was an even better

skater and racer because of what I had learned. And so, so all these, all these things that felt really bad in the moment are actually kind of stepping stones to lead to something really good. And all the things that were really good, they don't last forever. So why get caught up in thinking how awesome they are? You can enjoy it in the moment, but then you can expect that life's going to move on. And, you know, that goes back to Russ's point about expect the expected. Lows are going to happen and highs are going to happen. And you don't have to get caught up in those. You can expect that you're going to learn from them in the best way possible and then move on. Excellent. You know, when you think about

what you've learned, Catherine, just in terms of like working with some sports psychology professionals and then really diving into the app. You know, what do you think about, you know, your coach, you coach for several years now, what do you think about like coaches, you know, embracing this and why would you say that's important? I think that if I had had Vision Pursue as a coach, I would have been an infinitely better coach. I don't know how other coaches feel, but I know from my own experience, it's so easy to get frustrated when something's not going how you want it or when an athlete or athletes just can't carry out your plan, even though you've taught it to them a hundred times, like these things are really frustrating and it's so easy to get emotionally caught up in those things. And I mean, I don't know if other coaches felt like I felt like I

felt, but I would often feel like if my athletes can't carry out the plan that I've taught them how to do, that must mean that I'm not a very good coach. Right. And then I would start taking that really personally, which would make me feel like taking my failure personal, taking it as like a life sentence as opposed to just an opportunity to grow. And then I would, I would, you know, get emotional. And maybe I'd, I'd be grumpy at

practice or I'd yell at them and maybe they didn't really deserve it. Sometimes you have to yell at athletes to get them like back in the zone, but not always. Um, and I felt like I probably defaulted to that a little too often. Um, just because I was not, I was not creating space. I was not in the right frame of mind to deal with these issues effectively. So I let my emotions deal with the situation for me. And I do think that that's a pretty common issue in coaching. And so again, having this mindset as a coach not only would have made my experience way better, it would have made my athletes way better.

And then the last piece of it is that every coach wants their athlete to be able to handle pressure and to be able to perform when the stakes are high. But if you as a coach aren't handling your emotions and you're not performing properly when the stakes are high, how can you expect your athletes to be able to do this? So if nothing else, considering the fact that you have this idea in mind of how you want your athletes to react and how you want them to be able to handle themselves mentally in tough situations, by the coaching staff learning these same simple strategies, you're already setting an incredible leadership model that ideally your kids are going to, they're going to be able to follow in those footsteps. And now it's not just, oh, I know I

need to be better at this on competition day. Now it's actually, oh, I can see how these strategies play into my process. And when I get to competition day, I've already been practicing. So I can handle this in this moment. I have the tools and I am capable of being the athlete that I've trained to be as opposed to not being ready and then just having to deal with performance anxiety. And you're absolutely right, Catherine, you know, as a coach, your anxiety or stress is part of the culture you create. And if you're, if you can stay more present moment focused and kind of using the C acronym, separating yourself from the emotion or creating space, like you mentioned, like, you know, you're going to be an incredible role model for your athletes. You know, one thing that I thought was fascinating when I was talking to you, Catherine, is that like how you use the app while also working with the sports that called you a professional at the same time. So like, tell us like how that worked and and you know, why both of them were beneficial. Yeah. So sometimes as an athlete, I have something that

this is a, this is a big problem and it's happening right now. And I need someone to help me work through that so that I can get back to my process and perform the way I need to perform. And that's why I really like to have a full time sports psych that I that I check in with. Before using the app, I would need to check in with a sports psych, maybe about weekly. But then adding in the app and having those daily practices, the benefits were twofold. The first one was that I could practice what the sports psych was asking me to work on every day, which, you know, what they were teaching me, it started to stick a little better because I could be more consistent

with practicing it. But then also those big events that led me to need a sports psych, like right now, those became farther and farther in between. And I think it's probably similar to, you know, going to a class and having homework. If you just go to the class and sit there, you're going to absorb things, but your progress isn't going to be as fast as if you go home and you study and you do your homework. Or if you read, you know, supplemental material or watch videos just to help take what you're learning and concrete it into your memory. And it's the same thing here. Your sports psych gives you these tools of how to practice to be really good at what you do. But if you don't go home and do your homework, it's going to be hard

for those things to stick. And the VP app gave me this really easy daily 10 to 15 minute platform where I could practice and it didn't take hardly any time out of my day, but the results I saw from it were massive. Cool. Cool. So what's the next step for you? You know, are you going to continue to compete or coach or what's the next thing you're going to plan on doing? Well, I am still working a little bit on, you know, that same back injury from back in 2010. So I could manage it while I was preparing for the 2018 Olympic trials. But since then, it's, it's still hurting, you know, even though I'm not training and racing like I used to. So I, my original plan was to finish this

season. And, and then to just, you know, move on and be done. Right now with my back stuff, I'm not certain if I'll be ready to finish this season, but I mean, that's, you know, that's future stuff. I'll figure that out when I get there. My main goal for life after speed skating is to become a professional speaker and to share these messages and to share these strategies with people

so that, you know, they can see, you know, failure isn't final. There are ways, there are strategies out there to create the best life experience possible. I don't think we talk about them enough in our society. I think we should talk about them more and I want to be someone who helps put that message out there. Excellent, Catherine. So I know people are going to be inspired from listening to your story and want to reach out to you. So what's the best way they can find you?

The best way is probably social media, Instagram or Twitter. I do have a website, CatherineReuter.us. So any of those platforms would be great. Instagram handle is KatReuterAtomic. Twitter is just Kat Reuter. On Facebook is Kat Reuter Adamic or Katherine Reuter Adamic. And then again, katherinereuter.us. So all of these are great ways to get in touch. And I hope people do. I'd love to hear if there is a part of the story that really resonated with you. Tell me about it. I want to hear more. I want to learn

about people and their process, again, so that I can give back in my story and help. Awesome. Catherine, I'm so grateful that you have taken the time to talk with us about, you know, your experience competing at the world class level and what you learned from it, but also your experience working with a sports-like person. I think, you know, there's not enough kind of awareness of that. And there's growing, you know, more and more people talking about it. But I just really appreciate your openness to talk about like what you learned. And, you know, here are the things that I thought were really important from your conversation in this interview is like you talked about failure and how you didn't want to waste the failure by taking it personally and really like working to see the failure as more objective.

Like what can you learn from it instead of taking it to heart? And I also liked how you talked about how there's no such thing as a good thing or a bad thing. It's really our perception of that. And then how you talked about how you kind of fought pressure with gratitude and finding someone or something to be grateful for. So Catherine, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your insight here on the podcast today. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for joining me today on the High Performance Mindset.

If you'd like to learn more about the mental game in business, sport, and in life, you can pick up your own copy of the Beyond Grit book and workbook at beyondgrit.com. The book and workbook covers 10 practices to help you gain the high performance edge and provides practical strategies and tools that work. Adam Thielen, a Pro Bowl wide receiver for the Minnesota Vikings, wrote the foreword, and you can learn his insights on how he implements the mental game. And a special offer for the listeners of the podcast, you can use the code FREESHIP, that's capital letters and all one word, FREESHIP,

to get free shipping of the book and workbook at beyondgrit.com. Have an outstanding day, my friends, and be mentally strong. Thank you for listening to High Performance Mindset. If you liked 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.