High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 193: A Mindset for Excellence with Dr. Jesse Michel, Houston Astros, Mental Skills Coordinator

Episode Date: July 6, 2018

Jesse Michel is currently in his second season at the helm of Houston Astros Mental Skills Program.  As the Mental Skills Coordinator for the 2017 World Series champions, Jesse helps ensure the players, coaches, and staff are mentally prepared to compete at their best every single day. He has spearheaded the efforts to develop and implement a comprehensive Mental Training Program for the organization, and is an integral part of the player development staff for the major league and minor league teams.  Prior to his role with the Astros, Jesse was the Lead Master Resilience Trainer-Performance Expert for Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness (CSF2) at Schofield Barracks in Oahu, HI. While in Hawaii, worked with Soldiers to develop the same mental skills and techniques that elite athletes and use to excel on and off the field. Jesse has a Ph.D. in Sport and Exercise Psychology and M.A. in Community Counseling from West Virginia University, a M.S. in Exercise and Sport Science from Ithaca College, and a B.A. in Psychology from the University of California, San Diego. He is currently listed on the United States Olympic Committee Sport Psychology Registry and is a Certified Mental Performance Consultant for the Association of Applied Sport Psychology. In this interview, Jesse and Cindra talk about: His approach to failure What happens when we think about the wrong thing at the wrong time How there is a mental component in everything we do The bell curve of mental toughness The science of performance enhancement You can find a full description of the Podcast at cindrakamphoff.com/jesse

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 193 with Dr. Jesse Michelle. 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 to help us reach our potential or be high performers in our field or sport.

Now, today, before we head over to the interview with Jesse, I'm going to read a rating and a review from iTunes. This is from Jay Barshop. Jay says, Cinder and her guests provide compelling content that's geared to help you take actionable steps to perform at your absolute best. Highly recommend listening and subscribing to the High Performance Mindset if you want the knowledge and mindset to improve both your body and your mind and get an inch one step closer to peak performance as a result. Thank you so much for your comment and your rating over there on

iTunes, Jay Barshop. I appreciate that. And if you enjoyed today's episode, I'd encourage you wherever you're listening to go over and provide a rating and review that helps us just reach more and more people each and every week. So thank you so much for doing that. All right, we are going to dive into the episode with Dr. Jesse Michelle. Now, Jesse is currently in his second season at the helm of the Houston Astros Mental Skills Program and as a mental skills coordinator of the 2017 World Series Champions, that sounds awesome, Jesse helps ensure that the players, coaches, and staff are mentally prepared to compete at their best every single day. So he has spearheaded the efforts to develop

and implement a comprehensive mental training program for the organization and works with the player development staff for both the major and minor league teams. Now prior to his role with the Astros, Jesse was a lead master resilience trainer, performance expert for the Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness Program in Hawaii. That sounds like an amazing place to live. So while in Hawaii, he worked with soldiers to help them develop the same mental skills and techniques that elite athletes use to excel on and off the field. So Jesse has a PhD in sport and exercise psychology and a master's in community counseling from West Virginia University.

And he's currently listed on the United States Olympic Committee Sports Psychology Registry and is a certified mental performance consultant for the Association for Applied Sports Psychology. Now in this interview, Jesse and I talk about various things. We talk about his approach to failure, what happens when we focus and think about the wrong thing at the wrong time. We talk about his conceptualization called the bell curve of mental toughness. We talk about how there's a mental component in everything we do. And we talk a little bit about the science of performance enhancement.

Now, my favorite quote from this interview is when we talk about failure. And he says this, fail is just another four-letter word. I make a mistake every day, but we can train ourselves to see the mistakes as opportunities, not threats. So I know you're gonna love this episode with Jesse. You can head over to cindracampoff.com slash Jesse to find the full show notes over there. And if you enjoyed this episode,

we'd encourage you to head over to Twitter and you can join the conversation there. Jesse is at jessedmichelle and I'm at mentally underscore strong. We look forward to hearing from you. Without further ado, let's bring on Jesse. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset, Jesse Michelle. I'm so excited to talk with you today. How's your morning going? Oh, it's going great, Sindra. Thank you so much for having me on. I really appreciate it. What an honor. Thank you. I'm just looking forward to talking to you more about your perspective and your work and diving into that so we can all learn from you. So thank you so much for spending some

time this morning, just like letting us pick your brain and sharing your wisdom with us. So thank you so much for coming on. Well, I appreciate it. I'm not really sure how much wisdom I have to share, but I'll certainly do my best. And thank you for putting this together and for allowing all the folks out there in the world to listen in. You bet. You bet. All right. So I know you have a ton of wisdom, but to start us off, tell us a little bit about what you're passionate about and what you do right now. Sure. So right now I'm the mental skills coordinator for the Houston Astros. And I've been in this job for about a year and a half, just fortuitous timing coming in last year with,

with obviously the amazing season that we had. And really my passion comes down to allowing athletes to reach their potential. And what the best way that I've seen for us to do that is to give them the tools on the mental side of the game that they already at our level. They obviously have the physical tools. They have the athleticism. And I mean, so much of performance and sport and reaching your potential is to be able really to kind of get out of your own way and allow the training that you've done to take over. And so in a kind of ironic way, I see my job really is helping our players get out of their own way, trust their training, and go out and really have the confidence that they're prepared physically, mentally to take on the tasks of playing

baseball at this level. And for me, the passion is really giving control back to the player over their performance because there's so much, not only in baseball, but in most performance domains that's outside of the athlete's control. And if we can remind them that, look, they might not be in control of much, but one thing they're always in control of that look they're they might not be in control of much but one thing they're always in control of is what they're thinking and how they're thinking and that directly impacts their performance through their emotion through their body's readiness to play and so it's really about getting the mind and body prepared to give yourself the best chance to perform most consistently that's all we do i that. I think that we have to protect ourselves from

ourselves because we can definitely get in our own way. So I like how you described that. It's like giving the control back to the player or the person over their performance. And I'm thinking, you know, even those people who are listening who aren't baseball players, like we all have control over our own performance. So I like that, that empowerment. So Jesse, tell us a little bit about how you got to the Houston Astros. Like what a cool position, mental skills coordinator. What's your journey been like getting there? Yeah, my journey has been, I guess, probably 10, 15 years in the making going back to like why I got into this field. And for me, and for I think a lot of the folks in our field of sport and performance psychology, you hear a lot about

our stories, and there's some sort of personal connection. And for me, the connection is really personal. I was an athlete, you know, played a bunch of sports, grew up through high school, and then got to college and just really struggled. My primary sport was baseball. And, you know, I went to UC San Diego and it just, it didn't work out for some reason. I wasn't performing up to what I knew I was capable of. And I kind of went on this personal journey of trying to seek out like what's going on. I'm putting in just as much time in the weight room, on the field. And then I happened to stumble upon a couple of resources and some books and this amazing field of sport and performance psychology. And while it might not have worked out on the field for me there, it certainly worked out in this field.

And so, you know, just starting my education and training back as an undergrad and then getting a chance to play a little bit professionally overseas after college. Kind of rolled right into my master's program at Ithaca College in sports psychology. And, you know, I had a great chance to learn from some outstanding mentors and professors, you know, work with youth athletes and really understand what it is that this field is all about and kind of lay the foundation for what I wanted to be as a professional. And then fast forward to my time as a doc student at West Virginia and having a chance to work with a bunch of teams on campus, but primarily the men's and women's swim team. And if you know anything about me, my swimming competition peaked in Marco Polo as a high

schooler. So that was really neat to get a chance to learn about a sport that I had no idea what it was like and how to compete and kind of the mental game of swimming, let's say, and that kind of opened my eyes to recognize that, look, this field is very unique in the sense that really it's our job to meet our athletes where they're at and to get an understanding of who they are in their context, in their environment, what their sport is like, what the demands are like physically, mentally, and spent a few years at West Virginia. And then after that, I worked for a program called Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness, which is sport and performance psychology training for the Army. A lot of the folks that do the job that I do in and around Major League Baseball come from that

program for whatever reason. Spent four years doing that. And you talk about learning and putting yourself in uncomfortable situations and really applying everything that we know about peak performance and how to train the mind for elite performance and to focus on what you can control and what do you need to do to have confidence when you're in chaotic environments and things are speeding up and controlling emotions. And, you know, it's one thing to fail in the baseball field. It's another thing to fail in battle. So how do you prepare your mind for situations like that? And spending four years with our service members certainly kind of gave me a little bit of perspective.

And this opportunity opened up about two years ago and, you know, got permission from the wife to throw my name in the hat. And here we are a year and a half later to, you know, doing our thing over, over with the Astros. Well, that's really awesome. I love just how you described your story. You know, I think Jesse's really interesting because my story started similar in that I was a very good athlete and in college got a full ride college scholarship to run cross country and track and pretty much, you know, just so inconsistent, did not reach my goal of becoming an Olympian or an all American. Right. And so I think for both of us, like those, I tend to think about how those kinds of things happen for us because they lead us to this amazing career. Yeah. And the way I

think of it is like, because we're able to tap into what that was like as, and look, I'm not suggesting that I was any type of elite athlete. I think, you know, my athleticism peaked very early, but what I can connect with is like knowing that you have more to give as an athlete and getting in your own way and things spiraling out of control and the game moving faster and not knowing how to like slow the game down. Remember and trust your training. Tap into knowing that knowing full well that you have the skills to be able to compete

at this level. And that's just kind of the baseline, right? I mean, we're not even we haven't even gotten into kind of understanding who you are as an athlete, as a person, kind of the foundation that allows our players and athletes and coaches to live up to their and reach their potential. But without that, like personal connection and experience, I think it would be pretty tough for me to connect with, with athletes and their experience. And I think you see that really in any field, whatever field you're in listening to this podcast, just think about the more successful folks in your field. whatever field you're in listening to this podcast, just think

about the more successful folks in your field. And my guess is that there's some personal connection, whether it's a moral, whether it's experiential, whether what they do aligns with their values, because I think to really internalize what it is that we do in whatever field that we're in, you got to have that personal connection. It's got to mean something more. This is so much more than helping a player, you know, hit 300. I mean, if that's what we're trying to do here, like I wouldn't, I wouldn't last very long. I hear you,

but it's about deeper connection of understanding yourself and who you are. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. You know, I was thinking about, you know, you've been with the Astros for a couple of years now. And your first year, they win the World Series. Goodness. What was that like to be a part of it, just coming into the, you know, the organization?

And then, pow, I saw all these really cool pictures of you on Facebook. And, man, I was living through you. Yeah, well, that's very nice. I mean, obviously, it was a ridiculous experience and not something that you ever expect. And the truth is, it was the result of years of labor and a lot of smart people getting together over the past five or six years in this organization in the lead up, I just happened to be at the right place at the right time. So I mean, that's the truth, right?? Like this ownership group took over, I think in 2011, and they put a plan in place and they hired our general manager,

Jeff Lunau is one of the most brilliant people I've ever met. And just the way he, he orchestrated and was the architect of this organization and, you know, just getting a chance to see behind the scenes, how these guys work throughout our organization, the different departments, the collaboration, the amount of talent that is not only in the front office, but our coaching staff and our scouting staff. And it's just like, it's an unbelievable experience to like step into this high performance environment. And so like here, you know, I'm supposed to have some somehow have some answers about like how to perform at a higher level when this organization has been doing it for a long time. So, you know, we obviously had players and we had we have an

elite coaching staff and you know, you need players at this level to perform. And if you know if you saw the World Series at all, or you saw the playoffs at all I mean it's it was a grind nothing really came easy we played I think four seven seven so we played 15 right no we played 19 games out of out of a potential 20 in all the series so I mean it was it was a true test and it was just incredible watching these guys do what they love at like the highest stage. And that's what really stood out to me, like the joy and the passion and like, these are the world's best, like getting to do what they've trained themselves to do for a long time and, and get and doing it right. Like, right. I can't imagine a better feeling. And so just, you know, being there and, and, and seeing

them reach the pinnacle was incredible yeah that's awesome but you could tell that they loved it that there was so much joy and passion just like playing right oh my gosh yeah I mean you saw the joy in their faces after after the wins and the sorrow after the losses and I mean that's why they play right you know all the all the extra stuff is great but really this is about this is about winning at this level and their job is major league baseball players is to win and to perform at a high level. So yeah, I'm just, you know, really, really thankful to be a part of such a elite group. And I think, you know, this is, you've probably heard this before, right? But you know, you're in a good spot when everyone else in the room is smarter than you. And that's how I feel

pretty much every day. So, you know, I think if you, whatever field you're in, room is smarter than you, and that's how I feel pretty much every day. So, you know, I think if you, whatever field you're in, you know, you take advantage of your opportunities and when something arises and you throw your name in the hat, you just, you put your best foot forward. It's no different than what we teach our athletes, right? Absolutely. And then you got, it's a little bit of,

it's a lot of hard work. It's a little bit of networking. But it's really when that opportunity arises to, to show whatever, whether it's you're pitching a business, or whether you're training for a marathon, or whether you're, you know, you're a firefighter getting ready to go out, put out fire. I mean, it's all about like, in that moment, when the opportunities, they're pulling on the mental skills that you have to be able to allow your, your mind and your body to perform at a high level. And that's what our guys did. Excellent. So Jesse, one question I have before we kind of dive in and we learn more about how you do your work and your professional philosophy. Tell us about a time that you failed that, you know, what did you learn from it? I know you told us a little bit about

college and not feeling like you reach your potential there, but tell us a story that didn't go so great for you so that we can get to understand you and learn from you a little bit more and gain the wisdom that you gained from that experience. Yeah. I think for me, you know, we, we fail every day. And so I don't mean that in like a dramatic way or in a like deeply philosophical way. I think, you know, the word fail is, I talk with our athletes a lot about how it's just another four letter word. And it's how you interpret that failure and perceive that failure that really determines what you're going to learn from it.

So the truth is like, there are mistakes that I make every day. But you know, I've, I guess, trained myself to see those failures as opportunities as opposed to threats. So I think a long time ago, like in college, when I failed miserably on the field, and you know, I, I think back then, like my identity was fully connected with being a baseball player. But now when I fail, I see my identity as, you know, I'm a husband, I'm a mental skills coordinator, I'm a son, I'm a, you know, poor golfer. Like there's different areas of your identity. And so for me, failure is more about like opportunity. And so I lay that out there to say that I'll give you an example of, you know,

a time I failed last week with some of our players. You know, I was at one of our minor league affiliates and we had a player who I've had some trouble connecting with. And I think in our world, a lot of the impact that we can have is developing a trusting relationship, generating some rapport first to allow the player to kind of tap into what we're teaching them. And I tried, you know, I tried to kind of develop a relationship, this guy just making some small talk, asking about, you know, his experiences. And this is a player that needs to perform pretty quickly. And we didn't get anywhere. And I kind of beat myself up over it for a while, still beating myself up over it, trying to figure out like, what do I need to do to connect with this player?

And so right now I'm in Houston. I happen to be with our Major League club. And so I was kind of battling with like, how do I connect with these players that just seem to have a wall up in front of them? And so I finally just like broke down and I asked one of our major league guys, and I was like, I don't know what to do. Like you're in this, you and I get along really well. Like, how do I, what should I do? And so for me, that was like the first time that I was comfortable enough to basically ask one of the people that I'm supposed to be helping, like, what do I do

in this situation? Like, do you have any advice for me? And I think it's one thing to ask our, ask colleagues or ask people you work with for advice. But like, you know, here we are 18 months later and I, and I'm asking a major league player, like help me understand like what I need to do to connect with, with this other guy. And so, you know, that's just one example of failure, I suppose, in, in, in my job, what that looks like. And it's the longer it takes me to connect, like know, that's just one example of failure, I suppose, in my job, what that looks like. And it's the longer it takes me to connect, like the longer that player might be struggling. And so it's pretty time sensitive in that sense. And in this business, it's all about performance, whether I want to admit it or not.

Like if our players aren't performing well, there's some pretty dire consequences, sometimes really quick. So there's not much time. Right. And I think just from that experience and advice, you know, like what advice did he give you in terms of connecting with that minor league player? Yeah, the advice kind of revolved around like patience and really like, he was almost like counseling me in a sense and saying like, hey, if the guy's not ready to work, like, he was almost like counseling me in a sense and saying like, Hey, if the guy's not ready to work, like there's only so much you can do. So it's like knowing that, you know, there's two sides of this relationship, at least in our field, when it comes to guys wanting to work and

get better and having a growth mindset and being able to kind of put the veil down and say, you know what, like there's areas not only on my physical game, but on the mental game that I can improve. And, you know, it was more like, Hey, you know, what have you done? Why hasn't it worked? Like, what else can you do to connect with this guy? And then ultimately, like, just remember that, that he has a role to play in this too. Yes. And it's not all on you. Right. Absolutely. I loved hearing that story because I heard myself. We all have, I think, some kind of struggles like that. So I appreciate you just being honest and open. So Jesse, some things that I've heard so far that I think probably are like foundational to your professional philosophy is this idea of like your identity and your values and, you know, growth

mindset and just like what failure means to you. But can you kind of describe to us like how you do your work? What's kind of at the heart of your professional philosophy there? Sure. So I think I mentioned it a little bit earlier about helping the athlete understand what's in their control, what's not in their control, and then having them fully invest in, you know, training their mind just as much as they train their body. And at this level, look, our players haven't gotten to this point without having some physical tools, without having some mental tools. And so really, it's just about helping the player understand what do they already do well, and more importantly, why do they do it well?

So they can leverage that, get to know themselves a little bit, know their strengths, and then recognize that nobody expects them to be perfect across the board. But we are always expecting them to have that growth mindset and to want to improve. And so there's what are the areas that they can improve on and what's stopping them from taking the steps necessary to do that. And so that does kind of go into some, you know, who are they, what are their values, what drives them, what motivates them. So it's helping the player understand who they are at their core, what allows them, really what's driving them and what's going to allow them to

be the best player that they can be. And, you know, this is a high performance, high stress environment. And if you think of like the number of players and the number of people involved, at least in a major league organization, it's a lot. And so if you don't know who you are and you don't know, you're not rooted comfortable really in your own skin, like you're going to, it's going to be tough. And so like like I don't take that part of it lightly and that probably comes from my training and education background

me putting an emphasis on kind of helping players understand who they are there are certainly other folks in in this field that might not value that as much but for me I think it's a it's a critical component so helping people understand kind of where they came from, who they are, how they got to this point, some reflection, whether that means, you know, understanding family background or why they do what they do, or it could be like pivotal moments in their got here and what allowed them to get here. So they have an understanding of who they are as a person, as an athlete, leveraging what they can control because in baseball, there's so much that's outside of your control, not even on the field, but off the field as well. And then really understanding what do we mean by mental skills training? What do we mean by sport and performance psychology and helping people realize that it's not this taboo, something

to be afraid of. I'm only going to work with Jesse if I'm really screwed up. And he's the, he's the, I got to go on this couch. And I got like, that is so far from reality and so far from, from what it is that, that you and I do and people in our field do on the flip side, like we're out on the field, we're in the batting cages, we're in the dugout during games at most of the affiliates on the ground, we like to say like boots on the ground, helping guys in the moment understand like, okay, you just struck out, right? You might have. And then coming back to the dugout, you know, allow guys to be frustrated. Guy comes over and says like, man, like, I wasn't even I wasn't even there those last two strikes. Ding, ding, ding. What do you mean? Well, the umpire, he caught strike one was so outside and, you know, things sped up and I got, okay, now we're getting somewhere. So let's figure out like what, what do we need to do to regain control of your bat to

not allow the umpire to dictate our process or how fast the game is moving. And so in the moment, like we're not sure we do, we do training one-on-one training where in my office, or we might have some group workshops on different topics, confidence, controlling emotions, and learning how to focus on the right thing at the right time and kind of your stock mental skills. But really the value of, I think what we bring in the work that I do is like the one-on-one in the moment experience with the athlete right after they've failed or right after they succeeded like I want them to associate our mental skills program with when I'm doing well there's a reason I'm doing well it's

not just like oh like it's luck no no no no no like let's let's attribute our success to something that we did and part of what we do is help let's attribute our success to something that we did. And part of what we do is help our players realize what it is that we're doing when they're going well so they can do more of it. Because this is such an up and down game. And so, you know, I think that's kind of at the core of the work that we do and how we do it. And, you know, it's really meeting the player where they're at.

We have from the major leagues all the way down to, you know, the lowest rung of our minor league system, we have 200, 250 players. And so that's a lot of folks to try and figure out how we best can help them. And, you know, some guys have stronger mental skills than others, and they show up in different ways. And some guys are more able to cope with stress and cope with the demands, both physically and mentally, of playing professional baseball. And so while we can do team workshops and we can have group discussions, the majority of the meaningful work is done

one-on-one when we're either at our facility or when we're traveling around to the different minor league complexes and to Houston. And so Jesse, one of the things that you mentioned was like helping guys slow the game down, right? And you even mentioned that like when you were in college and just the game kind of going so fast. For those people who maybe don't understand kind of what that means, or like how do you slow the game down? How would you describe to someone like how do you how you might actually do that? Yeah so we hear that phrase a lot with our players when quote-unquote the game speeds up or things are speeding up. Now to their credit like at the difference between and I and I hear this from them the difference between major league baseball and let's say single- them, the difference between a major league baseball

and let's say single A baseball, the game is a lot faster, right? That is the definition of what a major league baseball game is. It's the fastest, it's the strongest, it's the quickest, the most powerful. So the game is faster as you go up in levels. But but for me, slowing the game down, like it's not fast enough where it's, it's noticeable, because it's already moving really fast. So that when I hear our players say the game is speeding up on me, what I really hear them saying is I'm thinking when I'm not supposed to be thinking. So I'm focused on the wrong thing at the right time. So like, imagine, you know, imagine just take five seconds and like, count one to five, it feels really slow. Like I that was probably two. But if it but if you're thinking it feels

like it's it's happening really fast, you know, and so a lot of times what happens when our players is when they start thinking or they start focusing on the wrong thing at the wrong time, or a pitcher gives up a couple hits, and he's walking around the mound, and he's saying, oh, gosh, how's my curveball? You know, I'm leaving it up. Do I have my best stuff today? That's his brain moving really fast. And so all of a sudden, his heart's beating a little bit faster. He's moving around the mound a little bit faster. His rhythm is going to be off. His timing and tempo are going to be off. Then his delivery is going to be off. And now it's like, okay, I can't find the strike zone. And so it's the spiral effect that started from, look, I'm focused on the wrong thing at the wrong time. And I don't know how to cope with whatever's going on

right now. So let me learn just a few basic stress management skills. And I think you hear them a lot. And it's nothing that I invented or anyone else in our field invented just deep breathing, you know, the ability to kind of slow the mind and the body down to be present. And it sounds easy, but it's really hard when there's so much going on around you. So we do a lot of work like that. We do a lot of mindfulness training with our players, a lot of relaxation training, just to encourage them to remember that they, they have control of the moments that are in between pitches. And so what they do with those moments are up to them. And so when I hear, hey, the game's speeding up, one thing we typically go to,

especially if I've done one-on-one work with a guy, is, hey, what are your go-tos for getting back to now, for being present? For some guys, like, you know, some of our guys, they really tap into feeling the ground in the batter's box. Like, that's their getting here. Some guys like to feel the grip of the bat. Other guys, you know, take a breath and look at a small marking on the bat. And there's different things

that are gonna connect with each guy. And in that sense, there's not a treatment plan or there's not a, you know, what's gonna work for one is gonna work for all. And in that sense, there's not a treatment plan or there's not a, you know, what's going to work for one is going to work for all. And I think if you hear that, I'd caution you to think twice because that's not how the brain works. That's not how people work. And so it's our job to help players understand what's going to be meaningful for them. What's going to hold weight for them. What are they going to be able to connect with some guys? It's opening up their batting gloves. Some guys look down to the foul pole. Some guys think of their wives. Like,

I don't know what it's going to be, but we got to figure out what's going to allow you to get here when you feel the game speeding up and when your thoughts start to go really quickly. How do you tap into being here right now and remembering what you have control over? I think we can all use that because it's the most distracted time that we have in our society. We've got these phones in our pockets that is like a major distraction and maybe we're not a baseball player, but we can really train ourselves to be more in the now. Yeah, that's such a great point, Sindra. And can I spend like one minute on that? Of course. Because you brought up something that I talked to our players about. And I and like the way I think of mental skills training and what we do, like it's not in a silo.

So I'm always thinking about, all right, how are how are we training our brain to perform? these players and like this generation or whatever you want to say, and even our generation, like we get caught up in, you know, being distracted or our minds racing constantly, or we're playing games on our phone. And then like, we're training our brain to react and perform a certain way constantly, right throughout the day. And so we when we get on a field in a competitive environment, our brain's just going to default to whatever it's been trained to do. And we know that when when we're in a perceived stressful environment, it's going to be even more. And so I really encourage our guys to take time throughout the day to like, if you're waiting until it's the bottom of the seventh, and there's runners on second and third to kind of like hope that you're able to get back to now and be present and like slow down and take a breath

and you haven't practiced it outside of the field down and take a breath and you haven't practiced it outside of the field forget about it if you haven't practiced it in a low stress environment if you're not inoculating yourself like why would you expect to be able to do that and so like we really encourage our players throughout the day because if you think of baseball sure it's a three-hour game but we talk to our players about the amount of time the ball is in play. Like the actual ball has left the pitcher's hand and is hit. It's like seven minutes, I think. And that's if you're in every single play.

And so there's so much downtime that you have to train yourself outside of the game to hope that you can tap into that during the game. So, Jesse, is there anything else that you tend to kind of talk to your players about? You hear yourself kind of repeating, or is there any topic besides being in the present that you might talk a lot to the players about? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I talk to our players a lot about this idea of, you know, the bell curve of mental toughness. And I think, you know, it's a really easy way for me to explain to players what we do. And I think most of us are familiar with the bell curve, if not, certainly Google it. But it's this idea that there's like an average to everything. And just like there's

an average to, you know, there's a range from the best and worst cooks in the world and the best and worst firemen of the world. There's a range from the people that are the most mentally tough to the least mentally tough. And if you think of a bell curve on the lower end of the curve, might be somebody who spills their coffee in the morning and is unable to function the rest of the day, right? Like they can't get out of the house because they spilled a cup of coffee. And then on the higher end of the curve, or in my opinion, the more mentally tough or most mentally tough people I've ever met are soldiers that have been through multiple deployments that have come back and that are leaders and pillars in their community and leaders of men and women. And they're able to balance their jobs at the office and have, you know, productive family lives. And, and then, you know, for what that looks like on the baseball field is, you know, your elite athletes that are able to reach their potential, the ones that are able to block out distractions and overcome failure and focus on the right thing at the right

time. And so wherever you are in that bell curve, and most of us are in the middle, most of us are in the, you know, the middle 50%, all our job is, is to move you a little bit to the right on that curve. So if you're a 35, and we have some players that come in as a 35 on this arbitrary bell curve, how do we get you to a 36? What does that look like? What do we need to do to get you there? Nobody's asking you to be the most mentally tough major leaguer on day one of you coming into our organization. If you're, you know, on a 60 out of 100 on that bell curve, how do we get you to a 61? How do we get you to a 65? What does that look like? What are the skills that you need to build up? If you're on the 95th, you know, percentile

of mental toughness, whatever that might mean, how do we maintain that? What got you there? How do we get you to a 96 or a 97? So it's really, you know, you hear phrases like it's a process and we buy into that. It is certainly a process. And so being able to give the player the ownership and have them identify where they are, be realistic with where they are, whether it's their athletic skill set, their strength in the weight room, their mental skills, and really help players understand that, look, everything they do has a mental component. So if you think of, oh, this is mental skills training, and like, this is separate from, you know, my training to be a better pitcher

or to be a better hitter, that is so far off from what we're doing. Every single thing that they do to help them perform better, regardless of whatever field you're in, has a mental component to it. So why would you just leave that up to chance? You spend so much time in the weight room, you spend so much time on the field or in the boardroom preparing for whatever it is that you're preparing for. Why would you neglect the mental side of that? Why would you just kind of leave that up to chance? So that's really what we're doing. We're giving players the ownership back and helping them understand, I don't need to leave this up to chance. Like I can take ownership of this and understand how my brain and body work together to perform at a high level more consistently.

I like the bell curve of mental toughness for a couple of reasons, Jesse. First, it sort of normalizes it, right? That, you know, that there's, there's always improvement. And even if you're at the highest level, you know, how do you stay there? Or how do you get from this 96 to 97? How do your, how do your athletes respond to just that idea? Yeah, I think they, they appreciate it. And really what you said, it's about normalizing their experience and normalizing that they could cope well in one environment on a baseball field and cope really poorly with another environment. So it's a constant evolution. It's a constant growth. It's a constant reflection. It's a constant, you know, you might be really confident against right-handed pitchers, but not very confident, whatever confidence means against left-handed pitchers. So it's, you know, I think our players really appreciate just the, that framework and they recognize that, you know, it, it's different for everybody. There's always

room for growth and it's just an easy way for them to kind of like see a visual of, and I don't know where they are, right? This is like an arbitrary bell curve. Maybe in some, in the weight room, they're really mentally tough, but in certain situations on the field, they're not as mentally tough. And then it's about figuring out, okay, well, what's leading to that experience?

Whether it's my thoughts, my emotions, prior experiences, and what do I have control over? So I think they appreciate, you know, understanding mental skills training from that perspective. And you know, you said something earlier about how baseball is so unique in terms of, did you say seven minutes that you actually have the ball in your glove out of like three hours? Yeah. So that I think that's one of the things that's really unique about baseball versus other sports is, you know, like, let's say football is, is pretty high, obviously pretty high pace. I think about even myself running longest is running marathoning, like, it's me the whole time, right? So what would you I guess, how would you help an athlete better kind of deal with that? And just terms of it's only seven minutes and is this long game and so you know do you want to have your attention fully in all the time like what are your thoughts on how to develop that skill so you're ready when you need to be yeah I think

first thing is to like give them some insight into just that like what is the reality of what their task is or their performance. And that seven minutes, that's if you're in every single pitch. If you're a hitter, you might have four at bats, you might see 10 pitches and you might not see one ball in the field the whole game. So that's what, 13 seconds, maybe 15 seconds. I mean, so it really kind of varies game to game. And you brought up a great point is like, you can't be locked in for three straight hours. Yeah, it's impossible. Right? Yeah. So you do we talk to our players a lot about kind of when does one pitch start and the next pitch end? And what are you doing in between pitches? And you know, I've had conversations with some

guys on our coaching staff that played at a pretty high level and played in the major leagues and and asked them that same question like how do you how do you do that and so they would talk about like I had a process like there was a point in time where I like a line of demarcation almost where like this this pitch was going to start and I was going to be so locked in so engaged to this pitch and then once once the pitch was going to start and I was going to be so locked in, so engaged to this pitch. And then once, once the pitch was the catcher caught it, I'm going to turn around and I'm allow myself to think about whatever it is that comes in. And I think he gave some examples about like, you know,

a movie he was watching or a book he was reading, or he, he literally like kind of removed himself from the experience. And then his body and mental rhythm allowed him to tap back in. And so that level of engagement, that level of focus, he thinks that that allowed him to play at a high level for so long. And he trained himself to do that. Now, he didn't have a sports psychology consultant or a mental skills coach. He just realized that that's what he needed to do that. Now, he didn't have a sports psychology consultant or a mental skills coach. Like he just realized that that's what he needed to do. And depending on the position you play,

you know, catchers, they need to be locked in for a lot longer of the game than let's say a right fielder. And so really, it's understanding what are the mental and physical demands of whatever your position is. And then how are you filling that space in between? And what I mean by that is if you're a hitter, you might have four at bats. Each at bat might last a couple minutes. That's eight minutes. Well, there's a three-hour game.

What are you thinking throughout the other two hours and 15 minutes that's going to allow your mind and body to be best prepared for that next at bat? And that's really what this is about. And that might be thinking about how the pitcher is going to throw you or, you know, thinking about, all right, well, did I chase a pitch or, you know, what do I need to do to make in at bat or in game adjustments, but then also tapping into whatever it is that's going to get your mind ready.

And for some guys, it's like fully unplugging at certain levels. And so some players, you know, I've talked to them about, it's like fully unplugging at certain levels. And so some players, you know, I've talked to them about, all right, after you're at bat, you know, how long are you going to give yourself to focus on that at bat? And some guys are like, Jesse, I need one more hitter, or I need one more out, or I need and so there's like this line that they've identified, I'm going to give myself this time to sit with that last at bat, and then I'm going to give myself this time to sit with that last at bat and then I'm going to move forward And so developing the skills to help them figure out what do they need? Where are their lines of demarcation throughout the game?

Super good And you know, I think about how just like the mental side in baseball has just grown so much You know in terms of people's awareness of the mental side and why it's important and I I like what you said about like, you know, in everything we do, there's a mental component. So just not, not just in baseball, but let's, let's turn our attention to baseball a second. What do you, what do you think about like the growth of even mental skills coordinators or, you know, just like almost every team at the major leagues has somebody doing what you

do. So why do you think that's happened? And what do you think has contributed to that, Jesse? I think that it's just like the obvious next step in the evolution of holistic athlete development. You know, we put so much weight and invest so much resources and time into helping these players, whether it's a nutritionist, whether it's elite strength and conditioning coaches, whether it's recovery, athletic trainers, physical therapists. And I think, you know, from the 30,000 foot view from a business standpoint, it's these in baseball, professional baseball, these guys need to perform. And so, you know, the ownership group and management, they want these guys to have all the resources necessary to

perform at a very high level more consistently. And so it makes sense that like the science tells us that there are ways to train the brain to perform better. So there's a lot of smart people running major league baseball organizations at this point that are evidence-based, that look at the industry and say, where are we missing opportunities to develop our players? And not only that, where are we missing opportunities to develop our coaches? We haven't even tested on this, but I do a lot of work with our coaches as well. And we know there's a science of performance excellence. And so why wouldn't they bring in trained and educated and experienced practitioners to help their players and coaches perform better, more consistently. And, and I think that it started

really, you know, if you know much about the history of, of mental skills training in baseball, I mean, there are some, some pioneers and some of them you've had on this podcast, guys like Ken Reviza, who kind of set the, laid the foundation for what we were able to do. And really like they've, they did really good work. And there are, there are also a bunch of people who did really poor work, who probably set the field back a little bit and, and might be setting the field back even outside of baseball. But there's a lot of smart people running baseball organizations right now. And they recognize that,

hey, this is an area that we were missing. And then once one, like any other industry, you know, the guy like Dr. Bernie Holiday with the Pirates, who's been around working with them eight to 10 years, and Dr. Charlie Maher with the Indians, he's been there for 25, 30. And some of these organizations have, you know, mental skills departments that are five, six, seven professionals deep. That's a big investment. That's a big commitment. And it's because they've done really good work and they've continued to build up and they recognize that, that why wouldn't we have somebody to help our players develop the right mindset to perform? Like this game is so hard. Yeah, for sure.

And as I'm listening to you, I'm just so grateful for the people who came before us, you know, that were pioneers. And I think about someone like Ken who just, you know, continues to crush it, man. We need to have like a, I don't know, we need to name something after him. Yeah, yeah. Well, he, I mean, he's certainly on the Mount Rushmore. I say that all the time with people in our field. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So Jesse,

I know you have started your own practice in terms of working with people. So tell us a little bit about kind of where you're going now. And obviously you're still at the Houston Astros. We'll continue to do awesome work there, but if anybody's interested in reaching out to you to learn more about working with you individually, or, you know, some of the services you provide, tell us how we can get ahold of you and where we can learn more. Yeah, absolutely. So I, you know, my primary job and responsibility is obviously working with the Astros full time, but I do also work with athletes outside of our work there. And

I have a website, mindsetforexcellence.com that you can check out. Feel free to check out the website for more information. I do group talks, one-on-one training. We can do remote mental skills training. I work with people in business. I work with soldiers and the military doing the same thing that we do with our players and coaches with the Astros is help people develop the mental skills for more consistent performance, working with people in business, working with doctors. And it's a really great opportunity for me to continue to hone and refine my skills and learn more about what everyone else does and what are the physical and mental demands of other sports and other professions. And it's just a way for me to

keep engaged also outside of the baseball world. And I'm really thankful that I have the opportunity to do that. Whether it's youth athletes, whether it's high school athletes, other professional athletes have been able to do some work since I've been with the Astros and it's been really rewarding. So feel free to check out the website, mindsetforexcellence.com, exactly how it sounds. And yeah, I look forward to touching base. And even if you just want to reach out just to pick my brain a little bit or follow up with something that you heard on the podcast, I love chatting back and forth with people, even if you're not interested in doing work with me, you know, definitely feel free to reach out. Love expanding my network and, and learning from you guys as well. If you're listening to this podcast, you're interested in

getting better. And, and, and as much as you think you might've learned something from listening to me, I guarantee I have a lot to learn from you. So please don't, don't hesitate to reach out, give some feedback on the podcast. If there's something that you think I need to improve on, I'd love to hear that too. So I just know you have a really captive and high level audience and I'd love to engage with them however I can. Love the growth mindset. And Jesse, I know you're also on Twitter. So tell us what your handle is and we can have a conversation there. Yeah, the handle's Jesse D. Michelle, just exactly how my name is. J-E-S-S-E-D-M-I-C-H-E-L. Definitely follow me. I'll give you a follow back and I'd

love to engage there as well. You know, Jesse, there's so many things that I got from the, you know, hour, 50 minutes with you. I want to tell you what I thought was helpful, especially for me. And, you know, I feel like I could, I could talk to you forever. So I'm like, bummer. Let's spend another hour together. But I really liked your, like a discussion about failure. And, you know, particularly when you're kind of describing in college and how you said like, you know, failure or just fail is just a four letter word. And, you know, we have to train our mind to see the opportunity versus the threat. So I thought that was really awesome. I also liked how you talked about controlling the moments between the pitches so that you can, you know, perform at your best. The bell curve of mental toughness,

outstanding. And just like how, you know, we, I think that bell curve just normalizes it but also helps us think about okay how can I improve just a little bit and how that's going to help my performance and then what you said about how every everything has a mental component so we don't need to separate it but also I think that shows you just the importance of the mental side everything we do has a mental component because everything goes through our mind. So Jesse, thank you so much for spending some time talking with us today. I'm so grateful for your wisdom. Oh, well, thank you so much for having me. And I look forward, hopefully we can do this another time. You bet. We need to definitely do that.

All right. Sounds good, Sindra. Thanks, guys. Thank you, Jesse. 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.