High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 216: Your Mindset is Your Engine

Episode Date: October 30, 2018

“You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself.” Jim Rohn Dr. Cindra Kamphoff is a Certified Mental Performance Consultant, Speaker and Author. She provide mental training for the Minnesota Vikings along with many other championships teams. She coaches athletes, CEOs and executives one-on-one to help them learn and apply the mental tools that lead to success. Cindra also speaks to and works with businesses and organizations on how to gain the high performance edge while providing practical tools that work. Her clients range from Verizon Wireless to Mayo Clinic Health System. Cindra's first book: Beyond Grit: Ten Powerful Practices to Gain the High Performance Edge was published in August. Her Ph.D. is in sport and performance psychology and she is a Professor in Performance Psychology at Minnesota State University. To book Cindra for your next speaking event or learn more about her one-on-one coaching, visit: cindrakamphoff.com For more information about Cindra's book, visit: beyondgrit.com

Welcome to High Performance Mindset with Dr. Sindra Kampoff. Do you want to reach your full potential, live a life of passion, go after your dreams? Each week we bring you strategies and interviews to help you ignite your mindset. Let's bring on Sindra. Dr. Sindra Kampoff for High Performance Mindset here on Minnesota 93 This Morning. Good morning, Sindra. Good morning. Great to be here. It's a tough one last night when you see the two guys on the team that make the least mistakes ever, right? And they both make mistakes that are pretty, pretty significant in last night's football game. But hey, they still played fairly well.

Yeah. Still hanging in there. I think about how sometimes those things happen to keep us hungry and motivated. Right? Yeah, you're right. Trying to see the opportunity. Right, and it's good to keep that angle, I guess that mindset, if you will. I guess if there's any saving grace to it, all the Packers ended up losing too, so there's always that

that can bring me back to a smile on my face. Today's topic, however, is Your Mindset Is Your Engine. Well, that ties in nicely. Let's start with the quote that you have today. This is a really cool quote by Swami Vivekananda. Here we go. Try that. I'm glad that you had to do that and not me.

This is really good. She said, we are responsible for what we are, wherever we wish ourselves to be, and we have the power to make ourselves. That's really good stuff. All right. So there's always a story that goes along with that. What do you have for us today? So Friday, we did something pretty cool. The first sort of live workshop, all day workshop based on the book. And it was through MSU's continuing education. Okay. And so we called it the grid academy. And so people came from all over the state and we wrote our purpose statements, kind of better understand what powers us and our internal motivation. We learned about

how to deal with negative thoughts. And then we set goals to provide us some long-term motivation and grit. And so each person wrote a, made a grit board. So it's pretty cool just to kind of see some kind of symbolizing everything we talked about throughout the day just to kind of be a visual reminder of what we talked about. And people said it gave them more clarity where they were going and more fuel and motivation. So that was pretty cool. Are you doing another one of these then?

We are. It went really well. So we're planning the next one to be Friday, April 12th. Okay. Friday. So you mark it on your calendars. So what's a grit board? Let me ask you that first. What's on there? Really, you could put anything you wanted throughout the day, like so key phrases or

ideas, what we talked about, kind of visual reminders. But the grit board basically had their purpose statement, their why, their goals, and just the other things that we've talked about that are really important. Awesome. So it's a visual to look at to keep you motivated and excited for your day. So why is this topic important for us today? Well, so we talked about lots of different things. It was a whole day, right?

But I picked out three things that we talked about in the workshop. And because I thought, well, this can kind of give you an inside scoop of what we talked about. But I think these three things are powerful for anyone who's listening. And the main idea being that your mindset is your engine and it powers everything you do. It powers your emotions, your actions, your goals, your interactions with everybody and each other, what you say to yourself. It powers your destiny. And you might think that mindset is like riding a bike, right? That once you learn it, you got it, but it's not. Instead, it really does take ongoing attention to master this right here. All right.

So for those of us going, oh, it's not something like riding a bike. You have to continually work at it. What should we do instead of what we're currently doing? So I would say, you know, living a high performance life early requires a daily commitment to understanding that your mind does power you and to be the master of your mindset. And I think the key is to be a silent observer of your thoughts and recognize this helps you recognize your limiting thoughts or beliefs. And sometimes the lies we're telling ourselves, right? Because we can be our own worst critic so hard on ourselves. So I thought we would talk about three things that we talked about throughout the day. Okay.

And what are they? So the first thing that we talked about was the importance of how you're talking to yourself. And we talked about three powerful thought principles. And the first one was, you know, thoughts only have power if you believe them. And we don't need to believe everything we think because there's just these automatic negative thoughts we have. The second principle we talked about was, you know, the key is we need to really talk to ourselves, not just listen to the negativity. So really be intentional with our self-talk.

And we talked about the best way to talk to yourself would be anything that starts with I, right? So I will, I can, I am, because that gives you power. And I know we've talked about in the morning before about how these are called power phrases to keep you going, and especially when you're experiencing difficulties. We have mentioned that I will, I can, I am before, and it's always good and it's never a bad thing to revisit that. So can you give us an example? So why this is so important is because I will is a statement about your intention and I can is a statement about your potential and I am

is who you are. So, you know, and it's important to really talk to yourself in this way because what you think about you become, right? So it's really important that we put some powerful things inside our mind because it's just those automatic negative thoughts. So one example that someone put on their grid board was I will be courageous. I can make a difference. I am enough. Good. Okay. All right. Okay. So then, can you give us an example here of that particular statement in that series? So I will, I can, I am. I think we can all use that in a way to keep us focused on what we can do, what we intend to do and who we are. And I saw this picture yesterday on Viking social media of Adam Thielen, right?

The maverick who also wrote the foreword of my book. And, you know, he broke an NFL record last night with eight games, 100 yards in each of the games. To start an NFL season or to start a football season. It's not just since the Super Bowl era. It's ever. Like the first to go eight 100-yard-plus receiving games in a row to start a season. Ever. Division II $500 scholarship. Amazing.

Right. And so this picture was awesome because it showed him like writing on a chalkboard. And it was a cartoon, right? So it's not real. But it said, I will get 100 yards in a game. I will get 100 yards in a game. I will get 100 yards in a game. I will get 100 yards in a game. Did he write it eight times? Was he still writing then? I did see that photo. Yeah, that was really funny. And I thought, well, we should really do that ourselves, right? Where we

write down what we're going to intend to do. Because things like that don't happen if you limit yourself and don't believe in the possible. So what's the second topic that you talked about in your workshop? We talked about grit. So again, that means having passion and persistence towards your very long-term goals. Definition by Angela Duckworth. And we talked about how pearls are made, that it's this tiny piece of sand that gets in the oyster, right? And it takes about five to 10 years to make this beautiful pearl that we buy in a store.

And so, you know, the way we can apply that is it takes really a lot of commitment to go after our goals and whatever that pearl is that you're working for. All right. What would you tell us to do then? So one of the things I would say to do besides talking to yourself, which we talked about so far, is writing your goals down. And one of the classic studies that I think demonstrates this is what's called the Harvard Alumni Study. And 30 years ago, they asked students who graduated from Harvard how many had their goals written down.

What do you think? Harvard students are pretty smart. Oh, my goodness. How many of them do you think had their goals written down? I know we've talked about this, too, and I can't remember the number. It's really low. It's like something dumb, like 10% who wrote them down or something like that. Yeah, it's 3%. 3%, see?

Wow, okay. And what they found was that 30 years later, 10% who wrote them down or something like that. Yeah, it's 3%. 3%. See? Wow. Okay. And what they found was that 30 years later, that 97% who didn't, you know, the 3% who did have their goals written down made more money combined than the 97%. Wow. So just shows you the power of writing your goals down. What's another topic you talked about? The last one I'll share with you today is the importance of having positive emotions.

And we talked about three powerful, heartfelt, positive emotions to every one negative emotion is when we thrive. And so we talked a lot about how do we even change those emotions, right? And the key is we talked about how our focus determines our feelings. So if we want to change how we feel, the key is to change what we're paying attention to our focus. And we can always ask ourselves questions like, you know, what's the opportunity here? Or how is the situation a gift when we're experiencing something that's difficult or hard? All right. So give us an example of that. The example I shared on Friday was Jonathan Ziert. So the president of Greater Mankato Growth.

And I interviewed him on the podcast episode 58, so a while ago. But, you know, I think one of the things that really stood out to me is, you know, he's struggling with cancer and, you know, really, I think, courageously fighting this on a public level. And he said, you know, I don't focus on the difficulty. I focus on what can come from the difficulty. And I thought, wow, like, you know, that gives you an example how you can reframe anything, which gives you more energy and creativity. And I think that's really what I think is a great example of how your focus determines how you feel. That's awesome. That's a good podcast, by the way, if you have been sifting through and listening to ones that Cinder has posted. Episode 58. You'll get that one. That's a good one. How do we summarize

today's topic? So I'd say high performers, those people who are working to reach their greater potential, they master their mindset. They know it's not like riding a bike. Instead, it takes practice every day. And it requires really ongoing attention. So you can do this by mastering your thoughts, not believing everything you think,

talking to yourself powerfully, setting goals to stay focused. And by the way that you focus on is how you feel. So it's the key to change it if you need to. Your mindset is your engine. Rev it up on a Monday. What's our power phrase for today? I master my mindset. I take control of my most powerful resource, my mind. Love it. All right. That'll appear on social media here in a little while. And of course, the podcast that we talked about in the book was mentioned today and the seminars and all the good stuff that you are up to these days. If anyone wants to get involved with that or get in contact with you, how do we do that? You can go over to my website, Dr. Sindra. So D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A.

Check it out there. All right. Sindra Kampoff with us today for High Performance Mindset. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Thank you for listening to High Performance Mindset. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. 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.