High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 219: Things Happen FOR you, not TO You

Episode Date: November 25, 2018

“Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. You don’t have to like it…. It’s just easier if you do.” Bryon Katie High Performers see obstacles and difficulties as happening for them not too them. They blame appropriately, not denying that is it difficulty, but use their cognitive appraisal to see the good that can come from everything. Power Phrase This Week:  “I see difficulties as happening for me not to me. I see the gift in the difficulty.” 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. It's time for High Performance Mindset today on The Country Club with Dr. Sindra Kampoff. Good morning, Sindra. Good morning. It's great to be here. It's been lonely in here up until now, so I'm glad you came in today.

We'll have something to talk about here. We're talking about things happen for you, not to you. And I feel like this is something we've just kind of skimmed over before, but we've really not got in-depth on. So it'll be fun to kind of dive into that today. You have a story. Or first, let's start with the quote. Okay, this is a quote by Byron Katie. And she said, Life is simple.

Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon or too late. You don't have to like it. It's just easier if you do. All right, that's good. So you do have a story to start with. I do. So when I think about how this applies to myself, the story that I can think of most clearly is when I was in high school, I was a pretty good runner. I got second at state my junior year and was on a quest to win the state meet.

But my senior year, I get second in two races, and it's basically my last race. And I won the mile, ran the fastest mile in the state of Iowa that year. Nice. Yeah. So I got a college scholarship to run at the University of Northern Iowa. But it was actually there that I struggled. And I remember, you know, coming in really fit. But then, you know, my junior year at Edwin College, I get second in one race. And then seriously, seven days later, I drop out of the race. And probably, you know, if I would have finished, got 400th in the race. And it was a difficult time, actually kind of shameful, really, because I didn't feel like I could put it together. And it was not my, you know, my talent. And I was skillful, but it was actually had everything to do with my mind. And, you know,

I think this shame actually still fuels me 20 years later because now I actually see that experience happening for me, not to me. Okay. And that's why I think I'm so passionate about what I do and I will continue to be passionate because it was like that time in my life where I really wasted my talent. One of those things where you're like,

if I could go back in time, right? How many times do you tell yourself that over the course of your life with things? If I would have gone back in time, I think my course would have been different. I don't know if I'd be doing what I'm doing now. Okay. So why is this topic important today? So imagine that everything in your life is working for you. Okay. So everything would be the good, the bad, the sad, the disappointments, everything in between. So what if you believe that, you know, these were all placed in your path as a

means to help you get where you're supposed to be? What if? That's interesting to think about because a lot of times people just hunker down on the negative and that's easy to do. Absolutely. This is a choice for us, right? We can choose to look at it that way. We can choose to look at it that way. And I think if you look at it this way, it'll be easier to deal with the adversity and difficulties that you're experiencing, right? Because we all experience difficulties or disappointment and adversity like that's given. It's really our perception of the difficulties that matter. And I just read this research that actually the meaning we give creates an emotion,

which actually changes our blood chemistry. So the meaning that you give something can change your blood chemistry. So it is a choice on how we perceive things. So things happen for you, not to you is the way we need to look at that. Where's the power in this? What happens? So I think when you imagine that it's happening for you, not to you, you don't get necessarily as mad when things go wrong. Or when bad situations come, you don't say, you know, why is this happening to me? You can reframe it. And when you experience a disappointment or setback, you know, you wouldn't always see it as difficult as maybe in the past. So this is something that you can choose because your perspective is something you can change. So even, you know, the difficulty and pain happens for you.

So that life does not happen to you. It happens for you. We just keep saying that over and over again. It's a powerful perspective. Why is that? So I first heard this phrase about seven years ago. I was at a self-development seminar and since researched it now that the first person who said it was the quote earlier that I said, Byron Katie.

And it's the focus of chapter three in my book, Beyond Grit. And I think it's powerful because you stop battling the things that really bother you. You can stay more focused on what you can control. And you can accept that although things might not always go as planned, that it's something better is in store. So it helps you have more energy and you can see the difficulty the good it really in the difficulty i have a random question right in the middle of all of this before we proceed as you're trying to pass this info along to people that you work with you find it easier or harder to implement this with one-on-one with somebody or with a team of people so good question sometimes when when I keynote, I do talk

about this a little bit and share some of my experiences, like my experience in college. And I think it's powerful either way, because it helps you really think about what has happened. And it's easier, I think, to look back and look at the difficulties and now see it as a blessing. Or, you know, instead of sometimes when we're going through things right now, it's a little bit harder to apply. Okay. But we still can apply it. Right. And I feel like it would be easier to get one-on-one with somebody and kind of get the

point across. Whereas you're trying to get a, you know, a roster of 50 some guys on a football team or whatever, all on board with that. Sure. But yeah, I think you can go more in depth. Yeah. One-on-one. But if you start to see success, then it's, then obviously you're like, well, there might be something to this.

And then you see locker rooms gel together, which is pretty cool. What other benefits do you see from this? I think by thinking about how things happen for you, not to you, it just feels free and uplifting. And when you face challenges, you can be more resilient. And I think sometimes we just get caught up in autopilot and we don't necessarily realize that we can choose our perspective and then impact our blood chemistry, which we mentioned. I feel like that is like the Eeyore effect where you're like,

oh, it always happens to me. That's a good way to describe it. Kind of my mood after the football game I watched last night. I'm like, yeah, Minnesota sports fan. It is what it is. But you got to kind of get over the hump. And yeah, I think all the whole state could maybe get over that hump this morning. So how do we do this?

How do we how do we go about this perspective of things happening for us, not to us? So let's take an example of something that's happened in your past, you know, that you could apply this perspective to. Okay, so I think about my experience in college and think about the thing that's difficult for you. And I'm curious if you could blame appropriately. And sometimes, so sometimes when we look back, at least for a while, I blamed my coaches, you know, I blamed other people instead of taking responsibility. But if I blamed appropriately, I would realize, okay, you know, that I took responsibility in that experience. But also, I could see the good, you know, that there is something that positive that came from it. So consider what you learned from that difficulty, you know, how you grew from it, how it led you to where you are today. You know, that's what we mean

by happening for you, not to you. One another situation for my own life is this happened about eight years ago when all these budget cuts happened at MSU. And I kind of engaged in a lot of conversations that led to more drama in my own head. And I thought I was going to be the person to be cut. Sure. And I wasn't. But I realized about three or four months that I made myself pretty miserable. And now I just kind of distance myself from those conversations. So I feel like that happened for me, not to me. Okay. And you know, it's going to be difficult, right? There's that saying, people say, if it was easy, everybody would do it,

you know, depending on what you're talking about. So you don't want to deny that it might be difficult, right? You just have to be able to push through. And I'm not, yeah, I'm not saying deny the pain of things that we've experienced that isn't helpful, but we consider, you can consider how the difficulty has served us. And there's a way to tap in, you know, this really helped us be, become the person that we were meant to be. And when you do that, you can become stronger and greater and it helps you kind of see that it helps you to be where you are today. And it's meant it helped happen for you. I feel like, yeah, I feel like it can be uh thought of and implemented in so many ways you know maybe it is a poor performance on the track

like you were talking about maybe it is the loss of a job or a budget cut or the loss of a loved one or any of those things that you're dealing with obviously it's not something you want to deal with but it's happening to you and for you to get you to where you're going, maybe even make you a better person along the way. What's a good example you can provide for us? So Jim Carrey actually said, right, actor, he said, when I say life doesn't happen to you, it happens for you. He said, you know, it's just about making the conscious choice to perceive challenges as something beneficial so that you can deal with it in the most productive way. And we actually call this in psychology cognitive appraisal, that we can change our lens. We can frame it as a lesson.

And again, it's not about denying it or lying to yourself, but reframing the obstacles as they're coming up to help you. And we can label our experience. You said, what do you mean by that? I mean, like, that's kind of what we're talking about is not labeling it as something that happened to us, right, that we can take personally, but really that there's a lesson to be learned. There's a gift in that difficulty. Categorize that and learn from it. Absolutely. All right. Well, this is pretty good stuff. And I think useful information going into a Monday here, depending on, I should say, regardless of your situation today, some good stuff to take away from this. How do you summarize today's topic of things happen for you, not to you?

So I'd say high performers, those people who are working to reach their greater potential, they see obstacles and difficulties as happening for them, not to them. They blame appropriately, not denying that it's difficult, but use their cognitive appraisal to see the good that comes from everything. Awesome. And a power phrase for today to wrap things up? I see difficulties as happening for me, not to me. I see the gift in the difficulty. There you go. Good stuff. All right. Well, if we want to contact you, learn more, get a hold of that book you mentioned here today,

and maybe read up on this topic some more, the podcasts are out there as well and they're always fantastic what's the best way to reach out and get in touch with you you can head over to dr cindra so it's just d-r-c-i-n-d-r-a and all the information is there that you need any big thanksgiving day plans actually we're going to park city utah my sister lives there cool so we're gonna go and have some fun go to let's see's see, a jazz game and a Utah football game. Nice. So lots of, and my birthday's on Saturday. Oh, awesome. Well, you've got a lot of things happening for you.

For me. There we go. I like that. That's awesome. Well, happy birthday. Thank you. And happy Thanksgiving and safe travels. That's awesome.

You'll be back next week, though. You bet. All right. Sounds good. Thanks for coming in. Dr. Sindra Kampoff with us today. It's High Performance Mindset on The Country Club on Minnesota 93. Thank you for listening to High Performance Mindset.

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