High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 229: What We Can Learn from Olympians

Episode Date: January 15, 2019

“The triumph can't be had without the struggle.” Wilma Rudolph High performers realize that a triumph can’t happen without the struggle. They make sure they aren’t listening to powerful voice inside their head telling them they can. They know their ability to overcome obstacles will lead to their best experiences. They do this by realizing mental toughness is a trait we can develop by living and letting go, training ourselves to be psychologically flexible, and staying in the present moment. High Performance Power Phrase: I embrace the obstacles that come in my way. I adjust and adapt.

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 Syndra. It's time for High Performance Mindset today on The Country Club with Dr. Syndra Kampoff. Good morning, Syndra.

Good morning. It's great to be here. Good to have you in. Keep a safe distance. Yeah, no doubt. Don't catch what I got. Well, I had it a little while last week, so I understand.

Both of you stay over there. Hopefully all of us have some... Use hand sanitizer over here. Yeah, they've got the gallon of it. Hopefully our immune systems are really bolstering themselves here and beefing up based on what's going around town for sure. Well, today we are talking about a topic, what we can learn from the world's best. And we'd like to start with a quote. What's our quote today? This is a quote from Wilma Rudolph. She said, the triumph can't be had without the struggle. Nice. I like that. Okay. So you have an example

to start out with, of course. Yeah. So Friday I was speaking at the United Soccer Coaches Convention in Chicago. And it's cool. It's one of the world's biggest gathering of soccer coaches. So it's just fun to be there and be around all these soccer coaches. And I heard Colleen Hacker speak. So she started working with the national team as their mental performance consultant in 1995 and has worked with like 10 world championships. I had her on my podcast like a couple months ago, and she helped USA women's hockey win the gold medal during the last Winter Olympics. And she shared the story about Wilma

Rudolph that I thought was really fascinating. All right. What's that story? Okay. So she said, okay, so if you don't know about Wilma Rudolph, she won three gold medals in the 1960 Summer Olympic Games. And think about what that was like for women. Women really weren't participating in sport much then. And she was named the world's fastest woman in the 1960s. Became the first American woman to win three gold medals in a single Olympics. Awesome. But what you might not know is she overcame polio as a child.

And for a while, she couldn't walk. She had these braces that she had to walk with. And there was a speech that Colleen was talking about how Wilma was talking about how her dream while she had polio was to be a runner, even though the doctor told her she couldn't walk. And so after this talk, a fellow sprinter asked her a question like, you know, to the whole audience where everyone couldn't hear it. And the fellow sprinter said, how did you believe that you could run, not only just like walk when you had polio? And she said this, and it's really powerful.

She said, you know, the doctor said I would never run, but my mother said I would. And I chose to listen to my mother. I love it. All right, cool. So why is that so powerful, right? So the moral of the story coming from the two mothers in the studio today is always listen to your mother. Always.

Of course, right? Yes. But how is that so powerful? Where did that, how did that get your attention? Yeah, it got my attention because there's always going to be someone who it's going to tell you that you can't, right? But the world's best have told, you know, time after time that they can't do something. You know, if it's, you know, when you share your goal or your dream, people say, yeah, right. You know, but sometimes that person is ourselves.

And the key is we can't really listen to our own worst enemy, which can sometimes be ourselves. So we really need to pay attention to the voices that we listen to among our own mind, right? But also the voices that we listen to what other people tell us. And it sounds like she was very good at overcoming obstacles and she needed to be and was able to achieve some dreams. So why is that important? Because we all have to overcome obstacles. And it's the feeling of really the satisfaction that comes from accomplishing them when we keep going despite the obstacles. And Colleen shared this really cool study that when most people look back at their lives, most adults, when they look back at their lives and they're asked what was the most important time in their life, it was a time that they overcame adversity and so i was thinking about

this for myself as i was reflecting on her talk and just thinking about it and i thought well actually you know besides the birth of my two boys right like i the times that i i think are the most important my life was actually when i was at the Boston Marathon bombing or when I won the Omaha Marathon or, geez, the launch party for my book. And when Lisa was there and all of those things, it was a significant amount of adversity. Like I wanted to give up on all of those things, but didn't, you know.

But you didn't and you did awesome. Not only did you overcome, but you rocked it. Yeah, and I just think, I wonder if you spent some time thinking about your own life, the most important times, I could bet that there was a time that you would say that you had to overcome a lot of adversity. That was an important time. Putting us on the spot. I'm like, a little over 11 years ago, Lisa and I moved radio stations,

and that was quite a struggle to get back on the air in a timely manner. That's kind of one of those stories we tell over and over again and overcoming the issues that went along with that. Yes. And then got back on the air just so we could do the job we love to do. Absolutely. And you're rocking it. I agree.

Several other times, too. When I first started in radio, I got snowed in in a blizzard and had to be on the air for about 48 hours in a row, me and one other guy. And we had to just rotate every few hours until they could dig us out. We ate candy bars out of the candy machine and fished quarters out of the pop machine to get that candy out just so we could nourish ourselves. That's funny. Just dumb little things like that.

But you're right. It's those struggles, those difficult times that stand out to you. Those are the ones you recall and get over. I'm thinking about myself. There's always something. When somebody tells you you can't do something, you get this little chip on your shoulder. Yeah. Just watch.

Yes. Just hold on. Yes. Yeah, exactly. What's another good point that you can think that we can learn from the world's best? Well, so I think another point is that, you know, this ability to overcome adversity, which I think is really defined as mental toughness. It's not something that we're born with. It's something that we develop.

And we know that the world's best have these qualities of mental toughness and resilience and perseverance. And it is something that we can develop. You know, it can be enhanced. It can be learned. And I think the way to do that is by reminding ourselves of our internal motivation. Like, why are we doing it?

And talking to ourselves really powerfully, you know, to overcome it. And Colleen was talking about how, you know, mental toughness is only required in the moments of adversity. I was like, oh, that's true. Right. Like when we don't experience adversity, we don't really need it. When things are going great, you don't think about it. Yeah, exactly.

It's kind of maybe, you know, going with emotions. So when you see the best of the best performing, what's another thing that they do? Well, I think another thing that they do, which relates to mental toughness, is, you know, we all of us perform every day, right? We're performing right now, you know, you perform at your job. And one thing that I see that the best do is they really have a short-term memory of their mistakes and a long-term memory of their successes. And sometimes you might hear coaches or people or parents maybe just say, ah, just forget about it. But I think we want to learn and then let it go, right? We can't just forget about it sometimes.

Maybe you hear that in sport where coaches might just say, ah, just forget about it. But then we're just going to keep making mistakes. Yeah, my husband doesn't say that. He tells people, like, what did you do? What will you do differently next time? What will you try differently next time So you don't make the same mistakes You know what I love seeing Is you know Cody Parkey The kicker for the Chicago Bears

He appeared on some talk shows After the failed kick Which now goes down as a block by the way It was punched But he seems to be handling it okay He's going to be alright And I'm sure that takes a lot of mental toughness But I've also seen them in a lot of different venues setting up field goals and letting

average Joes who are quick to criticize a kicker, let them try to kick a field goal. And they're shanking footballs all over the country right now trying to do what he failed to do. And they can't. So they don't really realize how difficult that job really can be. And obviously it's kind of like being, it's like the golfer of the football team. You're so focused. I mean, other than the quarterback, there is so much pressure put on a kicker. And so he needs to be able to kind of let it go, so to speak, and move on from that.

Exactly. So how do you see that they move on quickly? Well, I think exactly what we just said about the Bears kicker is that they have psychological flexibility. They can adjust and adapt and overcome. And they don't have these rigid expectations of what needs to happen. And they're willing to make mistakes by really pushing past their boundaries. And sometimes when we focus on too much of things that we can't control, that doesn't allow us to be psychologically flexible. So we have to stay focused on what

we can control. So what would you say is a key way that we can actually do that, work that into our way that we are? I think just like the kicker and like all of us, we need to stay more in the present moment. And when we're beating ourselves up for mistakes, we're focused too much on the past. And then we can stay focused too much on the future with just being anxious. But the world's best really stay in the present moment. And that's how they work to develop their mental toughness, how they can quickly move on and how they can be psychologically flexible. Awesome. Whoa.

A little feedback going on there today. So how do we summarize this topic today? This is a good one. And I think it's something, like you said, we're all always performing. We can talk about athletes and Olympians and the world's best, but it really does apply to everybody. Absolutely. And I think the main message today was that high performers, you know, those people who are working to reach their greater potential, they realize that triumph can happen without the struggle. And they're listening to the voices that are positive within themselves or, you know, other

people. And they know that the ability or their ability to overcome obstacles is going to lead to their best experiences. They do this by realizing mental toughness is a trait that we can develop by living and letting go, by training ourselves to be psychologically flexible and staying in the present. All right. And a power phrase for the week to wrap up with? I embrace the obstacles that are in my way.

I adjust and adapt. That's easy enough right there. You should put that on a Post-it note. Write it backwards on your forehead or something so you can read it when you look in the mirror. That's several ways to make sure you get the message across with high-performance mindset. Sindra with us today.

If we would like to get in touch with you and learn more, what do we need to do? You can head over to DrSindra, so D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A.com and these podcast episodes are always on High Performance Mindset on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, or iHeart Radio. Thank you for listening to High Performance Mindset. If you liked

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