High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 264: Be Perfect in Being Present with Brian Baxter, AMPlify Sport Psychology

Episode Date: July 22, 2019

Brian has been working with athletes and teams for over 15 years since earning his MA in Sport Psychology from John F. Kennedy University in California. He joined Sport Psychology Institute Northwest as a sport psychology consultant in 2007, and took over as director in 2011. Now as the Director of AMPlify Sport Psychology, he is constantly evolving his craft. Brian’s interest in sport psychology developed during his time as a high school football kicker/punter, college soccer player, and USSF C license soccer coach, where he found the mental game to be important, but under-taught. He believes strongly that training the mind is as important as training the body, and has dedicated his professional life to helping athletes achieve their goals, play up to their potential, and improve enjoyment in sports and in life. In this podcast, Brian and Cindra talk about: The mental characteristics of high level athletes What gets in the way of peak performance Why it’s important to be focused all on the process over the outcome His Sport Mindset Spectrum and the components Reactive vs proactive mindset training  

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, Dr. Sindra Kampoff, keynote speaker, author, and certified mental performance consultant. And thank you so much for joining me here today on the podcast with Brian Baxter. Now, if you know that mindset is essential for your success, then this is the podcast for you. Typically, with two episodes every week, we explore everything related to mindset.

And in today's episode, I interview Brian Baxter from Amplify Sports Psychology. Now, Brian has been working with athletes and teams for over 15 years, since earning his master's in sports psychology from John F. Kennedy University in California. He joined Sports Psychology Institute Northwest as a sports psychology consultant in 2007 and took over the director in 2011. And now as the director of Amplify Sports Psychology, he's constantly evolving his craft. So he's a lot of interests in sports psychology that have developed over his time as a high school football kicker and punter, a college soccer player, and a USSFC licensed soccer coach where he found the mental game to be important but under taught. He believes strongly that training the mind is as important as training the body and has dedicated his professional life to helping

athletes achieve their goals, play up to their potential, and improve enjoyment in sport and in life. Now in this podcast, Brian and I talk about several different things. We talk about the mental characteristics of high-level athletes, what gets in the way of peak performance, why it's important to be focused on the process over the outcome. He discusses the sport mindset spectrum and its components, which I found incredibly fascinating. And then we talk about the difference between being reactive and proactive. Now, a few of my favorite tweets or quotes from this podcast include when Brian said, being in the moment happens way before it happens. I thought that was brilliant. As well as

be perfect and being present. If you enjoyed this podcast, take a screenshot of wherever you're listening and post it on social media. You can connect with Brian and I on Facebook and Twitter. At Twitter, I'm at Mentally underscore Strong and Brian's at Amplify Sports Psych. All right, let's bring on Brian. Welcome to the podcast, Brian Baxter. I'm so excited that you're here to talk with us today. How's your morning going? It's going pretty well, thanks. I'm really looking forward to our interview. Yeah, I am too, and I'm looking forward to learning more about the work that you do. And so just to start us off, tell us about your passion and what you're doing right now. So, you know, my passion is basically sports and performance. I like to help high level athletes

and other performers to reach their potential. I like to help athletes as, you know, as young as high school and all the way through professional to just really get back to enjoying the game that they once loved. I had an experience in college with a coach who kind of sapped the passion out of my play. And so part of why I'm here is because I don't want that to happen to anyone else. And the more that I look back on it, the more I realize that I had more control over that than I thought at the time. And so if I can help anyone avoid that kind of pain, that would be time well spent. Excellent.

I have kind of a similar pain point where, you know, it wasn't necessarily a coach why I struggled, but it was my own mindset that led me to study this and really, you know, it wasn't necessarily a coach why I struggled, but it was my own mindset that led me to study this and really, you know, stay passionate about it. I think my own struggles really informed what I do. So sounds like that happened for you as well. Brian, tell us a little bit about your journey in performance and sports psychology so far. And just kind of give us a little timeline. Sure. Well, I grew up in Gainesville, Florida, and so a very, you know, sports crazy town. I grew up playing all different kind of sports from swimming to tennis to soccer, basketball. Most of my sports was kind of backyard in the

neighborhood with my friends, but I got into leagues. I ended up playing football and soccer in high school, and then went on to play college soccer at Wofford College in South Carolina. And from there, I, you know, I played soccer, and I got a degree in psychology. And I was just kind of going, you know, everyone always says, go towards your passion, you know, do what you love and the money will follow that kind of thing. So I just went towards those things. I got a license through the state for coaching soccer. And right after school, I went right into coaching, started working in the psychology field. I worked in a mental hospital on the child and adolescent unit for a couple of years.

And I worked in a group home for a couple of years. And all the while I was coaching and kind of building that craft. And at the National United States Soccer Federation coaching clinic, there was a sports psychologist who spoke there. And while I was getting my C license, that was really my first exposure to sports psychology. And a dozen bells went off in my head like, oh, yeah, I needed that. Oh, yeah, this could help me to become a better coach. So I kind of switched gears from the track was I want to become a college soccer coach to well let's see I ended up going to moving to California went to graduate school for sports psychology and was still coaching didn't really know what I was going to do with it

but I knew it at the very least it would make me a better coach so then I started to kind of fall in love with the coaching on the mental side of things aspect. I still love coaching soccer, but I also, like I said, have a passion for other sports as well. So I kind of gave it a go to become a consultant and moved up to Portland, Oregon in 2005 and started working as a coach and just got a corporate job to kind of pay the bills. And as I got more into coaching, I started to realize that to be a coach takes so much of your time, your afternoons, your weekends. And I always started a family, so I kind of knew that wasn't going to be my, my path. And I started a couple of summer camps for kids. And I started doing some sports psychology consulting and trying to grow my practice. So for a long time, I was working the 6am to 3pm shift, and then doing either a soccer practice or consulting with athletes or doing team sessions and um at a certain point about seven years ago i got uh the company downsized a little bit and i was very fortunate to be one of the ones to get laid off um nice because then i got to go full-on full-on into into my summer camps and to my consulting.

And so now it's been seven, eight years where I've been doing this full time. So over the summers and on spring and winter breaks, I run camps. And then the rest of the time, I'm busy working with athletes, writing books, working with teams, and whatever else I can kind of create and come up with. So I heard you say something really important that you're very fortunate to get laid off. Right. And sometimes I think we can take that so personally when something like that happens, it's negative, but I just heard you reframe it and change it. The phrase I like to

use is, things happen for you, not to you. That's a good one. Yeah. For you to help you kind of really live your passion full time. So Brian, tell us a bit about the difference between the summer camps, like the Baxter sports that you have, and then the performance consulting that you do. Sure. Well, they, like I said, I kind of started both of them around the same time and not knowing which direction to take it in. So, but they ended up both kind of growing slowly, but surely over the years. And the camp started as just purely soccer camps for kids, kind of a recreational level, come and learn how to play the game. And over the years, I tried to add the sports psychology piece. So every week I go out there and talk to the kids about the mental game and about maybe about focus or teach them how to

visualize. Just trying to give the younger kids an introduction to the game, you know, what I never had as a kid and what you don't see at any other camp. So I wanted to make it kind of different. And we've also added sports nutrition, and we have some culture building. We talk about playing the right way. We have different topics each day that we talk about that are more mental game or kind of sportsmanship focused. So that's most of the summer. And we added a, what's called all sports camp later, because we started to recognize, you know, now one of the big talking points out in youth sports is that over-specialization too early is really, really a big problem with injuries, with burnout. So we had an all sports camp where kids can try a little bit of everything all day long. We do Olympic style events and tennis and dodgeball.

We make up games. And so that's something that goes all summer. And then my performance coaching side, I work with athletes anywhere from high school up to professional. I do team sessions, workshops, and like I said, write books and blog posts and articles and things like that. Awesome. So when you think about the high level athletes that you work with, what do you see are some of the differences from a mental standpoint or a mental perspective? What do you think that they do differently that allows them to really kind of thrive in their area and their sport? The high level athlete, I mean, most of them are just dedicated and passionate and hardworking. And the difference between the elite athlete and just a good athlete,

I think is that extra effort and that extra passion and dedication to the sport. And from a mental game perspective, that becomes kind of a fine line and a slippery slope where that passion and hard work and dedication becomes too much and makes somebody miserable. I find that a lot of the athletes I work with are perfectionists. And one of the surprises that I wasn't really expecting when I first started consulting with athletes, especially in the high school and the collegiate athletes, is that I have a lot of 4.0 students. A lot of these athletes are not only good at what they do on the field and on the court, but they're also really good in the classroom. And so that perfectionism and that nothing's ever good enough is such a great attribute to have until it becomes too much and then nothing is ever good enough.

And that's when it becomes you know as enjoyable as as it once was so that perfectionistic tendency my I find my role to you know I always tell them you have a really good problem here I would rather have work with you who's they got this perfectionism and this over maybe overly passionate than somebody who doesn't have that. Like I can't teach those people how to become more passionate, I don't think. But I can teach you how to be take that perfectionism and direct it to the right areas. Awesome. That's one of the things I see in my work too, Brian, is that, you know, I think especially volleyball players is one sport that's really coming to mind,

maybe gymnasts, that they are such high achievers in other areas that sometimes they take themselves too seriously or they beat themselves up when they fail, which kind of gets me to the next question. So I always ask people about a time that they failed and what they learned from it for us to kind of just learn from your lessons, but also just to, you know, see that you're real and vulnerable. And I think sometimes we can listen to these podcasts and, oh, Brian's got it all figured out. Sandra's got it all figured out,

really, you know, every day. So, so what are your thoughts on, you know, a time that you fail? And what did you learn from it that we can learn as well? Well, I lost my keys this morning and I was late getting to camp. So there you go. So there we go. And you would think I would have learned by now. I've lost my keys. I don't know how many hundreds of times. But yeah, I was thinking about this and obviously have more failures than I would like to maybe admit. But one that I can think of was early on in my consulting career working with an athlete who was a swimmer. She was very high level on a track to D1 and wanting to get a scholarship and really wanted to go to a Pac-12 school. And

when I met her, I could tell that she was just so stressed out about this long-term goal that she had. She was so, I need to make this time, I need to make this cut to make this level to get. And she was just so in her head about where she needed to be and where she wanted to go you could almost just feel in the room how tense and tight she was about how how you could almost kind of feel the thoughts being trapped in her head around it and so I you know we worked for several weeks and I got her to kind of think more about the process and what she enjoyed about it and got her, you know, some breathing techniques and really got everything to where three or four sessions in, she was much more relaxed, much more kind of happy.

And then I, so I thought, okay, now let's set some goals. We've got a baseline of, of some mental game. And the first question I asked her is, so what time do you want to get? And all the work I did over the last month just evaporated right there. And I watched it happen. I heard it come out of my mouth and I tried to grab the words before they got to her ears and I couldn't. And she immediately, all the work left. She tense back up and she never met with me again after that and uh as a young consultant it was pretty crushing

because I I made this mistake and I knew it and there was just absolutely nothing I could do about it and I didn't have that many clients at that time, like barely any. And so I'm like, Oh, gosh, I'm never gonna get another client. This is terrible. I'm horrible at this. But as you said, you know, these, these failures are always, they're learning lessons, you reframe it, and you take something out of it. And that's something that was, you know, over a decade ago. And I can still remember it to this day. And it still affects how I work with athletes now. And so so one particular client I have now he's in the Major League Baseball. And his he had kind of the same problem. He's just had too much about his stats and about starting and playing time

and this, that, and the other thing. And so I've been working with him for about three or four years now, and I've never brought up stats once. We've never set a goal around outcome. It's about process. And sometimes I want to. I want to maybe congratulate his successes or go over where his failure is,

but it's never in the numbers. So I'm kind of waiting. If he ever wants to bring that up, then we'll go there. But for now, it's just great to just be focused on the process, his enjoyment around it, being able to be an athlete,

but also a person off the field to let go of a bad game or a mistake pretty quickly which is awesome because that comes back to my passion like I if one of my athletes wins a game or loses or gets the time they want that really doesn't have anything to do with me but if they're enjoying the moment and being and really play you know playing to their potential then that's where I feel like I have an impact. Cool. I think there's so much education to be done about goal setting. And I think you said something really powerful, you know, that I was actually just meeting with a client yesterday and she, it's one of my executive coaching clients, and she had this really specific goal at a time she wanted this certain position. And, you know,

it was like three months from now, but it was a position that somebody already held. And it was so out of control because that person would have to leave the job. It would have to be opened. You know, it was just so specific. And sometimes when you hear goal setting guidelines, and they should be smart, right, specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, timely, whatever, but they really pigeonhole people. And I don't think they're focused on the process. And the same thing. And when I think about some of the high level athletes that I work with, like they, they can just look at their stats online, you know, nfl.com and then they're just getting so stuck in that. And then it gets further away from their potential. So that's cool that you learned that the hard way. Yeah, yeah, it really is. The best lessons are always learned the hard way.

Yeah, that's true. But it sounds like really in your work that focusing on the process is maybe a pillar. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, cool. So how do you think, you know, stats, perfectionism, how do you think that's related? Because I'm thinking about, you know, what you said is like the best to have this fine balance of passion. But you know, but you've seen a lot of people that are perfectionists. Where do you think that perfectionism is coming from? Do you think it has anything to do with being outcome related? What are your thoughts on that? I think it's, I think it comes from a lot of factors. I mean,

mainly though it's, it's just personality based. It's just someone's personality is that they see something and they want it. They, they just have a passion for achievement for success and sometimes it can come from outside influences like parents or coaches or or something but I find most of the time it's it is just a high percentage that it comes from that person and so in my in my work I try to take that perfectionism, like I said, and direct it away from the outcome and onto the process and what I call the controllables. And the controllables that I teach, I just have four of them, try to keep it simple. And that's attitude, effort, preparation, and present moment. And so I say, look, if you can be perfect in your attitude

and you can be perfect in your effort and strive to be perfect in how you prepare for things and try to be perfect in being present, that's all. If you do that, how are you going to, how do you feel like you'll perform? So I give a scenario usually where I'll say, okay, you've got a game tomorrow. I'm not telling you who it's against. I'm not telling you where, I'm not telling you what the stakes are. If you did control these four things, how would you perform? I always say, well, I think I would do pretty well. I say, okay, well, because you can't control who you're playing or when, or what the stakes are, or you can't control these things but if your attitude is in your control and it's not if the referee makes a bad call or if you make a mistake but it's how you handle it and how you

react to it and control that i mean you're going to expect a referee to make a bad call you're going to expect to make a few mistakes here and there. It's really more about how you handle it. And so if you can change, and, you know, I find sports like LTV such a subtle, there's not really huge changes that most people need to make. It's just subtle perspectives. So if your attitude is, can we identify where your attitude, you know, what takes your attitude and your focus away?

And then can we just work on strategies to change that? Effort level, that's one that's so tied to confidence that when I lose confidence, my effort level goes down. I don't call for the ball as much. I don't put it all out on the line. And when I don't do those things, my chance for success goes down. And when my chance for success goes down, my confidence goes down and it becomes this cycle. So can you make effort a pillar that no matter what happens, I'm going to try to outwork my opponent. I'm going to work up to my ability level. Preparation is, you know, not only how you train, how you eat and sleep sleep but how you get yourself mentally ready

for for a competition or for training so you you drive to your event you get out of the car you're at a resting heart rate your muscles are just you know just normal and in an hour you're going to be running full speed and your parts gonna be pumping and lungs are gonna be expanded and so you warm up your muscles and your lungs and your heart by jogging stretching getting some technical work in then maybe you're going for more full speed and by the end when the whistle blows you're gonna be at a sprint so where's your mental warm-up that gets you from sitting in the car on the way to the field whatever happened at home or um with my family or at the hotel to my mind is now i'm full on 100 into the game and then the present is a little more of the abstract one but i i like using that one because

athletes that their minds in the past and their mind's in the future. That's when they're usually thinking about something not good. So most athletes hold on to mistakes for a long time. That's because they care and they're passionate about it and they're upset that they made a mistake. And I tell them that's fine if you are, but can you control that? All you can control is what you're doing now so what can i do about it what can i do now that will help and then the future being well if i if we lose this game then blah blah blah if i strike out now then my average is going to go down to this and

then i have to get two hits to keep my average up. And so can you be perfect in just staying present? And one of my athletes had this awesome quote. And he's, he's also been working on the process and staying away from all those out of control factors. And he said, from our work together, I realized that being in the moment happens way before it happens. That was the coolest quote. I'm like, I'm writing that down and I'm using that. And he's like, okay, you can have it. So what did he mean by that?

And tell us like how you use that. So being in the moment happens way before it happens. Yeah. moment happens way before it happens yeah he just he just he kind of combined all of those controllables and said you know if i work hard in the batting if i am if i do my mental warm-up and i do my visualization beforehand um if i am using positive self-talk and you know being having my attitude great then when i get up to the plate if i've done my my routine and i stick to my process i can live with the and um when you can get to that so that's why he said he said you know like because he had a nice run not too long ago and of you know getting on base and getting

some hits and things and um he he said it when we were talking about well how did you feel in that last game and he said well I was just really really in the moment and uh I asked him kind of describe it because I really wanted him to to feel it you know, to say it and feel it. And he said it. And then that's when he said, you know, I was so prepared that it was like, yeah, in the moment happened way before it happened. Like I prepared to be that way. Which was such an awesome, awesome quote. I'm going to put on a t shirt or bumper sticker or something. Yeah, that sounds really awesome. So being in the moment happens way before it happens. I think what he was saying is that there's preparation to be in the present. And that he had all this preparation just said is like, when, you know, athletes, and I think this applies to all of us, when we're thinking about the past or the future, it typically isn't good, right? And I find it helpful, something

I talk about in my book, and I don't really have research to support this, it's just what I see, you know, but the 95-5% rule, and I think that the best athletes in the world spend 95% of their attention in the present, bring their attention to the future to kind of plan and think about where they want to go. But it's, you know, most of the time, and even the best athletes who I see, like, are clutch, I think, like 99% in the moment, like, there's one guy I work with, who, you know, has been asked, you know, what are your goals? And he says, like, I don like 99% in the moment, like there's one guy I work with who, you know, has been asked, you know, what are your goals? And he says, like, I don't have any, because he doesn't, he doesn't want to think too far in the future.

Now, he really does, you know, that might be just like, he wants to just be so in the present moment, but you know, he's one of the best in the NFL. So, so that's really interesting. Being in the moment happens way before it happens. Love that. Yeah. Super good. So one of the things I wanted to talk to you about, Brian,

is I know on your website, Amplify Sports Psychology, you have this really cool continuum. So tell us about that continuum and how you think it might relate to those people who are listening. So you call it the sports mindset spectrum. Tell us about that and then how you might use that to work with the people that you, you know, that you help. Sure. So the spectrum that just kind of came, kind of like you, just going through feel of the clients I've worked with over the years is kind of the words and the the ways that people feel when they're performing. So the spectrum goes from the

top to the bottom. It's like green light down to a red light and it starts with being in the flow which is like you were just saying that just completely in the present playing at my highest level on a consistent basis, not really thinking about anything, just playing and performing. And then it continues to work its way down through levels of playing well, but could be better than the middle is inconsistent. And then it works down to like being in a slump or a complete panic. And I think I really came up with this because I found that most of my athletes,

like a really high percentage come at that, those red level, the panic and the slump where it's like, I don't even want to play anymore. I question whether I should be doing this. I'm miserable because I keep failing and I put all my life into this and I'm not getting the results. And so I started coming up with this way to gauge like, okay, how can we move up in small steps where I can't expect somebody who's inconsistent to immediately just jump up to a float date or somebody who's in panic mode to be just solid. I've tried to use that to show just different levels of like, of, you know, how you feel during your performance.

And also on that chart, it moves from bottom to top, a reactive mindset training to proactive, which basically means if someone is in a slump or they're just in a panic over their performance, they're reacting to what's going on. Like you said earlier, problems are happening to them. Everything's happening to me. So this is reactive. This is where we have to really just dive in and change habits, look for patterns. Where is your going you know where's your attitude going wrong where's your effort going wrong how can you better prepare is it self-talk use visualization breathing techniques so it's really building a

foundation of the mental game let's wherever you are let's look at your mental game and see how what do we need to react to to build new strategies new habits because what i typically find is that the way that we react to pressure situations is all habit we build up habits and patterns over the course of our life to deal with stress and in the worst cases you know people go to drugs or alcohol or overeating or you know things like that in the in the worst cases, you know, people go to drugs or alcohol or overeating or things like that in the in the, you know, in in in our field. It may not get that far, but that the patterns might go to self doubt self giving up. And so the patterns were built for a reason. They're usually self protective or usually a a way to mitigate the stress and anxiety. And so in the reactive measures, we want to break those habits and patterns down and figure out where they started and why they're happening and then rebuild it the way that the athlete

wants it to work. And then they start to see some control in that. Oh, if I change this, then it makes this part of my life a lot better and then they start to have those little successes and they can build up and then once they get into the green where they're playing well and they're feeling confident and prepared then it becomes more proactive where it's like let's keep doing little things and finding little gaps to fill in because you can never like you would never stop working on your jump shot because you can always get better at it. You would never stop working on your flexibility and stretching because you're going to end up losing it over time. So the proactive measures

become more about, again, filling in those gaps or where can I now get even better and how can I use my mind and my mindset to do that? So one example, I have a soccer player right now who's in the NWSL and she was the first month or two, we were going over some reactive. There were some things happening in her life and within the team that wasn't conducive to her having a good mindset. so we kind of rebuilt some patterns and and um strategies for her and she started to get more confident work through some really hard things and it was looking like it was not going to pay off but i just said keep you know just keep positive keep let's keep doing on the controllables because there's always going to be something out of your control to come try to trip you up. And she did. And she turned the corner not too long ago and started having some success and came to one of the sessions, hey, what do you want

to work on? And she said, I don't think anything. I think, you know, what's, what we've been doing is working. So I just want to keep doing that. And so then I said, great, well, but then now let's not get complacent and go like, okay, I've arrived and then just stopped your mental training. So that's where I think the proactive piece becomes. So then I started kind of asking more questions. Well, what could you get better on in your technical, in your technical side of your game or the tactical side of the game. And so she comes up with an idea. And then I go in further into, well, what's keeping you from doing that? Oh, well, I think that I'm not so good at this part of my game. And I never have been.

I'm like, okay, well, we've talked about mindset. If you have that belief in that pattern that you're not this type of player, you're never going to be. What if we change your mindset to like, you're not this type of player, you're never going to be. What if we change your mindset to like, I could become that type of player. I could, I could add this skill to my game. Even though I'm a professional, I've reached about the highest level I can, I can still get better. So it was just about changing this mindset around. There's, you know, infinite number of things we can look at for an athlete. So she left that meeting. Oh yeah, I'm going to work on this and I'm going to become a better player by

doing this, which is, I see as a proactive part of the training, which never would have gotten to had she not done the reactive part. But now we've kind of gotten a lot of things out of the way. We've uncovered that and she's looking to move forward just by changing mindset and finding new ways to improve and have fun at what she's doing. I really like, Brian, this idea of the spectrum. So I'll put a link on the show notes page. You can head over to cindracampoff.com slash Brian, or you can go over to your page, Amplify Sports Psychology, and you can see it. But I like it because it kind of shows you really clearly what happens when someone is proactive with their mental training. When they're proactive with it, they're not just letting it to chance.

Like, then you're more likely to get in the zone and feel confident and solid, which is the green colors that you have at the top. I like what you just said about how you asked her or you emphasized with this client is like that, you know, I can become that type of player, you know, I can become that type of, and I thought we can all ask ourselves that question right now, right at whatever our profession is, whatever we're doing, whatever field we're in, just having the power and the control that we can become whatever we want, right? Become that type of speaker, that type of consultant, that type of advisor, that type of coach, that type of

salesperson, you know, like that we always have more to grow in terms of the mindset and the mental part of whatever we do. Absolutely. Yeah. Awesome. Great. Great. So one of the things I also wanted to ask you about Brian I know you have a new book out and you have several books I wanted to talk with you a little bit about those so one of the things I wanted to ask you Brian is about your first book the sports mindset game plan so tell us a little bit about that book and what made you decide to write that book um yeah that was a that was a book that I had in my mind for years, but I was working this corporate job, didn't have the time, and then I got laid off and it was a perfect time. I took the next six months and just went ahead and wrote it. books and I get something out of everyone that I write or sorry everyone that I've read but for me I'm not I struggle with that I you can ask my high school and college English teachers you know that

was never my strong suit I was never the type of person that could read something and then immediately learn it I'm more of a learner by doing. And I feel like a lot of athletes sometimes can be that way because we're a little bit more kind of into the flow or learn by doing or very active. So I wanted to write it in a journal style. And I wanted to be very simple. I read plenty of textbooks and I wanted to make it really just simple and readable and not only introduce concepts, but introduce it to the reader in a way that they can personalize what we're talking about at, in the moment where they are kind of as a snapshot. So each chapter in the book has questions and exercises that you can write it right in the book. So it's written in journal style for that reason.

And I think on my website somewhere, there's also the sports mindset pyramid that shows my path to confidence that the book goes through, which starts at the lower level with your skill level, your sports IQ, your physical abilities, and how you can build those. And then it moves up into the mental game, starting with the controllables, focus, goal setting, et cetera. And that book is meant for basically any athlete, any sport. I purposely made it non-specific. It can be used for individual athletes or team sport athletes.

But that was kind of my introduction to writing and really like taking a bunch of concepts and putting them all in one place. Awesome. And then your last book, your newest book, tell us a bit about that, the Apex Journal for Soccer. Tell us a bit about that

and why you decided to write that. So the Apex Journal for Soccer. Tell us a bit about that and why you decided to write that. So the Apex Journal for Soccer, really happy with that one because it kind of takes my whole, all my most probably specific expertise and knowledge, which is soccer from the coaching and playing and parenting also aspect. But that book, the Apex Journal, the first version of it was, is for fencers. And this is a series that I planned to write with a co-author. The co-author, I actually worked with her daughter in private counseling and she's a fencer and she did really well with the work improved her game and her mom had written this journal that was to help because fencers are asked to log their practices and their opponents

and so she had this really cool journal and she read the sports mindset game plan and said hey can we collaborate and make the I think it would be a better book if it had some mental training because we you know people talk about it all the time but they don't ever get they say hey focus better and then they don't tell them how to do it or they tell them to be positive and they don't tell them how um so i worked collaborated with her on that book and then we kind of had this vision to make one for every sport specifically so i said soccer let's do that next. I know that one the best. I know exactly how that's going to go. So that, this is a six

month journal. So a soccer player, I would say age probably 13 and up. If younger, maybe if a parent goes through with them, could work. But it goes month by month for six months. And it starts with a mental game training chapter. So you read, it's a little like the sports mindset game plan. You read and go through some mental training. And then for a month, you kind of line up your month on a calendar. You write down kind of your overall goals for the month and then action plans for each week. And it's got a page for each week where you can journal every day, your successes, your failures, and what you need to improve on. And then each month you have a new mindset training piece to add. That book also includes a pre-competition packing list to help players

make sure they've got what they need to prepare. It's got a pre-performance routine section so that people can work out how they best prepare. Then it has some game logs and opponent logs. So each game that you play, after the game, you can evaluate your own performance based on the goals that you've set for the month. And side note, not just the stats goals and the numbers, but the process goals mainly is what we're talking about. Nice. And then you can also evaluate your opponent so that you have a, you take notes on your opponents in case you play them later next year. Now you have a way to prepare for them the next time. So that's that book, which I'm really excited to, uh, it just came out about three weeks ago.

So I'm really excited to, to get that out to some teams and athletes and see, uh, see how that helps them in their performance. Awesome. So I know you can get both of those at amplify sports, psychology.com. I see those there and the fencing book as well. So Brian, I think that I, you and I could talk forever. Probably. Pretty pumped about many of the things that we talked about today. And here's kind of a summary

back to you and a summary back to the listeners is like the things that I took from today and the notes that I wrote down. And so number one, I love just how clear you are about your focus on the process and really how you learn that in a difficult way, which is really meaningful. You know, that you had a client that maybe asked the wrong question and then that really taught you to stay focused on the process. And even the baseball player you're working with now, you know, you don't talk about stats or the outcome. So love that kind of main message. And then second thing would be like being in the moment happens way before it happens. So definitely put that on a shirt. I'll buy that. And I know some of the listeners will as well. And that, you know, there's really preparation to be in the moment. And I thought that was a great concept and how really when people are focused on the past or the future that they're typically thinking about something not good. So I thought that was

really helpful. And then, you know, the question that you asked us to think about is like, are you perfect at being in the present? And, you know, I think really your two themes, I think in that part of the interview is all about the process and about being in the present. And then the last part, when we're talking about the sports mindset spectrum, going from reactive into proactive and what can happen when someone really works to train their mind. And then I wrote this last question down is like, I can become the type of blank that I want to be, you know, so just like taking control of that image that you have for yourself and where you're going and really taking a hold of that. So Brian, I'm grateful that you shared some nuggets today with everybody who's listening

and help us be the best version of ourselves that we can be. So where can we find you? Like tell us a little bit on social, if we want to head over to social and connect with you there or send you an email or, or send you a tweet about something we got from today. Where can we find you? Yeah. Awesome. So amplify sports psychology.com, obviously the easiest way. And then the links are on their Facebook, Instagram, Twitter is all slash amplify sports psychology. You can find I have a YouTube page. I don't know the actual link to that, but I'll send that to you.

Okay, perfect. I'll put it on the show notes page. Again, cindracampoff.com slash Brian. And I'm on Twitter as well. You can tag us both. I'm at mentally underscore strong and you're amplify sports psychology. So we'd love to hear from you about which of these golden nuggets stood out to you. So thanks again, Brian, for joining us. I'm grateful for your time today that was really fun thank you so much appreciate it 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 cindra's free weekly videos check out