High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 302: Thinking Your Way to More Confidence with Dr. Stephany Coakley, Senior Associate Athletic Director

Episode Date: January 13, 2020

Since December 2017, Dr. Stephany C. Coakley has served as the Senior Associate Athletic Director for Mental Health at Temple University. In this role, she is responsible for ensuring that student-athletes, from 19 teams, have access to mental wellness services that they need.   An experienced and certified mental performance consultant (CMPC), she is also the founder/director of Maximum Mental Training Associates (MMTA) LLC, a performance psychology consulting business. She is dedicated to helping athletes, youth to professional, master the fundamentals of mental preparation for training and competition.   Dr. Coakley has worked with the Superbowl Champion Philadelphia Eagles (2015 – 2017) as the clinician and Rookie Success Program facilitator; as Group Doctor, for the NBA Pre-Draft Combine. For 10 years, she worked as a Master Resilience Trainer – Performance Expert with the United States Army.   Dr. Coakley earned both her Bachelor's Degree in Psychology and Master's Degree in Counseling Psychology from Temple University. She received her Doctor of Philosophy Degree in Sport and Exercise Science with a concentration in Sport Psychology from the University of North Carolina in Greensboro, North Carolina.   In this podcast, Stephany and Cindra talk about: The power of our thoughts What to do when you have a disempowering thought What NFL rookies most struggle with How to help NFL rookies overcome pressure Her work with mental training in the Army Her Manifesto of Greatness activity You can find a full description of the Podcast at cindrakamphoff.com/steph. You can reach Dr. Coakley at www.maximumentaltraining.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. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. This is your host, Dr. Sindra Kampoff, certified mental performance coach, keynote speaker, and author. And I'm excited today that you are here ready to listen to episode 302. And every time I say over 300, I'm just pumped because it's a really big milestone for us to get to 300. And I'm so grateful that you're here, ready to listen to another episode. So I'm

grateful for you. And thanks every week for tuning in. Because, you know, if you know that mindset is essential to your success, then this is the right place for you. Because every week we talk about mindset principles to help you be the best that you can be. In today's episode, I interview Dr. Stephanie Coakley. Stephanie and I went to graduate school together 20 years ago. We got our PhD at the same place and it was really awesome to talk with her as a friend and to catch up with her in terms of her work.

But I really also enjoyed the principles and the concepts that she shares with you in this episode. Really impactful and life-changing to your work, no matter what you do, no matter what role you're in. And so some of the key points that she talks a lot about is the power of our thoughts and how confidence is the result of what we think. And she talks about how we can turn a disempowering thought to an empowering thought. So really practical principles that I know you're going to enjoy in today's episode. So let me give you a little bit of a background of Stephanie Coakley. So since December of 2017, she has served as the Senior Associate Athletic Director for Mental Health at Temple University.

And in this role, she's responsible for ensuring that student athletes from 19 teams have access to mental wellness services that they need. So she is an experienced certified mental performance consultant or CMPC, and she's also the founder and director of Maximum Mental Training Associates, LLC, which is a performance psychology consulting business. She's dedicated really her life to helping athletes, youth to professional, master the fundamentals of mental preparation for training and competition. Dr. Coakley has worked with the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles from 2015 to 2017. She's worked with them as a clinician and then as their rookie success program facilitator. She's also worked in the NBA pre-draft combine.

And for 10 years, she worked as a master resilience trainer, performance expert with the United States military. So she has a really cool, diverse background. And we talk about in this interview just like how what she teaches and how what she teaches really applies to college athletes, but military personnel. And then we talk a lot about her work in the NFL. And so Dr. Coakley has earned her bachelor's degree in psychology, master's in counseling

psychology, and her doctorate in sport and exercise science with a concentration in sports psychology. And so in this podcast, here's a few things that we talk about. We talk about the power of your thoughts. We talk about why confidence is about the power of your thoughts. We talk about why confidence is really the result of what you think. We talk about how thoughts are not true and feelings are not facts and what that means for you. We talk about what NFL rookies really struggle with.

And I share my perceptions of working in the NFL for four years and then she shares hers. We talk about together how NFL rookies overcome pressure and what we can learn from that and whatever our role is and then we talked about mental training in the army what's that like and my favorite part of this interview was her activity called the manifesto of greatness which I'm going to encourage you to do once you do it we'd love to hear from you send it to us in an email and tell us what it was like to do it, do the activity, or you could also reach out to us on social media. We're both on Twitter. I'm at Mentally underscore Strong, and Stephanie's at BA Force of Nature.

So we'd love to hear from you. And without further ado, let's bring on Stephanie. Welcome to the podcast, Steph Coakley. How's it going over there? It's fantastic. How are you? I'm doing awesome. Good, good. What I'm most excited about today is I get to like talk to a friend who I've known for a long time, who I went to graduate school with. So it's so awesome to see what you're doing in the field.

So it's an honor to have you on. Thank you so much for the invitation. It's an honor for me to be here. Well, that's awesome. So Steph, for those people who aren't, you know, aren't familiar with your work, just give us a little insight in your passion and what you're doing right now. Well, my passion is to help make people great. That's what I'm about. What I'm doing right now is I work for Temple University in the athletic department. And that's where every day I go to work, and that's my goal, making people great, my student-athletes who I work with.

For the last two years, that's what I've done. Primarily, I work with student athletes from all the sports. We have about 19 sports, Olympic sports, and then we have football and basketball. And that equals about roughly 525 student athletes. And it keeps me busy. I could only imagine. Keeps me very, very busy. I feel really grateful. Yeah. Give us a little insight on what are some of the issues that you see student athletes at the college level dealing with right now?

For the most part, many of the issues that our student athletes are dealing with are issues that many people deal with in general. For our student athletes, they have the added pressures, if you will, of competing at a high level, not only competing at a Division I level, but also remaining academically eligible to compete in Division I level, which, you know, that's extremely pressure-laden. So in addition to those pressures, academics and competition, they also have the issues around injury and dealing with injury. One of the, actually, the most profound issue that I noticed when working, when I started working with student-athletes at Temple was the amount of grief and loss that our student athletes are experiencing.

Okay. And trauma from a very long period of time. And those issues manifest themselves different ways at the college, when they arrive to their college or university. And grief and trauma from like a loss of a loved one or... Certainly the loss of a loved one, the loss of a friend. There's, there's a, there's a fair amount of student athletes who arrive with friends from high school who are deceased.

Sure. And, and it was unexpected. And obviously it was in many cases, they were traumatic losses or tragic losses. OK, that has an impact on them when they arrive to the university. You know, there is some discussion that like mental health issues is on the rise for college athletes. Do you see that? And and if you do, tell us, you know, what do you think is contributing to that? Well, you know, once again, not sure if it's so much so on the rise, which, or if our students right we are been, we've been talking about the issues for most of their lives, it'd be stigmatizing, it might be a stigma for people in our generation,

or the generation behind us, right, ever for these young people, for probably for half of their life, they've been hearing about mental health, mental health, mental health issues. And I'm thinking that a part of the issue is that they're more willing to seek help. Yeah, I agree with that for sure. And isn't that a great thing, right? Yeah, it's wonderful. I mean, because, you know, if they're going to seek help at this stage in their life, as they become older, they'll be more resilient people because they will have learned some of these tools, some of the tools that you need to learn when you're faced with adversity. And certainly adversity doesn't just pop up when you're in college.

It pops up throughout your life. Absolutely. Be developing some of these really important life skills that will help them as they progress beyond college. was that? A long time. 20 years. Oh, yeah. A long time ago. It seems like yesterday. And then you've done some work in the NBA and the NFL. You've done some work as a master resilience trainer. So just kind of give us a little insight on, you know, your journey to Temple. Well, you know, as you mentioned, it's been a windy road. I've worked, you know, even before we met, I worked in children's hospitals, psychiatric hospitals. I also worked in community mental health. So my, you know, my path to this job as a, as a mental health provider for student athletes started well before we met, was providing mental health services to young people and their families

who were experiencing a lot of challenges, many challenges. So, you know, windy road, many different stops. But I think the thing that, you know, remains pretty consistent is my desire, my, it feels like my purpose to help, to help people to rise and to realize their potential. Yeah. So where you are in your life, whether you're, you know, in a hospital or whether you are, you know, injured as a soldier, whatever, wherever you are in life, just my connection with the individual is to help them to get better, to be better. Absolutely. Yeah, that's good. What's a concept that you find yourself talking a lot about? You know, is there a few ideas or tell something about like, what do you see or hear yourself saying a lot?

I mean, I use them, I talk about them all. But whether I'm in private practice or whether I'm working with student athletes at Temple and purely the performance space, I believe confidence is the one that that just always is always present. It's ever present. And I think, you know, helping people understand that their thoughts matter. So one of the things that I constantly am telling people is that confidence is a result of the way you think. Right. Think in ways that promote the outcomes that you want. Yeah. Just constantly beating that drum and helping student athletes or whoever, helping them to establish what I call impact statements. Okay, cool.

So an impact statement is just something that you say to yourself that gives you confidence or gives you energy, gives you motivation. It makes you feel unstoppable. Can you give an example or two of what you've seen, you know, like some of your athletes or clients have used? Oh, yeah. So I have one, um, a few years ago I was working with, um, a title nine basketball tournament in DC and, um, one of the young ladies, she really hated working out, but her goal was, and I mean, I mean, working out in the gym and weight doing weightlifting. Okay. Her goal was to play division one sports on basketball. Yeah.

So after we did our session, she said her impact statement was, if you want to shine like a diamond, you have to be cut like a diamond. Ooh, wow. That's good. I was like, oh my gosh, I just got goosebumps. Yeah. That is what she said that she was now going to take like that mindset into the gym because you have to be able to sacrifice and do things that you don't want to do so you can

get the things that you want to get. Yes. So there's want and the do not want and the do want. So, you know, helping them create that mindset. What's the mindset I'm going to take in with me when I have to do something I don't want to do? Or what's the mindset I'm going to take in with me when I've experienced a setback or some kind of a challenge? Right. So that's, that's one that comes to mind. Yeah, that's super good. That was a really good one. That was a really good one. If you want to shine like a diamond, you need to be cut. Be cut like a diamond. It has such strong and powerful language.

It has such powerful imagery. I would imagine that that worked for her. Yeah, I could imagine that worked for her. You know, when you say that confidence is a result of our thinking, what about somebody who, you know, might be coming to you more for like a mental health issue versus a performance issue? Is that, would you talk about confidence differently or what are your thoughts on that? Well, I mean, certainly I would talk about it differently. You know, once again, like our behaviors are governed by our thoughts. Yes. So helping the individual figure, you know,

kind of uncover or help them identify like, what are your thoughts? Sure. Thinking about, and oftentimes people can't tell you. A lot of times my student athletes can't tell me what they're thinking. They can only tell me what they're feeling. They did. And what we know is that all of those feelings and all that those actions stem from a thought and what that's telling me is that they're thinking the way they're thinking

it's so subconscious right they're aware of it so helping them to uncover and bring that up closer to the surface yes and i can figure out, oh, that's what you're thinking. All right, so how do you think that's going to make you feel? It makes sense that you feel sad or anxious. It makes sense that you want to withdraw. Right. And then, you know, once certain things have been established, rapport and maybe some kind of like uh treatment planning we can talk about

adjusting just making some small tweaks to that thought yeah that's good what are your thoughts on maybe people who are listening who um yeah think to themselves yeah i really haven't thought about my thinking and i'm not too aware of what I'm thinking about. Is there a tool or a practice or anything you'd suggest to help me be more aware of what they're thinking about? Um, I mean, okay, so here's the thing. If you're not sure what you're thinking about and you're aware of what you're feeling, when you've identified a thought that, I mean, sorry, a feeling that's kind of uncomfortable for you, like sadness, anxiety, depression, something like that. Sit with it and then try to then try like a backpedal.

So this is what I'm feeling. OK, what am I thinking about? Oh, I just saw such and such on television. It reminded me of X, Y and Z. And it made me think I'm too. I'm not good enough to compete at the division one level. Right. All right. So then that's the thought that made you sad. Yeah. And then how, and then identify, like, how many times do you think about, how many times do you say that to yourself?

That's something that you have on replay. If it's something on replay, then once again, it makes sense that your mood is constantly sad or depressed. Absolutely. For sure. Constantly anxious. So helping them to just kind of like break, just break it down. Right. And then similar to like a performance psychology, a concept of thought replacement. Right. Pop something else in there. And it doesn't have to be that. It doesn't have to be rocket science. I am good enough. Even if it doesn't, even if it feels inauthentic, the thing about the original thought, like I am not good enough. At some point, that wasn't real either. You put it on repeat and 200 times later, it feels real.

So let's, you know, so that's kind of how we, we would do that. And maybe in a mental health setting. And then also talk about like, well, you know, well, when did you start feeling like you weren't good enough? So, you know, cause it might not just be in their freshman year it could have been middle school when they were being bullied and so you know trying to uncover at the same time with the thought replacement why that thought even kind of began yeah I like what you said about like you know you didn't believe the thought at first or it wasn't a fact at the beginning, right? And so, you know, even if it feels inauthentic, that's okay, because it was inauthentic at the beginning. At the beginning of the kind of like the ineffective thought.

Yeah. I always tell my students, I always tell people, thoughts aren't true true and feelings aren't facts right and so like for me just being able to repeat some of those truisms like thoughts aren't true they're thoughts just because you think something doesn't mean it's true absolutely and I like what you said about feelings aren't facts break that for us like what does that mean to you I mean people you know you know like in our common vernacular now people are always saying well I feel like people don't like me first of all that's a thought but what is your evidence for yeah and a fact is something that is true and you have evidence to support your evidence to just to say to yourself that people don't like you or that you are stupid or like what is your evidence and you know more often than not they might have some evidence yeah because that's the only thing

they're looking for so then it's about helping them perceive what else is there. And there are times they don't have evidence. Like there's no evidence to support the fact that they think that somebody doesn't like them. And then helping them to see like you have no evidence, but yet you take that as possible. Help me understand that. Yeah.

Yeah. That's powerful. Good. I like it. So when I talked about, when I asked you like, what concept do you hear yourself saying a lot, right? Confidence is a result of what you're thinking. Is there any other concepts or maybe a signature technique that you might use that you talk about with your clients quite often? Well, one that I have, actually, I put it on a shelf for a little while.

I've been using it for about 2000 and maybe 13 or 14. Yeah. It's called A Manifesto of Greatness. Cool. I like the title. And, like, you know, I worked at the Army for a long time, so a lot of acronyms, MOG, and, you know, you know, I worked at the army for a long time. So a lot of acronyms, MOG, and you know, the other things with language and I allow my, my students, my clients to choose. So I either call it a manifesto of greatness or a manifesto of excellence. If one resonates with

you, that's what we're going to call it but essentially it is a mission statement your mission statement for um what do you believe to be true about yourself and your abilities what are you willing to sacrifice what have you overcome your strengths and who you know so it's it's your mission statement i think it's so powerful is because once somebody crafts a very strong manifesto of greatness, it includes imagery. It includes strengths. It includes goals. many of the mental skills that we teach, but all in about three or four sentences that describe who they are, what they believe to be about them, what they believe to be true about themselves,

where they want to go and what are they going to do to get there? Awesome. So how might you suggest us stuff? Like if people are listening and they're like, man, I want to write my manifesto of greatness emoji. How would you suggest we might do that? Well, so pretty much this is, I have like a list of instructions here and it says, write your own manifesto. What do you believe to be true about you and your abilities as an elite athlete or an elite performer? What are your goals and what sacrifices are you willing to make to achieve them? Okay. You deal with setbacks and how do you overcome them?

Find your greatness as you think, so you become. That's a quote from a man, Bruce Lee. So, you know, that's kind of like my instructions for how you develop one. And that's something that we would, you know, I'd say go three or four sentences, nothing over the top. Once it's crafted, every day you read that to yourself. You say that. And I remember working with a young woman, a tennis player once, and she created a really great one. I was extremely proud of her for putting in that effort because sometimes she didn't seem to be that into it.

Okay. No, that's okay yeah um but she she created she created a very fine manifesto greatness and like maybe about two or three months later i you know i challenged her so hit me what what say it let's go nice actually repeat and state her manifesto because she had been repeating it and stating it on a daily basis. Can you give us a sense of what you remember about what you said or maybe you don't use her. I do remember one thing she said was my serve is my weapon. Oh, so she, you know, she played tennis. Yeah. But one of the things when we talk about the

strengths, yeah, I serve is my weapon. I do remember that. Well, and I'm thinking about how Steph, like all of us can apply this, like we might not be athletes. Can we write our manifesto of greatness if we're a leader of a team or we're a financial planner or we're a speaker like i do a lot of speaking right and so um i like your prompts about what do you want to believe about yourself how do you deal with adversity what do you want to sacrifice what are you willing to sacrifice ooh so what do you what do you hear people say related to that? Well, you know, like for her in particular, she was, I guess, about a 17, 18-year-old. And there were things that she just wasn't able to do because she was traveling the country and participating in her sport. And so some socializing and some fun.

Yeah. and some some fun yeah and she wasn't able to get her driver's license when everybody else got their driver's license because she wasn't even at home at her house she was living in another state so some of those things and you know in order to get to where once again in order to get what you've never had before you're gonna have to do well, you might not be able to do some things, but it's okay, because in the end, if this is something that you see you want, it's worth it, and double it back, like, are you sure? Because if this is something you want, my only goal in life is to help you try to get there. That's good. Love it. So manifesto of greatness. I think all of us should write our manifesto. I have been since the new year stuff, sort of similar,

but maybe mine is a little longer, but I thought a couple of weeks before the new year, I thought about like, what do I want to believe more about myself? And what are the beliefs that are going to help me get to my next level? And what are maybe some of my goals that I might put in, you know, power phrases or kind of what you called? Impact statements. Impact statements, right? Same kind of idea. Yeah, no doubt. I have about 20 that I say to myself every morning. Yeah. And

maybe the same or very similar. And it's really helped me just in the short period of time when I've been doing it, like help me show up as my best and bring value and continue to believe in my value. You know, like I think all those things that it's really easy for us to all listen to the doubters or our own doubt sometimes. So yeah. And I remember, I remember her saying my service, my weapon, that was one of her impact statements. So she just like, we started out with impact statements. Great. All setting. Yeah. Once again, like this is a culmination of like some of your best impact statements your goals like what your strengths are and then you put it in a nice little package yeah on it and this is what you this is what you say to yourself on the because um there's this quote by Gail Sayers that I think that I often say it's

gosh, it's something about pretty much you, you speak in ways you want to become until you become the way you speak. Oh, awesome. So I heard that a long time ago and I was like, yeah, I like that. Super good. Yeah. The way I might say something similar is what I think about myself I become. So, I mean, you know, it's a little take on Aristotle's, right? Become what we think of the most, right?

Yeah. We'll take on that. But, you know, I love creating, you know, something that's my own or using something maybe from somebody else that's similar to like one of the greats. Yeah. I love it. Awesome. When I think about these impact statements and right, like how you just said, like confidence is the result of your thinking. Um, and you know, we were talking about replacing that thought. Do you ever feel like, you know, I think there's kind of maybe two schools of thought, this kind of cognitive behavioral perspective that, you know, you replace that thought, or more of a mindful perspective that it's like, okay, I'm just going to let that thought move by.

What do you find, like, has helped your clients the most? Are there anybody that says, gosh, I just, you know, I can't talk back to myself, or that really doesn't work, or one perspective works better than the other? What are your thoughts on that? I think that it depends on who you're dealing with. Because there are genuinely people I've worked with who said, like, yeah, I can't, I can't let that thing go. It's right. I say the impact statement, but then here comes the counterproductive thought. Here it comes right back. So, yeah, then we talk about, okay, well, say hi to it. Acknowledge that it's there.

Yeah, I like that. But once again, thoughts aren't true. So, once again, thoughts aren't true, right? Just because you have a thought doesn't make it so. What is true is, like, if you have even an impact statement. Yeah. But having that thought is going to get you closer to the championship. Then I'm not enough. Absolutely. Yeah. Super good. And I use a lot of like you know you talk about this and just acknowledging uh

counterproductive or negative thought being there and i i was somewhere recently where um this uh other performance like uh brian you he did a he did a an exercise with i use bubbles a lot for a whole lot of things. This one was to talk about when we blow bubbles that our tendency is to mess with the bubble.

When we have a thought and we react to that thought, that is like us blowing bubbles and messing with them. But if we don't blow a bubble and we just let the bubble go and it goes away or it just pops onto the, it'll go away. Like the thought will go away if we don't respond to it. So I like to use, you know, activities sometimes. I use a lot of activities actually.

Yeah. you know the activities sometimes i use a lot of activities actually yeah to help to solidify some of these concepts that can seem pretty abstract especially to the 16 17 18 year old and even to the 25 year old sometimes like when you talk about mindfulness like what so using some like using some tangible and concrete activities. Yeah, I love that idea because I can see the visual and I can see like the bubble just like flying, like you're really like maybe flying away or just moving away. They just move on past. Like, just let the thought move out of your mind like a cloud or, you know, it's like, but the bubble, people have seen bubbles and they know what, you know, what that really is. So love that analogy. Yeah.

You know, Steph, I know we've both done some work in the NFL. So we'd love to talk to you about, you know, what your perspective is, particularly high level athletes. I know you've done some work in the NBA too. Like, what do you see, you know, let's just say rookies, for example, because, you know, I know you've done some success, like, or some with the rookie success program, what do you see rookies struggle with in the NFL, as they're coming to a new level, maybe they even haven't made the team yet, you know, like, what do you see, from that perspective, we've been talking about college college but let's talk about pros a little bit a lot of expectations yeah a lot of expectations and a lot of pressure yeah um so when

you have expectations and usually those expectations some of them come from in you know some of them are internal but a lot of it is like external pressures but once you're focused on the external that will really prevent you from being at your best yeah because you're not in the moment you're so as I would say expectations okay expectations and um like pressure to feeling like this is their last, you know, if I don't make this team, then it's over, which that's not really, once again, that's not true. You don't make this team for 31 other teams. Yeah. There are 31 other teams. I mean, certainly try to make this team.

Yeah. But, you know, maybe this is not where you will spend the rest of your 15-year career right and so helping them to see kind of like what's possible as opposed to like the limiting thoughts like if I don't make this team like it's over for me and you know I have to go back to you know wherever town USA and work in a factory right I. I also think that the, obviously the level of competition is completely different from their collegiate competition. Right. And that takes some getting used to. I think the NFL does a really great job, though, of preparing rookies for, like, what to expect. Because you don't know what you don't know, right?

You've never been a rookie before in the NFL. Like, it's all new. And the NFL does a great job of inviting them to know some stuff before they experience some of those things or inviting them to learn some of these things so how have you seen like i love i like the two things that you said about pressure and expectations so that's what i see too what do you think about like um you think about helping the rookies in particular deal with pressure what What are the ways that you have found work? Helping them to figure out what it is that they want. I mean, so, I mean, once again, goal setting, you know, figure out what motivates you,

what are you doing this for? They want it for the money and you know, there will be people who will say, yes, I'm doing it for the money. Well then, then we talk about like, can we find something else? Be more intrinsically motivating? Right. Because let's just say you have to be in the trenches because you don't make it to this NFL team. You aren't at the future team yet.

So there's this period, whether it's three weeks or three months. So how do you stay motivated in that three-week or three-month three month period when let's be honest there's no money coming in because you don't have a team right finding some other way to become motivated so so those are some things so goal setting but goal setting tied to intrinsic motivators family or tapping out on your god-given potential or perhaps um a friend i think i was just reading something about a player at alabama okay i think he just declared for the draft and I won't remember his name but he had a best friend in high school who like they were like you know twins I think that's what he said that young man died in a car accident wow so that is what motivates like that person every day. Right. So finding something to tie their behaviors to.

I talk a lot about what is your reason to act? Because there will be days you don't want to. In particular, like there's a lot of soreness and pain and like tired, fatigue. Yeah. Rookie year, there's something called the rookie wall that happens around November, where we know that they've pretty much been in season since the summer before. Right, exactly. So by the time the October, November of their rookie season hits, like they're feeling it. So what would be your reason to act?

And it's going to be important for you to tap into something that really is going to get you to take action. Yeah, I know what you mean about being real. I've seen it. They're so sore they can't move. And, you know, you mean about being real. I've seen it. They're so sore they can't move and, you know, the rookie wall is really good. Yeah, so, and the other thing would be helping them to stay present. Like, you can't do anything about the past. Once again, just doing a lot of education. What can you do about the past? You muffed that ball.

You've made the fumble. You got chewed up by the coach. What can you do about it? Zero things. So please help me understand what is causing you to give 80% of your time, energy, and effort right now to something that you cannot do anything to change. Great. that you cannot do anything to change. Right. Similarly, have that conversation about, okay, I know you can prepare for the future, but in all honesty, we can't control that either.

There's so many things, especially in the NFL or in professional sports that are happening. Trades are being made. People are doing this. General managers, coaches are coming and going and all of that can affect you. So that's too much information to be like trying to process.

All you can do is manage what's happening right now. What do you need to do right now? Oh, you need to go see the trainer? Okay, let's go do that. Take care. Take care, number one. Yeah. When you think about, I mean, you worked in such really cool environments now at Temple, but with the NFL and the rookies, and then for 10 years were a master resilience trainer.

Absolutely. How do you see that different working with the United States Army compared to these two other populations that we've talked about so far? I think there are many similarities, but the biggest difference is the stakes are higher, right? With the military, I was just watching on television, like the 82nd Airborne was just deployed to a conflict region right now. Okay. So when we talk about mental skills training for armed forces, the stakes are higher. It's about life or death. It's not about W's and, you know, losses. It's about life and coming back home safely and bringing everybody you went with back home safely. So that's, to me, the biggest difference. But the similarities are in terms of like the level of physical, like readiness and preparation that goes into the job, the hierarchical nature of working in the military, you know, there's a hierarchy of how things happen. And similar to like in athletics, you have coaches on down with a

student athlete, or you have your general managers, owners, like that have coaches on down with a student athlete or you have your general managers owners like that whole thing on down um you you know the the one of the things that is pivotal for both is like the family like support yeah and there are these people working behind the scenes to help and support either soldiers or, or athletes. But those two people who are the performer, so the soldier or the athlete, they can't really do their job without support. Absolutely. So, you know, just for those people who are listening that say, they're might saying like, wow, you know, I didn't even know that they did mental training in the military. They help train these kind of like soldiers for war from a mental perspective. Give us a little insight on like, generally how you might go about doing that. And what are some of the

topics and skills you might train them on? All right. So, I mean, because we were at so many installations, it could look different, but I'll give you, I was at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. and then at Fort Belvoir and then Bethesda, long story. But I worked primarily story but i work primarily with wounded soldiers who have been wounded or are either ill or injured okay and what we did was every two weeks we would do these workshops for warriors in transition that's what we call them and we would cover a you know the same topics goal setting managing Goal setting, managing your energy, attention control, building confidence, maintaining confidence. Awesome. And I think the Mental Skills Foundation. Awesome.

And imagery. We trained them. It was more like training and education. And then we would give them skills. I mean, sorry, techniques and strategies to help master confidence or help to master attention and focus. So that they could move from warrior in transition either back to return to duty or out to back to civilian life. Okay. In addition, we also did resilience training, and that was something kind of in addition to the mental skills training that we, and in there we, with that program, MRT, Master Resilience Training, we taught skills to help to build competencies of resilience.

So optimism, connection, mental agility, strength of character. Did I say connection already? Yep. Self-awareness. Self-resilience. I think that was it. There were six competencies. Well, that gives people like at least an overview of the kind of things that you might do. Yeah. And it was I mean, it was extremely rewarding work. And, you know, when you do this work, the thing that I love about it as well.

I mean, there are many things I love about it, but I am learning, too. Yeah. So I am getting I am building skills as Yeah. So I am getting, I am building skills as well. So that's kind of nice. And learning about yourself, but yeah, I like the skill development. Well, that's segues to my next question, Steph. So tell us about a time that you applied, you know, some of the mindset principles that you've talked about or a mindset principle. Well, I, I ran a marathon, my, my first and only, I know, Sandra, you are a marathoner. Yeah. I ran a marathon. I, you know, for a very long time, I wanted to run a marathon. And I guess now that I, you know, in hindsight, I was letting my

self-defeating thoughts prevent me from doing so. And I guess it was shortly after I started working with the Army, I said, well, let's see how this stuff works. I mean, I knew it worked, but I said, let me apply it to something, a big, hairy goal that I have that I haven't accomplished or achieved in a number of years. Let me apply to this. And I set about, you know, constructing a goal plan, creating my power state. And at the time I called them power statements because that was the language I was using then. Okay. I power statements, developed an imagery script, had a mental and a physical training plan for running a marathon. And so like I did that and then I did that. Like plan in place and then follow the plan.

And then it just happened. Like it was like six months or maybe seven or eight. But you did it. I did it. I had that thought to myself, you're defeating yourself. Like you are, you are getting in your own way. So I came out, I got out of my own way and I helped myself by establishing my mental goal, my mental goal my mental skills plan and uh yeah december 2008 i ran my congratulations which one did you run kiowa island awesome yeah so but that was fun like and like i remember what i'll just share i remember one of my kind of as i was thinking about what I wanted to do on the marathon I said I wanted to keep running like I could run another mile so I I envision like people want to just collapse at the finish

line but I was like nope I want to keep running like it's so I put that on my imagery script nice remember that they were running after me with that little yeah thing and I just I was just running and I was just running I was like at the end of the like after you went through the finish line oh yeah no I just kept I kept running that's awesome most people like die and just like collapse at the end you know I kept running because that is what I saw myself doing for like six or seven months in my head and continuing to run. I was like, oh, okay. Yep. That works. Well, that's pretty cool stuff. I think about like when I first started marathoning, cause I had, you know, I was a college runner that kind of just really had an up and down college experience. So when I got out of grad school, I run it like, that's

actually how I applied my mental skills at first too like what actually works let's let's let's see and let's try it on myself and um I had a really a few really amazing marathons right because it was like now this physical training coupled with training it was like well okay absolutely the limit i had to go for a while of trying to make uh uh the olympic trials cut i did not do that but you never know you never know never know well cool yeah how can i was gonna say i saw a commercial with um a woman who's a football coach for the 49ers and she said like when she was, she had a goal that she wanted to be on a real football team. Not playing, but she's coaching. So like, you just don't know how it's

going to manifest itself. I mean, it's the goal. It's still a goal. It's still a goal. Well, pretty awesome. Tell us how people might reach out to you. I know you have your own company. So if people are interested in connecting with you for um you know consulting so tell us a bit more about what you do and how can people how people can reach out to you either on your website or social tell us a little bit okay i have um a private practice called maximum mental training associates i've been in private practice for pretty much since we were in grad school yeah a long time now and you can find me at www.maximummentaltraining.com. And that's M-A-X-I-M-U-M-E-N-T-A-L training.

So only one M between maximum and maximummentaltraining.com. And I'm also on Twitter at B, the letter B, A, force of nature. And that is my Twitter handle. And that is, those are the only places I'm, I am on social. I'm also on LinkedIn. I'm pretty, you know, as it pertains to not just my career, but advancing the career of many of my colleagues in this space, I know that there are so many opportunities. Even though our field is still growing, there are more and more opportunities coming or more and more opportunities that are available.

And being able to connect my colleagues, my peers, with those opportunities, I use LinkedIn a lot to connect, not just for myself, but other people to opportunities. Cool. I would say that's one of my goals too, Steph, is like that's deep within my purpose is to grow the field. That's why I do this podcast. Absolutely.

Absolutely. It's cool to talk to cool people like you too, but at the heart of it, it's like, okay, how can we get this information out there to the masses? And so people can understand the power of your mind and like what you should be thinking about some real tangible strategies that are backed by evidence that work. Right. And people just I mean, people just don't know. And so, yeah, as much as folks like you or I can and a lot of people out there. But people out there, but I know that's one of my passions, like how to help others. So not just my clients, my colleagues, my peers, how to help others grow. So here is what I got from the interview, Steph.

I wrote down some notes, so I'm going to summarize it here as I want to help people who are listening. So I loved how you talked about how confidence is really about the result of what you're thinking and how it's really important to pay attention to what you're thinking because our behaviors are really a result of our thoughts. And then you talked about how thoughts are not true and feelings are not facts. So I thought that was a really good sticky way of kind of describing what you're saying. And then maybe even just saying hi to those thoughts, like a bubble going by. So I love the bubble analogy.

And really just asking ourselves, is there any evidence that that thought or that feeling is a fact, right? So I thought that was really good. It's like, what is your evidence for that? And really examining the thoughts that you have. Loved your idea of the manifesto of greatness. So I'd encourage everyone to answer those questions that Stephanie provided and write your own. So I thought that was really, really tangible for everybody to understand. And then I enjoyed our conversation at the end about what are these differences within the NFL rookies to the soldiers to the college athletes and how some of the principles are the same, but didn't appreciate what we were talking about related to the NFL and the rookies about how, you know, there's this rookie wall and just the ways that you might help them manage their expectations and pressure. So I'm grateful that you joined us today, Steph. What final thoughts or advice do you have for those people who are listening?

Well, you know, I'm a big believer in the goal setting. So some people, they're not, you know, they're not keen on it, but that's all right to each his own so I really want to encourage you all who you know whoever's listening especially since we're at the beginning of the year you set your goals for this year already I encourage you to set your goals I encourage you to have like lofty goals like what would you do if the like the possibility of failure did not exist because that's kind of like that expansive thinking the goal setting process should elicit because you want to have lofty goals so what would you do if you could not fail so set your goals and then not the thing about goal setting is that it can sometimes keep us kind of singularly focused. But in order to achieve the things that great people have achieved, you need to have people with you. What's the point of getting to the Super Bowl if you look around and none of the

people you care about are there because you didn't nurture those relationships. You need support, but in order to get support, you have to nurture those relationships in pursuit of your goal attainment. So while setting your goals and making sure that they're lofty and you're thinking big, remember to have some provisions in your goal process for your relationships so that when you achieve your relation your goals you have your people with you yeah you're not riding solo nice so that's what that's what i would say is start now if you haven't already written them down i encourage you to do that i love that question What would you do if you could not fail? I have a mug with it on it.

It's at work. Awesome, Steph. Thank you so much for joining us today. It was great to talk to you. Thank you, Sandra. I am grateful to you for the invitation and continued success in everything that you are out there doing. 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.