High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 307: Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger with Carrie Cheadle, Certified Mental Performance Consultant

Episode Date: January 31, 2020

Carrie Cheadle lives just north of San Francisco, California and has been working on the performance of teams, organizations, and individual athletes and exercisers since 2002. She is a Certified Mental Performance Consultant through the Association for Applied Sport Psychology and author of the book On Top of Your Game: Mental Skills to Maximize Your Athletic Performance and co-author of Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries as well as the co-host of the podcast The Injured Athletes Club. She has been interviewed as an expert resource for articles that have appeared in publications such as Outside Magazine, Shape Magazine, Men’s Fitness, Women’s Health, Runner’s World, Women’s Running Magazine, Bicycling Magazine, New York Times, and HuffingtonPost. She is a sought-after speaker and has spoken and consulted with many collegiate teams, cycling teams, and triathlon teams, as well as corporate organizations including CamelBak. She’s also been featured in the TrainingPeaks blog and webinar series as an expert in Mental Skills Training. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology at Sonoma State University and her Master of Arts degree in sport psychology at John F. Kennedy University. Carrie is engaging, energetic, and fun. She has a great sense of humor and employs a real-life approach to working on the mental aspects of sport and performance with her clients. Carrie has her own personal commitment to lifelong fitness and when she isn’t working you might find her hiking a trail, playing guitar, or hitting the slopes on her snowboard. In this podcast, Carrie and Cindra talk about: Her new book Rebound and the contents that can help you 4 types of coping Her “Go Far” exercise Her “Feel Focus” exercise Why you need to understand your operating manual You can find a full description of the Podcast at cindrakamphoff.com/carriecheadle.

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 Consultant, Keynote Speaker, and author of Beyond Grit. And I'm excited today that you are here, ready to listen to episode 307 with Keri Cheadle. Now, I rarely have people on again for a second time on the podcast, but Keri is one of them because I was really excited to talk to her about her new book, Rebound, to help you learn

more about how you could use Rebound in your own life. And so Keri and I have been collaborating on various projects for several years now, including our mastermind, which we talk about at the beginning of the podcast. But let me tell you a little bit about Carrie. So Carrie Cheetah lives just north of San Francisco, California, and has been working with performers, teams, organizations, individual athletes, and exercisers since 2002. She is a certified mental performance consultant with the Association for Applied Sports Psychology and the author of the book On Top of the Game and co-author of the new book Rebound, Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries. She is also the co-host of

a podcast called The Injured Athletes Club that you should check out. Carrie has been interviewed as an expert resource for articles that have appeared in publications such as Shape Magazine, Men's Fitness, Women's Health, Runner's World, New York Times, and Huffington Post. She's a sought-after speaker and has spoken and consulted with many collegiate teams, cycling teams, triathlon teams, and corporate organizations including Camelback. She's also featured in Training Peak's blog and a seminar series as an expert in mental training. As you will see, Carrie is energetic, entertaining, and fun.

She's a great sense of humor, and she got a master's degree in sports psychology from John F. Kennedy University. And fun fact that you might not know about Carrie, she was here a few years ago and she went to a Vikings game with us and she plays guitar. She's in a band and her and my husband, Dan, rocked it out on the guitar. So we talk a little bit about that fun experience when she came here to Minnesota. So Carrie and I in this podcast talk about this. We talk about her new

book, Rebound, and how the contents in that book can help you. We talk about four types of coping, her go-far exercise, and why you need to understand your operating manual, which is your mind. You can find the full show notes and description of the podcast at cindracampoff.com slash Carrie Cheadle. All right, without further ado, let's bring on Carrie. I am really pumped today to be joined by Carrie Cheadle on the podcast. How are you doing, Carrie? I'm so great. How are you, Cyndra? I'm awesome. And we thought maybe we'd start the interview talking a little bit about how we know each other. So I was just thinking last night as I was prepping for this and getting even more excited about it, I think we really started talking a lot after the sports psychology conference in New Orleans.

Like, how long ago was that? Six years? Seven years? At least seven, right? A long time ago. Yeah, a while ago. Yeah. We've gone to some conferences together in terms of improving our business.

Yeah. Brendan Burchard's conference we went to, which is really awesome. And we do a mastermind together. So it's really fun to be able to chat with a friend. Yeah, absolutely. I know it's so fun to get to do this now. We do all this great work together and it's so fun to get to do a podcast as friends as well as co-workers. Yes. Yeah. I told my son that I was interviewing you today because you came to us here in Minnesota and went to a Vikings game. That was awesome.

You played guitar with my husband. It was so fun. Is that the Carrie that I watched Ghostbusters with? Oh my gosh. That's right. I forgot about that. Yes. Yes, it is.

Yeah. Yeah. So we thought, you know, I think what might be helpful, Carrie, is to talk a little bit about the mastermind we do, because I'm guessing there's going to be some people who might be interested in that so we're just starting that but if you are a sports psychology professional working in this field and you have education in sports psychology we have a mastermind that you might be interested in to help you really level up your business so do you want to talk a little bit about that before we kind of dive into the interview today? Yeah, sure. So the mastermind

we do, I mean, Cinder and I kind of, it was really at that very first conference that we met each other in New Orleans that we realized we both were aligned in terms of our passion of growing the field and helping people be successful and wanting people to be successful in the field. And so it just seemed like a perfect fit to be successful in the field. And so it just seemed like a perfect fit to create this program to help. It's a six month program and it's for professionals that are educated in sports psychology and building their business and their practice in sports psychology. And we get people that are like at the very beginning of their business or they've just come out of their programs, maybe their graduate or the PhD

programs and wanting to get started. And then we've had people that have been in the field for years and years and years, very successful and want to just level up and kind of look at, you know, getting some, it's almost like a booster shot for your motivation because you get to talk to other people. You know, it's not just about me and Cintra. It's like they, everybody really appreciates, I think being able to talk to other people in the field that are passionate about the, you know, just as passionate about sports psychology and performance psychology as they are, and also wanting to be successful at it and wanting to build their business. So, man, it's been so, it's been so fun. We've run like, I don't know, four or five of them.

Yeah. Or six, something like that. Yeah. Yeah. So it's been super, super fun to get to like, just support people going through that process and, and see and see what people come out of the program, like to get to see some of the things people are doing now after coming through the program. Super fun. It's awesome. And, and, you know, I had somebody asked me about the mastermind carry and, you know, he was like, well, why are you doing mastermind carry and you know he was like well why are you doing this because you know don't you think that by building other people up it's going to be less business for you and I said no no no no no there is enough work to go around I believe in the abundance theory and why I do this carry is the same reason I do the mastermind is because I want

to help grow the field and give you tangible strategies they can use. So, so if you want to reach out to Carrie or I to learn more about that, you can reach me at cindra at cindracampoff.com. And so that's cindra, C-I-N-D-R-A at C-I-N-D-R-A-K-A-M-P-H-O-F-F.com. And Carrie, how can they get ahold of you? I am at Carrie at carriecheetle.com. So C-A-R-R-I-E at C-A-R-R-I-E C-H-E-A-D as in dog L-E.com. Nice. Okay. So let's dive in. So I'm really pumped to talk to you about your new book rebound. Um, and I'm looking forward to talking to you. You know, I've already had very few people on as a repeat guest and you are a repeat guest. I'm so flattered.

I know you're going to bring some awesome value to the people listening today. So tell us a little bit about your book Rebound and why you decided to write this book. Yeah, I think that, you know, the catalyst, there were a few different things that led me to this place where finally I was like, I got to write this book. And one actually happened while I was a graduate student in my program. And so I had, before I got into the program, before I even knew sports psychology existed, I had a knee injury and I had a torn meniscus and I had to have surgery and kind of had some things cleaned up. And I had a really hard time coming back from that injury and regaining my confidence in my knee and coming back into my sports.

At that time, I was rock climbing and also snowboarding. And I just struggled. I struggled with the recovery so much. And then I ended up just by chance injuring that same knee while I was in the program. I was going into my second year and I just kind of a freak snowboarding accident and tore my MCL. And almost like within an hour, I pretty quickly, you know, at first it's kind of traumatic and painful and terrifying when it happened. And then I have to like get brought down the mountain on a sled and strapped into the sled.

But, which funnily enough had always been a goal of mine, but that's a different story for another day. So I, there was, there was a part of me that was kind of like, oh, well, look at this. I finally get to go down the mountain and sled. So, um, but I pretty quickly was, uh, had decided, made a very conscious decision of I'm going to do, I'm going to all of everything I'm learning about sports psychology and performance, I'm going to take all of that information and apply it to recovering from my sport and see how it goes. And the difference in my recovery from the first knee injury to the second was profound. Like I, I can't, like, I can't even express that enough. The, the, what a huge difference it was in terms of my feelings of confidence and how I came back

and had my best season ever coming back after that, because I had taken the opportunity to work on all of these different things. And, um, so that was my first kind of eyeopening experience where I was like, Oh my God, everybody needs to have this information and have access to this. And then, you know, fast forward, I worked with a lot of athletes coming back from injury. I had worked with quite a few cyclists coming back after a bad crash and ran some support groups for college athletes recovering from injury and sort of realized, man, I am like the only, you know, for a lot of these people was the only support they were getting on the mental aspects of their recovery and seeing all of the challenges and struggles they had and realized, oh my gosh, at a time when sometimes they need the most support, they're getting the least and got to change. So, um, so that's when I was like, okay, I'm this, I'm ready for my second book. And this is the topic it needs to be. Awesome. Yeah, it's true. When you need the most support,

you have the least, cause you have the least because you might not feel like you're part of the team. And I'm thinking, Keri, today, even for those people who aren't interested in sport or they aren't working in sport, like today, I think what we're going to talk about relates to any kind of illness that you might have, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And anything that takes you away from one of the most important things in your life, right? So even if you're not an athlete, but your injury or your illness takes you away from your family or your work, it absolutely can have just as big of an impact as it does on the athletes that I work with. I remember the first time that I was injured, Carrie, and it was like when I was a junior in high school and I was a very competitive runner, running was everything to me. Winning state was everything to me. Right.

And I just tweaked my ankle on one of my runs. I was like half mile from home. I thought my life was over and I made my mom take me to the emergency room. And it was just like this, you know, minor ankle sprain. So that was my first experience with my poor mom. Oh my God, that's so great. You should send her a thank you card right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So love it. So you know what I love about the book, Carrie, is it's written incredibly well. So very nice job on that. I love that it's so easy to understand, really practical tool for anybody who wants to learn more about this subject. And I liked how even at the beginning of the book, like page seven, you have the 15 essential mental skills for injury recovery, and then you divide them into rookie, all-star, and hall of fame.

So tell us a little bit about just kind of overview these mental skills that we might need as we're going through an injury or, you know, anything that we're struggling with right now. Yeah. So the, you know, the, we kind of, as, as I thought about, I really looked at like the work that I did with my athletes and especially those recovering from injury and, and really dissected and okay, well, what are the mental skills that I'm working on? Cause we break it into like, here are the skills. And we don't often think of them as skills. And I'll kind of explain that in a minute. But, you know, here are the actual skills that you're developing.

And then here are the drills that will develop that skill. And then realized it was really, we had these three categories where there were some like, kind of small, not smaller, but like foundational, like these are some basic, like these are really key fundamental foundational mental skills that need to happen. And then they sort of progressed from there where you sort of leveled up to these other places where now we're really getting into some of the nuances of the, of the mental skills. But a lot of times we don't see things like resilience and confidence as a skill. And so we wanted, that was part of the message we wanted is like, these are, these things are actually skills and

this is the skill you're developing and this is the drill that will help you develop that. Awesome. Awesome. And why did you do, tell us a bit more about what a skill means to you? Because like I love how you divide them up. Like level one is like rookie skills. Level two is all-star skills. Level three is Hall of Fame skills. So, you know, why would resilience or psychological flexibility be a skill? Just give us a little bit more about your perspective on that. Yeah.

So, you know, there are aspects of psychological flexibility and then also resilience that are things that we can do that help promote that for ourselves. So, you know, it's with resilience, both, and there's actually some crossover between those two in particular, that we find that people that are able to be more psychologically flexible are also, we find them to also have some resilience. And so being able to practice things that lead into psychological flexibility, like what are things that I could do to work on my ability to adapt and change, my willingness to adapt with changing circumstances? And is it possible for me to shift my perception of what I'm looking at in front of me? So that ability to shift your perception is a skill. And then there's things you can do to help work on that skill. Because I think a lot of times we think that, well, I'm just, you know,

and this is true to a certain degree, like that we all have our own sort of natural tendencies and our personalities and the, you know, ways that we have developed over the years that are kind of entrenched. And so there are some ways that we just operate that are important, you know, why self-awareness is so critical to understand like, well, what's my operating manual and how is it different than Sindra's? And what are my strengths and what are, how can I utilize those strengths and just kind of accepting that? But there's also things we can do to help build and promote these other skills. And really seeing them that way, I think, helps people recognize like, oh, you aren't just like once you achieve confidence, you have confidence forever and you don't have to worry about that anymore or motivation.

Like now I can check that off the list that it doesn't work that way. It just doesn't work that way. Yeah. And I was thinking one reason that there are skills, they're not things that we're born with. We're not born with psychological flexibility and resilience. Exactly. And emotional intelligence and self-awareness. Those are things that we develop over time. And I like that you said that we might feel self-aware today. Right. Or confident today, but maybe not tomorrow. Exactly. Excellent.

So, Keri, tell us a little bit about what do you see in terms of athletes' response to injury? And I'm thinking also a little bit about the stages of grief. I know there's still some research that still might be relevant. Tell us about what you typically see in terms of athletes' response to injury and how these stages of grief help us understand that. Yeah. So it's pretty, you know, every injured athlete experience is unique. And every injury experience you have might be unique as well. So the way that you respond to one injury might be different than the way you respond to another injury, which sometimes can be confusing for athletes. But there are things that

we see that a lot of athletes will experience in terms of how they're relating to their injury and what that experience is like. And so some of the early research looked at, can we understand this experience through the stages of grief and kind of use that as a model. And so the more current research is looking at it more as a stressor and how do we deal with any type of stressor and kind of looks at it through that model. But when I talk about this with athletes, it's very sticky and they resonate with it immediately. So they're still, um, you know, understanding the, for, for some athletes, if that's their experience with it, understanding it through this grief model is very powerful to kind of normalize what you're

going through. And you'll find too, I mean, I still find that I'm like, I definitely fought, um, when I'm injured, am I like moving through the stages of grief. And one of the reasons people didn't like the model is because it sort of feels like it's this linear process where you first, you go through denial and then you're angry and then you're bargaining and then you're depressed. But it doesn't really work that way. You kind of go back and forth between the stages. It's more, it's a little more fluid than that. And it's important to remember that. And I'll still get stuck with that where I'll think like, wait a minute, why am I in big? And I already went through the states.

Like I'm done with this. I don't understand why I'm like, I should just, and we do that as athletes. Like I should be past this. I'm moving forward, but it just, it doesn't work that way. So, so, but it does, you know, kind of understanding that there are, there are these things, there's these stages of denial where it's like this, please don't let this be happening. Maybe I'll be fine. Um, uh, to feeling angry about maybe blaming people that were involved or blaming yourself or angry that this happened to you. And then going through this bargaining phase of like, well, maybe, you know, maybe I'll be okay. I'll just take a week off and it's going to be fine. I'm not going to tell my coach like, you know, kind of bargaining with yourself about like, well, maybe it's not as bad as I think or if I just do this.

And then it sort of starts to settle in that, okay, I'm injured. And that's where depression might come in where you start to real angry. I mean, what you're doing is grieving. I think a lot of times what happens is we're grieving the path that we thought that we were on. And suddenly you kind of realize, oh, my path is not going to look like that anymore. And that's when you might feel depressed

when it starts to settle in, like I really am injured and there are things I'm going to miss out on. And then all the things, you know, missing out on being with your team, missing it, like feeling like, who am I, if I'm not, you know, Cintra the runner or Carrie the snowboarder, like if I can't do this thing that I'm passionate about, like, I don't know how to be in the world. And so for some athletes, it can be really upsetting, but the good thing about getting to that point of sort of sadness and depression and grief is that it means you're closer to then acceptance because you're not fighting it anymore. It's like, okay, this is really happening.

So what do I do now? So in case people aren't familiar, Dr. Elizabeth Kuhler-Ross first designed this model. And it was really designed to help people understand the grieving process, like when they lost a loved one. Right. And so, yeah. And she worked, her work was with people that had, um, a life threatening illness. Um, so, and so it was, it was also grieving their own mortality that, that some of this was developed. Yeah. Yeah. Really powerful. So you could see like, oh my gosh, is it really that traumatic? But, um, yeah But the reason they did it is because of the loss of identity is that loss of feeling like I'm not an athlete if I can't do the thing. If I can't perform in the sport, that means I'm not an athlete, but that's 100% not true. Right. And so the five stages again, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and then acceptance. And

I like what you said is that we know that people can kind of go in and out. I think just knowing that helps you realize that, okay, this is normal. This is natural that I might experience this if I'm injured or if I can't do the thing that I love. And, you know, I think that just, you're right, like it normalizes some of these emotions that you might experience when something like this happens. Yeah, absolutely. I love the mental skills and then the drills that you have in the book. Super practical. Give us an example of one or two of the mental skills and drills that you think are the most powerful, the ones that you think really help athletes or people that are injured. Yeah, there's so many great ones. And I love that too, that they're all very practical and there are so many different types. So you

can really kind of think like, you know, it's like, I don't really want to do this one, but maybe I'll try this one. So there's a few that I, oh gosh, there's so many, but there's a few that I really like that are very practical. One is, is feel focus. So to try and practice this idea of shifting your perception or shifting your emotional state if you feel like you're stuck. So the feel focus exercise is kind of when you're feeling stuck or you're feeling upset about something, you're feeling hooked or triggered and you say, well, I'm feeling blank because I'm focused on blank. So like I'm feeling frustrated because I'm focused on the fact that I can't use my body the way I want to. And then you say, I want to feel blank. So I will choose to focus

on blank. So I want to feel calm or I want to feel confident or I want to feel prepared, whatever it is that you'd prefer to feel template that we, um, that we go through. Another one I really, really like is, um, is the acronym we use go far and far is an acronym for, like, if you want to go far, you have to go far, which is feel, accept, recover. So one thing that happens sometimes is, um, we might fight against how we're feeling in the moment, or we may not actually accurately label the emotion we're feeling. So our brains are there. It's adept at, it wants to put things into categories. So sometimes it categorizes our feelings of like, these are good, these are bad, instead of really actually touching the exact emotion that you're feeling in that moment, which maybe it's guilt or it's fear or it's despair. But getting more specific with, oh, that's what I'm feeling. And then allowing yourself to feel it. Because in order to move to acceptance and then recovery, you have to let yourself feel the feelings. And we're just so,

we're so good at the skill of moving away from our feelings instead of into them. So that in and of itself, just the ability to stay with the emotion you're feeling is a skill that can be practiced. And then we realize like, oh, this emotion isn't going to consume me. I think our fear is that we're going to get like stuck in that emotion forever. When you really allow yourself to feel that, truly feel the emotion, they have a shelf life. But oftentimes, because we fight against it and try and stuff it down or we keep feeding it our other fears, it makes it go longer. It's kind of like, you know, when the boys were toddlers, right? Or in the end, you would see them go through, like they would get upset about something and

lose their minds. Like this is the worst thing that has ever happened to me. Milk. My snack went, uh, I can't eat my snack and I drop it on the ground. I don't know. Yeah. And then 30 seconds and they let themselves feel like the deepest depth of that despair of like, I just want my snack and then they're fine.

30 seconds later, they're like, all right, well what else can we do? Or when are we going to play next? Or like, so they have a shelf life, but you've got to feel them in order to move through them.

So feel, you got to feel the feelings in order to get to then accepting like, okay, okay. I'd prefer for things to be different, but they're not. So now recover, which is what do I, so what do I need to do? And that's shifting the control, like the control back into your hands where you can feel like, okay, okay, the steering wheel is back in my hands. Which direction do I want to go? That's awesome. I really like at the beginning of the book that you do a lot of like self-awareness exercises where you even list like the emotions you're experiencing, you know, so people can label them. And you're right. I think people might say, well, I don't want to feel angry

anymore. I'm just going to let it, just not think about it anymore. But you're really saying like, feel it so you can go through the emotion. So what advice would you give somebody who is feeling these emotions right now? What advice would you give them in terms of not pushing that away and what should they do instead? Yeah. There's a couple of things that people can do. One is to write it out and journal. It's so funny because sometimes I talk about this with my athletes and they're like, oh my God, Keri, I don't want to write. I don't know if you've had that happen with some of your athletes where they're like, please don't make me do this. I like to do, I don't want to write.

Yeah. And so sometimes if that's the case, you can audio record it too, instead of writing it down if you'd prefer not to write, but it just is an opportunity to process. Like there's some really remarkable research on our ability to process emotions through the act of writing them out and journaling. So that, you know, can be a really powerful tool. And thinking about it that way, I think sometimes it's like, you know, it feels different than maybe journaling when you think, you know, I think sometimes people have this like idea of what that word means, but really it's a tool for processing some of these

emotions and what you're going through. And then the other thing is really is to get support. And so what I run a support group on Facebook called the injured athletes club. And I, what I, oh my gosh, it's just been so amazing to watch the athletes supporting each other. And it's a place where it's okay to talk about it. So I think the other thing sometimes that happens is athletes feel like, uh, or, you know, maybe you're injured and you feel like the people in your life are sick of hearing about it or you're afraid to talk about it with them because you're afraid they're not going to get it and they're

not going to get why this is such a big deal and why you're so upset about it. So people will be able to share those emotions in this group with people that get it. And so they're not afraid to share their emotions because they know these people know how important this is and they've been there. So they get what it is that I'm talking about. Yeah. Really, really helpful. Do you find any hesitation maybe among male athletes, you know,

to like talk about what I'm feeling? And I just think about our culture and what we expect male athletes to do, particularly in really masculine sports like football and hockey. Those are the ones I work a lot in. So, you know, curious what you see there and what advice you might give to somebody. Yeah, I think that naturally because of cultural sort of expectations and upbringing, you're absolutely right. There's differences in how men and women will deal with their emotions

and whether or not they're willing to share those vulnerabilities. Um, I do see some shift, but, but definitely, um, it definitely leans more towards, um, towards the women in the group than the men. And that's interesting. I should look at the, um, analytics. We probably, I, if I had to guess, I'm going to guess that we have more women in the group than men, but we do have both. And that's one of the reasons I love on the podcast. We also have the Intra-Athletes Club podcast that we interview both male and female athletes in all different sports and different levels. So people can see, oh, I'm not the only person out there feeling this.

And maybe it is okay to talk about it, even though I was brought up to feel like if I talk about my feelings, it means that I'm weak or that's, I'm supposed to be the strong one. And I don't want anyone to think that I can't handle this. Like that it's like they get to see some people modeling that like, uh, yeah, you know what, being injured really sucked. And I was worried about how I was going to come back from it, you know, or just like that. It's okay to talk about it. Yeah. That's really good. You know, the other exercise that you were describing, which I think you called it the shift focus exercise. Tell me. Yeah. Feel focused. Yeah. Okay. Um, where I am feeling blank because I'm focused on blank and I want to feel blank. So I'm going to focus on blank. I love that because it's, um, it gives you like a, uh,

a format to use and to realize that you really are in control of what you're focusing on. Yeah. And maybe what you're focusing on is, well, creating how you feel and then, you know, helps you maybe, uh, you know, helps you or leads to you being stuck. Right. So, um, how would you suggest that we use that exercise? Yeah. So sometimes I'll have people write it down, like you kind of have a, like, you know, get a notebook or something like that, where you're going to recognize each time it happens and actually write it out. And then you can see patterns over time. So sometimes I might suggest like, okay, so for the next week, you know, at the end of, you know, or make sure you have at least two feel focus statements

in there where you recognize a time where you were stuck to see that pattern. But really it's actually using that, you know, kind of setting a goal with it and taking time to bring it to the front of your mind, right? Like you're shifting it to the prefrontal cortex by making the decision like, okay, this is something I want to focus on this week. And then memorizing the template and actually just using the template and doing that consistently. Eventually, that's going to happen quicker. And it's going to happen more sort of naturally and seamlessly because you've practiced it. So that's the whole idea of developing the skill is now you have a way to practice it and we get good at what we practice, right? That just kind of the bottom line is like the more you, you know, set the intention to

deliberately practice something and develop something, the better you get at that thing. So, you know, for so many of us with some of these mental skills we um are shaped by our upbringing and our environment and our culture and we kind of get to a point where like well this is just who i am and how it goes and how i do these things and don't realize oh wait so i could change um like i could work on my emotional intelligence or I can work on my ability to focus and my ability to shift focus instead of just thinking like, oh, well, this is how I do it. This is how it works.

Right. Yeah. When you first gave us the template, I was thinking about me and I'm not injured right now. I was stuck in thinking earlier today about a decision I made yesterday. So it was snowy here in Minnesota. There wasn't great road conditions, so I decided not to go to the speaking engagement, and we rescheduled it. But I was stuck thinking about that.

Yeah. When you said that, I thought, well, I'm feeling like guilt because I'm focused on a decision I made, but I want to feel excited today. So I'm going to focus on this right here, what we're doing. Right. So, right. Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking about how I can apply it just in my life in general too. So yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It works for it. Right. It's a total life skill and it helps bring you back into the present moment too. Right. So your brain was time traveling and like thinking about the past. Yeah, it was, I was trying not to let it. Right. And that just shows you, Cydra and I are human too. Like that's the other thing

that you can take from this, that the fact that these are skills is because we're experts in this, we still have to practice it because they're skills. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we have to use them every day. So there's a few other things I wanted to ask you about in the book, Carrie. So one of them is about these cognitive distortions that we can experience when we're injured. And so some examples you gave are like all or nothing or maximizing or minimizing personalization, overgeneralization, jumping to conclusions. So give us a sense of how you've seen that with injured athletes and then, you know, what do we do about them when we might experience a distortion like that in our thinking? Yeah.

So first, just knowing that they're normal to have these cognitive distortions and their ways that we've sort of developed, you know, in some ways they're protecting some part of us, seemingly protecting some part of us, but really they're oftentimes getting in the way of what we really need to be, what the real picture is and what we're really needing to deal with. And so, and sometimes you might find like that you might have a tendency to have a certain cognitive distortion or maybe a certain couple, anytime you experience any kind of challenge in front of you or difficult situation or something that's happened that's

unexpected. So you can kind of look through that and go like, oh, okay. So I tend to, you know, it's again like building your self-awareness and understanding your operating manual of yourself where you kind of go, oh, okay, so I tend to operate this way. So I need to think about that when I get into this type of situation. And no, it's almost like a disability to separate from yourself and see yourself through from an external perspective and go, oh, okay, so when this happens, this person typically reacts this way. So I need to support them by doing this. Like you need to do that for yourself. So the cognitive distortions that I see people, um, you know,

I see maybe more often than not, although I'll see all of them, but, um, one is that, uh, personalization where, um, it's like, well, why, why did this have to happen to me? And, and kind of, or, or taking on more responsibility or blame for what happened when really it's, if you're privileged enough to be an athlete for long enough, at some point, there's a good chance that you're going to be dealing with an injury. And this just happens to be your turn, right? That, that a lot of, that all, you know, it's pretty rare that I work with someone that hasn't had some kind of injury at some point in their athletic career. So, um, you know, that it's, that, that you, you don't

need to take on that personalization because really these things get in the way of you doing the work you need to do to move through the recovery process in the most resilient, positive way possible. That's not to say that, you know, sometimes it, you know, the bottom line is it sucks being injured. I hate being injured. Nobody wants to be injured. So it's still not going to be pleasant, but you absolutely can have some choice over how you respond. And that absolutely influences how you come through that process and how you come back into your sport and, or whether you even choose to come back into your sport. So that personalization is a big one. And then also, um, I think the other one is over

generalizing. Um, I see sometimes too, like, well, if, if this is happening here, it's ruining everything. And so, so I'll see, you know, it kind of like puts a blanket over everything in your life instead of like, well, nope, this, this one thing is happening. But there's still so many incredible things that I have in my life. So it's, so, you know, again, both of these things don't just happen in injury. They happen with everything where it's like something, something really challenging happens or you're faced with something unexpected and you think, you know, it just kind of spreads to other areas of your life or you just, that's the, you can only see that thing under the microscope instead of stepping back and looking at the bigger picture and realizing this is happening but but there are all these other things happening as

well it's not the only thing happening but we just tend to sometimes look at it under the microscope or under the magnifying glass i like the example in the book that you gave of personalization that um you know this wouldn't have happened to me if I were a better athlete. Yeah. And then the more accurate explanation and reflection is every athlete, even the best ones, sometimes get hurt. You know, they can get hurt. So I like the idea of just like noticing that cognitive distortion, understanding your own operating manual, your own brain so you can work through this. And the reason you'd want to is so you can get closer to acceptance. As I'm listening to you, Carrie,

I'm thinking about like some of those athletes you might've heard of, like, I think of Adrian Peterson when he tore his MCL and ACL. And there were stories about, it got back to the, you know, right away, right after the injury, it seemed like he was at acceptance. I don't even think he went through these. Yeah, you're right. In like a split second, you know, so yeah, yeah. That's about athletes who can just move on so quickly. We've seen a few other examples in college football this year of like, big time, you know, season ending injuries, and it seems like people are recovering so well. Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. Because sometimes people won't go through that. I mean, that's a really, really good point. Like, um, because everyone's experience is unique. Um, sometimes they might get to acceptance more quickly and there's a lot of different reasons for that. Sometimes it might be, they've had experience with previous injuries and

they know what they need to do. I think sometimes with that too, when the athlete knows that they have the support and resources in order to help them get back, I think that they can get to that more quickly as well. When they have a clear idea of what it is that they need to recover from. So sometimes people, they might have an injury where maybe it's more of like an overuse injury or they can't, you know, their medical team isn't quite figuring out what it is that's going on is different than having like a, I know exactly what this injury is. I know tons of people that have recovered from it and I've recovered from injuries. I know what I need to do. And I trust the process. And I trust my team. Right. So if you, you know, if all those things are in place where it's like,

I know the people I'm going to be working with to recover from this injury. I like those people. I trust those people. I respect those people. I know that I have the resources that I need. I know that I personally have the coping skills to be able to handle the situation in front of me.

You're, you're seeing, instead of seeing it as a stressor, you're seeing it as a normal challenge that, um, you can address and that, you know, and you still might be like, what a bummer, you know, and the timing of the injury sometimes, uh, will impact that too. So if the timing is like in the middle of the season and you guys are looking really great and you think there's a good chance to go to post-season and now you're going to miss out on that. Maybe you don't come to that as quickly. So there are a lot of different things that kind of play into that. You know, one of the reasons I think, yeah, like there's just these other little factors that play also. Yeah. And I think about the athletes, some of the athletes that I work with who they don't have the

answers about their injury yet. They're still meeting with doctors and a year later, that's so tough. Or I've worked with some athletes who have cancer and there is, you know, you know, that that's really tough. So I get what you're saying. So one of the things that you talk about in the book, Carrie, is these four key ways to cope. So you give some examples like problem-focused coping, emotional-focused coping, avoidance coping, and support-seeking coping. So I'm thinking this might be really helpful for people who feel stuck or they don't have all the answers about their injury. So how can we use these to help us be more resilient in our injury?

Yeah. So the, you know, with any challenge that's in front of you or any stressor, right? So a stressor isn't stressful until we decide we can't cope with the thing in front of us, with the challenge in front of us. So, so our whole, you know, so it's so critical to be thinking about our thought process and how we're approaching things. And are we making that assessment based on feelings or on facts, um, and, and kind of go through that process. But the other piece of it is also developing your own coping skills so that, you know, I, I have the coping skills to be able to handle the thing in front of me.

And there's different ways to do that. So with any challenge, but in the context of injury. So there's a problem in front of you and you need to figure out how to address the problem. So whether it's like I need to go through, I'm really bored in rehab and I'm not sticking in my rehab plan, might be the problem. Or I have an injury and we can't figure out what the injury is, might be the problem. So whatever that problem is, there's different, these four different types of coping. One is problem-focused coping, which is what is the problem I'm facing and what are some specific things I can do in order to get information or develop a skill

or set a goal to address the problem, right? So that's problem-focused coping. Emotion-focused coping is what do I need to do in order to manage the emotions that I'm having because of this problem? So whether you choose problem-focused or emotion-focused might have to do with what it is that's in front of you. So sometimes when there's things that are out of our control. So the problem is I just got injured and I'm going to miss my whole season. That's a big emotional roller coaster that you're on when you kind of the beginning of getting injured.

So you might need tools to deal with the emotions that you're feeling. So the emotional response, there's things you could do like breathing or relaxation or reframing and kind of thinking about your internal thought process, mindfulness. So there's different coping skills that we can draw from. There is research that shows that the people that use problem-focused coping are more likely to move through that situation successfully and sort of feel more resilient through that process and more likely to experience growth. There's this idea of growth really like you can grow through a traumatic event. And so you're more likely to grow through this experience if you're utilizing problem-focused

coping. Because again, it helps you put the steering wheel back into your hands when you're doing that. But sometimes we need both. Like sometimes we need to be able to know how to do both. And then it's funny, avoidance coping is, you know, sometimes people think like, well, that's probably the worst one, right? Or you don't want to do that. Right. But there is a really critical time where that is the skill, that is the coping mechanism. That is the thing that you need to do for yourself in that moment. If we only used that coping mechanism, then that might lead to other problems because you're not really looking at, well, what's underneath? I'm just avoiding. But so say, you know, if you're a high profile athlete and you get injured and they continue to replay your injury over and over, that could be very traumatic to witness. So maybe you

don't put yourself through that emotional turmoil by avoiding social media for a while or avoiding, you know, so that's a, or we naturally might, in the beginning of our recovery, avoid the situation that was similar to the experience of getting injured. Uh, so you might not be ready for that yet. So say if you're a cyclist and you maybe crashed on a steep downhill turn, maybe, you know, as you're building your confidence back up, you don't go straight for that thing. Um, so, and you're avoiding it and there might be a good reason you're avoiding it. If you continue to avoid it and then you're not doing races that have that, which would be impossible, like then, okay, we need to look at some of these other coping skills. And then one of the most critical ones is support seeking. So seeking, one of the things that we know is this knowing that you have a support system is a huge buffer against stress. And so kind of looking at what kind of support

do I need and where can I get that support and how can I empower myself to ask for the support that I need is a really key component to getting through the recovery process. Awesome. Awesome. Okay. So rebound, train your mind to bounce back stronger from sports injuries. Tell us where we can get the book and everything else you got going on. So I know you got a podcast, you got a Facebook group. So tell us how we might learn more about the things that Keri Teetle has going on. Yeah, you can go over to our website. It's www.injuredathletesclub.com. And me and my co-author and co-host have all kinds of great resources there for athletes. So there you can connect to the podcast, which is

Injured Athletes Club podcast. And we're in the middle of season two and really great interviews on there. Oh my gosh, so many amazing stories and amazing athletes. And, and then, um, the book you can get at Amazon, you can get, um, at target.com it's at Barnes and Noble. Uh, and it's also at the publisher, which is Bloomsbury sport publishing company. And, um, and, uh, and then, uh, the injury I, yeah, if you're out there struggling with injury or, you know, someone that is, I highly, highly recommend coming and joining us on the injured athletes club, um, Facebook group to get some support. Our, our motto in the group and all the podcasts is we're sorry you're here, but we're glad you're with us. So come on over. You'll get all kinds of support. Who's been your favorite person to interview so far and the injured athletes club podcast?

Oh, there's been so many. I know there's been so many. Our very first one was pretty special. And we interviewed her right before she came out and let everyone know she was struggling with an eating disorder and had to be honest with herself about that that was the reason she was getting injured. And so it was really just the timing of all that was so interesting. Oh my gosh. All of them. I love all of them. David Weiss, that was a really fun one too. Yeah. You check them all out. Yeah. Check it out. So Injured Athletes Club podcast, Facebook group, website, all that. Marie, thank you so much for being on here today. A few things that I really loved about what you said is like understanding your own operating manual is really important.

A stressor is not a stressor until we decide we cannot deal with the stressor. Boom, mic drop. That's a tweet. You can tweet that. And I liked how you talked about how we need to like stay with the emotion so that we can move, you know, to acceptance. And then you gave us some really practical tools like the go far exercise and the shift focus. So thank you so much for joining us today. What kind of advice do you have or final thoughts to end it with a bang here? Yeah, injuries suck, but you will get through this.

And one of the most incredible things, even if you're not in a place to hear this right now, I can tell you that from all the people that we interviewed for the book and for the podcast, that many people go through the experience and say, I would never want to go through it again. And I wouldn't wish it on anyone, but I'm so grateful for the experience because of everything that I learned and the places that it took me. So it really, it's just part of your journey. Awesome. Thank you so much, Keri Cheadle. Yes, absolutely.

Thanks for having me, Sindra. Thank you for listening to High Performance Mindset. If you liked 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.