High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 309: Defining Success and Failure with Dr. Artur Poczwardowski, Professor at University of Denver and Consultant to the U.S. Paralympic Team

Episode Date: February 7, 2020

Dr. Poczwardowski is an associate professor at University of Denver Graduate School of Professional Psychology and a Consultant with Sport and Performance Excellence Consultants (SPEX). He is a Certified Mental Performance Consultant with the Association for Applied Sport Psychology and is listed in United States Olympic Committee Sport Psychology Registry. Since 1991, Dr. Poczwardowski has consulted with athletes and teams from numerous sports such as tennis, golf, hockey, judo, squash, baseball, team handball, soccer, track and field, diving, rowing, air pistol shooting, alpine skiing, cross country skiing, figure skating, and speed skating. At the elite level, he worked with the Polish national men’s and women’s judo teams (1991 & 1992 European Championships, 1992 World Championships, and 1992 Olympic Games), St. Lawrence University Division I women’s hockey team (2001 and 2004 Frozen Four), and tennis players from Academia Sanchez-Casal (Naples, Florida). He has 38 publications and has delivered over 60 professional presentations at the national and international level and over 30 invited lectures and workshops in the United States, Canada, Greece, Denmark, and Poland. His publications and professional presentations focus on sport psychology practice for performance enhancement and psychological well-being, coach-athlete relationships, and coping strategies in elite performers. In 2006 he was nominated for the President of Association of Applied Sport Psychology, which has membership from about 30 countries. Artur received his Ph.D. in exercise and sport science with specialization in psychosocial aspects of sport from University of Utah, Salt Lake City.   In this podcast, Artur and Cindra talk about: His work with the US Paralympic Team and how he has looked into his own biases Differences in the world’s best athletes His theory of performance excellence How to deal with expectations How he defines failure and success What do to with the “uncontrollables” in performance You can find a full description of the Podcast at cindrakamphoff.com/artur.

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 our tour to the podcast today. Thank you so much for joining me from Denver. How are you doing up there? I'm doing well. Thanks very much. I really appreciate this opportunity. You including me in the group of wonderful speakers before me, and I'm sure you were working on other speakers as well. So I really appreciate that opportunity. Thank you very much. Yeah, absolutely. Well, you're one of the guests that

I wanted to have on for a while. So in my work in performance psychology, I read a lot of your work and use a lot of it in the classes that I teach. So it's an honor to have you on. And for those people who might not know a little bit about your background, Artur, just get us started with telling us a little bit about your passion and what you're doing right now. My passion is situated and located in sport and performance psychology, and it's like threefold, if you will. One of them is consulting, and that was the goal for me to come from Poland to the United States and study sport and performance psychology with Dr. Keith Henschen at the University of Utah. The second, the equal passion is teaching, spreading the word about sports psychology and even more specifically how to do it. So hence my work at the University of Denver and teaching a number of classes and also supervising students in their own delivery of psychological services. So it's sport and performance psychology, it's consulting,

it's teaching and supervision primarily, and a bit of research and publications and presentations. So I belong to that part of that world that you also are so very active and so successful, and that's where my passion is primarily located. Yeah, excellent. So give us a little insight in terms of your consulting. I know you've worked with the Paralympic team, which I want to ask you about. And then you have your own private practice.

And so just tell us a little bit about that for people who aren't familiar with what you've been doing lately. Great. Paralympic sports are quite underserved in terms of population. Probably you and your listeners know about it quite a bit. Although recently, probably just one decade or so, there is a greater interest in athletes with disabilities, physical disabilities, sensory disabilities, and then intellectual disabilities as well. So that was about six years ago when we at the Department of Sport and Performance Psychology here at the University of Denver were contacted with an idea to look for a fit

whether we would be able to work with Paralympic teams. And Jamie Shapiro and myself, we stayed on after that conversation. And then at this point, I'm consulting with three Paralympic teams in winter sports, which is Paranordic, Paralpine, and Parasnowboarding. Nice. Okay. Give us a little insight in terms of going to the Paralympic Games and what that was like for you as a consultant. Paralympic Games was probably the biggest major event for me in my life. I started consultation with elite performers back in Poland in early 90s and I was part of

a preparation of Polish judo team, men's and women's judo team for Barcelona Olympic Games in 1992. And then after that experience, I came here and then started for my doctorate and then my academic and then consulting career started from there. So Paralympic Games was definitely a highlight in terms of my career as a consultant and consultants who went there and other other professionals nutritionists and obviously coaches and and staffing they always speak about how different and uh and challenging that that is and indeed uh it was uh and on the on the other hand how much challenge that produces is also a great deal of satisfaction and opportunities to grow and learn and evolve as a consultant.

Yeah, for sure. And give us a sense of Paralympic athletes and what they might, man, I mean, I know they're very similar to, they are elite athletes, right? So what do you see that they struggle with in terms of mindset? Indeed, there is, in a number of respects, they are very similar to able-bodied athletes. I primarily work with athletes with physical disability and sensory disabilities. And then there is research on it. And there is also practical insights into how there is a great deal of shared common type of experience. And yet there is quite a plethora of very specific challenges and contextual features that Paralympic athletes need to face. Here are a few examples. So from a social context and then facilities and then people's opinions, they need to work through

against with, however you want to call it, with biases and certain types of lowered expectations from around. Facilities don't have ramps. The access to the bathroom is sometimes very problematic for those athletes. So that's one of them. Another one is that many of them, they experience or suffer from medical conditions that are progressive in nature. So from that perspective, there is a different approach to goal setting. So we cannot view and see that in some cases that there will be a progression of outcomes or results. And then we need to change and switch the goal setting accordingly.

For visualization purposes, athletes who, after amputations or paralysis, and they don't feel some parts of their limbs or their limbs at all, you need to modify the scripts for imagery, for mindfulness meditation, for example, for body scan. So that needs to be done as well and modified. In a sense, you could also, what I've experienced is in major events and the Paralympic Games is there is so much more time that's needed for preparation, for making sure the equipment is there,

prosthetics are fitting, obviously getting to places. Bathroom breaks are the major stressors for Paralympic athletes. So that's another one that they need to figure out. Those facilities sometimes I mentioned are less accessible or they're away or they are temporarily set at the venues which produces additional level of problems. And maybe last one just to illuminate some of those contextual features, is that in order to make the field of play fair, if you will, there is this classification

system that then the medical doctors and committees assess what type of category classification an athlete will be performing, so they equalize, in a sense, their abilities, so then competition is being fair. So that's a source probably of the most frustrations that we are dealing with the work with the athletes, and that produces another major disruptor, if you will, and then draw their attention to unfairness of it because that's typically how it's being perceived by most of those athletes and then um in the working around it and with it

actually i had to expand my practice and my professional philosophy and skill set because idea of letting go of it oh that was unfair or that athlete has more propulsion because of the longer limb, trying to rationalize with it, trying to make a reason with it and make it somehow less stressful did not work. So letting go of it was not possible. So what we did find, and I did find then through my own professional growth and development and listening to other consultants i switched for some of those non-controllables to let it be so this is how the mindfulness acceptance and commitment approaches in in i invited that into my own practice so yes

it is unfair it's not worth thinking about it trying to reason with it but can we focus on what's important now the one principle that probably your speakers spoke about a number of times when what's important now it's connecting with the values and then after understanding that this this particular destructor needs needs to be there i cannot reason with it i cannot let go of it but i can let it be and then refocus on what's the task at hand. Yeah, that's really important. I think it's, I can tell that it's really important for Paralympic athletes, you know, just given everything that you just mentioned.

But I also think about us in our everyday life. There's so many uncontrollable factors. So I like the idea of letting it be, not fighting against it. You know, we can't control the facilities that are there. If I can stop and go to the bathroom or not, but I can control my response to that. And I like the idea of like, what's important now. Give us a sense, Artur, of like what you said about like people's opinions and biases and how that might impact performance or happiness when you're at, you know, a competition like the Paralympic Games?

How might you help an athlete, like, through that? And then, like, what's the, what are they struggling with? So, for example, bus transportation. And in different countries, bus drivers or mini bus drivers. And then they are being hired for that particular event and then they have Paralympic athletes, para-adoptive athletes and they find themselves in excessive help mode because they think that those athletes are very fragile and they need assistance and help so they in the sense they you could think that they subscribe to that tragedy model of understanding individuals with disabilities,

that something tragic happened, and indeed it did, but those individuals are less able, and we need to help them, and society needs to be on that overprotective mode. On the other hand, there could be individuals around facilities, dining area, bus transportation, that they don't acknowledge or they don't see that there needs to be an a different approach to those individuals and it could be that an athlete is sitting on a chair and then having a plate to be loaded by a by a service dining service professional and then

they need an extra approach or an extra flexibility on the dining server end, which sometimes is not happening, and then it causes frustrations. So those are just a couple of examples that come to mind. But also we as professionals, and when I entered the world of para-athletes, I need to look very closely at my own biases and then how I was acting in front of them and around them. So I'm coming from Polish background and then we have this courtesy or manners,

good manners perspective that could be on the surface, but also in me is very deeply inside me. So I'm thinking that opening a door for a Rafid on a wheelchair or on crutches makes most sense in the world, but it doesn't make the same sense for them. And there was a number of situations that actually they were opening the door, holding that door for me and maybe for other people on the team. And I had to accept it, obviously, and I had to see how to individualize approach and which particular

individual needed in those circumstances. Yeah. Sounds like a lot of learning and reflecting in terms of your own practice and not necessarily the delivery of sport and performance psychology, but how you might be interacting with these athletes. So what are the lessons that you learned in terms of doing well in that environment and treating athletes, no matter what their disability is like as, as a person, right? One thing that I've learned because of their pains, inflammations, how the prosthetics fit or not fit. And there is some literature to support that their muscle soreness or muscle

pains post workoutsworkouts have a different quality. So one of the lessons learned was to really emphasize in our conversation and consultation the notion of recovery and self-care, which is very well accepted and practiced in able-bodied sports. But here, that was even more important many of those athletes actually have to work or there are student athletes like other athletes so there is a additional roles that they juggle in life and that recovery piece was very important this the second lesson that was very important and jamie shapiro my colleague and we consult actually with two teams and she was saying there is an an adoptive mental performance consultant so we need to adopt we need to modify our approach be very flexible

and and really blend with the environment in a sense that makes more sense to those individuals so modifications to different exercises and if you come and have a team meeting and if if typically you would have a portion involving writing uh then some athletes cannot write uh amputations or finger deformations or other other features of the medical condition that is basically impossible so then we need to adjust accordingly to those types of conditions um another one is and they already mentioned it, and that's your very great proponent of it, is the growth mindset. Yeah.

Embracing it specifically, and that becomes not something in the background, but it started to be my self-reflective target, whether I'm moving in the direction in myself, believing I can acquire skills, I can acquire that knowledge and then also if I can be some somehow walk together or roll together with an athlete with that growth mindset so they they we all subscribe to the idea of ongoing improvement deliberate practice growth mindset come to mind and to both them performing their roles and their sports and me joining them as yet another performer of my skills and my role and then striving for excellence

together. Yeah, excellent. Artur, I go back to what you were saying earlier about you're not necessarily opening the door or coming from like this tragedy model. How did you learn to do that? Did you just watch the cues of the athlete? Did they give you that feedback? You know, how have you learned to be in that space as an able-bodied person? That was, we had to go through a very steep learning curve, if you will, or performance curve, that would be more appropriate to say. So that came, just all those things

that you've covered already in terms of athletes how they reacted what they directly were saying they actually they have so much experience elite athletes who are on the paralympic teams in accepting or initiating professional staffs sports science, coaches, consultants, nutritionists, and so on, that we did not have that experience with them and around them in the past. So in a very intriguing way, more mature athletes offer a mentorship to us. And they would say, okay, I know that you are here

for the first time at the World Championships. I will tell you about paraswimming. I will tell you more paraswimming i'll tell you more about what we what we go through and there was a more mature veteran athlete on the team so he decided to do it coaches are a wonderful resource there as well and coaching meetings staff meetings in which those issues also become part of the conversations and then and then we can modify our behaviors as well then um jamie shapiro and myself and recently sarah mitchell we have those groups for more groups of supervision and

exchanging notes on cases on how we do things but also informally supporting each other so then a number of consulting trips that jamie and shapiro and i, we took from Denver to Aspen or to Vail or to other places in Colorado. Then we spend those hours in the car. And this is when we talked, we talked about many different things, including how we fit, we don't fit. What is, what is good? What are good approaches to really make good transition into that context? Excellent. Excellent. Artur,

when you think about being at the Paralympic Games and the athletes who are able to really thrive at that location, what did you see that they did from a mental perspective versus those that maybe didn't meet their expectations or do as well? There is a definite line between the first comers and those of them who actually participated in the Paralympic Games before or even two times prior. So the notion of self-protection was very clear in the veteran athletes. They needed their space, they needed their they they they needed this schedule being set up for them so they they were on the end of managing it in a way that fits them best okay for the

younger for the athletes who went their first time there was a great deal of support psychological support coaching support and staffing support for them to figure that out and then sometimes recommending or suggesting certain solutions or approaches so that would serve better than the mindset. So one of protecting and one of learning, depending on how much experience they've had. And obviously, day by day, taking it race by race, run by run, meal by meal. So that was another element involved. And then we were really very well integrated and it was really so good to be part of that staffing in terms of on the ground, United States Olympic Committee at the time.

Now it's called United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee. That's the first committee of that sort in the world that decided to put those two names together, which was just as great news for us, for the humanity in general, how we're embracing the different shades and aspects of diversity. So probably I will end here this way. And then one last thing is that the protection, not only of the mindset, but protection of the recovery and time for themselves so they can be best prepared they could.

So they had self-protection, like protection of their recovery, of their time. They were really able to stay in the present moment. Anything else that you saw you know i'm just thinking about maybe the the athi two did uh win the gold medal or meddled anything else that you saw them do differently that what they were able to do so well there was this this joy of achievement and depending on an individual uh there were some individuals who actually came to the Paralympic Games first time, and they produced an excellent record of meddling a number of times. And individuals for whom it was the second or third Paralympic Games, and they did it first time.

They meddled first time. So, in this sense, some of them could, one person specifically, had a feeling that the achievement need was saturated and having a medal or two is bigger than one could expect. So, then we worked on developing greater hunger, if you will. That was a metaphor that showed up in a conversation when that person had a break after warm-up before the next race and then that that person was eating a banana and then i connected because we are immersed you're walking different places do you need anything and i'm bringing more water anything like that oh i'm see i see you eating on banana could be like you're a bit hungry and then obviously you follow the nutritionist recommendation that's great how about the hunger for greater success and bringing yet another medal so that was an entry point and then so the the sustainability of high level achievement

what was was extended for next few events rather than being happy with what has been accomplished thus far. I like the metaphor of like eating along with that and greater hunger. I think people can, you know, a lot of people could really benefit from hearing more about how did you help her figure out that she, you know, desired a greater hunger for success? So that was built on the metaphor of that snack. And then that person worked with me prior for about two years. So then five, seven-minute conversation could actually accomplish some of fine-tuning or calibration, if you will. And that person told me later and post-Paralympics and then very recently that actually that metaphor of hunger connected very well in terms of that the hunger is one that you start to eat on banana. And then you have one bite, another bite, and third bite.

And you can have a fifth bite and you can have a sixth bite. So it doesn't get satisfied with your first bite with your first metal with your second metal second bite but you can keep going and that's a natural progression of how we operate how human how human function obviously that's much more complex than this because there is every day is different and then sleeping and recovery and next events are more and more difficult because you accumulated a level of fatigue. So there is a great deal of things that go into it. And yet this metaphor had somehow resonated

with that person that had this ability to capture the time from now to forward that there was an extension of that hunger and need to still achieve and not be satisfied yet. Be satisfied, but not completely, if you will. Ah, good, good. Give us a sense, Artur, of a topic or a concept or strategy, something that you see yourself talking a lot with the athletes that you work with? One that I found as very important for biathlon athletes, especially for the shooting portion, is the idea that many moral control specialists speak about automaticity or that ability to free conscious control over your movement, trusting, relying on automatic skill

execution that only works with very well-learned skills. So then in order to work on that automaticity, we had to develop the notion of trust. So the concept of trust and also focus, present mind focus that you mentioned before are kind of cornerstone stones of my um philosophy or theory of optimal functioning okay dr marco yagi and myself in 2012 we we sort of started to um talk about how our own professional philosophy and our specifically theories of performance excellence inform our work so obviously we had to dig into our own and i found that focus is the primary cornerstone of my theory that and trust and between focus present moment focus and trusting your ability or and then actually that's having no expectations, having no positive expectations,

having no negative expectations or issues with confidence, if you will. So trusting I can execute the skills and the metaphor of muscle memory comes to mind, practicing, deliberate practice, all those hours. And then I, inside of the hurricane, that the things can be very volatile and quick and fast outside, but I'm sitting inside of it in the eye of it and things are calm things are focused things are working for me so so focus trust producing hopefully automaticity and there's an entire mental training and strategies how that could be accomplished like a preset mind that upon approach to the range an individual gradually is shifting attention from

pushing being a nordic skier being a cross-country skier to a shooter so now they will need to adjust their heart rate they will need to regulate their breathing they will need to get on the mat they will need to adjust their mindset so we have the transition before the range then there is an on mat routine and there is a post-mat post-range routine as well to let go and then move on to pushing and then switching the mindset from the shooter to to race again so when one more element that here is that that underlies it all that we already spoke about it is the growth mindset what i call it ongoing improvement. So improving in all aspects of preparation, better nutrition, better sleep, better conversations,

better retention and learning, better mental game. So the idea of altius sitius fortius, if you will, from the ancient Greece that we want to be faster, stronger, and more powerful. So if people want to learn more about your professional philosophy and how to actually write their theory of excellence, one amazing resource that I think is a classic article in our field is something that you wrote. It is an article in the Sports Psychologist, is that right? On professional philosophy. So it's something I have all my

graduate students read right away and then you have another book that I really really enjoy about experts approaches to sports psychology and you have other resources right but where can people learn more about your theory of excellence is it in that book on experts well this this is probably what's going to happen we are now contemplating a second edition of this book so potentially that could enter that and also um i was invited to contribute a chapter in the book by one of our uk colleagues dave collins and so that more of of that could be also found there and also there was an article years back in the um research professional research and practice practice, in which a number of colleagues of mine, including Marco Iaghi and Alexander Cohen and Tracy Stafter and John Metzler and myself,

we put in this article excerpts or sort of very condensed versions of our professional excellence. So I would be so very happy to send you a link or even an entire article. And then you might make it useful. Yeah, what we'll do is we'll put it on the show notes page. So people want to head over to cindracampoff.com and then slash Artur. Yes. Find it. Or just, I bet if you search Cindra and Artur, you'll be able to find it.

I like this idea of like clearly articulating what your theory of performance excellence is. I think that's a necessity. But one of the questions that I have kind of related to that Artur is like this no expectations. How do you think that you, well, maybe first start with talking about like, why is that so important? Because, you know, people might not realize that that's really important and then how do you train your own mind or and help athletes train their mind to have no expectations yes i'm glad that you followed up because then when i was saying no expectations is there no expectations for the outcome yeah there is an expectation and trust yes I am capable of engaging in the process of performing so there are procedures protocols and processes involving in me executing the task and I trust I can I can do them but

there's no expectations what those processes protocols will produce So this is a very difficult, this is the most difficult portion of working on that automaticity with the athletes that I had privilege to work with because the expectations will be always there and that some individuals internalize them through self-pressures. So medal count and ranking,

obviously other things that come to mind from an outcome perspective. And we cannot avoid them. And then from a mindfulness acceptance and commitment approach, our mind will be producing those thoughts. It's a thought-producing factory. And among others, those thoughts of expectations will be showing up so here is when when we we we can reason more with expectations of the process muscle memory i've done it many times i could do in my sleep i can trust it i can be in the eye of the hurricane that's the idea of having expectations of myself trust i can do the process But then letting go of expectations for the outcome who could be coming from CBT perspective cognitive behavioral therapy approach and then

Reasoning with them putting them aside saying that's gonna be later. I'm gonna include that in my post race processing You need to have that as well. So then bracketing it, neutralizing it, positive self-talk. So all different CBT techniques, including visualizations, me sitting with mindset, pre-competitive mindset, there is no expectations for the outcome. But I can rest in and relax into things I can do. So then what came handy with no expectations was the mindfulness approach, as I mentioned,

is that we cannot remove expectations. They will be there, but I can change my relationship towards them and with them. And I know that they will go away. I don't need to fuse with them. That's okay. That's natural with them. And then that's fine. Is there something I want to do now?

Do I need to go and get my treatment? Do I need to sleep? Do I need to review, visualize my course for tomorrow? Do I need to go and get my treatment? Do I need to sleep? Do I need to review, visualize my course for tomorrow? Do I need to focus on my warmup? Yeah, that's awesome. Thought that explanation was top notch. You know that no expectations related to the outcome. So when you observed the athletes at the Paralympic Games, the ones that maybe met their expectations or won a medal, did they have that goal of winning a medal, but they just weren't focused on it at the Games? Tell us a little bit about how this no expectation for the outcome like played out yes and um so that that works exactly like you said in the sense that they have expectations and then they're capable of to the for the outcome and they're capable of

managing them let it go or let it be and then focus on what needs to be focused that's what sits in my theory of performance excellence another Another one is that for some athletes, and that's one of the mistakes I made in preparation with one of the athletes for the Paralympic Games, that I trusted too much into the outcome orientation and pressures from the coaching and then the whole idea of Paralympic Games, that the outcome orientation will be there.

So focus went exclusively and entirely into the processes. And then one of the feedback that we received from coaches was that some athletes, and that was that athlete that I work with, that a person was not, in this case case hungry enough for meddling for the outcome. So the expectations are so vital or hopes and an optimist in terms of producing the results are vital in my mind. But the question is what is that you do with this? There were two athletes that also I work with, and they were so authentically and genuinely dismissing the notion of meddling

and then results that I truly and authentically then believed them, that one of those individuals went there to learn, and they were pursuing the goal of finding nice balance between the speed and safety. The other person had an approach of Buddhism, Eastern philosophy of being an empty cup and being open to every type of experience. And for that person, very easily the idea of I don't have an expectation for the outcomes authentically came up.

So the whole range of individuals probably you will also find that in your own work. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Great clarification. I'm glad that we expanded on that. So Artur, one question that I usually ask every guest is to tell us about a time that didn't go so well for them and what they learned from it. And I think this is important for me to ask you because, wow, you know, you're so intelligent and have written so many great things in our field and have done such quality work that, you know, people might think, well, our tour is probably perfect. Yes. I know what you're saying.

And then there is the idea of, of, of all of us pursuing the best that we, that we can produce is so dear to me. And it's so dear to you and all our speakers that are part of your podcast. One thing that comes to mind, and there are a couple of things, but the one primarily that I wanted to share is that I feel that I fail, and probably many other people in the sense, so frequently, is that if I don't live up to my expectations or the aspirations. So I already mentioned that metaphor of traveling and walking together,

rolling together with the athlete, they pursue their own excellence, we pursue, I pursue my own, that we sometimes quite often under deliver. So I had that idea that this could have been explained better. That would be a better way to connect with that athlete. So there's always that aspect of not quite succeeding, if you will, but still not failing, right? Yeah. So that was also one lesson that i i learned early on from from research uh with elite performers in performing arts and sports that they had this intriguing definition of what failing and succeeding is and that was actually the topic of our research they had like four they did have four possibilities. You succeed, successful. You fail.

And there are two additional ones. You didn't succeed. And the third one is you didn't fail. Succeeding, not succeeding, not failing, and then failing. And for them, there were qualitatively different meanings around them. So in the sense, there are three out of four that are not failing. So 75% possibility of not failing, which is protective for mindset and confidence and the motivations and so on. reflecting on how I do things, that's very helpful to soften the edge of self-criticism, if you will. And on the other hand, there are things that, from those we can recover. So if there is an athlete for whom facing the idea of being a favorite in their events,

because they accumulated the great level of accomplishments. And they avoid that. They clearly want to avoid it because they believe that puts too much pressure on them. And then CBT approach that I learned from Peter Harbel in his article, how to work with the favorites, how to work from beliefs and convictions around it, it didn't work. So then I decided to switch to mindfulness and acceptance and commitment approaches. And I didn't quite connect with the athlete and I didn't sell that

possibility quite well. And that person continued to prefer avoidance and then pretending those expectations are not there rather than face the situation. So then I could recover from it and then i strategized approach i employed motivational interviewing into our conversations uh really beyond the autonomy supportive and the created different options and then the athlete decided to try sitting with the expectations during their regular mindfulness training so that's one of those failures mistakes problems that we can recover. Hopefully that was one.

The other one that I mentioned that we go to the Paralympic games and I, I aligned with the process, with the, with the athlete's preference. I follow too much the process orientation and then the outcome, the hunger for it, the focus, the intensity of performing and competing was underserved. And I cannot recover from that because the athlete didn't know. And in those situations, I recall very vividly in how the big professionals in our field speak about it, how we need to take care of the process. That's what we look at,

whether we've delivered the services and professionally, ethically, according to the best standards. And then if athletes do well, that's their own success and coaching staff and the organization, obviously. But if they don't do well, it's our responsibility to actually look first

into what we've done and how we approach things and see if if there in any way we contributed to that outcome that we witnessed or we were part of yeah that's tough um i've been in situations like that our tour where i have had a few athletes i've worked with have you know major failure and it's hard to look inside yourself and and okay how did I best help this athlete in this case I did there was nothing else that I possibly could have done you know we don't perform for them so I appreciate just your vulnerability and your honesty about that how that can be really difficult because it can be really difficult for me as well give us a sense

in that situation how maybe you overemphasize the process because i think that's going to be really helpful for people who are listening since we just talked about like this expectation like you're having no expectations for the outcome but keeping that hunger alive so it feels like this this like fine line right like this balance so give us a perspective on how you see that it's like the way you presented it back to me. And that's the way also I'm thinking about it, is that there's a great deal of paradox in it. Yeah.

Hence, the idea of having no expectations and yet believing and trusting you can do well and then produce good results is a paradox, experiential paradox. And yet, I also believe that many of the lead athletes that I work with and I hear about and I listen to and I watch, they are so-called creative personalities. And Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, beyond his awesome work on flow,

he also worked on understanding creativity and then he he believed that creative individuals uh are they have they are multifaceted in the sense that they have extreme um ways of functioning be very introverted and be very extroverted be very passionate energy producing and then relaxing and doing nothing for you know a longer period of times so in my mind elite performers are also those who are capable of tolerating both so it's not it's a intellectual paradox but experientially it makes sense to them because they can embrace both the expectations and no expectations both the intensity and then being relaxed. When they say, when I'm more relaxed, when I lose, this is when I'm fastest.

When I let go of control of my line rigidly when I go on the skiing race, then all of a sudden the speed is there for me. So they learn that from producing physical achievements on their own, and then we transfer it to the mental game. And somehow that paradox, they are capable of tolerating that. Yeah. So one thing that I over-regulated, that idea of process, was that before going to the Paralympic Games,

I ran by the teams the idea that they would be individual athletes would like to write three statements as being their CEOs, chief executive officers of their own experience. So what experience you are after for the Paralympic Games? And there was this statement of goal mission mission statement, like in the business world and then in military and in sports, outcome statement. Then there was a process statement. And there was a personal growth component statement. And that individual that we speak about when I delivered this outcome aspect, that person decided not to develop the outcome mission statement. Only process and only what I,

is that what I want that for me as a person in life. And my following the client and trusting that person because that was third Paralympics. Okay. I agreed and I took it that we will be not working

on the outcome aspect of it. We just covered the experience and then the process. So that's how I can pinpoint back at least one element that this underregulation of outcome happened for that athlete. Excellent. Excellent. Excellent. Well, thank you for being open about that and helping us learn and grow from your experience.

So Artur, I took so much from this interview. I want to repeat a few things back to you. First of all, I love that you could clearly articulate your theory of performance excellence. I think that was great for us to hear and I really enjoyed our conversation about having no expectations for the outcome and this paradox between the outcome and the process. I enjoyed what you talked about related to like Paralympic athletes and how the best really do have the self-protection that they make sure that they are recovered and they have everything that they need, but they also have this like greater hunger, joy of achievement. They're able to really

stay in the present moment. And I just really enjoyed talking to you from a high level perspective. The last thing is like this idea that we don't either fail or succeed, that maybe there's these other options too, like that we don't succeed or we don't fail. So how can people reach out to you if they're interested in learning more about your work and learning more about your consulting practice and reaching out to you related to that? So I'm part of the private practice here in the Denver area, Specs Consultants, Sport and Performance Excellent Consultants. So I can be reached at Arthur, A-R-T-U-R, consultants that's one word dot com sp so a r t u r at s p e x consultants that's one word dot com excellent and what kind of final advice do you have people who are listening or for people who are listening our tour um one thing that probably unites us all is love for what we're doing and passion for sport and performance psychology or passion if there are coaches and athletes and and other professionals

in the realm of performance passion for getting better so that's really what I like to leave us all including myself that this passion about the field and getting better and improving the human condition around task performance because there are other aspects of human condition that we might not be touching very much so here like maybe artistic nature in sports but the idea of growing and learning and improving that's that's one that i really appreciate excellent thank you artur thanks for being on the podcast thank you so very much again growing and learning and improving. That's one that I really appreciate. Excellent. Thank you, Artur. Thanks for being on the podcast.

Thank you so very much again. And I appreciate your questions. Thanks very much. 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.

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