High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 503: The Keys to High Performance with Dr. Doug Gardner, ThinkSport Consulting Services

Episode Date: August 2, 2022

Dr. Doug Gardner has spent twenty-four years working with athletes, coaches, executives and organizations throughout the athletic and performance spectrum. Doug brings on-the-ground experience, in addition to a theory-to-practice common sense approach to improvement in preparation and performance of both the person and the player. Doug is a respected member in the industry of Applied Sport Psychology, and he has experiences working with the Green Bay Packers, the Boston Red Sox, and the NFL Players Association. In his role with executives, he works to enhance leadership capabilities, build cohesive teams and to grow business opportunities internally and externally. In this interview, Doug and I discuss: The psychology of preparation The role of awareness in high performance How to think neutrally The difference between mindfulness and mindlessness What to do when you overthink HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE: www.cindrakamphoff.com/503 FOLLOW CINDRA ON INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/cindrakamphoff/ FOLLOW CINDRA ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/mentally_strong TO REACH DR DOUG: [e-mail] OR WWW.THINKSPORT.COM Love the show? Rate and review the show for Cindra to mention you on the next episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/high-performance-mindset-learn-from-world-class-leaders/id1034819901  

Hey, my name is Cindra Campoff and I'm a small-town Minnesota gal, Minnesota nice as we like to say it, who followed her big dreams. I spent the last four years working as a mental coach for the Minnesota Vikings, working one-on-one with the players. I wrote a best-selling book about the mindset of the world's best, and I'm a keynote speaker and national leader in the field of sport and performance psychology. And I am obsessed with showing you exactly how to develop the mindset of the world's best. So you can accomplish all your goals and dreams. So I'm over here following my big dreams. And I'm here to inspire you and practically show you how to do the same. And you know, when I'm not working, you'll find me playing Miss Pac-Man.

Yes, the 1980s game Miss Pac-Man. So take your notepad out, buckle up, and let's go. This is the High Performance Mindset. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset podcast. This is your host, Dr. Cinder Kampoff, and welcome to episode 503 with Dr. Doug Gardner. I'm grateful that you're here listening to the High Performance Mindset Podcast, and let me share with you a little bit about who Doug is before we dive in. Doug has spent 24 years working with athletes, coaches, executives, and organizations throughout both the athletic and performance spectrums. Doug brings on-the-ground experience in addition to theory to practice common sense, which you will hear in this interview today. He's a respected member of the industry of applied sports psychology

and has experiences working with the Green Bay Packers, the Boston Red Sox, and the NFL Players Association. In his role with executives and his work coaching executives, he works to enhance leadership capabilities, build cohesive teams, and to grow business opportunities. And in this interview, Doug and I talk about the psychology of preparation in athletics and in business, the role of awareness in high performance, how to think neutrally and why you should think neutrally, the difference between mindfulness and mindlessness, and what to do when you overthink. Thank you again for joining me. If you'd like to head over and find the full show notes and

description, you can go over to cindracampoff.com slash 503 for episode 503. And without further ado, let's bring on Doug. Thank you so much for joining us here on the High Performance Mindset Podcast. How are you doing, Doug? I'm doing great, Sandra. How are you today? I'm doing excellent. It's very warm and sunny here in Minnesota. So we're very happy about that because this is the best time of the year here in the state. Anyway, it's great to have you here. And I know we've been working on getting you on the podcast for some time. So thank you so much for joining us. And I'm curious just to get us started.

Maybe just tell us a little bit about what you're passionate about and what you've been up to recently. Oh, thank you. Really excited to be on this podcast with you. Well, you know, recently I've been kind of bouncing all over the place in terms of high performance environments, doing a lot of corporate work with executives during the day. Then at night, I hop on calls with e-sport athletes, 17 to 26 year olds, roughly, who play video games for a living. And in between that, I still have my private practice locally and work with kids throughout the lifespan, you know, like the beginning stages of the lifespan of the athletic journey in youth sport, which I've been doing forever. And, you know, so it's a real, my days are pretty interesting, bouncing from, you know, executives to video game players,

to athletes and coaches and parents and all of the fun stuff. So that sounds like a blast variety, you know, interesting on a day-to-day basis. Yes. I can't wait to talk to you about the similarities between all those environments. And I think you have such a really cool background, you know, including e-sports and executives to the green Bay Packers and the, the Boston Red Sox, the NFL players association. So just such a diversity of experiences in your lifetime. Maybe to get us started, tell us a little bit about how you got into your business

and this work to begin with. Sure. I mean, I would say just like maybe 95% of everybody who got into sports psychology. I wanted to work in pro sports when I started as before, even as a graduate student. And that really propelled me like everybody else to, to go for it and get, get busy in graduate school. And so with my master's and my doctoral training, I utilize that time, you know, obviously to learn a theory to practice approach, develop my counseling skills

in terms of being able to connect with people. But my focus was in an Ed Psych doctoral program. So I really thought that at that time, Ed Psych was a real critical piece and component that wasn't necessarily addressed as much. At the end of the day, you could be trained as a sports scientist or as a clinician, but most of our role is really about being an educator. And so that for me was a real critical piece at a time where you were either getting a PhD in sports science or a PhD in clinical psychology. And I was like, well, let me take a middle route. And that was very beneficial for me. In terms of the work, the way I've always described it is every major job that I've ever gotten did not exist prior to me really advocating and pushing to try to create something. So the work with the Red Sox at that time, I was 29 years old. Ken Revisa, Bob Rotella,

Harvey Dorfman, Charlie Mar just started with the Cleveland Indians. I was an intern under him in 1997, which led to getting hired by the Red Sox in 1998. At that time, pretty young age to step in and oversaw the building of the mental sports psychology work within, within the entire minor league system by myself. Um, the NFL players association, they did not have this type of resource at the time and took about two years and unfortunately a little bit of tragedy to occur within the NFL to bring me on board, to build out large scale programming for rookies transitioning into the league, um, creating and setting up a network of services for athletes in crisis. And so that was really, you know, something that had not been done and had to create from scratch. And then you look into eSports and as just, I'm a junkie and I

want to go into different performance environments, especially as I get older to see if I'm relevant, if I can connect with people and what I need to do to get better as a professional. So e-sports was this just wonderful opportunity to step in and go, you know, can I work with somebody who doesn't have a traditional sport background, but is competing in something and really has to learn a lot of the basics that a lot of athletes take for granted that they learned as they come up through the athletic pipeline. So, you know, that's kind of how it is where I have to go out there and build my own private practice. I've been doing it for 24 years now and, and we'll continue trying to push envelopes until I can't anymore. I love it. What I'm hearing is that you're always interested

in learning and growing and like extending yourself in these different environments. And good point that you created all these opportunities. And I'm thinking about there are people who are listening who maybe are sports psychology or performance psychology professionals, people who have their own business, executives who are listening, leaders, sport coaches, like a wide variety of people listen to the podcast. And I think about just the power of creating opportunities and what can come from that. What advice would you give, Doug, to people who are saying, yeah, no, I need to create more opportunities. How do I do that? Right. Well, you know, it's funny.

I often, first thing I say is prepare for failure. In so many ways, I feel like in my own career, I faced more failure and adversity than a lot of the athletes I work with. Because you're out there reaching and trying to convince people that the work that you do has value and, and is important for the development of the people that they're overseeing, whether it's coaches or athletes. And, you know, I just get a ton of no, no, no. Or if I get an in somewhere, I know it's like a two year process until I maybe even get a yes if I'm lucky to get that. And so I think that's the real challenge. It's I don't like to like put our work in the concept of just sales. Cause I'm

not here trying to sell something. And I think that most people in our industry aren't there to sell something. They really want to care about the work and care about the people that they work with. And so I think that's the thing. And the challenge is to start where your passions are, build those relationships, build those networks, understand that you're not just going to like get a yes right off the bat. And if you can build and sustain those relationships over a period of time, there's a chance that you might end up having someone want to hire you to do a level of work or create something that has not existed somewhere else. And I think that's, that's important. A lot of people like to go to where

the work is, and I understand that. But oftentimes, if you are building your own business, you have to go out there and really literally build it from scratch. And so I have that mentality. I have to basically hunt for my food and my work. And that has really framed my perspective on the industry and the field and how we go about doing the work because it's a difficult task. And I think students appreciate knowing that or young professionals appreciate knowing that ahead of time and realizing that they are their own business. And that in order to do that, you have to go out there and do the things that a small business would have to do and understand it's going to be difficult. There's really no other way around it. In a lot of ways, the parallels to sport and competition with no guarantees of success

are right there for us as well. Well, I think what you're saying, Doug, really applies to any entrepreneur that it's like, okay, you know, I got to go out there and make it happen and create these waves and attract people to my business. So I think you make some really good points. I was also thinking about for about a year or so on the podcast, I asked everybody who I had on their definition of failure. And I was trying to honestly to decide what I should define failure as. And I got a wide variety of responses. Like one person said, well, it's anytime I didn't go for it or anytime I wasn't being myself was another definition. And so now whenever I see that word of failure, it's like, okay, well, failure doesn't always necessarily, I don't need to feel like I

failed if I got a no, you know, if I was really going for it or, you know, doesn't always necessarily, I don't need to feel like I failed if I got a no. You know, if I was really going for it or, you know, giving it a try, or if I was being myself in the process, like I can define failure consciously on my terms, which that's what led me, as I looked at everyone's definition, I decided I can define failure the way I want to. Right. Definitely. It's one of the F words I don't use much. There's another one I use quite a bit, but that, but that one doesn't, I don't, I don't like framing things under that concept. And I'll just share a very brief story. I worked with a swimmer that competed in the Olympics in 2012 and in the finals in the Olympics, she PR. Yeah. And she won a bronze. And I always ask the philosophical question of, did she fail?

Right. Like she finished in third place. Like if we just look at it, object, you know, like take everything else out of it. Like she't win the race but in the most important race of her entire life she swam a pr did the best she possibly could like literally we we could we could quantify that metric right and she didn't quote unquote win so philosoph, did she lose? And we know that, you know, no, she did the best she could. She brought all these wonderful outcomes. But at the end of the day, you can do the best you can and still, quote unquote, not win. And so that has always stuck with me as a challenging question for people to contemplate that you can literally do your best and quote unquote, not win. And so how do we make sense of that? Where I really think, of course,

she did win and she, it was what an amazing opportunity and situation to live through. But people like will want to look at things as zero sum, like win or lose. And I'm like, you know, that's why I don't like that. I think it's more about learning and growing from those experiences instead of just defining it as something good or bad, or what I would call an either or scenario. Yeah. Really good point, Doug. I was, As I was listening to you, I was thinking about a lot of the elite athletes that I work with, specifically with USA Track and Field. And I was thinking about when they go to like the trials and if they don't get in the top three to go to the Olympics, many times people around them believe that they failed when really maybe they did race a PR or they jumped the longest that they've ever jumped and they got fifth, but they didn't make it to the Olympics.

You know, it's like, we have such high standards for people that it's only the top three or the winner that equals, you know, this best outcome. So I think it's like, we have to be really careful on not letting other people's definition of failure impact us as well. Cool. Well, great way to start. You know, as I kind of think about all the variety of work that you do, I wanted to start with your work in corporate and with executives. And as an executive optimization coach, tell us a little bit about what you do with executives and what you see right now that they're really struggling with. It's a great question. I mean, there's so much right now. I mean, what a clearly crazy time in the world that we're living in on all levels. I think that for me, one of the reasons why I got into this industry, I have always had a passion for psychology back in the nineties and into the two thousands.

And as a young coach, I wanted to create environments for my athletes to go and play and compete without judgment from the coach. Obviously I coached the opposite of how I was coached. I put a tremendous amount of pressure on myself. Then it was doubled by the coaches yelling and screaming at me. And, you know, and so for me, I stepped into the coaching realm at 18 years old, saying, I want kids to have a better experience than I had, because, you know, it just wasn't, I needed me when I was their age. And so doing the work at the executive level is something that I'm like, look, if about helping the people that they lead or they manage to have a better work-life balance, to be able to feel like that the work that they're doing

is rewarding, that they work in an environment that rewards effort, that creates a level of psychological safety for people to be their best and do their work without fear. And just because somebody is in a position of leadership doesn't mean they're a good leader. And so I kind of call them a term I've coined, a lino, a leader in name only. And so it's this aspect of, that's what I love about this work is that I get to work with some quote unquote high powered executive who is successful, but maybe lacks the basic relational skills, the ability to communicate with people, the ability to empower people to grow themselves and not just be successful for the leader or for whatever company, but to be successful for themselves and help them evolve as a person and as a professional so that whether they stay at that organization or that they don't, that they feel like this person in leadership is really helping me grow, which makes them want to do the work and not feel obligated to have to or work in an environment that is just,

you know, miserable or upsetting, which then creates the cyclical problem that we also see in sports where the athletes or the employees within a leadership hierarchy are struggling with mental health issues because of the environment they work in. And so that's what I find so satisfying is that if I can help impact and a leader and help them grow, then that's only going to create a better environment for those that they lead. Yeah, really good point. So you did you say a lino leader? A lino, a leader in name only. Leader in name only. I love it. A leader in name only.

Yeah. So and we see a lot of that, right? I mean, if we were to talk to anybody on the street and talk about their work experience, oftentimes it's people saying, oh, my manager is awful. You know, what a toxic environment I work in. And we often think about how, you know, I always think that coaches either coach the way they were coached or they coach the opposite of how they were coached. But I think when you go into kind of the work environment, how many people in positions of leadership are really trained or even think about how to lead correctly. And obviously there's a variety of different ways to lead correctly, but oftentimes they view leadership as a way I'm in power, I'm in control,

you know, and that's not necessarily their fault. It's just the environment that they come in and they learn what leadership is. So if we can impact that, then we can impact the lives of so many people. Absolutely. It's a trickle down effect. And I was, I'm thinking a lot about how as people are listening, they might think, wow, you know, there's, there's a lot of difference between performance psychology principles in business and in sport or e-sport or whatever kind of sport we're talking about. But the way I kind of think about it, Doug, is that we perform every day. We perform in our jobs as an executive, or we perform in our sport, or we perform, I perform as a mother or I perform as a,

right, a friend. And so these principles are all similar. How would you describe it in terms of, you know, helping people thrive in the executive space? What are some similarities that you see in terms of mindset or performance psychology principles that are consistent, no matter what domain it might be in? Yeah, it's a great question. And that's kind of high performance is high performance, whether, and I feel like we don't, as a society, look through that lens that the work that people do is a level of high performance and expertise at what it is that they do. It's just that they're not getting paid millions of dollars or on ESPN when that occurs. And so for me, I wanna like really recognize that

with people and acknowledge the fact that what they're doing requires a level of high performance. And I think it always goes back to the concepts of awareness. And I always go back to the concepts of awareness and and and i i just i always go back to basic foundational tenets within our industry that the true concept of theory to practice is is yes we have theories that we want to apply but what are some of the most foundational pieces intrinsic motivation learning environments ability to communicate, ability to

understand what's going on internally, as well as externally, and for people to develop a greater awareness of themselves and like how their actions, their words, their nonverbal behaviors impact others and legitimize adaptive or maladaptive coping behaviors. And that to me is so critical. And so oftentimes that is the work within leadership in the executive environment where they lose focus on the fact that what they're doing and what they're saying is being viewed by so many different people. And that if they're not aware of their own behaviors, the power of their words, the power of their body language, then they are setting the tone, um, for a potentially toxic work environment so that people can't thrive. And, and that is clearly in sport.

It's the same thing. Like how many athletes are not able to perform at a, I'm not saying the highest level, but at a consistently high level, because the environment that they're in is one that warrants them to hold back because if they make a mistake or if they demonstrate incompetence in something or they're stressed over something, and they don't bring their best performance, then the outcomes that the coaches will, you know, elicit in terms of whether you get playing time or not will impact them. And so it becomes this cyclical process that oftentimes people in positions of leadership don't understand the pressure they're exerting on their performers. And so to me, if they can become aware of that and recognize that and connect with people

on a human level and really understand how to build relationships that aren't just transactional, I think we've moved away from that a lot as a society. What does a coach or a leader mean? And in some ways it hasn't changed at all. I mean, you know, there's ways to look at that through the lens. And so to me, that's, that's real important. That's, that's where I really want to try to push the envelope. Because when people are given a good environment to perform and not be so critically judged, but, you know, learned and get constructive feedback and information to grow, then you're going to be able to see the best of people, even if they don't succeed a hundred percent every time. Yeah. Well, really good points, Doug. I was,

I agree that high performance starts with awareness, right? And as people are listening, I'm going to encourage them to think about, you know, how does how do you impact those that you lead? Right. And I think we lead at home. We lead at work. We lead our teams. We lead in a lot of different ways. But being aware of how your actions and even emotions impact other people, I think, is really important and where I think high performance starts. When you think about, I know one of the topics you talk a lot about is the psychology of preparation. So I'd like to talk a little bit about that and maybe just give us a high level idea of what that means. Because I know we talk a lot about maybe the psychology of performance, right, or high performance. But what do you mean by the psychology of preparation? Well, you know, it came from my background in coaching before I started graduate school. So

I competed in baseball, tore up my shoulder, couldn't play anymore at surgery, went through that experience. And that was another crystallizing experience for me to go through, as so many people do, understanding the impact of what injury can do at a very young age and then coaching you know when I was in school and most of us we get exposed to kind of these mental skills that we want to teach athletes which I think are important within context but at the end of the day I've always seen sports psychology siloed the mental side. We're going to go do the mental side over here, but we're going to go do the physical side over there. And I believe in an integration of that. And it's not necessarily an intention of mental

skills within practice, which is important. I mean, once again, I'm not trying to downplay that, but I think it's about purpose of what am I working on on a day-to-day basis that I need to get better at. And if we're not addressing those things in practice and we're not dealing with that focus, then how do we expect ourselves to be thinking differently in a pressure situation and performance. Ichiro Suzuki, the famous baseball player, there was an article that he did an interview back in 2003 in the Sporting News. Can't even find it anymore. It's not online anywhere. I have hard copies of it. And he talked about the concept of, I want to prepare and I want to perform in what he called a normal state of mind. I need to be normal in my preparation and I need to be normal in competition. Now we've heard that terminology turned into neutral thinking from people within the industry, which is fine.

But like I credit Ichiro with the first person I ever, you know, heard talk about that. I'm not saying he invented it. People have been doing it for, you know, eons, right? In life to survive, you know, from an evolutionary standpoint. But when you start thinking about that normal mindset, that really means that, hey, I'm working on things so that when I'm in a game situation, it's not that I can turn off my brain and let my body take over. Like, I think that's an oversimplification of what happens. I think it's about getting your mental reps in. So a very simplistic example is you go and watch any baseball team from the major league level down. And when they're in batting practice, a lot of hitters will just swing at every pitch in BP because they think I have to get my work in. So I got a hit and other guys have to hit it. So

I'm swinging at every pitch, a pitch up, a pitch down, a pitch in, a pitch away. And it's kind of like, wait a minute, are you training yourself for anything? Are you training? Hey, I'm a guy who likes to hit the ball middle in, or I'm a person who likes to hit the ball middle away. Why am I swinging at a pitch that's not in my zone? So why are we not practicing that in practice? And if you think about a hitter on game day, they start in the batting cage, they hit off a tee, they get soft toss, they'll get some live pitching in a cage, they'll go out on the field. And how many times

do they swing at pitches that aren't pitches they shouldn't be swinging at in a game? And what are they training themselves on? So that's like this concept of mindlessness in preparation. And then we talk about mindfulness, but the way our industry has kind of framed mindfulness recently has been more about, you know, being a Zen-like state, you know, clear your mind and think, but mindfulness is about being mindful of what you're doing. And that goes back to the work of Ellen Longer at Harvard University with her book, Mindfulness, which is a very impactful book that I read and was able to watch her give lectures at Harvard

back when I was at Boston University. And so to me, that's the essence of it. Are we working at integrating the mental components, the variety of mental components we need in our preparation so that when we step into a performance environment, we've gotten our mental reps in. We know how to make decisions. We have worked on things. We've developed competencies. And so that we can take those into games and into competition. And I don't see enough of that. And that is where I really like to bring my work because a competent performer is a confident performer. And so if you're working on competencies and you're doing that purposefully in practice, then you have a better chance of bringing that into competition than not really practicing with purpose and then expecting to perform at a very high level when you haven't really prepared at

a very high level. Yeah. I'm thinking about Doug, how it's how we practice is how we perform, right? And we're, we're really developing these mental skills in preparation. I'm curious about this idea of like, would you say normal thinking and neutral thinking is, are they the same thing? And as people are listening, maybe describe your perspective of what that actually means and how do you develop that? Because I think that's really difficult. And I think it applies to not only sport, but also sales, being an entrepreneur and executive. And sometimes we can get so high and so low and create this meaning around things that then like leads to us spiraling. Oh, tremendously. I mean, here's the thing.

My high school coach called me a mental midget like every day, every day, you know? Oh yeah. Yeah. He called me a lot of things. You know, the eighties were an interesting time to be an athlete. Are you still working through that now? You know, a little bit. I mean, I think it's one of the reasons why I do what I do, but you know, you think too much, you think too much. And we hear that industry all the time. Right. Like, and I, I, I've always believed that this is the reason why I named my business ThinkSport because I think that we, people are thinking, it's a question of what are you thinking? And are those thoughts helpful or hurtful to you at this moment and so to spend a lot of energy to try to help people not think because that's a very kind of I just think it's over simplistic and and I just don't think we can just turn our brains off

and even if we turn our brains off there's no guarantee that that's going to lead to high level performance on a consistent level. Like it could, you could be in the zone. Like Ken, Ken Revis and I had this one talk years ago and he's like, talk to me about the zone. And I was like, you know, Ken, you're in the zone 1% of the time. What the hell do you do the 99% of the time you're not. And then he hopped on a radio, he called me because he was getting on a radio show up

in Northern California. And then he, he sees on the radio show and someone says, oh, the zone, the zone, the zone. And he's like, yeah, you know, but 85% of the time when you're not in the zone, what do you do? And I just started laughing because, you know, we had just got off a phone call. And that's really what it is. I think that you have to be a thinker. You have to understand. But what happens is that we can

use our thoughts, get impacted by our emotions. And so we can't we can't be Vulcan. We can't turn off our emotions like Mr. Spock. I'm dating myself probably a little bit with that reference. But I think that that's where the integration of understanding how to think through things is critical. And when athletes are performing at a high level, I argue that they are thinking, acting, decision-making, this whole process of seeing what's going on and, and acting accordingly. It's not that they're just turned off their brain and they're not thinking,

no, they see that person over in the corner. That's wide open. They know there's someone behind them. That's trailing them as they're driving to the basket. They know where that wide receiver is going to be on the certain play. They can read defenses and understand where the seams are. And so there's an intellectual element to sport that I think is often dismissed. But it's also at the same time given given a tremendous amount of credit, oh, this this player has been in the film room, you know, they're studying their iPad, they're doing

their homework. Well, why aren't we encouraging to develop and help athletes be more student more student minded, like I always work with the athletes I work with, I talk about you're getting a PhD in your sport, You need to treat this like it's graduate school. You can't just show up and play. And that often is what happens with the NFL, the college football player that transitions to the NFL. It's the minor league baseball player that gets to double A or triple A or even to the big leagues. And now all of a sudden the competition is better and you have to do more. But if you haven't built up that, you know, let's call it a routine or that ability of ways to get yourself ready to go and to study and to prepare, then how, once again,

do you expect to be able to execute, make good decisions in competition, in a high stress environment, if you're not applying those concepts in practice? And so that to me is just, I don't know, like I've always said it's common sense. But a lot of times people say I play sports because I don't want to study and I didn't want to go to school. And like, well, as you get up to that reverse funnel, the talent is only better and better. And it's your ability to think through that. And if you study the grades, why are they the greats? Maybe they have have great physical skill but if you were to study any great athlete there's so much more than their physical ability if any of it sometimes their

physical ability isn't that great Wayne Gretzky wasn't the best hockey player in all of the metrics that they would define but he was the great one I mean so you can go on and on and and cite so many examples of that. But to me, that's where the core of this is, is that there is a thinking component to every physical activity you do in performance. Are you working on that as much as you are the physical component? Yeah. Excellent. Really good points. Doug, I was thinking about when you were saying that neutral thinking or normal thinking, I think to me, what that means is that evaluating things not as good or bad, more just like

that they are what they are, right? And I think about when someone is preparing, there's a lot of judgment that can come in. I'm thinking about the work I do with USA Truck and Field. And it's like, well, I didn't jump very well today. I'm probably not going to do very well at Worlds, right? Or I'm not, my legs aren't feeling quite right. And so instead of just like noticing how your legs are feeling or noticing what's going on in practice, but not putting any judgment on that. Is that how you would describe it as well? And if so, as people are listening, how would you say is how do you develop

that? Yeah, I think that, you know, you give great examples. Sometimes you're not 100 percent, sometimes you're 60 percent And, and are you going to be able to maximize that by figuring out what can I get done today? What is it? You know, I don't like to sound cliche when I say this, cause it's always said like, what do I control? Right. I, I, I think there's layers, there's always layers to the onion of that. And I think that you're right. The judgment is also hedging. It's like, if I don't perform well, then I'm preparing myself for that ahead of time. And for me, what I really try to drive home is this aspect of what does it mean to be a competitor?

And so we hear the legends of a competitor. This person is a competitor. And I'm like, well, what really is a competitor? And my definition of a competitor is someone who competes regardless. You may win, you may lose, you may not be at your best. You got to figure out what you need from yourself on that moment and that day. And that hence comes back to the concepts of self-awareness. Like where am I? What do I need? What do I need to focus on right now? And that ability to adapt and adjust in the moment, given what's

going on and that ability to think through things, to analyze, make decisions and act upon those decisions. That's where you come full circle to the psychology of practice is that you are giving yourself a foundation to come back to, to assess what's going on with you and what's going to give you the best opportunity right now to adapt and adjust in the moment to be able to do the best you can, given the circumstances you're in. Because if we're only wanting to be in an ideal state, whether it's mental or physical or both, then what happens when you're not? And most of the time you're not, you're not always going to be at your best. And then people get into that, you know, emotional side of thinking. And that's what I call this either or mentality,

either got to be great or it's going to be awful. And I'm like, there's a lot of gray area there. And what are we doing with that gray area? And if we're working within the gray, that means we get out of our own heads and to get to a normalized or a neutral level of thinking. Excellent. So as you think about that, Doug, what advice would you give to people? And I know we're almost at time here. So I'm like, I think we should have doubled our time. We have planned, but what advice would you give to people, you know, who are listening and really thinking, oh, I want to develop this idea of neutral thinking. Yeah. Work on things you suck at.

That's my eloquent way of saying it. That's awesome. I think that what ends up happening is if you work at things you're not good at and you see yourself improving on those things, then what do we know from theory and research that you'll expend more time and effort into it? You'll understand that I have to work in order to get better and that that structural process can then be applied into really almost every domain of your life. And it's something that I myself have always worked on. I was not good at it when I was an athlete. I learned about it when I was like post competitive,

but I would do these types of things where I would work on things that was not good at, because I realized if I could get better at that, I would be better at what I was doing. And, and that was in a little round, a lot of sports, even like I played hockey and stuff post my baseball career. And I would just skate the opposite directions that I wasn't good at skating. And my friends were like, what the hell are you doing? Everyone's skating around the circles in this direction. And you're the only guy on the ice going the other way. I'm like, I can't move this way. And I, if I'm going to play hockey, I got to be able to go in all four directions. And people look at me like I was a nut, but I was like, I'm just trying to get better. And I'm trying to become a complete

performer. And so I think that that empowerment of working at things you're not good at, and that you know, you need to be good at that you're not avoiding because most people avoid the things they're not good at, because they want to demonstrate competence in front of peers in front of coaches, and they don't want to show weakness. So they avoid working on things they're not good at is they want to demonstrate competence in front of peers, in front of coaches, and they don't want to show weakness. So they avoid working on things they're not good at, but then it always comes out in competition. Your weaknesses always get revealed. And so why not work on those? That's empowerment. That is applying a mental component to your physical development. And as you improve on something, and then you see

yourself doing it, you're becoming more of a complete performer. And so that to me is kind of a core value of mine is identifying what people need to get better at, because that's what's holding them back to a certain degree. And let's not be afraid to work on that. And let's not a think it's going to happen overnight, and, realize that the benefits of it taking time makes you realize that learning takes time. But if I really work at learning and I apply that, then I become empowered as a result because I worked at something, I improved,

and it makes me want to take that mindset into other domains or other areas of my performance or of my life. Excellent, Doug. Well, I'm so grateful to spend some time with you. And thanks so much for sharing your wisdom with the high performance mindset community. Tell us how people can find more about your coaching and what you offer through your business. Sure.

I, you know, like everybody, I'm on Twitter at ThinkSport. And I have a quasi website that I haven't on Twitter at ThinkSport and I have a quasi website that I haven't finished yet at ThinkSport.com, but that's where you can find me or do a Google search and, you know, reach out anytime. So. Excellent. So ThinkSport.com. And Doug, here's what I got from the conversation today. I love that you said like high performance is high performance, right? It doesn't matter what domain you're doing it in. And awareness is really the important part of kind of the first step we talked about. I liked our conversation about failure at the top of the call and what that means.

And then this idea of neutral thinking and the ways that you can develop it. And really that means like no judgment and avoiding this kind of either or mentality, which you talked about. And then at the end, working on things that you're not good at to develop really your ability, I think, to fail forward. And it's okay not to be perfect at everything. Give yourself permission just to be you and keep trying and keep growing. So thank you so much for joining us. I'm grateful and I know everyone who's listening is grateful too that you joined us today. Well, thank you, Sandra.

I appreciate it. Way to go for finishing another episode of the High Performance Mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe. And you can head over to Dr. Sindra for show notes. And to join my exclusive community for high performers, where you get access to videos about mindset each week.

So again, you can head over to Dr. Sindra. That's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A.com. See you next week.