High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 664: The Power of Mindfulness & Self-Compassion for High Performance with Dr. Alan Chu

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Alan Chu, a leading expert in sport psychology, mindfulness, and self-compassion. As an Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a Certified Mental Performance Consultant, Dr. Chu helps athletes, executives, and high performers unlock their full potential by leveraging positive psychology approaches. We explore the science and application of self-compassion—why it matters, how to practice it, and how it enhances motivation and resilience. Dr. Chu also shares insights on mindfulness, self-determination theory, and strengths-based approaches to managing stress, overcoming setbacks, and improving performance. If you're looking for practical strategies to lead with self-compassion, sharpen your mindset, and sustain motivation, this episode is for you! Tune in for game-changing insights that will help you perform at your best—both in sports and life. HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE CONNECT WITH DR. CHU HERE: [e-mail]  REQUEST A FREE MENTAL BREAKTHROUGH CALL WITH DR. CINDRA AND/OR HER TEAM TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE MENTALLY STRONG INSTITUTE Love the show? Rate and review the show for Cindra to mention you on the next episode.  

Welcome to the High Performance Mindset, the podcast where we dive into mental strategies to help you be your best even more often. This is your host, Dr. Cindra Kampoff, and welcome to Episode 664. In this episode, we sit down with my friend, Dr. Alan Chu, a leading expert in sports psychology, mindfulness, and self-compassion. As an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, which is where I got my PhD, by the way, and a certified mental performance consultant, Dr. Chu helps athletes, executives, and high performers unlock their full potential

by leveraging positive psychology approaches. In this episode, we explore the science and application of self-compassion, why it matters to you, how to practice it, and how it enhances both motivation and resilience. Dr. Chu also shares insights on mindfulness, self-determination theory, and strength-based approaches to help you manage your stress, overcome setbacks, and improve your performance. If you're looking for practical strategies to lead with self-compassion, sharpen your mindset, and sustain your performance. If you're looking for practical strategies to lead with self-compassion, sharpen your mindset, and sustain your motivation, then this episode is for you.

Without further ado, let's bring on Dr. Alan Chu. Alan Chu, thank you so much for joining us on the High Performance Mindset Podcast. I've been looking forward to this conversation since we talked in October at the Association for Applied Sports Psychology conference. And I've loved all of the presentations you've done the last couple of years on mindfulness and self-compassion. I'm just really looking forward to talking to you today. So thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me. Looking forward to our conversation. Yeah, I always learned so much in your presentation. So I'm excited to learn more from you today. And what I'd love for you to kind of start with is tell us a little bit about how you became interested in sports psychology. I was reading more about your story and I'd love for you just to tell the listeners how you got into the field. Yeah, sure. So I grew up as a five-sport athlete back in my home city, Hong Kong. That was where I was born and raised. I played table tennis,

which is the sport that I still play and compete nowadays. I've also played badminton, soccer, basketball, and I ran track in high school. So I was a five-sport athlete, loved being active and enjoyed competitions. My main sport was table tennis. So I got the chance to compete at a pretty high level. At the age of 15, 16, I got the chance to try out for the junior national team, really wanting to try and represent Hong Kong. So I went to that trial, you know, going in, feeling pretty confident about wanting to make a good impression and play some good matches. But unfortunately, I didn't start well. I lost my first and second matches and lost it by a little.

If you don't know much about table tennis, the scoring usually goes to 11 points. And when you tie 10-10, you get into duels. So for both matches, I lost in duels, which were close games. So what happened was that I got pretty upset at some of the maybe mistakes that I made and not able to pull it off for those first two matches.

And that got in my head a little bit and ended up impacting the rest of my matches. And long story short, I didn't get to make the Junior National Team my matches. And long story short, I didn't get to make the junior national team that year. And the trial happens once a year. And I pretty much lost my motivation because I was at that crossroad

that I had to kind of decide, do I focus on sport or just kind of go to college? And in Hong Kong, it's not like in the States that you can be a collegiate athlete, compete at a high level, and do school at the same time. So pretty much, you know, I kind of gave up my table tennis a little bit that year and focused on school and almost entirely dropped out of table tennis. So that was maybe my first entry point to sports psychology, just realizing how my mental game impact my performance, but also how my performance impact me wanting to continue sport or not. And then another entry point was I went to college and I did trial for the college team, even though not super competitive compared to national team or junior national team, I make the team and the team have a really supportive environment.

My coach is still my life mentor now. Whenever I go back to Hong Kong, I would see her. I would go and play with the current team now. So I got really good support at that time that got me realized. Individually, it's important to have that good mental game but also your environment the support from your coach but support from your teammates also matter a lot for your motivation and for your performance on the court on the field as well and I did end up being the captain we won the national championship as the college

team so that full experience kind of got me into thinking, yeah, I can see this being my career to do sports psychology. I already majored in psychology in college and just kind of combined my passion in sport and in psychology together. And the rest is history, so to speak. Yeah, perfect experience. You know, growing up is, you up, I really learned early on too that my mindset and my mental game was so important to my success. And if my mind wasn't in the right place, I did lose motivation. And I think about, I didn't play table tennis, but I was a cross country and track athlete and was really successful in high school. And then when I got to college,

I actually thought that the more I beat myself up, the better I would do. And so I got in a really big downward spiral, you know, in terms of because what I noticed is being really harsh and critical of myself ended up leading to a lack of confidence and a lack of motivation. And we know that now, right, from the research standpoint, but I didn't know that at the time. And I thought that the more harsh and critical I was of myself, you know, maybe increase my motivation, or I'd be less likely to sort of fail or disappoint myself the next weekend. And so that's why I'm so excited to talk to you about what we're talking about today

related to self-compassion because I think I've experienced like the opposite, you know, and then it led to lower performance for me. So Alan, just tell us a bit about how you define self-compassion and how you started studying it. Sure, yeah. I'll just kind of relay my experience to yourself, your experience really quickly. I think that was my case. I wasn't very self-compassionate to myself. That hurt my motivation and performance. And that's why I got interested in this particular idea.

And it's good to have a good kind of understanding of what self-compassion is, but also what self-compassion is not. So in a layman term, when we talk about self-compassion, it's really about treating yourself like your best friend or like your inner coach. Sometimes that's how we would say it. You know, kind of think about when you have a best friend

in the same situation that you are in, how would you treat them? You would likely encourage them, you would support them, or maybe you think about how a good mentor or good coach would treat you. They are also likely to encourage you, give you some good advice rather than beat you up, have those setbacks. So that's what self-compassion means from a modern event perspective. But from a more scientific academic standpoint,

we know self-compassion has three elements into it. The first element is mindfulness, meaning being mindful of how you feel and what you think. So maybe let's say going back to my example of losing the first two matches in the national team trial. Maybe I can say, oh, I know this. I'm busy, frustrated, and upset right now.

So you have to recognize your thoughts and feelings first to be able to make any changes and to be kind to yourself. And then the second component is common humanity, which means knowing that we are not alone in our experience. So going back to that national team trial, I could say, oh, I'm likely not the only one who lose in dues or who may get frustrated. Other athletes also have that experience. Even the best of the best olympians they might also lose in deals they may still make mistakes so that i don't think about it's only me type of experience

and then the last element of self-compassion is self-kindness meaning that when you are aware of what you think how you feel you know that you not alone, then give yourself a pat on the back, give yourself the kindness that you would extend to others. So those are kind of the three components that is academically defined by Christian left that we still use nowadays. And it's important to know self-compassion is not about being complacent, you know, when we are self-compassion is not about being complacent. You know, when we are self-compassionate,

we actually work hard to work on our goal in the long term. It's not like, oh, things are fine, you know, I forgive myself, I don't need to work hard, but you are actually showing up every day, think about what you need to get better at so that you actually be kind to yourself to achieve that goal. It's not about self-pity, you know,

it's not saying, whoa, me, why I have this experience, but it's accepting the fact that you did have that challenge, you did have that setback. Also, it's not about being weak or being soft. It's about being strong and resilient. Rather than avoiding the challenge, avoiding the fear that you might have, I many times when they struggle with self-compassion, I have them read one of Dr. Kristen Neff's books called The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook. And it's really made a huge difference for people because

I think people don't always realize the importance of being kind to yourself. And when you think about, you know, your scientific research that you've published in journals, but also what I love about you is like you're a researcher, you're, you know, you're a professor at UNC Greensboro. And then you also do a lot of work with leaders and executives and youth athletes. So what have you found in terms of like, why is self-compassion really important? You know, tell us about the research, but also what you've learned from your own experiences. Yeah, from the experience standpoint, I think high achievers in general are just really self-critical because they have

high standard of how they want to perform. In some way, it helped them, right? That's how they keep improving, like what me and you shared earlier. Sometimes we criticize ourselves because we want to get better. We want to improve. And there are good criticisms. If we are able to constructively think about what we want to work on, then that's great. But it's not helpful when we feel bad about who we are. We feel bad about not being able to perform well.

So from my experience, it happens so often with the executive, the managers, the employees, the athlete, no matter youth level, collegiate level, professional level that I work with. I think we all are challenged by just being too self-critical in those moments that we should be more kind to ourselves and I think that's why it's such an important concept to work on with those clients and with anyone in some way but especially the high achiever and we know from the research that we see the same idea that athletes have to be more self-critical. And that's why working on self-compassion is really crucial to combat those unhealthy self-criticism and maybe still have the healthy ones that help us be successful moving forward. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for sharing that.

And what do you think about how personality shapes our ability to be self-compassionate? And I think about, honestly, my two boys. So I have two teenage boys and one practices self-compassion, I think, honestly, just naturally, whereas the other one maybe doesn't. And so I'm just kind of curious what you think about that. Yeah, that's a good question. I think there might have been some research article published on this area. I'm not completely aware of the consistent finding, if that's consistent finding. But based on what we talk about from maybe the mindfulness standpoint, related to self-compassion, but also from my experience,

I feel like the openness really matters. So if we talk about the big five personality, if someone is more open, they might be more likely to be self-compassionate because I think they are more open to maybe the difficult feelings. They are more open to their setback and they are open to trying things out meaning that they are more open to be kind to themselves when they learn

that idea because i do think that i see athletes some of them that i work with they just really struggle with even trying out the idea because they feel like i can't be kind to myself i shouldn't be that nice to myself. And that openness probably made it about how much they even begin to try that. Yeah, thank you. I hadn't thought about the big five personality traits and how that's connected. And for those people who aren't familiar, how would you define what openness means? Yeah, openness would be being able to allow any experience any thoughts and emotion

to come to you rather than resist any new experience um i think we can think about it as might be going to a new city you know you travel you know some people they are open to trying different food they try to immerse in the whole experience, some people, they are open to trying different food. They try to immerse in the whole experience, but some people may travel, but then they are like, just go back to their routine. They are stuck in the hotel room or they're more like just do things

that I'm comfortable with, that type of feeling. So kind of just allow an experience to come to you rather than receive them or just have to always be in your own way, so to speak. Yeah, absolutely. And Dr. Chu, what I appreciated about what you said is, you know, some people might think that self-compassion means that you lower your standards or you don't hold yourself accountable. And, you know, that means that, you know, just lay in bed and don't do anything all

day. Like that's not self-compassion, but it's like reaching, you know, being kind to yourself as you reach your goals. And it's something that we can practice or develop. It's not something, you know, that we're just, people might say we're just born with confidence or born with compassion, self-compassion, but we can practice it. So how have you found when you're working with your own clients, if it's athletes or leaders, how have you found that, you know, what works in terms of practicing self-compassion? One thing that I find always helpful at the beginning is to do some refresher, maybe through the form of journaling.

If for athlete clients that do not really like journaling, I probably ask them to do some refreshing in their mind, ideally record themselves, so that they are hearing, you know, what they say in that, in that refreshing. And specifically kind of touching on the three elements of self-compassion that we talk about might be described a setback a failure a challenging experience that you had this past week past month so maybe for an athlete would be oh i missed a penalty kick or i missed that free throw and our team lost and i felt really frustrated so that would be being aware of your thoughts and feelings from that experience. And then bringing in some common humanity, meaning that, okay, what might be ways that other people also experience the same thing?

Might be, oh yeah, even LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, they all make mistakes, you know, they all miss something that the team loses and try to bring the perspective that they are not alone. And I think about, okay, what would you say to a good friend in this situation? Or what would be a coach say to you? What would be a better perspective to have in this scenario to practice reframing the criticism to something that is more kind, more helpful. And then at the end, how can you offer yourself some kindness and encouragement? Maybe, yup, I'm sad, I'm sad, I'm frustrated. It's okay, you know, let's move on. Let's set a goal to think about what I can change. So that take, take, not just feel better, but also take action,

right? Like I think you touched on both angles of not just feel good, feel better, not feel bad about yourself, but also moving forward. How can you focus on what's important now? I like to talk about that a lot. Yeah.

I want to win the win mentality. Win, W-I-N stands for what's importantI.N. stands for What's Important Now. So what's important now is not keep drowning on that mistake. It's to make some changes so that you can move on and play better the next game. So that's usually the first thing that I talk about. There are different meditation, different practices. We can keep diving into those things, but that's usually

the foundation that I start with. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks so much for sharing that. And I think that's the power of having someone like you or I, you know, as a mental performance coach or executive coach, because it's like you have someone to talk to and even become more aware that you are stuck on that mistake or disappointment. And the questions that you asked of, you know, what are your thoughts and your feelings around that? How can you think more productively about that failure, mistake, or disappointment? And one thing I was thinking, Ellen, people could do is even write that out, right? Because I think once you write it out, you start seeing what your thoughts are and what your feelings are, and then you can start getting unstuck from them and not just kind

of stay in a downward spiral repeating that. Because that's exactly what I thought in college. I thought, you know, the more I thought about a bad race, like maybe it would help me learn more. And then if I repeated it more in my head, then maybe I wouldn't, you know, do the same thing. But it was like the opposite, you know, it was more likely to do the same thing again. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We know that it's almost impossible to completely block the thought that we have,

but when we're able to have a better perspective on things that will help us moving forward and focus on what's really important now or what really matters now rather than the past or the too much into the future that we sometimes get stuck in. And yeah, writing and journaling helps a lot. Oftentimes, if clients are willing to do the journaling, they come back the next session when i ask what did you notice from the exercise they will say wow i never realized i have so many negative thoughts and criticism but also not the criticism and thought it actually translate into more worry might be worse performance and things that got me to that negative spiral.

So when we are recognizing that now can be reframe and change our perspective to help us with that positive spiral rather than the negative spiral from here on. Yeah, a positive spiral versus a negative spiral. I like that distinction. How would you describe that for people who are listening? What's the difference there? Yeah. So the negative spiral would be, I make a mistake. I have a poor performance. I feel bad. That's why I'm a bad athlete. I'm not good. And then they put less

effort into your practice or you might tank or you might have more anxiety then it causes you to have more negative thoughts so you go into that negative cycle spiral versus positive spiral would be yes i make a mistake but it doesn't mean i'm a bad athlete uh one game doesn't define me um that's something that recently a lot of the athletes tell me, one game doesn't define me, one performance doesn't define me. Let's offer myself some kindness. Think about what I need to work on. Let's work on that.

And then they work on that, they have better performance, better motivation, focus on the right thing. So that trigger that spiral to end up performing better. And you feel also better along the way in that process yeah and that doesn't just relate to sport right we're talking about leadership and you know executive performance as well and i think about me i i still run um a lot you know but there's other ways that i perform and i'm just listening to you thinking, hey, I got to keep on practicing self-compassion myself. Yeah, I do that a lot as a professor because there are definitely times that I feel like,

well, I've put in a lot of time preparing for my classes. I've planned this idea. It just didn't work out the way that I wanted. Like sometimes I do get pretty maybe frustrated with myself or disappointed. I have to catch myself so that I can create a positive spiral for the rest of the semester rather than beat myself up and then have the negative impression going into the next task. Then when I have that negative impression and mindset going in, likely the next task wouldn't go well either. And then, you know, it would just kind of impact the rest of it.

So that's really better to not just sport but work relationship and so many things in our life as well hi this is cinderella kampoff and thanks for listening to the high performance mindset did you know that the ideas we share in the show are things we actually specialize in implementing if you want to become mentally stronger, lead your team more effectively and get to your goals quicker. Visit freementalbreakthroughcall.com to sign up for your free mental breakthrough call with one of our certified coaches. Again, that's freementalbreakthroughcall.com to sign up for your free call. Talk to you soon. One of the things I really appreciated about your presentation

at the Association for Applied Sports Psychology in October was you had this slide where you had like bricks and then a wall and then a house. And I think you also had a picture of like a fire, you know, like a fire station. And you were talking about how our words lead to, you know, that's maybe the brick and then it, you know, compounds and it leads to this beautiful brick house versus this fire station. Tell us a bit about that and why would that be important to understand related to mindfulness or self-compassion, the things we're talking about today?

Yeah, yeah. I think when we talk about the house type of idea, a lot of times, you know, thinking about the building blocks and the foundation of it. So I think the foundation a lot of times is just being aware of what you're saying and how you feel, like we discussed earlier.

But also maybe be aware of your values. So understand what are important to you as an athlete or what are important to you as a person. So for example, as an athlete, if I notice I really value hard work, I value teamwork and relationship, I value being resilient and strong. I go back to the, maybe the National Team Trial.

Like when I have that setback, I will remind myself about that foundation, about my values. Then, okay, how can I add on my value now to respond to that setback and to that mistake or to the games that I lost. So it might be, okay, how can I work harder? So I'll keep working hard next time,

or how can I be resilient in this moment? Or how can I still keep the teamwork with my team, people around me, so that you're adding the building block. So every time you do something aligned with your value, you kind of add that building block there. And it's just kind of the positive spiral to build a house that you want versus always putting out fire and not knowing why you're doing something. You know, when we think about putting out fires is you are reacting rather than responding.

I like to distinguish react versus respond. So when you have a mistake, you react would be like, let's say the referee make a bad call. Your reaction will be frustrated. You yell, you yell, okay, why did this ref make a bad call? It's like not fair. And you feel bad

and you end up not having a good performance versus respond would be, so that would be like putting out fire and the fire is that moment. You're maybe meeting that fire with frustration and negative behavior. Versus when you're able to respond, meaning that you're able to pause

and respond with more mindfulness and awareness, knowing your value, that you put that building block on that house to build the house that you want by responding with, okay, I can't control this situation, but I can control how I respond, my behavior, how I communicate with my teammates, so that we feel positive about the scenario, rather than that negative spiral that we were discussing. I know sometimes it could be a little bit abstract, but the idea of the house and the fire is like responding while they're reacting with the value and some self-kindness in that process as well. Yeah. Yeah. Super helpful. And I like the distinction between reaction and responding, right? So thinking about how your words over time do become like this house, right?

And you get to decide how you're talking to yourself. You said earlier, Dr. Chu, about this idea of like being your inner coach instead of your inner critic, right? And sometimes I'll say to, you know, I'll try to teach my kids these ideas and, you know, I'll say something like soften that inner voice, right? And then

sometimes when my husband Dan is in the room, he'll be like, well, how do we actually do that? You know, and I think it starts with being aware of your thoughts. But what else would you say in terms of how do we practice and listen to our inner coach? And how do we actually be kinder to ourselves? Like I mentioned earlier, journaling could work. You bring in different voices, maybe not only from your own voice. Think about what someone who you love would say to you and actually try to hear their voices, imaginary voices, that way. And a lot of the meditation actually do it that way.

When I ask athletes to practice meditation, we will take some deep breath and we will say, or put one hand on your heart or maybe a hand on a part of your body that feels soothing and relaxing to you. So usually the physical touch also allow you to access the compassion

and kindness a little bit easier. That's why we like to give someone a hug where we love them or where we want to encourage them, that we know that touch could help. And in that meditation process, bringing in other voices, or maybe think about, maybe you're at a soothing place, at a happy place, just kind of use different ways to access that kindness and compassion. That might be slightly easier

through sound, imaginary, sight, touch, different senses that hopefully kind of work for athletes to refer to that kindness. And then we put some loving kindness phrases. We often say that based on the value, come up with some phrases, maybe saying, may I be kind to myself, may I be healthy, may I be confident. the voices that you are giving yourself some wishes. You can say may I or may you depend on different

ways that you can play around with those words or you can use your own voice. And like I said, you can use maybe your mom's voice that work better for some of the athletes that we work with. So there are many options in that process that we can try to access that compassion and that voice a little bit more easily, effectively.

I appreciate that. I like the idea of imagining other people's voices inside our head and the may I. What have you found is the power of starting with may I or may you? Yeah. There's an interesting distinction between loving kindness phrases and self-affirmation. We know moving could work from research and from experience. But for affirmation,

we usually start with I am. So affirmation will be, I am strong. I am confident. I am absent of fear. But sometimes the issue with affirmation could be that the athlete, the person might not actually believe in their actual confidence. So they are saying it, but they are not believing in it.

But when you use the word may I, you are giving yourself that invitation to try and feel maybe a certain way, but it might not be true, right? When you say, may I be healthy, might be actually not healthy right now, but you are inviting yourself into that process and that journey of becoming healthy, but not like the outcome that you want to see right now. So it's like a invitation to that process. You know, may I be confident, kind of try to give yourself that kindness to feel that way but you might not feel that confident which is okay so then may i and may you kind of give the invitation and may you will just be some people

prefer saying it from a external voice that they feel like um well like personally i'll be better with them just like sometimes athletes like to say you got this versus i got this type of idea yeah yeah i'm so glad i asked you that question and the differentiation between like a love and kindness statement and start with may i or may you versus a affirmation or a power phrase like I am. And you're right. Sometimes we don't actually believe those I am statements. Right. Yeah. It actually happened with one of my clients that I've been seeing.

She'd be using that a lot with lots of time and spaces and doing meditation and journaling. She's a senior analyst at one of the companies that she had to present also the work with her client and she said that she initially used the affirmation of I trust myself I I'm not a fear of presentation but as you said like I don't really believe in it you know because I feel I'm still fearful I was still like not completely confident yeah and then we try out the loving kindness phrases and she said oh yeah when i give myself that invitation and not saying that i have to be this way i'm actually feeling better and i end up delivering that uh i give myself more trust than i would uh by saying i i trust that i i am type of statement. So that's just anecdotally, you know, some evidence I've

seen a lot that contribute to the effectiveness of using AI sometimes. Excellent. So I know, Alan, you just had a presentation last week with parents and you were talking about self-compassion. I think they're parents of soccer players. And I'm thinking about myself as a parent and why that's important for like me to practice self-compassion. But tell us a bit about how do we practice self-compassion as a parent and what's the impact when we do that? I think as a parent, there's probably a lot of stress and different things a parent juggles with. And especially if you are a parent with multiple kids and if they play multiple sports, there's so much going on that you have to juggle.

And I would say that wherever you yourself, if you feel like you're not doing a good job as a parent, give yourself that kindness that we just talked about. Think about how you say encouraging things to a good friend or maybe in some way how you encourage your kid and try to give yourself that type of kindness as well. Or maybe at work, you know, I think just as a parent, as an employee, practicing that regularly will help you

and make you more able to be less critical of yourself. For one, your kid sees that. Your kid notices that. It also helps if you explicitly teach them the idea. But they notice it regardless. You know, you're not beating yourself up when you make a mistake, when you, you know, drive to a wrong place, you know, when you make a mistake.

Like, you know, in the past, I would get frustrated, like, get to the wrong place, you know, and not getting where i want to go like with the gps so any little mistake you know you can practice that your kids see that but you're also less likely to be critical of your kids and people around you as well we know that from research and from experience myself when you are able to give yourself that kindness, you are more likely to extend that kindness easily to others. You are not as likely to judge and blame others as well. So that means that you are being a good role model, but maybe you are less hard on your kids when they make a mistake at a game, they miss the penalty kick, or maybe they have a bad practice that they just don't feel good, they didn't put their best effort, then instead of beating them

up, you give them some encouragement or you may help them understand what's going on and make changes on that positive spiral rather than negative spiral. Yeah, what you just said, you just dropped like a value bomb right there, Dr. Two, because it's like when you're less critical of yourself, you can extend that to others and you're less likely to judge and blame. And I think about how so many times we can create issues with the relationships that aren't even really there by being really harsh and critical and judging the other person. So not only, you know, do you perform at a higher level when you're compassionate with yourself, but I think you are also able to continue to develop those relationships and maintain some of those and make them even stronger. Yeah, certainly.

I think that worked really well for not just parents and athletes, but for a sports team. You know, when you are kind to yourself you're kinder to your teammates so when your teammates make a mistake you are not like keep getting upset about it or you are responding or react or to say you're not reacting to that mistake in a negative way because when you are being negative your teammates feel bad they may perform worse as well so So I think it just creates a culture of compassion in every single interaction that you have when you're able to be kind to yourself, which is a really positive spiral for yourself, but positive spiral for people around you on your team in your daily life as well.

Yeah. And I think about what you just said is so important, and even the sports teams I work with, when they're able to be just not as harsh and critical of each other when they make a mistake, you know, just builds like, it seems like it builds positive momentum on the team. What does the research say about self-compassion as a team and the importance of it and, you know, why we should practice it maybe in the workplace, but also in sports teams. There's still ongoing research in both, I think, both sport and work. But based on the available research, we know that self-compassion, actually, that's more at workplaces. They help organizations thrive.

Especially managers. It's like top-down, right? If you think about the CEOs, the employees, the managers are able to show the value of compassion

and be able to encourage that to the employees through all the teams, then more likely the employee also practice it and it just create a culture that when anyone make a mistake okay that's okay um yeah that's fine solution right rather than trying to put blame but it's

going to create better trust because you imagine if an employee make a mistake okay i worry about my boss judging me i worry about my team member judging me, I'm going to maybe try to hide some of my mistakes so that they don't find out, or maybe I try to hide my weaknesses so that they don't find out my weaknesses. Then you will see that's going to be not as good transparency, and that's not going to be as good trust and teamwork in the organization. And that's true in organizational research that we see. Sports psychology, we are still kind of working on that team-related aspect. That's not been as much.

But I definitely see that in consulting with sports teams. But also might be in some of the qualitative research, seeing that when teammates self-compassionate. In the research that I do, I have to also say it's easier for them to be kind, easier for them to share vulnerability where their teammates are more understanding, more open, rather than judging them. I think the openness is a really key aspect when you create that culture. Yeah, we talk about self-compassion a lot, but just being open and non-judgmental

probably the critical step. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Dr. Chu, what have I not asked you that you tend to talk to your clients about related to your research and self-compassion and mindfulness? Yeah, I think that's really a lot of work that I do with my clients. I think another piece related to, could be related to the self-compassion. It's a little bit about the value,

but also about how can you take action? I think that's the part that we touched on a little bit, but not fully. So a lot of times we are not consistent with our action because one might be we are not used to doing something uh two might be because we worry about something in the in the process uh so if we have to touch on maybe the idea that, well, it's just the idea of practicing self-compassion or mental training regularly. I think that's been something challenging for athletes because they feel like, oh, it's going to take time. I don't know if I have that time,

or I don't know whether that works. So usually we try to understand the value of mental training, understand why that is important and how that aligns with me wanting to be a collegiate athlete, professional athlete, and understanding that, yeah, we do need to make that commitment if we want to get to the next level. It's not just about knowing, being kind to myself or knowing the idea of framing our self-talk, but you're actually practicing it regularly. So I think that's the idea of like translating thought to action is really writing down what are important to you. We also usually use something called a habit tracker. Sure.

Yeah, actually writing out, okay, I'm going to do this five times a week. I'm going to do meditation. I'm going to, not just mentally, but we talk about physical, technical, tactical, and mental. I'm going to stretch two times a week. I'm going to sleep seven hours every night. I'm going to drink water. So we write out things that are important to them.

And then we think about, okay, what are the barriers? This is a critical part. What are the barriers? In that process, that do not allow you to meet those habits. So we talk about the time, about the internal thought of, I don't have time. I just don't feel good about doing this. Just kind of writing down those obstacles. And there's a framework called Whoop

that we use a lot. What's your wish, outcome, obstacle, and what will be your plan? So in some way, just try to make that concrete about what are your values, what are your actions, what are your obstacles, and then write all that in the habit, and then tracking them along the way, so that you're keeping yourself accountable in things that you say you would do. I think that's part of being kind to yourself,

is to really follow what you say what you would do, rather than saying, I would do this, but then you forget about it later. I think that's so crucial about wanting to meet those big goals is the daily action that you are doing. It's not just like a big thing that you want to do well. You want to do well in the national championship or in the showcase. It's not about the one big thing. It's about the daily small things that we do that make who we are. Excellent. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that. I like the WHOOP

acronym. So Dr. Chu, you gave us so much value in this podcast today, and I'm so grateful for you. Here's some things that I thought were really helpful as I kind of summarize today. We talked about perhaps openness and one of the openness of the big five personality traits might be connected to self-compassion, our ability to practice it. We talked about the importance of like journaling so that you better understand times that you're really critical of yourself and to understand your perspective of a failure or disappointment. You talked about the negative spiral versus a positive spiral.

I thought that was super helpful. Concepts like what's important now, when and responding, not reacting. And then I loved what you said about imagining the voice inside your head as someone that you love or someone like is a mentor or a family member and what would they say to you, as well as the may I versus I am. And the less critical we are of ourselves that we can extend the self-compassion to others and we're less likely to judge and blame. So thank you so much for being on the podcast. I knew it was going to be incredible, and I knew I'd learn more from you. So tell us a little bit about how people can reach out to you if they'd like to learn more about your work and connect with you. Yeah, sure. For me to reach out

to me through my email, I do have a prior practice called Match Up Mental Performance, and the email is matchupperformance at gmail.com. You can also, I do have an ex-formally Twitter account, Dr. Alan Chu. I don't post too often, but sometimes I do post things about self-compassion. So it's at D-R-A-L-A-N-C-H-U, Dr. Alan Chu. You should be able to find me on LinkedIn. If you type Alan Chu or Alan Chu, UNC Greensboro or North Carolina, you'll likely find my profile there. I'm more active on LinkedIn than X.

Those are probably the best spaces to follow me, connect with me or reach out to me. And we love to really talk about self-compassion at any time through messages, email, or even get on the call. I actually had a person email me from India just a couple of weeks ago because of knowing some of the compassion work that I did. And we got on the call. It was just amazing. You know, always get to, you know, spread the word of kindness to the sports setting, to the work setting, but just to the world in general. Thank you.

Thank you, Dr. Tu, for being on today. And thanks always for listening to the podcast as well. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's an amazing podcast. Thank you for having me on. 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 enjoy my exclusive community for high performers where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can add over to Dr. Sindhra. That's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A dot com. See you next week.