High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 97: How to Avoid 3 Common Mental Barriers

Episode Date: March 28, 2017

High performers break free of mental barriers. They dream big. They play big. They continuously push themselves and their limits. They realize fear will always be there if they are growing and learning. They choose to stay present moment focused and make a decision to be confident. This week's affirmation: "I dream big. I play big. I continuously push myself past my limits to find a new level."

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. High Performance Mindset is the name of the game today. Dr. Sindra Kampoff with us in studio once again. Good morning, Sindra. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me today. Yeah, awesome. As usual, a beautiful day today. The birds be here. Thanks for having me today. Yeah, awesome. As usual. Beautiful day today. The birds out there. Yeah.

This is awesome. This is the day I was hoping for yesterday when I was out for that long run. Remember the day you sent me the photo of you and your girlfriend in 30 mile an hour winds? That was me yesterday. Hair all over the place. I told my wife I actually turned. Well, I felt like I was running into the wind the whole time because I thought for sure when I turned around and went the other way that it would die down.

And it felt like it was still blowing. I turned and yelled at the wind in the middle of my run yesterday. Flat out, I was the only one on the trail anywhere in sight, and I was out there yelling at the top of my lungs. It made me feel better. And then I finished the run. You know what I was thinking? Running in the wind really builds a lot of mental toughness and resilience.

So there you go. A guy I coached track with, too, I sent him a text. I'm like, I have this superpower. I have the ability to have the wind blowing in my face no matter what, wherever I run in any given moment. It's kind of like the power I have of the campfire smoke that always comes in my direction. And he did just the right thing. His comment was that's why he goes, but that's because you're so tough that you can handle it. Nice.

All right. There you go. Making all kinds of syndra sense this morning. Holy cow. All right. Three common mental barriers. And I'm glad you brought that up when we were talking about it makes you mentally tough. That's what we're getting into today.

And we're going to start with a quote. By Michael Jordan. He said, if you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it. All right. So your podcast is something we're going to use as an example today. So we want to know the story of you starting your podcast. So a few years ago, I actually was writing my goals down,

and I wrote one that just said, podcast question mark. And as I was writing this down, I had all the reasons why I couldn't start a podcast. It felt like a really big mountain. I didn't really know how to do it. I didn't know the logistic things of how to do it. And it was actually a little scary about just getting out there with a podcast and nationally anyone could listen to the messages. And one Monday, actually after being on the radio, I got a Facebook message from a woman named Angie Jarr. So she lives in Mankato. She's a professor at Bethany. And she said, hey, I got a Facebook message from a woman named Angie Jarr. So she lives in Mankato. She's a professor at Bethany.

And she said, hey, I just heard you on the radio. Do you want to have coffee? And so I thought, okay, well, I'll just have coffee with her at Panera. And as we were talking the next Monday morning, she was telling me about how she listens to us in the morning. And then she goes to class and she repeats the message to her class. To our students. Nice. And I thought, oh, cool, the positive message is spreading.

She said to me, have you ever thought about putting the radio spots on a podcast? And I was like, oh, well, kind of wild because I really wanted to start a podcast, but I didn't really know how. I thought, well, gosh, instead of this positive message spreading in our town, could it spread more at a larger level, like a national level? And when I look back at that, I was experiencing a mental barrier. And it was Angie who kind of removed it for me. And I think it's cool because it was a stranger who gave me a push that helped me remove the

mental barrier. And now these radio spots are on a national podcast every single week. And I get to really interview some really awesome people about mindset. And I get to really interview some really awesome people about mindset. And I get to continue to learn. You are wrong about that, by the way. It is not a national podcast. It's an international podcast. It is all over the place. I listen to every one of your episodes, Cindra,

and you're coming up on 100. It has been downloaded in over 80 countries and a five-star rating on iTunes. Is that the best rating you can get is five-star? Yeah. Okay. Pretty good. Yeah.

So congratulations on that. There was a time where you're like, I don't know if I can do this. Absolutely. And as people are listening, I want that to inspire them because I was definitely holding myself back. I was thinking of all the reasons that I couldn't. And what I actually really love about the podcast is I get to interview some of the world-leading consultants or coaches or athletes.

So, you know, there's been over 30 interviews so far. The people that I've interviewed have attended over 25 Olympic Games or World Championships as consultants working with athletes, bestselling authors, award winning speakers, Olympians. And what I like about the podcast is like J.F. Maynard said on the podcast, he said, you know, a key to high performance is to keep educating yourself. So this podcast allows me to keep educating myself, but also it helps internationally spread a positive message. You learn from all those people. It's awesome. It's awesome. So some of these radio interviews end up on the podcast.

But then, as you said, you talk to all of these very influential people working in the business. One of them that I listened to recently was Duncan. What's his last name again? Simpson. Simpson. All I remember is Sports Psych Duncan. Nice, nice. That's great.

That's his Twitter handle. Yeah, but he had a really interesting point, and I'm going to forget it again. You're going to have to refresh my memory on a quote that he said, but it was all about, I don't care how you feel, basically, because it doesn't matter how you feel to me. How prepared are you for what you're about to do? Because he was bringing up basically the point that you don't have to feel your best to perform your best. You might go into something and say, I just don't really feel like doing this today, and then still end up performing really well. Or you can go into it feeling so confident, so prepared, and everything falls apart. So he's

like, I'm not really worried about those emotional parts. How really prepared are you? And I thought, wow. Good stuff, isn't it? Good stuff that I haven't heard anybody else that you interviewed talk about. So Duncan is an assistant mental conditioning coach at IMG Academy, and he said confidence is not a feeling state, it's a belief state. He said, I don't care how you feel.

Instead, I care what you focus on. Yeah. That's pretty intense. I was running along thinking, wow, this is the deepest one so far. I'm like, this is the gold nugget right here. This has been a good one. So let's talk about mental barriers. We're talking about three of them today, the three common mental barriers. How did you come up with these three mental barriers? I looked throughout the interviews of the people that I've done on the podcast,

and I looked for some commonalities. So I always ask the question, what gets in the way of you reaching your potential or the people that you work with? What gets in their way? And so what I'm going to do is talk about each of these three kind of relatively shortly, you know, not very much time, but also try to give you kind of a golden nugget. Okay. And that might be kind of tough in a minute or so for each, but, you know, what's the main thing that you want to know about this mental barrier? So what's the first common barrier? Most of the guests have talked about failure and how we approach failure. But the key is, is that failure is inevitable. And it's actually essential for us to be at our best and perform at our best. And the world's best obviously have

failed many times, but they view mistakes as mistakes. So just as a way to continue to improve and get better. And one specific barrier that people have talked about is our ability to get over mistakes. So Carrie Cheadle, a mental skills coach from California said, you have to risk failure in order to risk success. And then one of the authors I interviewed, Mark Anshul, he wrote a book about kind of failing forward. And he said, failure is a stepping stone to something better. So we need to, we need failure to learn and continue to be self-motivated. And then a sports psychologist from Penn State said, champions let go of things quicker. So they move on. And the key is to be here. Flush it. Flush it. All right. So the kind of key point is, is notice how you respond to mistakes and failure and remind yourself failure is important for your growth and reaching your ultimate potential.

All right. So what's the second most common mental barrier that we all face? Fear. Oh, yeah. Yeah? Yeah. Okay. So fear happens when we focus on the future.

And I think fear happens anytime we're really trying to do something new, something that we haven't done before. But J.F. Maynard, sports psychologist from Canada who works with some of their top Olympians and the best athletes in Canada, this is one of my favorite quotes on the podcast. He said, world champions are not fearless. They just fear less. And remember how we talked about how like 85% of our fears never happen. Yeah. I remember that from his podcast with you. That was a good one. So we need to ask ourselves, you know, how much do we really need to be scared? He suggests. So the key is, is to focus not necessarily on the future. That's what's causing your fear.

And instead, move your mind back to the present. And you can do anything you want here. That's where peak performance happens is in the present. And pressure doesn't exist in the present. So if you've been watching March Madness, you can see sometimes people really not dealing well with the pressure. Because they're focused on the score. They're focused on the future. So the key is to bring your attention back to the moment.

As Patrick Cohn, a mental game coach, talked about, he's from Texas. He said focusing on the process leads us to the desired results. So the key is to keep your mind in the present. And that's where high performance happens. And the third most common mental barrier? Lack of confidence. So really confidence is the belief and trust in your ability. It's your certainty that you're going to be successful.

And Angie Pfeiffer, sports psychology consultant at Drexel University, talked about how confidence is really a decision. It's really a decision that we make every day to think and act confidently. So the most confident people think, I will, I can, I am. Right. You know, instead of, you know, I can't, I won't, I don't know how. And Erica Carlson, mental skills coach from California said, I haven't met a person that couldn't improve on their self-talk.

So true, isn't it? Yeah, that's very true. And then Erica Garms, she's a speaker and author and consultant from Minneapolis. She said, remember, everyone is doing the best that they possibly can. And this one shift in perspective can make a world of difference. So the key is when you notice yourself lacking confidence is to be aware of your self-talk and just remember you're doing the best that you possibly can. All right. Okay.

So what do we do from there? Okay. So I think the key is, is these three examples, failure, fear, and lack of confidence is really about ways that we hold ourselves back. And the only person really holding you back is you. So the key is, is let's all find a new level this week. No more excuses or no more, no getting in our way with these things, fear or confidence or failure, and move forward towards our greater potential. All right. This is good stuff here, too.

And you'll find this on the podcast. Yes, you will. How would you summarize all of this for us today, then? I mean, we went through a lot of stuff. We did. We did. So you might want to listen to this one again. High performers break free of mental barriers.

They dream big, they play big, and they continuously push themselves and their limits. They realize fear is always going to be there when they're growing and learning, and they stay in the present, make a decision to be confident. And our affirmation for today? I dream big, I play big, and I continuously push past my limits to find a new level. All right. Interviews like this and a lot more, too, from all of those people that Sindra mentioned and a lot of great guests on it, on the podcast,

that can give you more uh information than you even know what to do with to be completely honest with you yeah for sure really good listen so if we want to follow along with the podcast uh twitter updates and all of the things that you're doing what's the best way for us to keep in touch with you you can find podcasts on itunes so you can search high performance mindset and you can go on there and if you listen regularly a rating would be awesome or a comment would be awesome. And then so that's where you can find that. All of the podcasts are also on my website, DrCindra.com.

And again, this is free. Like it's information that you can continue to learn and grow. And you can listen to it when you run or when you're driving or when you're cleaning the house. That's what sometimes I do. Yeah, exactly. I do. I usually have it on when I run. And then when I get home from running, I'm not done with a podcast. So I just keep listening to it while I'm making lunch and then prepping for the next day's work.

And I just keep it on. And then pretty soon I'm out of podcasts. I'm like, come on, Sindra. Let's go. Let's get going with it. Yeah. DrSindra.com to get more information. Thank you very much.

Thanks for listening. And thanks for having me today. The Three Common Mental Barriers with Dr. Sindra Kampoff today in High Performance Mindset on Minnesota 93. Thanks for having me today.