The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos - The Happiness Lessons Helping Win Olympic Medals

Episode Date: July 29, 2024

America's top athletes need coaches. And those coaches themselves need guidance. It's a hard and stressful job - and one where coaches can easily become burned out and unhappy. And stressed coaches can't help their athletes win medals.  Christine Bolger and Emilie Lazenby of the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee teach happiness lessons - many they heard on this podcast - to America's elite coaches. They share their story with Dr Laurie and tell us what regular folk can learn from top coaches.  Check out more Olympics related content from Pushkin Industries and iHeartPodcasts here.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pushkin. Pushkin. Pushkin is going to the Olympics. Shows across the network have got all sorts of stories to share, including the latest on sports science in What's Your Problem? A suite of swimmers on slight change of plans. A cautionary tales tale of how women had to literally fight to be allowed to run the marathon. And an epic season of revisionist history about why,

in 1936, America participated in Hitler's Olympics. Here on the Happiness Lab, we've already spoken to an athlete who fell back in love with the sport she'd grown to hate, just in time to head off to the Paris Olympics. But we're not just interested in the sporting stars. To get to the Games, every athlete needs the help and advice of someone who shares their passion and commitment, a coach. Oh man, this is such a special occasion for me. I've been a big fan. It's always humbling to hear that someone is a fan, but I was absolutely over the moon when I found out how much this guest liked the show. I found your podcast and it resonated so much with me that we were sharing episodes of the happiness lab with the coaches we were working with because this expert doesn't just work with any old coaches

we put these episodes out there but we don't really know who's listening to them and to find out that someone who is actually working in behavioral science with team usa who would be like are affecting our olympians and our paralympians like this is amazing you've got many more listeners now from team usa because of the work that you've been doing. Christine Bolger is the Associate Director for Coaching at the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, helping to train some of the finest athletic trainers on the planet. We certainly do have some of the best coaches in the world who are at the top of their game, who have been there for decades in some cases,

and crank out either fantastically gifted performing athletes or teams, or both sometimes. Christine works with trainers across so many sports. Archery, badminton, baseball, boxing, bobsled, cricket, curling, diving, fencing, golf, gymnastics, judo, surfing, swimming, weightlifting, wheelchair basketball, wrestling, and even yachting. Coaching's coaching, regardless of if you're coaching cycling or swimming or some snow sport. But what we try to do is cultivate the skills and information that cut across as many sports as possible. Leadership, communication, care, planning,

just the things that will resonate with every coach. And it can look different in different contexts, in different sports. But those are the pieces that we as USOPC grab onto. I was shocked at how new this kind of coaching education is. The U.S. Olympic Committee was founded way back in 1894, but the group only got around to publishing its quality coaching framework in 2017. Unlike, say, school teachers, most U.S. coaches, even at the Olympic level, don't receive special instruction on how

to coach. There's no requirements for coaches to go through any specific type of training for the most part. We now do safe sport to ensure that they do background checks and things like that. And I think first aid and CPR tend to be pretty standard now. But really, anybody can go out there and coach. So I think that there is a big risk without the proper education and training. And we say that so often that coaching isn't about sport necessarily as much as it is about working with people. And I think that that is part of what we're trying to help the coaches understand. If they're overtraining, if they're not listening to the athlete saying, hey, I feel off, they really have to have all their senses up so that they're able to know when to push, know when to pull back,

know when to change things, know when to take a day off, know when to get out of the training facility and just try to learn and get better in a different context. Yeah, it's just, it's so much self-awareness and being totally in tune with the people you're working with and listening to feedback from the athletes, from your coaching staff.

But Christine's goal isn't just to improve the experience of the athletes. She's also concerned about the well-being of the coaches themselves, which thus far has been pretty neglected. It's far from being an easy or a secure job. We have some coaches that rely on athletes to secure an income, where if they don't have the athletes, they don't put food on the table. There could be some that don't have that proper health care individually. And if their spouse doesn't have what they need, then, you know, they're kind of

just like going day to day, hoping that I don't get sick. What are the kind of mental health challenges that coaches go through all the time? Yeah, certainly the pressure to win at the elite level. If you're not winning across pro sports, across Team USA, then you're probably not going to keep your job for very long. So that in itself is enough of a stressor to put just so much pressure on yourself that all you're focused on is working, doing more, staying up watching tapes, you know, skipping meals because that gives you another opportunity, 15 to 60 minutes to do more work and put it in there.

So after a while, that takes a toll. And what are some of the strains that coaches face when it comes to their own personal relationships and their family ties? Oh boy, we worked with a coach who was on tour for a winter sport that, you know, was gone for 200 days a year that had young kids, you know, and that leaves their spouse home to take care of everything on their own. So there's the guilt factor too. You're missing your spouse. You're missing your kids.

You're missing your pets. They're so selfless most of the time that all they're thinking about are the athletes in front of them. And how can I help my athletes get better? It seems like another challenge that coaches face is that they're kind of the ones that are in some ways in charge of the performance, but they don't get to do it themselves. I know as a faculty member, I've felt this, that like when I have to give my own talks, you know, that's nerve wracking and I get a little bit anxious about it. But when my student is giving a talk, I'm so much more anxious. And I feel like my students who are giving talks are just like giving a talk at some random conference. They're not like competing for a gold medal in front of millions of people. And so,

you know, is this a particular challenge that coaches face? Oh, they're no different than you and your students. They lose control, especially those that competed as athletes themselves. They're like, I can't do anything. I'm just on the sidelines. I hope that all the preparation works and they do what they need to do. And if it doesn't, I'm going to, you know, just tear my hair out. But you can only do so much and then it's out of your control. Like, prepare them as well as you can, as best you can and hope for the best. And I think that with social media, of course, that's going to come up in anything. You know, you lose a game or you do something wrong, even if it's one player, like that person should be fired because that was just a horrible situation. Like how can they possibly be considered a good coach? So I think the pressures are compounded certainly by social

media. I think that that takes a pretty special person to try to manage that and keep the level head when people are just at you all the time. It seems self-evident that sports coaching, particularly at the elite level, is a stressful business. But as a teacher myself, I know that those of us who instruct others often think that we should be the ones with all the answers. others often think that we should be the ones with all the answers. One of the saddest ironies, says Team USA's new guidelines, is that although coaches strive to provide an enjoyable and healthy experience for their athletes, too often they approach their job in a manner that has the opposite effect on their own well-being. Christine says that for that to change, coaches need to be okay with asking for help. So what we want them to do is be able to take better care of themselves ahead of time. That takes some vulnerability.

We're trying to encourage coaches to make sure that they have somebody they're talking to that can relate to them. Might not be their same sport, might not be even in sport, but somebody that they can seek and trust and get some input into anything that they might be going through.

And coaches, they aren't typically used to receiving feedback. They're used to giving feedback. So it takes a level of vulnerability for sure. We have to kind of help them understand that it's okay to ask for help, that it's okay to take a break every once in a while. I was talking to the group of weightlifting coaches actually last night. Emily Lazenby also coaches the hard-pressed Team USA coaches. There is a single mom of, you know, two young kids

and she's got a hundred athletes and she starts at four in the morning and she goes until 6 p.m. at night. And at night, she's got some time with her kids and then she starts all over again because I don't have time for myself. I mean, that's a luxury and a privilege to me that I don't think I'm going to have in this phase of life for quite some time. Emily's work involves taking the kind of well-being lessons

you hear on the show and tailoring them to the needs of people just like that time-starved weightlifting coach, so that they don't burn out or just quit the profession completely. weightlifting coach so that they don't burn out or just quit the profession completely. Coaching is a field in an industry that has no net. There's no union, there's no government agency or anything there to support a coach when a performance doesn't happen from their athlete or from their team. It's very black and white. If they perform, then there's a high likelihood that the coach continues on in their role. And if the athlete isn't performing, then there's also the likelihood of not continuing. And so I think that there is a lot of pressure around not having that support net available to them. And it just adds to the entire pressure of having to stay optimized in a field.

It's a tough industry to commit to and be part of long-term. As a happiness scientist, I was really impressed reading the well-being guidance Emily helped design. It specifically addresses the exact kind of stressors that coaches endure in their high-performance job. You're spending your days basically filling everybody else's bucket, right? Everyone's needing you all the time. So to find the space to actually recover and experience deep rest is a very rare thing. So most of our coaches are operating either at an acute or a chronic stress stage for as long as they possibly can. What are some strategies that coaches can use to kind of handle stress better? One of the first things that we have them look at is, is it enhancing, right? Many of us look at stress in terms of like, it's so bad, right? But if we're

able to see stress as enhancing, I actually may be able to utilize this in a way and help me adapt and persist through what it is that I'm facing right now, this particular challenge and actually grow from it and maybe come out stronger from that adaptation. So I think it's sort of looking at what is this stress actually looking like in my life and how do I need to approach it differently? Another strategy I know you've talked about in a lot of your materials is the importance of

social connection. In one of the articles I read from your group, you had talked about filling your network with energy givers. What are energy givers and why can that be so important for helping you to manage stress? It's looking at who are the people that bring me the most joy that may not be like completely filling up this battery that's depleted right now. But you know, who are the ones that I can count on that I know when I speak with and spend time with that they're there for me and show up for me in a way to where I walk away feeling energized. So it's surrounding yourself with the people that I think create the most energy, particularly during the harder phases of life, and maybe setting boundaries around those that tend to take away. We know that we're going to

have to give a certain amount each day. So how is it that we can plan to offset that with those people that really boost us when we need it. I think this is such a fabulous suggestion because it's not just the idea that we talk about a lot in the podcast of making sure you're getting social connection, but really kind of paying attention to the particular people you seek out and making sure those people are kind of the ones that are feeding you rather than depleting you over time. Another thing you talk a lot about is the importance of coaches getting daily physical activity, which felt a little bit ironic for me because in my brain, these elite coaches are so focused on exercise and weight training and so on. But it sounds like that in their own lives, these things may fall by the wayside in ways that I didn't expect. And so what are some of the important benefits of exercise? And how do you get these busy coaches to get more of that movement in their lives? And how do you get these busy coaches to get more of that kind of movement in their lives?

So it's funny. So on my call last night with the weightlifting coaches, the majority of them, their biggest struggle is movement. So they're like the stuff that I'm teaching every day. It's actually not unsurprising. It's like just adding more of that to their day feels like more. And we want it to feel like less, right? So it's figuring out, I think, utilizing movement as a way to help set a rhythm and a tone for the day. So it's less about being as fit as you possibly could be. If that's your goal, great. But it's more about utilizing movement as an asset to help you feel good, to help fuel your

body and your brain to meet the challenges of the day, but then also feel good doing it, right? And a lot of what we are exploring with coaches right now is looking at how they move, how they like to incorporate that into their day, when they like to do it, and how they utilize it as an asset for themselves rather than something that they feel like they have to do in order to reach some type of fitness goal. Another physical activity you talk about with coaches is the power of sleep. Why is sleep so essential? And what are some of the strategies that you've suggested coaches engage with to make sure they're kind of protecting their shut eye? Yeah, that's the number one for us. I'd say out of everything, nutrition, movement,

stress resilience, I mean, all of them are significant in their own ways. But as we know, the other stuff doesn't really go as well if we're not getting sleep. The interesting thing when it comes to the Olympic and Paralympic environment is that their sleep is irregular all the time. So do you have routines set in place that can help you reset after a bad night of sleep when sleep pressure has built to the point where you're not falling asleep when you want to, or there's jet lag, or you're waking up in the night. So we teach that skill of, all right, here's where I'm at today. Here's what I can do. And all of that is okay. And it's still going to be the best I can give. And here's how

I'm going to reset tonight. And so it's creating that ability to reset rather than set. Like what are some of the things you suggest for coaches who need to figure out a way to reset better? I love Matt Walker's approach to sleep, like approaching sleep as if you were landing a plane. So we often approach it as if it's like a light switch where it's just, all right, I'm going to lay down and I got to sleep within 30 seconds. Whereas our body and our brain needs that time to take the sleep pressure that we've built that day to then get it into a place where we're falling into sleep. And that can take some time. And I love that approach in terms of figuring out what that time looks like for you,

whether it's 30 minutes or 60 minutes or two hours, you know, whatever it is that you tend to do, you know, warm showers at night, dark room, cool room, no screens, that kind of thing, or, or putting the screen on the opposite side of the bedroom so that you don't reach and grab it in the middle of the night and you look up and there everything is waiting for you. I think all of those have been really wonderful, critical experiments for us all to play around with to see, all right, what is it that really works for me? One of the challenges for coaches in terms of protecting their well-being and sort of maintaining self-care is that they're kind of in this mode of wanting to do it perfectly. They want to have the perfect sleep and the

perfect nutrition and the perfect exercise. But you're talking about these tiny tips that allow you to do these sort of things a little bit imperfectly, but continuously. And so explain why these small additions of self-care can add up over time in these important ways. Why is that so essential to remember that even the kind of imperfect attempts at getting some more self-care can be really critical? Because I think that's life, right? And I think it's a really wonderful way to look at it in terms of, all right, I have some agency here to really experiment with, here's what I know what works with me when stuff's hit the fan, right? And here's I know what works for me when I have a little bit more time to myself to recover. It's adapting between your resource pool and the challenges that you

face every single day. And it's the seesaw back and forth of, I'm facing this challenge. So what do I need to do to offset that? I think one of the problems with self-care is you feel like it has to be 100%. I mean, I know I go through this in my own ways. I'll be like, this is the week that I'm going to get to the gym. And one day I'll get to the gym and then Tuesday I miss out. It's like, well, I've already messed up. But it's like, no, just one day at the gym is better than zero days at the gym. 20 minutes of extra good sleep is better than zero minutes of extra good sleep. We sometimes think this has to be all or none. And I imagine that in high performance individuals like coaches, that's even worse.

I think it comes down to the ability to look at what you're leveraging that day as optimal, right? So, all right, I've got four hours of sleep last night. I've got 10 athletes that I need to coach today, or I have a 10-hour day that I need to get through. I'm at about 30%, but here's how I'm going to maximize this 25-30% to get through this day the best way that I can. To me, that's high performance. It may not be perfect, but it's excellence. And I think that's the difference. We're not striving for perfection. We're striving for excellence. And using the 30% that you have that day, to me, that's excellence. And kind of recognizing that you're at 30%. And it strikes me that this is another strategy that you work with coaches on a lot,

which is just overcoming the stigma of not being perfect. Overcoming the stigma of recognizing that you're at 30% and you might need to ask for help or you might need to take a break. Why is calling a spade a spade and really recognizing where you're at so important? What are some strategies we can use to combat of combat that sense that it can be sometimes hard to admit when you're struggling? I think the instinct is to avoid, right? To just grind it out, get it done. So I think right now, well-being can be tied to unrealistic optimism in a lot of ways where we feel like perfection is part of that. But the realistic part of that is that this is actually what I can do today. This is all I can do. And that's still a lot.

And it's okay. And that's great. I really like this strategy because I think it's something that all of us can use. We might not be Olympic coaches heading off to Paris, but I think all of us have times at work when things are a little bit busier, maybe times in the school year where as a parent, things feel more hectic. It sounds like the strategy is really like radical acceptance, kind of look at what things really are like

and to ask the question, okay, what am I going to be capable of? How can I build in self-care, but maybe in a way that's more compassionate, maybe not beating myself up for not, I don't know, making the healthiest meals during the busiest time or keeping the healthiest meals during the busiest time or keeping the house perfectly clean

during the busiest time. Yeah, absolutely. Here's the extent of what I can do here and I'm okay with that, right? And accepting it for what it is and maybe labeling that as great performance. Of course, all these lessons aren't just vital for coaches.

They apply equally well to ordinary folks like you and me. None of us can expect to turn in our personal best each and every day. Sometimes 80% might be the best we can muster under the circumstances. And that's okay. So what else can we all learn from the high-pressure world of Olympic sports? The Happiness Lab will be back in a moment. You might not think you have that much in common with a Team USA coach. They can put their own lives on hold for years, endlessly traveling, missing family events, clocking long hours,

all to help an athlete who might pull a muscle, drop a relay baton, or get a cold come race day. It's hard to think of a more stressful and unforgiving job, but their lives can be really instructive for the rest of us. Oh, I think that coaches just are kind of like a microcosm of society for sure. Christine Bolger is part of the team that teaches well-being fundamentals to America's Olympic and Paralympic coaches. One core principle, a principle that applies just as much as it does to a high dive instructor or a volleyball team manager, is that you need to find your purpose.

We talk a lot about finding your true north. Like, why do you coach? What's my why? And is it to be the best in the world? That's okay. You can be the best in the world while also being a good person. You want to know why you're out there and it's not just to win all the time. It goes back to self-awareness. Are you in this for yourself, for the athletes?

And if the athlete needs a break or other support, then I think we need to find a way to do that. That's part of quality too, right? Like they're not machines, they're people. And I think we need to realize that even in the passion of competition, sometimes you just need to take a break and that's gotta be okay.

Another strategy that lay people can learn from coaches is this important of delegating and asking for help, which is, I know something that your organization has tried to work with coaches on a lot more. You know, what's the importance of delegation and what can kind of lay people learn from what coaches have learned from doing this a little bit more often? I'm still learning how to delegate myself. I think you can bring people in in a way that

makes them feel more valued if you give them a responsibility. And that means a lot because we're developing people, not just the athletes, but the team around you. So if I'm a head coach, keeping everything close to my vest and not asking people to help me, that doesn't help anybody else. And eventually the system's going to break down because you just need that support system around you. So give people an opportunity to show them what they can do. Give them an opportunity to learn

and maybe do it even better than you would have done it yourself. In the last episode, we heard from British long distance runner, Georgia Bell. She was a great runner in her teens, but later on in college, she found that the training regimen didn't really suit her. She was unhappy and picked up injuries, and her times got worse and worse. I was perpetually injured in and out of boots because I had stress fractures. And so that

just translated to not running as well on the track and not running as fast. I really wasn't enjoying it anymore is the bottom line. It had gone from being something that I really loved and looked forward to racing and training to I just cannot wait to be done with this. Georgia left the sport and only got back into running by accident when the COVID lockdown prompted her

to dig out her old track shoes again. She's now competing at the Olympics thanks to a training program from a coach who listens far more to her individual needs. He's just been a fantastic coach, emotional support and guidance. And yeah, I have full trust in him. And I think that's one of the things that has led to a lot of the success as well. Making a lot more decisions over my body and racing and training that I just felt like I didn't really have before.

And that means that I just feel a lot more in control and enjoying it. At Team USA, Christine Bolger teaches the kind of sensitive coaching that has helped Georgia so much. Christine thinks coaches, like the rest of us, need to put themselves in the shoes of the people around them so that we can try to see their perspective. Oh man, that goes back to having some self-awareness because if your athlete is just off or you go in there and you're just in a bad mood as the coach

and the athletes kind of feel it, like there's obviously something going on. You want to be able to be there for your athlete to the best of your ability. So if you're not connecting with them, if you don't understand what each other is feeling or doing or going through, you're not going to have as deep an understanding of how to get the best out of the athlete. They say, treat others as you would like to be treated. The one lesson that I've learned is that's not accurate. Treat others the way they'd like to be treated because we're all individuals. And I think that that makes such a difference. You know, if I have to tell somebody seven different times how to do something, I'm clearly not articulating how I want them to do it.

And that's a me thing. It's not a them thing. If you watch the games this summer, you'll probably see the medal ceremonies, where elated, sometimes teary athletes have gold, silver, and bronze hung around their necks. You'll also see the leaderboards and medals tables. Who's winning, who's ahead, and who's falling behind.

In elite sports, coming first seems to be the only prize worth pursuing. But Christine is trying to widen what's perceived as success. She encourages coaches and athletes to feel a sense of accomplishment and gratitude for the entire journey and not just the final lap. For the athletes who participate in the Olympic and Paralympic Games, this might be a once-in-a-l a lifetime, usually it is a once in a lifetime opportunity and it could last 30 seconds or three hours, right?

You might not have won that gold medal or you might not have hit the podium, but look at everything that you accomplished. And even if it was a bunch of hard work just to make the team, not everybody gets to do that. I hope that the athletes realize what a fantastic accomplishment it is for them to achieve even making the team

and then going over to experience the games. And I think we have to think about that in our own lives. It's like, if you're the business person and you're selected to go to a business meeting that's reserved for the top 1%, like that's an achievement. And I think that we have to remember, give ourselves some credit for the work that we're doing

because if you accomplish your goal or you don't, you're working towards something with a team, you're probably making lifelong friends, people who work in the trenches with you. I love this idea of both celebrating your wins and also celebrating the journey that led to those wins. That sounds super important for everyday people to engage in. It's hard to do, though. You have to remember to do it, right? So, so hard to do. So, so hard to do, right? Another kind of strategy that you talk about, which comes up in coaching a lot, is this kind of give and take between practice and playing. In some of your materials, you've mentioned this idea of kind of

going back and forth between deliberate practice, which is what we often think of as important for performance, but also play, which we might not think of as that necessary. So talk about the importance of play and what lay people might learn from that, from how coaches think about play and performance. You know, I used to teach swimming and, you know, the most learning occurred after the lesson when they were able to just play around with their friends. You know, they take those chances. And I think that you can see that at the Olympic and Paralympic level as well. I mean, it has to be fun. You know, you're going to do a skill or, you know, an exercise thousands, if not millions of times, if you're an Olympic or Paralympic

athlete. And that can get really mundane. You know, you need to put in the work to do it. And you have to do other stuff so that you don't burn out or like hurt yourself. But I think every time you can give some control back to the athlete, just so that they can say, hey, we're just going to try this other thing. Just see what happens. And you can discover some great things if you just give them some freedom to play. Well, I mean, I have whole episodes talking about, you know, the fact that I needed to build more fun into my life. But I think it's also something that we can miss out on, like in the work context.

We often think that fun happens in the context of leisure. But I think we forget that, like, like in the work context. We often think that fun happens in the context of leisure, but I think we forget that like our jobs should be fun. We should be kind of messing around and thinking creatively and kind of getting flow from the enjoyment and the intrinsic rewards that we get out of the jobs that we have. But this is something that we forget a lot. So any tips that come from coaching about how to remember the fun and sort of get back to it even when the pressure is on? Oh man, just the inspiration. You hear the stories of the athletes and the coaches, you know, at this level of sport and I'm a little biased because I grew up in sport, just loving it my entire life. So I get a lot of inspiration from the people that I work with. The knowledge that's just around to try to push human performance in a safe way, safe, respectable way,

and then just see what they can do. We had an interview with a bobsled coach and athlete a couple weeks ago, and I swim on the side. I'm an old lady swimmer. I was joking, but I was like, man, if I had the passion that you had to do so well in the drive,

I would have had a much better swim this morning. Christine and Emily are doing some really inspiring work with the Team USA coaches. And I'm humbled that they're using the happiness science that they heard on this show to push my nation's Olympic efforts to the next level. I can't wait to see how all their advice winds up playing out on the courts, pools, fields,

tracks, and trampolines this summer in Paris. We've started the conversation. The vulnerability it takes to admit that you need some help for many people, it's a lot. But the ones that really are interested in improving are going to seek the input so that they can be their best for their athletes. The Happiness Lab will be taking a short summer break, but we'll be back soon with a season exploring how we can navigate a world in which argument, division, and anger

seems to be bubbling up everywhere. We'll look at evidence showing that we aren't as polarized as we fear, and we'll look at ways that we can come together and act cooperatively and civilly. All that next time on The Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos.