What is Mental Athleticism™️? Part One. Anchoring to your Big A**, Audacious Vision.

Ever feel like a rudderless ship in the ocean—moving, busy, maybe even working hard… but not actually steering toward anything?

That’s where Mental Athleticism comes in.

In this episode, we introduce the  first foundational pillar of MA: anchoring yourself to a bold vision for your life. Because when you know where you’re going and who you’re becoming, your entire trajectory will start to shift.

This episode sets the stage for how to think bigger, act more intentionally, and start training your mind like an athlete.

Want to go deeper?

🔥 MA LIVE – March 11 at Noon
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Ten days. Real accountability. A taste of life as a Mentally Athletic animal. Send us an email at keri@thekericroftshow.com and we'll add you to the waitlist.

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Keep Movin', baby! ⚡️

Transcript

Defining Mental Athleticism

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, hello there, friend, and welcome back to another solo cast with yours truly. Very excited about today's episode. It's all about mental athleticism. And what is it, right? What is this mental athleticism you speak of? Why I created it? And I think more importantly, how can you apply this system into your life? Maybe take the whole thing and run with it, or if there are parts of it that resonate with you more than others, what can you take from this system to allow you to be a more confident, consistent human being in the world and to allow you the opportunity to win more often? Quick story time, you know, back when I was in college, I was having a conversation with my dad on the phone. I was living on 11th Avenue, and I remember him saying to me, You're like a rudderless ship in the ocean. And I was like, ooh, ouch, that stings, but it's not completely off. And I've always taken that, and we laugh about it now. I laugh about it. I say this to people all the time. It's like a rudderless ship in the ocean. But when you really think about that, a rudderless ship in the ocean is probably one of the most powerless things you can think of. And I'm so glad he said that to me when he did, because I've taken that throughout my life. Creating this imagery in my mind around a rudderless ship in the ocean has been very beneficial to me throughout my life. So thanks, Dad. Thanks for the um for the analogy. So let's define what is mental athleticism. Mental athleticism is the discipline practice of anchoring to your big vision, executing relentlessly on the small, unsexy, mundane little things every single day that nobody sees, and mastering both command of self and environmental design. What's that mean? So, in this particular episode, we're not going to go super deep. I just want to introduce you to the idea of mental athleticism and give you sort of the backdrop around why I created it and what it is high level. So, again, mental athleticism is the disciplined practice of anchoring to a bold vision, executing relentlessly in the smallest daily actions, and mastering both command of self and environmental design so you can consistently put yourself in a position to win. And why do we say it that way? Why do we say consistently put yourself in a position to win? Because no one's guaranteed. No one's guaranteed to win. I'm guaranteed nothing. You're guaranteed nothing. So for me, it's like, okay, mental athleticism, if I do these things every single day to the extent that I can, I am putting myself and setting myself up in a position to win as much as possible. And so that is really the definition of mental athleticism. And there are four main components that you also have heard in that definition. It's like big vision, relentless daily execution, command of self, and environmental design. There's so much that goes into each of those pillars. And so I'm going to break those into episodes so that you don't have to sit and take all this in at one time. You can sort of bite it off when it makes sense to you. So today, we are going to just basically stay with the big vision, the idea of anchoring yourself to a big vision, which sounds really simple. And high level, what is it? What's your big vision? It's like the game you're choosing to play in life, the life you're building on purpose, the identity that you're stepping into or trying to step into. And without having a big vision for yourself in your life, it's easy to drift. It's sort of like you're just in this gerbil wheel with really, again, your rudderless ship in the ocean. So you have to ask yourself like, what does winning mean to me? Who do I want to become? And what kind of life do I want to build for myself? And my question for you is how do you personally set your goals and anchor yourself to these big, lofty visions that you have for your life? And if the answer is, okay, I have, you know, this particular model, I do it this often and I feel really good about it, great. It sounds like you're on your way and well on your way to anchoring your big vision. But if you are sitting here thinking, well, shit, I don't really know how I do that. I just kind of live day to day and I react and I kind of take things in stride as they come. All right, cool, no shade. But we can do things differently. And I think in order to really realize the things you want to realize in life, you have to plan for it. You have to be the first person to envision it and believe in it before it comes true. Now, you know, is that manifesting? Like I have a whole opinion on manifesting. You know, this is only one part of the game, right? You can't just set big visions and walk away. And we'll get to that in later episodes. But sticking to the point in the way that someone who is mentally athletic sets up their big vision, we have four boxes. The first box is me first, MF. I love a good acronym. The second box is IIC, invest in your inner circle. The third box is BYE, build your empire. And the fourth box is ITA, improve the atmosphere. And for the person who's mentally athletic, whether it's annually, every six months, however you want to do it, you sit down and you say to yourself, okay, what are my big picture goals? What is this identity that I want to have? Like, do I want to be someone who gets up at 4 30 in the morning and works out and who focuses on strength training and who is lean and strong and has endurance. Okay, so you put that in your me first bucket. I want to get up at 4:30 a.m. consistently five days a week. I want to do the sauna 15 to 20 minutes, three to five days a week. I would like to go on a 60-minute walk jog with no music just to listen to my thoughts once or twice a week. Quantifying these visions and these goals in each bucket. So invest in your inner circle. Do I want a loan time with each kid for at least an hour a week? Do I want to take Dane skiing and have Dane and mom time? Do I want to do a date night every month? Okay, so you sit and you really refine and figure out what are the things in each of these buckets? Build your empire. Clearly, I have no shortage of business goals in that bucket. And then for me, improve the atmosphere is a legacy service-based box where it's like, okay, what am I showing my kids? How do I want this business that I'm building to give back to the community? What are we doing like in service? Whether it's just volunteering with Dane at Seeds of Caring or somewhere else, um, the lemonade stand that we do once a year for the community, for someone who practices mental athleticism, these are boxes that you see. They're anchors, they're always in your mind. And when I first started this system, when I first started to like get it from in here out into the world and was practicing it and doing it myself, I would put little post-it notes in my sauna. And I like had a sharpie pen and I'd put M F, I C, BYE, and ITA. And so I would look at them every morning and I would like think to myself, okay, what's in my me first box? Am I tracking? Where am I falling off? Do I need to add something? Does something need removed? So you're you're sort of auditing and pruning each of those little gardens every single day to say what's working, what's not, what needs to move, et cetera. And so you go through every single box and you do that. And the power of first of all, just setting a vision for your life, anchoring yourself to something that you want sounds so simple. It sounds so intuitive, but it's not. I guarantee you right now, if I went out on the street and surveyed a hundred people and said, hey, give me your vision for the next year, five years, 10 years, and tell me your system for providing that for your life. And I promise you, most of them were gonna look at me like I have six heads. So anchoring to your big vision is the first part or a very important part of mental athleticism. Again, me first, invest in your inner circle, build your empire, and improve the atmosphere. That is how I set it up. And that's all I want you to do. Like if you're listening to this and more than likely this is your first, maybe second, maybe third time tops hearing about mental athleticism. I don't want you to feel overwhelmed by the big definition or by all the stuff that's behind the curtain. Just take that first step. And even if that first step is like you just thinking about it and going, aha, interesting. Let's think about anchoring my big vision. And maybe I will use these four boxes right now and fill those suckers in. Okay, that's really all I want you to do for today. It's like very simple, but very, very profound. And another thing that I will tie into this that's so important. And if you haven't listened to my episode with Cameron and Molly Mitchell, please go listen to it because, you know, we all know about Cameron Mitchell's story. We all know the restaurant empire that he's built, and it's this Rags De Riches story about a kid from UA, and his book's incredible, and his whole story is fantastic. And I think one of the really cool parts of the story is just the idea of believing in yourself and in a vision for your life and being able to draw it in. And that's what Cameron was able to do at a very young age before he had any proof, before he had anybody in the stands going, Oh, Cameron Mitchell, you're so great. He believed something was possible for himself and for his life. There was something inside of him that was like this whisper. And he was able to look out and create goals for himself. And if you go back and you read the book or you listen to the book, even back when he was in this rebellious phase, didn't have, you know, know his ass from a hole in the wall, he was still creating visions for himself. He was still saying, okay, my goal is to be the manager of X restaurant, and then my goal is to, you know, go to the next step, and then my goal is to own a restaurant company. And so he would continually visualize and believe before he saw. And I want you to hear that. You always hear seeing is believing. And it is for so many people, for so many people. They need proof, they need statistics, they need to analyze. But for the person who is able to anchor themselves to a vision, believing is seeing. I believe it to be true before it ever comes out into the world. And I just, I don't know, I've always been a huge visualizer. And I know some people out there just aren't built that way. And that's okay. But I think an exercise like this for you to anchor to your big vision is so, so important, especially for those people who don't naturally dream big for themselves or don't naturally look out into the distance, into the trajectory and say, oh, wait, if I take out, how could I draw this a different way? Or wow, if I took this path, or what would that look like? So, so use this as sort of a creative exercise for yourself. It reminds me of what we have a thing called the B10 challenge that we just did the first one for. And it's just, it's basically an entrance into mental athleticism, and it's called the B10. It's 10 days with me. It's very community-based. It was really, really fun. We had a really great group of people that we that we did this with at the end of January. And one of the girls who I I love a lot, her name's Allie. She and I were talking, and we were talking about this very thing, the the tying yourself to a big vision. And she's like, you know what? Like, I never do this. I'm constantly, I feel like I'm constantly doing what is asked of me. I'm always, you know, right on time. I'm always saying yes. I'm always, but she's got her head down, right? He's she's got her head down, kind of doing the things that she feels like she's supposed to be doing, the things that are expected of her. And she never takes a moment to look up for herself, for herself, and for what is possible in the distance by anchoring herself to a bigger, more audacious vision for her life. So I say all that to say, if you could today, after listening to this episode, just go through the exercise, you know, that would be a win for me. Don't think about anything else. We'll talk about the other stuff in the episodes to come. But I want you to anchor yourself to a big vision. I want you to get creative and wild and just what if? You know, what if? What could my life look like if I got real crazy? Okay, some housekeeping things. Before we conclude this episode, I'm very, very excited about this. We are doing our first mental athleticism live. You heard it here, March 11th at noon. Okay, this is not your typical jump on a call, turn off the video and check a box newsfest. We're not doing that. I'd rather not do it than do that. This is a training hour. Come to train, honey. The topic that we're gonna talk about on this first mental athleticism live is what is your comfort zone costing you? Because that shit's expensive. I know, I know it's comfy, it's cozy, it feels good here, it's safe, it's my comfort zone. But when you realize the cost of the comfort zone, you cannot unsee it. And so on March 11th at noon, you and I, friend, are gonna get on this call and you're gonna bring your shit. You're gonna bring where you're stuck, what are your fears? What's the thing you really want to do, but you can't figure out a way to get yourself over the hump. We're gonna workshop it, we're gonna talk about it real time, and I'm gonna give you at least one little nugget, one little nugget that's gonna allow you to move forward. Just a tiny little hinge to swing that big door open. Okay. So think of this as a fitness class, but for your mind. And it's it's incredible to me how intuitive it is for people to get on mind body and go to class pass and sign up for their workouts, right? But when are you signing up to train in between here? That's what this is. I'd rather have four people coming to train than a hundred people like half listening on a call. That kills my joy. Again, mental athleticism live, March 11th at noon. The link's in my bio. Please jump on and let's talk about how to get you out of this little comfy nook that is costing you more than you even realize right now. As always, you can set up a 15-minute call with me. All you have to do is click on the link in my bio and I want to talk to you. I love it. When I see a Calendly pop up and I don't know your name and I see your name, and I'm like, oh, I've never heard of this person before. I wonder what they're, you know, looking to do, and I see in the notes and it gives like a high-level thing. I absolutely love to talk to people who are trying to get to the next step. As long as you're willing and your intention is to try to get yourself moving to the next step. Also, if you have not subscribed to the B-Word yet, my weekly newsletter, please, link in bio, go subscribe today. I put all kinds of stuff in there. You guys get access, my subscribers get access to things first. Um, there's so much thing, there's so much stuff happening. And so getting that email every week is really a great way for you to make sure you don't miss a thing. Another exciting thing coming on the horizon are these in real life events that we're doing on the Carrie Craft show. Okay, I've been, and talk about being out of your comfort zone, right? This is that's what this is for me. I am putting my whole get out of my comfort zone in practice with these in real life events because I want it to be right and I have a certain way that I want it to go in my head. And I've been thinking about this for two years and we're finally doing it. And the first one is April 9th, and it's called In Her Badass Era, and it's all feminine energy. The amount of amazing women who are going to be together in one space. I mean, I cannot even tell you how excited I am. We've got DJ vibes, we're gonna have cocktails, mocktails, but the most incredible part of it is gonna be the amount of women who are so different in all aspects. They're, you know, different businesses, different personalities, but the thing that's the same is the bad assery that each one of those women possess. And I just cannot, I cannot wait to get everyone together in the same room and see what happens. There's gonna be more of those this year. Tickets will be available sometime this month. There won't be a lot of them. So for this in real life event, there may be like 15 spots. So stay tuned. And if you subscribe to the email, you'll be getting that link before anyone else. So, again, another little bump for you to subscribe to the B-Word. If you remember, last April we did an infertility and child law series that was very, very impactful. We're doing that again this year. We're gonna do some really cool stories, people going through it. So if you have anybody in the infertility and child loss space who wants to share their story, please feel free to send me a DM or an email, carry at the Carriecrofshow.com. And last but not least, the next B10 is going to be happening. Yes, it's already that time. It's gonna be happening at the end of April. So if you are interested in the B10, stay tuned. There will be a lot more information coming. But that's my 10-day mental athleticism challenge where we all get together, we give up some things, we add some things, and we it's it's meant to just be a foray into the life of mental athleticism. So just giving you little bites one day at a time. It's a great community builder. There's so much cool, uh, interactive stuff that happens during the B10. So if you're interested, stay tuned, or you can also DM me and we can put you on the wait list. And that's what we got going on right now on the Carrie Croft show. So thank you for listening. I hope this was helpful for you. And again, please think about your big vision, big dreams, and how to anchor yourself into those four boxes. If you have questions, you know where to find me. And if you're still out there following your girl, follow me on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. And until next time, keep moving, baby.