The Fearless Warrior Podcast

111: What to Say to Build Her Confidence the Right Way

• Amanda Schaefer

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Do you struggle to find the right words as a parent sometimes? Especially after a tough game? This episode is for you! Build your athlete’s mental game with practical tools that turn car rides into connection and confidence. Learn my 3P method: what to say and how to say it. (With a few fewer eye rolls from your teen!)

Episode Highlights:
• 3 Ps of parent conversation
• Shifting postgame timing and tone to reduce heat
• Mapping her mental game and naming triggers
• External, internal, and physical fears framework
• Failure recovery and grounding for pressure moments


Download our free Parent Guide HERE: Conversations to Create Confidence Parent Guide 

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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Fearless Warrior Podcast, a place for athletes, coaches, and parents who know the value of a strong mindset. I'm your host, Coach A B, a mental performance coach on a mission, former softball coach, wife, and mom of three. Each episode, we will dive deep into all things mental performance, mindset tools, and how to rewire the brain for success. So if your goal is to gain the mental edge and learn the secrets of mental performance, you're in the right place. Let's tune in to today's episode. I wanted to bring back a really powerful parent workshop that we ran, and it's so powerful that this is actually inside one of our parent resources, our parent program that we normally charge$200 for. It's on our website. What we teach inside this video, I'm going to be giving you guys for free on the podcast. You get to listen to the parent workshop. It is so powerful. I created the 3P method. So not only if you listen to this podcast episode, you'll get to hear the 3P method, but so many other tangible tips and takeaways, especially if you are an alumni that's been through our program and you need a refresher, or you're a new parent and you're curious about how to speak with your athlete to build confidence. The PDF that also accompanies this is our conversations to create confidence guide. It's all over our social media, but just in case, we will also link it below in the show notes. So if you want to download that worksheet, it's the Conversations to Create Confidence Parent Guide, and it accompanies this training. So without further ado, let's dive in. Welcome to the Parent Workshop. I'm Coach A B. We are super excited to kick off the parent workshop, and we teach softball athletes how to leverage the power of mental skills training. Things like confidence and worrying about self-doubt can absolutely be trained and overcome. That is what we do. And we are so excited to teach you behind the scenes of how we work with athletes in more of a parent role. So let's get started. So you're probably wondering: okay, I'm a softball parent. You are absolutely in the right place. If you're desiring to connect more with your softball athlete, we want her to reach her full potential. And the fact that you guys are here right now says a lot. And I know that a lot of successful softball parents that we've worked with, they understand what it takes to go from just the physical side to the mental side. So our mission is so much bigger. It is so much more than softball. So one of the things that we talk about is when your daughter is hard on herself, she's gonna make mistakes. It's not a matter of if she makes mistakes, it's a matter of when. But maybe you don't know what to say, or you're afraid you're gonna say the wrong thing. If you have a teen, maybe you get the eye roll, and we get that you guys get the butt mom, but dad. And so our whole goal is to teach you guys what it is that we do so you can go from butt mom to hey mom and really get that connection. She wants to come to you. She wants to break down game film with you, she wants your advice. And so that's what we're gonna teach you guys here tonight. And with our step-by-step process, we get a lot of feedback from parents too of I don't want to say the wrong thing or I've said the wrong thing in the past, I don't know when to say it. And what, like, what do I say? And so I get it, you guys are just trying to help. If some of you are not from a softball background, my mom was not an athlete growing up, she couldn't really connect to me on that level, but I knew that she could connect on me from a relationship perspective. My dad was very much the one that was hard on me. So, whichever role you fill as a parent, um, if this is a shift that you want for your daughter, you're not alone. I think oftentimes we feel alone. There is a whole bunch of parents that we've worked with on this call tonight from the call on Sunday. My promise to you is that if you commit to this workshop, walk away from this workshop, you'll know what to say, how to say it, and when to say it. And if you like to take the next step with us, we will have opportunities to work with our team to give your daughter the step-by-step as well. And as a bonus, because you guys showed up tonight, if you haven't already, we have a brand new guide that literally lays it out for you. So a lot of the stuff that we're gonna be talking about tonight is in this PDF. It's called Conversations to Create Confidence. We actually give you guys journal prompts to give you exactly what to ask her. Um, obviously, not something that you're gonna sit down and knock out in one night. It's kind of your guide for season or um when you want to bring it and try having that deeper conversation. There's five journal prompts for each section. If you guys have questions about that, we'd be happy to answer. But really, this is about um conversation starters, really to start that awareness. So if you're not aware of what your daughter's mental game is, you can't effectively help her. So, how do we get her to develop these empowering thoughts? This is where we start. We're gonna teach you our parent conversation framework or the three P's. We're gonna tell you how to figure out what your daughter is actually thinking and how she views her mental game and what we've seen in the athletes that we've trained. And then finally, our step-by-step process, we're literally gonna lay it out for you guys on how you can empower her with her mental game. What is the challenge, right? We are faced with this challenge all the time. I'm guessing you guys are here because you want your daughter to succeed. I've seen it in softball groups. Um, you know, we just need the latest bat or the mantra. But why is it? Have you guys ever noticed there are some girls that their parents buy them a new bat, they hardly ever go to the bat in cages, and she's just like crushing it. What is it about that girl? And yet, my daughter is in the cages, she's spending hours, we buy hitting lessons, and yet she struggles. And I wanted to show you if it's everything mental or just everything physical, she starts to think, well, something's wrong with me. And no matter how much physical training you get her, if she's not equipped to deal with her emotions, to deal with her thoughts, to deal with her mental game, that's just even more proof of, well, geez, mom buys me all of these hitting lessons and dad takes me to the cages every other day, and I'm still not successful. So we're just reiterating that proof when really we just need to take a step back and say, who are you as a person? What is your mental game? And give you some tools to work through that. The biggest thing that we want to kind of tell you guys is that through this messiness, through the challenges, there are opportunities. We just have to be willing to set the bat down, set the glove down, and just ask these questions. Um, and everyone hears it all the time. I sound like a broken record, but you'll always hear me say mastering the mental side of softball is the most crucial ingredient for your daughter's success. So, my question for you guys is if your daughter fully trusted your advice and you felt connected, how would that feel for you as a parent? You know, regardless of her performance on the field, what that's going to take is how she wants to be engaged, may not be how we engage her. I can say that a different way. Oftentimes we want to give her the advice, but she's perceiving the advice in a completely wrong manner, not because of what you're saying, but because of the internal dialogue and the stories that she's telling inside of her head. So we're going to show you guys how to flip that script. So I can't talk about this without telling you guys a little bit about my story. Um, that's me underneath the little yellow arrow. Um, I was having a blast my senior year of high school, I was on one of the most competitive teams in our area. We we traveled, gosh, all over the Midwest. My mom was a teacher, my dad was a truck driver, and my whole goal was to play college softball. And I made that happen. I was on top of the world. Um physically, I was dominating, I was a pitcher, but it didn't come without challenges. I did accomplish my dream, but part of my story is this was one of the worst years of my life. I actually signed to play at Dana College. And as you can see, my jersey does not say Dana, it says Concordia. The college that I signed to play at had actually closed down. They were trying to get accredited. Um, I had to start the recruiting process all over again. Two weeks after I had signed at Concordia, the head coach left for another job. Um, we got a new coach, and then he ended up getting fired because it was shady. Um, and we were overworked. We we put in, gosh, over 20 to 30 hours a week as pitchers at weightlifting, at conditioning, at practice, the extra time that we put in. So, what was it about that season that really tested me mentally? Is I went from being a really big fish in a little pond to a really tiny fish in a huge pond of college. And my freshman year, I struggled because I thought that I could just dominate physically and it wasn't happening for me. And then to make matters worse, you can see the ice pack on my shoulder. After my freshman year, I'd go on to have shoulder surgery and have to relearn how to pitch. I could have easily thrown in the towel. And in those moments, I had teammates that said, Why are you still doing this? We have a horrible coach. This program is not going anywhere, you can't pitch. Why are you still doing this? And it was in that moment that I realized it was my mental game that got me through. And now looking back, I had all of these skills that I was using like visualization, um, like self-talk, that I was telling myself I was the greatest. I was visualizing my success. And my senior year, we ended up going to nationals and making it um, we beat one of the top NAIA teams in the nation. And so my whole goal in telling this story is that yes, my challenges are really unique. Your daughter's college may not close down, she may never have shoulder surgery, but it's those moments in life that it is so much bigger than softball. It has nothing to do with their ERA or their batting average. It's can she handle life when it happens, right? And we've talked through girls on coaching calls that oftentimes their biggest struggles have nothing to do with softball. It's divorces, it's virtual learning in the pandemic, it's dealing with coaches, dealing with drama, um, trying to please one parent or the other. And then how that manifests itself on the softball field, it absolutely affects their performance. Um, so again, when I say this is so much bigger than softball, looking back, as we tap into the mental side of the game and researching this, I want your daughters to be able to handle anything life throws their way. And this is what's possible when you have those conversations of, okay, why am I why am I learning about the mental side of the game or why am I paying for these hitting lessons? That's what it can do for your daughter. So I'm passionate about this. We'll keep going on the training. Um, it's gonna get a little cheesy, but I think oftentimes as parents, we we want so bad of, okay, this is bigger than softball. Maybe you guys are like, yes, Coach A B, we get this. It is bigger. And so, how many of you guys have heard of the Oreo method? It's it's basically saying, like, if you have a criticism or you want to coach somebody through something, you sandwich it between praise. So you're like, oh my gosh, Becca, that was awesome. Way to throw to first, but you should have thrown to second. You need to do this differently next time. But that's okay, you got this. That has always felt really cheesy and gross to me, um, corny, if you will. And so what I want to give you guys is the ability for your daughter to take it as not false praise, but genuine, real praise. And we'll talk you guys through that on how we do that. Um, but more specifically is these terms like trust the process or just breathe or the Oreo method. It's not mental skills training. So the first thing that we teach is the three Ps of parent conversation. You guys will get the replay of this. So if you want to take a screenshot, you're more than welcome to, or you can take notes. This is also in the parent guide. So one of the things that we've researched and that I've researched is withholding is a term in psychology where parents are withholding praise, withholding love, and it starts to affect their cognitive development. So if you guys can think back, I'm very much in the parenting stage where I have a three-year-old and he's getting a cookie if he goes potty or picks up his toys. And so when we think about those relationships, your daughter is used to that praise from you. And I think oftentimes we look at the ability to praise our daughter. If we withhold that, it's she's longing for that, but we we don't want to give it to her because we're afraid of the participation trophy or we're afraid of you know creating snowflake daughters. And what I want to remind you guys is you can praise her attitude, you can praise her effort, you can see when she's cheering in the dugout. And oftentimes that needs to be where you guys start. I think so often we start at the very top in our perspective. So, how many times have we gotten in the car? And I've done this as a coach, where I've I've immediately done a post-game where I started saying we should have done this better, you guys needed to do this, um, I saw this, and they immediately shut down because we're leading with our perspective. Really, what we need to do is we need to work them up the stair step. So when we start with praise, we're giving them that I see you, I recognize you, and I love you regardless of your performance on the softball field. And then what you can start to ask them is what's their perspective? What are they seeing? What are they thinking? What are they feeling? And if you want your daughter's eyes to bug out, the one of the first things that you could do when she gets in the car is, hey, how did that feel? What did you experience? And then she's looking at you like, wait, you want me to tell you what I like what I think? And maybe you'll hear things that you never even realized were happening. Um, she may go into the negative and she may go into the positive, but you get to let her start the conversation and guide it. And then from there, the greatest line that you can say is, would you like to know what I think? Write that down, guys. It's huge. Would you like to know what I think? And she can say yeah. And then you give her your perspective or your advice. If she says no, okay, great. And see what happens, see what reaction you get from your daughter. Um, and again, just to reiterate, you may not you may not work up this linearly. You may not go one, two, three every single time. If you're struggling to connect with your daughter right now, you may be in phase one for a while. If you do have a really good connection with your daughter, you may bump up to phase two right away. So the biggest thing is living through this, you know, the three P's of parent conversation. The fourth P is play the parent card. So I think so often, um, especially if you feel like your daughter really wants to take ownership or she's saying, you know, excuses that you know aren't valid, or, you know, why aren't you practicing? You can pull the parent card only after you've reached the other three Ps. So oftentimes we want to be our daughter's best friend, we want to connect with our daughter. But one of the best ways to pull the parent card is if she shuts you down, she gives you the eye roll, maybe she had a bad game, you can say, Great, I get it. Maybe you don't want to talk right now, but I really am interested in talking about this later. When would be a good time? And maybe she says, Mom, tomorrow. Okay, great. I'm gonna bring it up tomorrow. And then she knows, okay, I'm not off the hook. I still need to talk about it. Mom wants to know what my thoughts are, and then you work through this conversation framework again. Sound good. Um, let Coach Becca know if you guys have any questions. How are we doing on the chat, Coach Becca? Doing good? Okay, awesome. So the next piece of this is the timing. So one of the things that I want you guys to think about is when we immediately come off of a game, we have all of these thoughts that we don't want to forget. One of your best resources is the note app on your phone or a blank email. If you're having these things that you notice and you don't want to forget, as a parent, you can easily take notes. I think so often we take advantage of the fact that our daughters are there's an age gap there. And we do pull the parent card and we say, you know, XYZ, we should have done this. But if we start to understand that these young women, they're not fully developed in their brains yet, they're rageholics, just as much as a toddler, we we immediately respond to our emotions. And so one of the things that I would encourage you to think about is how do you react with your partner or spouse when they're fuming? If they have, if they had a bad day at work and they come in and they walk in the door and you can just tell that they are mad. Do you poke the bear or do you give them space? And so if we can do that to a peer or an adult, give that space and time for your daughter and just let them know, hey, we can talk about this tomorrow. Same thing that you would do when you approach a high pressure situation at work. You know, what notes would you take? What information do you need? And what space would you need to allow? And then more specifically, you could open up a conversation with your daughter of how you like to be approached. I think sometimes as um as parents, we forget they don't know what we experience. So you can bring in anecdotes or experiences that you've had where you can say, hey, when I've had a bad day at work, I don't want to talk about it. Or maybe you could say, man, when I do have a bad day at work, like I just want somebody to talk through it. Is that, are we similar or are we different? And then you're not talking about her performance, you're talking about how she likes to be communicated with. And again, she's feeling validated, she's feeling heard, and then you're sneakily setting up your own process for how she wants to be communicated with. Sound good? Awesome. So the next part is where it gets really fun. This is the second section that we wanted to teach you guys is her vision of how she views her mental game. Um, I think for some of you guys, mental toughness and the mental game may seem like a bit of a buzzword. Um, it's a relatively new. It is my dream and my hope that five years from now there will be mental skills coaches, just like there are hitting coaches. Um, Coach Becca can probably attest to this too. 10 years ago, hitting coaches weren't a thing. And now everybody has a hitting coach. Um, this is my goal for the mental side of the game. So the first step is awareness. So, one of the ways I like to think about this is a bomb. Your daughter's mental game is like a ticking time bomb. It's not a matter of if it's going to explode. We know that it's going to explode. It's trying to figure out what those triggers are. We cannot diffuse this bomb for her. You've probably tried, and it just explodes it faster. She has to unlock the codes to her bomb. So if you guys can think about this ticking time bomb, pressure, right? How many times in the movies where there's like three seconds left on the clock and you know this bomb is going to explode? And the only one that can diffuse it is her. The mental side of the game and mental skills can help give her how do I diffuse this bomb before it even counts down to three seconds. Um, and again, the one thing I want to reiterate is we can't do this even as mental skills coaches. We are equipping them, we're empowering them with the plans, we're empowering them with the toolboxes to diffuse their own bombs. So um it's kind of it's frustrating because it's we can't control the fight or flight response. We can't control emotions, but we can control how we respond to them. So um CBT theory, you know, psychology, counseling, the worst thing that we could say to a kid is don't feel emotions. You're not supposed to be emotional, or how dare you have those thoughts? No, these thoughts are normal. You're human. It's what you do with them that matters. So I hope if that makes sense, can you guys give me like a yes or like a thumbs up in the chat? Um, I think that's the biggest mistake that I see in the coaching world is when we tell our daughters to just relax or, you know, it's calm down. It almost makes it worse because you're you're basically saying that her feelings and her thoughts are invalid. So, what does this look like for your daughter? Confidence is a big deal to girls. I don't know if you guys have noticed this. Men and boys, they are already confident, overconfident, and then the results happen. Women and girls are flipped. So they need to feel confident, act confident, look confident in order to get the results. So one of the things that we talk about is as they become more self-aware, yes, they are maturing, and yes, they're going through preteen and teen years, but their confidence drops. So this is something that we want to address, and softball is the vehicle to do that. So as we talk about it, the flip side of this is okay, great, softball is this vehicle to increase her confidence. But if it's no longer fun for her because it's just not fun, um, this stat is crazy to me. 70% of kids in the US stop playing organized sports by the age of 13. Now, another way to look at this stat is it probably also pertains to specialization. So if your daughter's a multi-sport athlete, eventually she's gonna start to choose, hey, what's worth my time and what's worth my mental stamina to continue. Oftentimes they're gonna choose softball or they're gonna choose basketball and drop the other sports. So that also plays into the factor. But talking about confidence and opening up those conversations and saying, hey, I get it, you want to feel confident, let's get you there. That's kind of what she's thinking is I have to feel confident first. So when you instill these conversations with her again, using that guide, you're giving her that tool ahead of time. So on the flip side of that, we talk about triggers. And Coach Becca loves this. We always talk about when we coach our athletes, we have to get to the root of what it is that's causing these fears. So I'm gonna outline the three fears that we talk about. And through all the athletes that we've worked with, we've boiled it down to three fears. And the first one is external fears. So these are fears like performing for a coach or um, you know, high school and game changer and trophies, all of these external fears of can I perform? Can I perform to mom's expectations? Can I perform to coaches' expectations? Um, we hear this one a lot. This is like Buku, we hear this more than any other comment. They do not want to let their teammates down. They're more concerned about letting their peers down. So that's that's our external fear. The internal fear is everything to do with their identity and themselves. So I'm not good enough. I'm never gonna get this. Carol Dweck talks about growth mindset. The people with internal fears are constantly comparing themselves to their peers. They're saying, Who am I to do this? I suck, and they don't believe in themselves. This can manifest itself a lot in school and identity as well. So, again, if it's happening on the softball field, it's happening elsewhere. And then the final fear, this one we get a lot too, is physical fears. My daughter's afraid of getting hit by a ball. Um, or my daughter's afraid of sliding. She's afraid of an injury or a reoccurring injury. And that's very valid too, and can absolutely affect her performance. So when you guys talk with your daughters, you can pop it in the chat. You guys probably already have a pretty good idea. Just pop it in the chat. Is your daughter an E, an I, or a P? Maybe she's a combo, maybe she's an IP, maybe she's an EP. But if you're looking at this going, oh my gosh, I actually really don't know what is causing, what is triggering my daughter's fear, you can start to have those conversations to see, okay, so she's afraid of letting her coaches down. And then you're gonna know how to navigate that conversation. But if you don't know why she's tensing up, some of your daughters may tense in moments of pressure. Um, some of them may get overly emotional, some of them may pull back their athletic ability, they may not try as hard on some really big plays. Finding those triggers and getting to the root of those fears can do a lot in those moments and in those conversations. So, Coach Becca, what what do we have in the chat? Do we have lots of E's, I's, Ps? Uh, we have a couple, we have a lot of P's. We have all across the board. We got a little bit of everything coming in. Yeah. And that's fun too, because then you guys can start to see, okay, there's this doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with your daughter. Plenty of our athletes that we've worked with deal with all of these fears, or they'll move through fears. And then as they get into different levels, especially the high school level, um, external fears really start to ramp up, especially as they move up to, you know, like if your daughter's going from 10 U to 12U, or she's going from class B to class A, um, external fears are huge, huge, huge, huge. What I want you guys to think about is, okay, yes, we're starting to see the power of the mental game. What could it do for your daughter if you realized, okay, maybe we just need to set the glove down and have this conversation. It is really tempting to go through this workshop and learn all of these amazing nuggets for your daughter. But if you don't do anything with it, where's she going to be three months from now? Versus if you guys commit to this, you could do the conversation guides. You could commit to, you know, maybe once a week, you just kind of sneak in some of those conversation starters. Hey, I have a question for you. Boom, hit them with a conversation starter and just see if you can address what their triggers are. So if you guys can commit to the this today of just growing the mental game, this is why we do what we do. This is huge for us, especially because we know that there are so many parents out there that um it's easy to blame outside factors. We get politics a lot, we get drama a lot, or man, maybe my daughter's just not cut out for it. Yes, she is absolutely cut out for it. She just needs to see that it's fun and that she's totally capable. So we do this because we care so much more about who she is outside of softball. Um, but that can't happen if we're constantly in the cages. So it's going to take putting the glove down, which is kind of polarizing. It's it's opposite of what is gonna happen. Like literally what I could tell you guys to try is the next time that you're trying to get her to practice and she gives you the eye roll, or maybe she's like, I don't really feel like practicing. She comes to you with her glove and you say, Hey, for today's practice, grab her glove, set it on the kitchen counter. We're just gonna talk. Let's go get smoothies. Take her to Starbucks, take her to, you know, jumbo juice or whatever juice place she likes. And you can say, Hey, we're just gonna talk mental game. Would that be something you'd want to talk about? And then you could show her, hey, I really care about what it is that you think. Um, and then that pressure is also relieved for her to physically perform. Again, it doesn't have to be an everyday thing, but even 15 minutes on the mental side of the game can do far more than hours in a cage. So the last part of this is showing you guys how we teach mental skills training and using it as a vehicle to have them see, okay, I'm not alone. Other people struggle with self-doubt. How do I start seeing success? So these are some of our warriors that we meet with on Zooms. Um, it cracks me up on Sunday. I think we even had Ashlyn's dad on. So, um, and you guys may recognize some of these people as well. When we start to talk about, okay, how do we teach this and why do we teach this? When we teach this, this isn't just motivational quotes. This isn't just feel good, patting them on the back. I'm MPM certified by Brian Kane. I don't know if you guys are familiar with Brian Kane. He's one of the most renowned mental skills coaches in the baseball and softball world. He was actually trained by Ken Ravizza. So, again, this is backed by research. So, again, one of the things that Wanted to talk about is you're probably thinking, okay, great coach. My daughter is actually pretty confident. And the reason that I show these pictures is Jordan is holding the district championship trophy. Jordan is actually one of the girls that I first started teaching this to. And her mom thought, well, Jordan is great, like super crazy confident. She's super athletically talented. And she was coming up on her freshman year of high school softball. And what we found out was Jordan was secretly the most negative to herself. Some of the self-talk that she was telling herself would literally break your heart. I think her mom even called me one night and said, Oh my gosh, Amanda, I had no idea. You know, you've been giving her lessons for years. I had no idea either. And it was just on the softball field. She was fine when she was in gymnastics. Again, two completely different competing arenas, but she didn't feel like she majored up in softball. So again, just by looking at your daughter, you may think that she's confident. Again, having these conversations can be really powerful. Some of these other girls, um, Mia's in the yellow helmet, she's out of New York. One of the things that I talk about with her is when she first came to me, her mom said she's small, she's never gonna get recruited. Um, she doesn't think she's ever gonna major up to her teammates. And it absolutely transformed her and her daughter's relationship and the way that she viewed softball. She's actually in the middle of the recruiting process right now and just switched to a showcase team. So, and I show Reagan with the redhead band, she is, she just turned 10. And so, and Coach Becca is on this call. We talked about this on Sunday's call. One of the questions that I get all the time too is, well, when do I start talking to my daughter about this? And the question that Coach Becca brought to me was, Well, okay, you teach pitching. When would you teach a young girl how to pitch? When would you start? Would you wait until they're 12? No, we would never wait to teach a girl how to hit, run, pitch. And so if we can teach them these mental tools, these mental skills now, there's really no wrong time to start having these conversations with your daughter. When she plugs into our mental skills training, when she plugs into this community, what you'll find is the greatest takeaway that these girls come away with is I had no idea that somebody else had the same thoughts that I did. They think that they're alone in their thoughts. They think that they're the only one that struggles or has a little voice inside their head that says, I suck. Um, and it's so far from the truth. When we talk about the alternative, one of the things that I like to share is whether it's mental skills training for your daughter, whether it's you walking her through this process, we're gonna show you the skills that we teach inside of our program. Is it worth seeing her continue to struggle? And I hope that you guys would say, no, it's not worth it. What is it gonna take? What can we teach her? And oftentimes we don't want to throw everything at her. So when we talk about hitting, you would never send your daughter to a hitting coach, or pitching is probably a better analogy, where we say, okay, we're gonna teach her a curve, ball a drop, ball a screw, ball a rise, ball a rise, screw, slinger, blah, blah, blah, right? She would get extremely overwhelmed. So the beautiful thing about mental skills training is we don't know what is going to be most effective for your daughter. She may really latch on to visualization, or she may love self-talk or a grounding technique. All of these techniques, when we start learning them and you start teaching them to your daughter, or you work with us inside our programs, they're gonna start to see what works best for them. And we don't even know that until we start working with athletes. So when you guys think about this, if I'm gonna focus on the physical side of the game versus the mental side of the game, the key thing is it doesn't have to be this big monumental, hey, there's something wrong with you. Let's talk this out. It's hey, I would go to a lifting coach to get stronger. I would go to a hitting coach to be a better hitter. I would go to a pitching coach to pitch better. But on the flip side of that, there are plenty of mental skills coaches out there that, ah, I'm gonna teach you the big six, and we'll talk about this here. So the three phases that we teach, and this is what sets us apart from other resources out there, and we want you guys to know this too, is we could immediately go into phase two, which is game strategies. Where we like to start is who is she as a person? What is her support system? What are her goals? And why does she play softball? And so if we look at defining her identity, she knows, okay, this is so much more than softball. The way that I describe that is this is kind of like her armor. So if we're thinking a warrior, um we posted to Facebook too, kind of describing this. This is her armor. So if she's fully geared up in her warrior armor, things like negative comments from coaches, drama from teammates, um, to just bounce off of her because she knows and can stand with full authority in who she is as a person. She knows that you love her as her parents, she knows why she plays, and she has goals that she's going after. Once we address who she is, then we can absolutely move into game strategies. And then phase three, we teach living a warrior mindset. So, how do we actually apply this, remember it, continue to grow that confidence because it's not a quick fix. Um, so even if she does have the tools, she has to be able to use them. So again, you guys have access to this as a replay as well. This is everything that we teach inside of our program. So it's how fast do you want to go? We lay this out step by step. So we teach support system and how she has relationships with you as her parents. So just as much as we're training you on tonight's call of the parent-to-daughter relationship, we're teaching her the daughter-to-parent relationship. Then we talk about identity, who she is as a person outside of softball. What does that identity pie look like? Um, you know, who is she? Is she a daughter? Is she a Christian? Is she a huskard nut, right? Does she like to bake? Is she an artist? And taking that pressure off of softball alone. And then we talk about her why. Simon Senec always talks about, you know, finding that why and what fuels you. And then obviously we talk about goal setting. So this is phase one of what we teach. This is relatively unique in that not a lot of mental skills coaches will teach this. They'll go immediately into phase two, which is what we call the big six. So if you guys are familiar with the mental skills world, you've probably heard things like self-talk and breathing and visualization, absolutely routines. We talk about marching butterflies, failure recovery, huge for softball. Just because our sport is so cruel, we talk about basketball, we talk about volleyball, we talk about tennis, it's a volley sport. So they're getting multiple chances. Your daughter could be playing left field and maybe get one chance all game. What happens when she blows that one chance? So, and then module 10, we talk about grounding. Again, you could start teaching this to your daughter. You guys can absolutely start building these routines. We teach this step by step inside of our programs as well. But these are what we call game activation skills. The analogy that I like to use is she's driving down the road. If she gets a flat tire, if her bomb starts going off, does she have the codes? Does she have the tools to fix the flat tire? That's what these are going to give her. So when the pressure rises, self-talk is huge. But you can't wait until that pressure happens to prep that. She has to know how. Again, if there were more dads on the call, they would probably be laughing. Please teach your daughters how to change a tire before she needs to change a tire. Don't that happen to me? My dad had to talk me through how to change a tire on the interstate. It's about equipping them before the big moment. And then lastly, what does it look like to keep this confidence? What does it look like to keep these skills? Giving her problem solving and giving her leadership. Because if she can't apply this to other areas of her life, this confidence can help her in the classroom. It can help her with relationships. And again, one day she's going to hang up her cleats. Is she going to be able to use what she's learned in the sport for her own good? And that's what the mental side can give your daughter. This is literally step by step everything that we teach inside of our program. This is the exciting opportunity that we give. You guys can use everything that we taught you today with your daughter. We didn't feel like it would be fair to equip you as parents with all of this amazing information and then not give you a resource to continue on. All right. So if you've made it this far, you know that this was from a parent workshop where we opened up enrollment into the Fearless Warrior program. The good news is that because you've listened to this whole episode and you have made it to the end, I have a very special surprise for you. If this is something that you're serious about for your athlete and you want to get started right away, I have a very special link. I have a$200 credit you can apply to your program purchase. If you go to our main website, the program is available for$495. But with this special link, you can apply$200 towards enrollment, making the program$295 today. We also have payment plans. This is the program that has helped over 800 families give their athlete the confidence she's been longing for, the ability to bounce back from slumps, to believe in hard work, and play like you know she can. You ready? You can access this$200 credit in two ways. One is when you download the parent guide, you will get an automatic email from us with that download and your$200 in credit. That can be found at FearlessWarrior Program dot com forward slash CTCC. And the second way is to use the show notes below. There's a second link directly to the program page, and it has all the information of what's included, times, details, the skills we teach, and more. That can be found at FearlessWarrior Program.com forward slash join dash 2025. Give me 90 days, and I guarantee you'll have other parents asking you what your daughter did this off season because she's smiling ear to ear and crushing it out there. This is my way of saying thank you for listening to this parent training and this podcast. I appreciate you, and I'm excited to work with your athlete if you decide to join Fearless Warriors. Till next time, I'll see you on the pod.

Contributor

Amanda Schaefer

Host