The Fearless Warrior Podcast

114: Journaling Is The Most Effective Way To Get Started With Mental Skills

• Amanda Schaefer

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It's Thanksgiving week, and what better way to celebrate than to explore how gratitude and journaling build real mental skills. Coach Sarah and I map out a three-step process to helping your athlete get their thoughts out of their head and onto paper! So that they can get clarity, feel better, and reflect on their mental skills to be successful!

Episode Highlights:
• Gratitude as a brain-based performance edge
• Journaling as the simplest entry to mental skills
• How to brain dump, reflect, and find the right mental skills
• Learning how to evaluate their performance with less criticism and more
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The Fearless Warrior Mental Game Plan
A Journaling Guide for Athletes to Create a Pre-Game Mental Checklist and Post-Game Evaluation

Download HERE: https://www.fearlesswarriorprogram.com/gameplan
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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 AB, a mental performance coach, admission, 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. Hey, hey, it's Thanksgiving week. Happy Thanksgiving, fearless fam. We thought it would be really fun to do a podcast about the power of gratitude and journaling. But before we dive in, I wanted to make sure you get to know Sarah. Sarah Lucas is our community manager and she's here with me live, which is really cool because this very podcast you are listening to, she organizes the whole thing from finding experts and guests to editing, following up, finding images, you name it. She's done it. And the podcast is what it is because of you. And I'm so thankful for all the work that you do. And she's blushing because she likes staying behind the scenes. But a little bit about Sarah. She's a coach and she's our community manager. She's in Georgia with her family and pups as a former softball player and multi-sport athlete, now turned mental performance coach. She graduated from Adams State University with her master's in applied sports psychology and will seek her CMPC certification, which is also a really big accomplishment. When she's not working hard behind the scenes with Team Fearless or coaching athletes, you can find her tweaking her sourdough recipe in her kitchen, which by the way, she was doing this morning before we hit record. You still need to ship me a delicious loaf of bread, by the way. Sarah, I know you love what you do, but it's to bring you on the other side of the mic. So I know I'm being really cheesy. Welcome to the pod. Thank you so much for having me. Cheesy's the best way to go. Yeah. Do you ever add things to your sourdough loaves? Do you like add cheese or jalapenos or not yet?

SPEAKER_01:

I'm sure my husband would love that though. I was just talking to my friend. I think I need to try like a cinnamon sugar loaf next.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, sounds so good. I just saw a recipe for instead of making cinnamon rolls for Christmas, you can make cinnamon roll facasha, which facasha is like the cheap way out, the easy way out. Sarah does like some intricate. She sends us pictures of her like fancy bread scoring in our Team Fearless chat.

SPEAKER_01:

So I need to try the turkey loaf. Have you seen those? I have designed them in turkeys. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it's Thanksgiving week. And so Sarah and I were talking about this, and I thought it would be really fun to have a conversation. This week's episode is going to be a little bit shorter, but if you have a pen and paper, we thought it would be really fun to hit record. The title of this, if you're listening, you've you've heard the intro, but journaling is the most effective way to get started with mental skills. I think sometimes we get a little intimidated on, oh, Coach A B, you know, Coach Sarah, what are mental skills? How do they work? We don't have time to go through the program, or maybe you can't afford the program at the moment. And we get it. We want you guys to have resources where we have our conversations to create competence resource, which is kind of a parent guide. We've never made a player guide, mostly because we're working with athletes inside our one-to-one calls and inside our program. And so I thought it would be really fun to dive in and just talk about journaling and mental skills. So let's start out with a fun one. Sarah, what are your favorite mental skills to use and to coach?

SPEAKER_01:

Um, I personally love self-talk. I that was the first skill I ever learned. And ironically, I learned it to help me in school. So I it wasn't even sports related. But I guess like when I was in high school, my coach did teach us like self-talk, and she wanted us to like ride on our gloves. And so I have, I should have brought my glove, but I have a ton of different like affirmations on my glove. So like if I am struggling, like on the field and whatnot, I was a third baseman in high school. I also played second base and outfield and everything under the sun except for pitchers a true utility. That's right. But I also played volleyball, basketball. So I guess I had a little bit of that as well. But I also do love journaling and I do enjoy meditation too, just really focusing like on the present moment.

SPEAKER_00:

Which is hard. And we get it as a mama, like you and I are living very parallel lives. And I think the thing I want to point out is when we're talking about mental skills, a lot of the times we get so heavy hitting into sport, sport, sport. And I think it's really cool. You you see the comments inside the Fearless Warrior program when athletes have that light bulb moment of, hey, I use this technique when I was taking a test. I use this when I was studying, I use this, you know, we're changing relationships. I think it's it goes so much further beyond sports, which if you're on our email list and you're listening to the podcast, I sound like a broken record, but it is so much bigger than softball.

SPEAKER_01:

So yeah, absolutely. I've even used it to like help me with interviews because there was a time like where I wasn't getting the job that I wanted because I thought I wanted to go into physical therapy, but that's a conversation for another time. But there was one instance where I had to write down different affirmations for myself, like through self-talk, saying, like, I am confident, I am smart, I am strong, I know what to talk about in this interview. And then I did get the job. So, you know, obviously not every time it happens, like you do self-talk that you get what you want, but it is a powerful tool. And I walked away from that interview feeling good about myself, whether it was, you know, the thing that I was meant to do or not.

SPEAKER_00:

So I love that because it's a real example of I honestly believe that sports and mental skills, it's it's kind of an unfair advantage. What you're talking about, I love too, is the the deep-rooted science and understanding of we're not just slapping affirmations on a piece of paper, they're rooted in identity and they're rooted in proof, right? Of like, well, why are you confident? You do know what you're talking about. As a former AD, right? Like you have your masters, you have so much experience. And I've seen your contributions to Team Fearless, and just it's just so cool. So you also don't have to be the loudest person in the room. I'm making Sarah really uncomfortable. You don't have to be the loudest person in the room. Sarah is like the bedrock of our team, just your quiet confidence. And I don't I don't think half the projects would get done if we didn't have you in the, you know, leading us in the the team chat. So well, thank you.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I like I like working hard and honestly, like sports are a great contributor to that. I wouldn't be who I am today without sports, but I also know that gratitude has led me to where I am today. And I will say, like, it's all God too. Like, I can't express like how I don't know, I just wouldn't be where I am today without sports, without the Lord and without Amanda. So I'm just thankful that I'm part of the fearless fam.

SPEAKER_00:

That's awesome. So give everyone kind of a behind the scenes. We've talked about this. What are some of your journal practices? You know, how are you prioritizing time for prayer? What are your routines look like for journaling?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, absolutely. So it's not perfect, and I don't necessarily do it every day, but I do see the value in it too. You know, it's whether that's waking up early before everybody else or doing it when everybody goes to bed. It might even be like just trying to find a moment like during lunch where I just need to write down some things, but I do journaling by just honestly like talking to God. Like, I'll write a prayer. A lot of time we think that prayer has to be super complicated, but really it's just a conversation with God, just saying, like, hey God, how are you doing today? Like, I know that sounds silly, but at the same time, it's like just giving like the hardships that I have going on my mind, or even just saying, like, hey God, thank you so much for my house. Thank you so much for providing the food that we have. Like, thank you for my job and the ability to be able to like use my talents, you know, but it's definitely not perfect. I, as Amanda knows, I am a perfectionist. I don't believe that there are recovering perfectionists because I think it's a lifelong learning process where some days are better than others. But and I know journaling's not for everybody, but at the same time, like writing down your thoughts is a great way to live out your your actions too. And it's not just like thinking in your head, but you're writing down what you need to say.

SPEAKER_00:

And this is really cool because a couple of weeks ago I sat down and had a very similar conversation with Ashley Burkhart Eagle. And we were talking about the brain pathways and the science of gratitude, which I kind of pulled this over onto a sticky note because I had a feeling this would come up. But again, Thanksgiving, we talk about gratitude. And I think sometimes it gets a bad rap of like, oh, write down what you're thankful for, and we put it on a turkey or a leaf, and it's like a craft project from second grade. But when we talk about the science of gratitude, it's really fascinating because it's kind of like every time you tap into gratitude, your brain gives you a hit of dopamine, which is like a tiny neurological high five. And if you're interested, Sarah, we can link it. The we can go so deep and so long. Ashley Burkhart and I talk about the science of all of this on her podcast. So maybe we'll link that when the cleats come off podcast episode. But basically, when you start practicing gratitude as a skill, it becomes a habit. And the more you practice it, the more your brain wants to engage in gratitude. And then it becomes a loop where you're firing these chemicals in your brain that are creating these reward loops, right? Where if you have a bad day, getting it onto paper. And we Sarah and I outlined this for you. We have three steps for you on how to do this. So at the beginning of this, when I said grab a pen and paper, Coach Sarah and I are literally going to lay this out for you. But it in these studies of gratitude, they have found that it literally starts changing the brain, you know, makeup. Our prefrontal cortex is where these pathways are kind of stored. And especially for preteens and teens, your brain is still developing. So if you're a parent listening to this or you're a teenager, or maybe you're like, hey, I want to start journaling too. It is never too late to start to build these mental muscles, build these pathways. And the more you do it, again, it's just like prayer too. The first time you do it, whether it's journaling or prayer or any mental skill for that matter, right? It's gonna feel hard. It's gonna feel awkward. It's the same thing as if you picked up a tennis racket and you've never played tennis. The first time you do something is always gonna be hard, but I promise it gets easier. And Sarah, you've kind of held me accountable too because you have those habits and I want to be better at those. How do you how do you make sure that you get this into your day? You're a busy mom, you're you know, working for Team Fearless, you've got other things on your plate. You mentioned getting up early, but like how what's your mindset as far as have to versus get to? How are you squeezing this in?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think a lot of it is just shifting your perspective too. So I have a one-year-old daughter. She is learning how to walk. She's not great at it, but she we're getting there. So just even taking her outside. We don't go outside very often. For those of you that live in the south, we have fireats. Um, so I don't like to walk in the grass as much. However, I am from the Pacific Northwest, so I miss the nice soft grass that we have, but I don't go outside very often because it's too hot and humid and all the things, but because we are starting to cool down a little bit, I've been trying to take my daughter for walks just in our driveway. And just seeing the life through her eyes, she'll pick up a leaf and just like go, ugh, like show me with her, like, look. So, even just like the changing of the seasons, like the leaves are changing color, like the beauty of the reds and the oranges and the yellows, and everything has a season. And so, like, no matter what you're going through, whether you're in a difficult season, like in a rut, in something going on in your life, somebody passing away, losing a job. There's so many things that we go through hardships, but we always come out of those too, because when spring comes, there's new life and there's new flowers and there's leaves on the trees, and you can just tell that there's new life. So I think just viewing the world through my daughter's eyes, like, and it's not about me, it's about somebody else. And so um, I really think shifting our perspective and looking outward to helping others. I think gratitude also runs into kindness too, and just really stopping focusing on ourselves. And I think sometimes we get this misconception that mental skills like are all about self, but at the same time, they're also about others and serving others. So that's something that like I love tying into gratitude, is because it's not just about us, it's about our family, it's about our teammates, it's about our friends, our coworkers, and so many others.

SPEAKER_00:

That's a really great segue because I did want to talk about self-awareness and this idea of when you know yourself and we have this tendency to get in our head, we're going internal and we're we have we're human, right? We have worries. And I would also make a case for when you're frustrated, when you're in a season of grief, when you're in a season of loss, that's when you can lean into these mental skills even more. Where, you know, it's helped me through a lot of hard times too, but you cannot change what you are not aware of. And so journaling is going to get your thoughts on to a page. And let's just dive in on what we had planned of the three steps. So this is great. If you are feeling aggravated, if you're feeling frustrated, it could be a micro moment, like a bad game or a bad lesson, or it could be a macro moment of like, I've just had a bad day or a bad week. When you find yourself in this moment. And again, it doesn't just have to be for bad moments, it can be for great moments, but we'll get to that. But for now, let's just use it in the context of when would be a great time to journal? I'm noticing I'm feeling aggravated. Great. Step one, get it out of your head. So we recommend on paper, but you can also do this with someone in your support system. So a couple notes on this. One, if you're a parent, please listen and let them get it out. So if your athlete is wanting to get things off their chest, get out of their head, it's really hard, but please try to be as quiet and let them get it all out without criticism, without trying to fix their problems. Sometimes they just need someone to listen. If you're a parent that has a hard time doing that, then a pen and paper would be great for this. Athletes on the flip side, please communicate with your parents that you just need a minute to get it all out. And you don't want them to interrupt you. It's okay to communicate this and kind of set that boundary. And then the third option is to work with a mental performance coach like Sarah and I, who can help you get this sorted out out of your brain. Sarah, I don't know what you do with your athletes on your calls, but I also notice I have a tendency to interrupt. So I'll say, okay, set a timer for two minutes. I just want you to write without having to tell me as your coach, we're not going to coach right now. You're just going to dump it onto a page. So, you know, if you're listening to the podcast right now, this is how I work with my clients and exactly what I would do on a one-to-one call. Sarah, do you have a different technique or a perspective on that?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think for me, I really have to catch myself when I'm thinking ahead. So if an athlete says something and I had to really work on this when I was in my masters, and we went over a season where it's like, are you a good listener? And I'm like, Of course I'm a good listener. Like, that's why I'm in this field. Like, but then I would catch myself when athletes would be talking or, you know, coaches or whoever that I would try and think ahead and try and think of questions. But, you know, that's that's actually not being a good active listener. Like, you really need to stop yourself. And so I think for me, I really try and let the athletes like guide the conversation and try not to focus like on what I need to say next and just letting what the athlete has to say take over.

SPEAKER_00:

I love that you said that as well because I also have that same assumption of like, I am absolutely a good listener. But the reality is, I know that I'm not. And so one of the things that I'll also add to this is mirroring. I think we've talked about mirroring on the podcast, but sometimes your greatest asset as a coach is to mirror back what you heard. And a mirror, in a reflection of a mirror, a mirror doesn't ever add anything or take anything away. A mirror just gives it back exactly how it sees it. So, you know, if Sarah came to me and said, Oh my gosh, I'm just exhausted. I stayed up late last night, I had a bad lesson, and I just am feeling really frustrated. And I would say something to the extent of, oh, I totally get it. You stayed up late last night, you're tired, you know, you had a bad lesson. I get it, right? All I did was repeat back. And I'm not fixing anything. I'm just, is this what I heard you say? And right now, subconsciously, Sarah's Sarah's nodding. She's like, Yeah, coach, they just want to be heard. So that's step one. Get it. You got to get it out of your head, or it's gonna keep spiraling. It's gonna be that mental tornado. And so you can notice this too as a parent or a coach. If you notice that your athlete is kind of in a frustrated tornado, hand them, hand them pen and paper. Say, get it out, get it out of your head, right? I'll even say this too when the when I work with teams, this is kind of funny. When I work with teams, sometimes I'll have them do worksheets or activities. And in order to gain their trust, I'll say, look, guys, you're not turning this into me. After this practice, you can go burn this, rip it up, dump it into a dumpster. I don't care. This is your time to get it on paper. Sometimes that helps too. All right. So what now? We just got all of these frustrating thoughts onto paper, or you've had a conversation. Step two is to reflect. Here's here are the questions that I would ask you next. Does it make sense? So you're looking at this paper. Does it make sense why you feel this way? So yeah, I'm tired, or yeah, I'm frustrated. A good example is a strikeout. Sarah, how do you feel after a strikeout?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, it doesn't feel good. But so I wish I had mental skills, obviously, in high school, but I am one of the worst. I'm my own self-critic, as we all are. But yeah, it does not feel good. And as all of you know, whether it's a missed strikeout or you miss a serve for volleyball or you miss that game-winning free throw or whatever it is, like those moments do not feel good.

SPEAKER_00:

And it would almost be more weird if you missed a serve or you struck out and you came back and were like, woo-hoo, life is awesome. Be like, then you don't care about your sport. It makes sense, right? So, question one is does it make sense why you feel this way? Yes or no? The second question I ask is, is this a normal response to your situation? So for example, we'll just stick with the strikeout. If you are frustrated by a strikeout, that is a normal response, right? Now, if you are hucking your helmet and like breaking your bat, probably not a normal response. But for the most part, in coaching calls, anything we look at, I'm here to humanize them and say, hey, this is a normal response. You're human. I don't expect you to be perfect, polished, positive after something bad happens. We're wired to respond to negative scenarios. Just as much as, you know, like if you burned your finger making your turkey for Thanksgiving, what's a normal human response? Pain, owl, frustrated, angry, you know? And so I think sometimes when it is in uh conjunction with sports, parents, we tend to do this of we try to diminish their feelings because we we want to snip the body language, we want to snip those big emotions. And if we say, okay, she's frustrated, is this a normal response? Absolutely. The same way is you know, you got a one-year-old, I've got toddlers. If they fall down and skin their knee and they're crying, normal response. But what do we try to say? It's okay, it's okay, it's okay. Take it off. Don't cry.

SPEAKER_01:

I think that we all forget too, like as adults, sometimes we were once kids, and so we forget what it was like to be a teenager or, you know, to be a kid. Like, okay, what I get frustrated when my daughter is putting food on the floor or like tossing food on the floor. And sometimes I just have to take a deep breath and not freak out. I think maybe sometimes I am a clean freak, but I just don't want her throwing food all over. But we forget about those moments. We all have to learn. We all have to learn how to eat with a fork or a spoon or drink a cup of water. And you know, even teenagers, like, I think sometimes we forget that we what we were going through as teenagers, and that can be hard. And, you know, we're sometimes thinking about boys, or we're thinking about like grades, and those are very real things, or like even, you know, our whole world might be sports at that point, but just remembering that we were once in their shoes, we need to sometimes put on that lens again. Like, okay, what what am I what is what are they going through?

SPEAKER_00:

So I love that you brought that in because that has transformed how I have parented. Is this what a seven-year-old would do? Is this what a four-year-old would do? Is this what a three-year-old would do? Like those are my ages right now. But also flipping that and saying, okay, she's uh 12, she's 14, she's 16, she's not 22, she's not 32, right? Of like their brains are still developing, they're still testing boundaries, their risk take like literally a teenager's brain is wired to take risks so that they can form those walls and those boundaries to see how far they can push. Teenagers are supposed to push your parents. So let me know. I'll let you know when I have teenagers, but as for right now, we're not there yet. So, question number one is does it make sense why you feel this way? Question number two is is this a normal response to your situation or to their age? And three, I love this one, especially on coaching calls. Would anyone else in this situation feel the same way? So sometimes I'll take it a step further and I'll say, hey Sarah, like who is an athlete that you follow or love to watch, or you know, someone who's really good in your sport? Oof.

SPEAKER_01:

That's so hard. I honestly like I kind of fangirl over the people that we have on mentorship calls. Like, I think it's so cool that we just had Amanda Lorenz. I'm like, I watch her on TV, and that's even as an adult. So like if you're listening to this and you're a teenager, you're the adults still like think it's cool. Okay. I know.

SPEAKER_00:

And we're getting older. So if you don't know who the greats are, of like, I would name Jenny Finch, Natasha Watley, like Dot Richardson, like some of the game's most prolific players. And so you just named Amanda Lorenz. And so if we were on a coaching call, I would say, okay, Sarah, you love watching Amanda Lorenz play. Well, let me ask you this. Do you think she ever feels frustrated? Do you think she strikes out? She's one of the best hitters in our game. She's now a professional player. Does she strike out? I'm like, yeah. Do you think she likes striking out? Right. And and you'll start to shift that in your athlete's mind of like, when we start to see that other people experience the same situation and the same feeling, it also starts to normalize it. So, you know, have them pick somebody, or would anyone else in this situation feel the same way? You could also flip it and say, as a parent, hey, if I was in your shoes, and let's use a life example. Let's say your teen is struggling with bullying or you know, a friend group that's kind of excluding her, sometimes just saying as a parent, you know what? If this happened to me, I'd kind of be sad about it too. That makes sense. It totally makes sense, right? So again, zooming back out, this second step is really powerful because if all we ever do is journal, but we don't ever talk about it or we don't ever sort it out. This reflection piece is really, really awesome because what it starts to do is it starts to rewire the brain. We're taking this stimulus, we're taking these triggers, we're getting them out, and now we're just walking them through it, not by fixing it for them. We're just asking really good questions. So I'm gonna repeat these again. One, does it make sense why you feel this way? Two, is this a normal response to your situation? And three, would anyone else in this situation feel the same way? So powerful. Do you have anything to add on those?

SPEAKER_01:

It's just so good. So many good nuggets.

SPEAKER_00:

Good nuggets.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Which I we should just get our we need to get this onto a sheet. We'll we'll talk about this at the end because I know Sarah's gonna ask me. All right, step three. So we've got it on to paper, we've got it out of our head. Step two, we've reflected on it, we've kind of gotten curious, we've asked questions. Step three is mental skills, which is what we do. So, based on what you uncover in your journal by talking with someone or in your support system, you should now have a better understanding of what you need. So Sarah and I wrote down some examples. So one thing you might uncover is wow, everything I wrote down, I realized that my self-talk is really negative. Okay, what's the mental skill? We would recommend learning how to reframe them with the mental skill of self-talk. So, with reframing, we teach the pop method. It's my own method inside the Fearless Warrior program, where we see this negative thought and we know immediately how to shift it. And again, with time, when you practice these, you'll get better and better at them. The next one we wrote down was big emotions. Do you want to talk about those?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, absolutely. So, are your big emotions clouding your decisions? So I think a great example is either throwing that bat or throwing that helmet on the ground or throwing your glove, right? You need the mental skill of grounding techniques coming back into the body. So really taking a deep breath after you're feeling those big emotions and just really bringing yourself back to reality, you know, it's okay to have those big emotions, but how are we putting those into action is really important, right? Because what are other people, it's not even about like what other people think, but how you portray yourself is so important too, whether you're looking to get onto a new club team or you're looking to go into college or you know, even in the classroom, like if you're trying to get into like a specific club in school or whatever, but you really need to think about okay, what are my emotions going to lead into my actions?

SPEAKER_00:

Love that. And recruiting. I think that's huge for recruiting. The next one is, you know, again, we're doing this as like you're evaluating. You might hit on all of these, you may only hit on one of them. If you're noticing in your journal that you're letting errors affect your next at-bat or your next play, you need the mental skill of failure recovery. So, how do you bounce back? What is your failure reset routine? So you can snap back and be ready and refocused. And so a lot of mental skills kind of overlap. So, one of the skills we teach is a grounding technique where Sarah's talking about being in the present moment, coming back into your body. Well, how do we do this? And so we can weave different mental skills into your failure recovery routine so that every single time something happens, whether it's a ball you biffed between your legs or you struck out looking, your failure reset routine, your failure recovery routine stays the same every single time. It gives the body a sense of comfort. Ooh, this one also ties into emotions. Do you want to take the next one?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Are you nervous? I'm sure everybody knows we all experience nerves, right? Like whether you're up at bat, whether again, you're about to take that free throw. Are you about to do public speaking? Are you about to be a guest speaker on a podcast, right? Like, are you letting your nerves take over? So, like, totally normal. Everybody experiences them, right? But mental skills like pregame and in game routines, breathing techniques, visualization, and remembering your why are super important to helping control those nerves.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. Again, a lot of overlap. I think one thing I want to touch on that we didn't put kind of on this list is as mental performance coaches, I wish. That I could just say, great, we're going to teach you how to visualize. We're going to teach you how to reframe your negative self-talk. We're going to teach you these things. But until athletes come into our program or until we work with them in coaching calls, we don't know what they need. So a beautiful example is this idea of holding all of the tools, right? So if you were going to build the foundation of a house and you've got your drill and your hammer and your laser leveler, all the tools, right? Your wheelbarrow. If we're holding all of these mental skills and trying to use them all at the same time, it's not going to be effective. And so a lot of the athletes that graduate from our program, we teach the 12 mental skills we know all athletes need. But once they graduate, they're really latching on to two, maybe three, that are most effective for them. And so when you're doing this journaling process of we're journaling, we're reflecting. Our goal is that once you reflect and journal, it's going to become apparent. We're just giving you guys some ideas on if you struggle with negative self-talk, you need the mental skill of self-talk. If you're feeling big emotions, you need grounding techniques. If you're letting errors affect you, you need failure recovery. If you're nervous, you need routines, visualization, maybe remembering your why. We don't know this until you do these skills. So step one is we we have to start with it. So this is kind of the big one. And the last one is are you letting your success or laugh lack of success define you? And this is the mental skill of identity. And so if you have a good game and you're happy, or you have a bad game and it's a bad day, or you're letting it affect your entire day, this is kind of a huge indicator, especially for parents, that your athlete's identity is getting put into one basket, which is their sport. And we can get off the confidence roller coaster when they understand that, you know, I'll use softball as an example. Softball is just what you do, not who you are. And when you get this mental skill down of identity, we talk a lot about personalities and strengths. Inside the program, we do the color personality test. And you become free of pressure when you know who you are and what fills your bucket. I know we talked about faith earlier in this, but there's got to be something in your life that defines you besides your sport. And we help our athletes figure that out. But again, you have to take the time to understand, to dig in, to journal, to reflect, to kind of set this foundation. And once you have it, this is kind of sad, but I didn't realize this until my sophomore year of college. And I can't even imagine how much better I would have been had I had these mental skills.

SPEAKER_01:

I learned this when I was in eighth grade. I was doing the travel softball thing, trying to do everything under the sun. But I just remember I really missed going on mission trips and like doing the summer activities with my youth group. And I was tired. I saw I'm a homebody. I love traveling, but I also missed being with my friends. And so I'll never forget the day that I told my dad like I was done playing travel softball and I was in eighth grade. And he said, Well, like you might not make the varsity team in high school, or you know, and I was like, Well, I think I'm good enough to make it. And long story short, I played JV for two years, and then I played varsity for two years. But again, those circumstances and those situations like shape me into who I am, and I became a better player because I was on JV for two years and I became a better athlete, I became a better teammate. So, you know, I wanted to play more sports instead of just sticking to one, and I think that that's so vital. And but it's scary telling, you know, your parent that you are done. Like, I don't know where that confidence came from, to be honest, but yeah, I just knew that like if I didn't say it, like it was going to wreck me. And I will never forget, like, I had a softball friend in college, and she was so burnt out. She didn't know how to tell her dad that she wanted to be done, and she was on scholarship, and she's like, I have to keep going. But she was miserable, and uh we weren't even that close, but you could just tell physically that like she was not okay, and so I just think knowing when you're done is a super powerful tool too, and just knowing that, like you said, your identity is rooted in more things than just softball or just sports, like you're so much more than a person, you're a friend, you're a family member, and we could go all into that. But Amanda, I think this would be a great time to share your new resource with our listeners.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, so again, I'm gonna make Sarah blush, but a lot of the things that we do would not get done if I didn't have Sarah. And so one of the really cool things that Sarah has been helping me with is to get the ideas that I have onto literal paper. And so one of the things that we've been working on is the Fearless Warrior mental game plan. So we have a guide for parents, we just don't have a guide for athletes. And so, as of today, when this podcast is being released, you can download the Fearless Warrior mental game plan. It is exactly what we do with our athletes in one-to-one in blank journals. But instead of just a blank journal, since we're not there to explain it to you, really what we did is we laid out step one is to know your pre-game mental checklist. So these are your mental reminders, the mental skills that you want to use, your keywords to help you perform at your best. This is everything that we're doing in our one-to-one calls. And so, again, if you look at this and you're like, oh, what do I put on here? That's a great opportunity to come into our program to hire a mental performance coach. But you also don't need that to get started. And so the pregame mental checklist is kind of a quick way to evaluate what do you need going into a game to fill your best? And then the second page is your post-game evaluation. So this alone is so powerful. We actually have it in our notebooks. So we have notebooks that we give all of our clients, and then it has these three questions at the top. And so we're actually going to give you this. And this is a way to evaluate your performance as an athlete. Again, this is for the athlete, not for the parents. Obviously, parents, you're gonna want to download this and hand it to your athlete. But this is to help them celebrate their successes, not just beat themselves up. So if your daughter immediately gets into the car after a game, and you know, maybe she goes, you know, one for three, which isn't bad. And maybe the one at bat, she got a double up the middle and it was amazing. But the only thing she's talking about is the two at bats that she either struck out or didn't get on base. But we know, hey, you hit 300. I think going one for three or even two for three is a great game. But if you're noticing that your athlete is only latching onto what they did wrong, this is for you. This resource is going to change everything for her. Because not only is this a requirement when you work with us as mental performance coaches, we're not at your games. And if you can honestly evaluate your performance with an open mind, the number one things that athletes start to realize is huh, wow, I didn't do as bad as I thought I did. Because the number one thing that we're doing is they have to list their wins first. And then we list what we need to adjust, what we need to fix. And then the last one is going to help them figure out how to make the next game better. And when you have this resource, it's really cool because our athletes are doing this after every single game. It will become a habit. And so going back to the podcast, right, of this journal technique, step one is to get it out of your head. And so this is a great resource. Everything we talked about today, get it on a piece of paper. As soon as this becomes habit, maybe they don't even need the journal. And maybe they use it in a note app on their phone. The post-game evaluation is just three questions. It's super powerful. And if you get busy, you hop in the car as a parent, you can ask them these three post-game questions, right? So we want to give you guys this. There's no cost to it. We want you to download it and give us your feedback because it's brand new.

SPEAKER_01:

And we will link this for you below. Or you can DEMS the words game plan on socials. And I wish I had these resources when I was a high school student. So, you know, I think it's super powerful. So, Coach A B, it's awesome way like you've created. So, all right. Final question, A B. What is your favorite Thanksgiving dish?

SPEAKER_00:

Ooh, I did not prep this. Everyone hates on the cranberry sauce. I feel like as a huge foodie, I love getting piles of like a little bit of sweet potato, a little bit of this, a little bit of this, but having that tart cranberry of like it's like a palate cleanser. I don't know, I don't know why I wasn't expecting to say that. I do love butter. So if it has butter, mashed potato, how about okay? Here's my rank. Really good. My mom's homemade mashed potatoes with real cream and real butter, and then you gotta have a little dab of cranberry sauce on your plate.

unknown:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

You can never go wrong with a bread roll. It's my favorite. Oh, I called it sourdough person. However, I do also want to say Costco makes the best pumpkin pies. So, you know, I've tried homemade pumpkin pies before, and no like disrespect to those at home make it because I know it's hard, but Costco's pumpkin pies are on another level.

SPEAKER_00:

So this is this is not an ad. This is this is just yeah, chef's kiss. Are those the ones that are going viral where people are saying fun fact, pumpkin pie has 17 grams of protein per serving, and people are like literally eating the pumpkin pie in Costco.

SPEAKER_01:

Have you seen those? No, but you also have to have a lot of whipped cream on it too. So, you know, it's probably the whipped cream that, but anyways, it's all delicious.

SPEAKER_00:

So amen.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, happy Thanksgiving, Miss Fam.

SPEAKER_00:

Happy Thanksgiving to you, Sarah. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone listening. If you're listening to this on Thanksgiving week, like wow, you took the time during a busy holiday season. We just really appreciate and fun fact, we actually pull the stats of our podcast. We have hundreds of listeners. And so if you're one of those listeners, do us a favor. I'm gonna give Sarah a quick shout-out. Sarah works really hard on the podcast. So if you enjoyed today's podcast or any podcast for that matter, leave us a review. It helps other people find our podcast and give us your honest thoughts. You know, we're not even asking for five stars, we're just asking for your honest opinion of the podcast. And we we love reading them. So, and if you want the new game plan guide, we'll work on setting up that automation so that by the time Thanksgiving rolls around, we can have all of that automated. And Coach A B will automatically email you that two page PDF that's super, it's not finished yet as the time of recording, but by by Thanksgiving, it will be done. So thanks, Sarah, for holding my feet to the fire and getting these resources out there because it's today was so fun and so exciting. Well, thank you, A B. Thanks for having me.

Contributor

Amanda Schaefer

Host