Anything But Law
We love law, but we don't always want to talk about it. Who are we outside the boardroom and courtroom? In this show, we explore how our multiple purposes collide and ask the question: where does our motivation to work come from? Community and business leaders join us to share personal stories about their passions, how they stay driven, and what makes them tick.
Anything But Law
Miranda Ayim: From Olympic Glory to Mental Wellness & Leadership
In this episode of Anything But Law, we explore the extraordinary journey of Miranda Ayim, a three-time Olympian who has transitioned from a world-class basketball player to a leading advocate for mental wellness and empowerment. Miranda opens up about her experiences as the captain of the Canadian national team, her challenges with injuries, and how she discovered the importance of mental and emotional health. Now a mental wellness coach, Miranda shares valuable insights on leadership, resilience, and the deep connection between mind and body. Tune in for an inspiring conversation that transcends the world of sports and offers lessons for life.
Presented by: Lerners LLP Hosted by: Mark McAuley Executive Production: Natalee Davis Project Management: Dylan Willems Audio Engineering: Aaron Murray – Charterhouse Studios (Season 1,3), Chandra Bulucon - Puppy Machine Recording Studio (Season 2) Graphic Design: The Branding Firm Inc. (Season 3), Jen Luchka and Dawn Yan Theme and Underlying Music: Mark McAuley and Randy McAuley
Welcome to another season of Anything but Law, where we talk about anything but law. It's literally in the name. This season, we continue to dive into the minds of exceptional people, from entrepreneurs and business leaders to gold medal winning Olympians and thought leaders. We bring you inspiring stories and valuable insights from those who have truly made a mark in their fields. In each episode, we explore the success mindset, the art of overcoming adversity and the powerful lessons learned from failures that have launched extraordinary success. Our guests share their journeys, challenges and the pivotal moments that have defined their paths to greatness. So, whether you're looking for motivation, Hello and welcome to another episode of Anything but Law, where we talk about you guessed it anything but law, and today I am joined by somebody very special.
Speaker 1:I like to think that all the guests that we bring on this show are impressive people, but, man, I got somebody impressive sitting in front of me today. So today we are going to be speaking with Miranda Am, a three-time Olympian whose name resonates beyond the basketball courts. Miranda's journey is one of relentless determination and resilience and a real testament to what it means to pursue excellence, not just in sports, but in life itself and as an emerging beacon of empowerment and mental wellness. She has hung up her basketball shoes to step into a role that echoes her passion for mindfulness and peak performance. Her transition from celebrated athlete to a mental wellness coach and advocate is nothing short of inspiring, so I am very pleased to be able to speak with her today.
Speaker 1:Miranda, thank you for joining us on Anything but Law.
Speaker 3:So happy to be here with you today.
Speaker 1:Great, all right, darn, I was hoping I'd get you a little flustered by reading your accolades.
Speaker 3:Oh, it's always the worst to listen to. But you, I might need to steal that bio. You really sold it.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, you know it's funny because I didn't know where to start. I was, you know, I will let you. I know that you on your podcast, you usually tell your guests you know, for people who don't know who you are, let us know a little bit about your journey. And so I was trying to figure out ways to kind of cobble it together on my own. I started reading the stats, was an all-time blocks leader at Pepperdine, your career points and I was like good Lord, I should probably just stay home today and call in sick because I'm not sure if I can hang on the microphone. But you know, for people at home who don't know who you are, let us know who you are. For people who didn't, let's say, watch you carry the Canadian flag in at the Tokyo Olympics, let's just give them a little primer on Miranda IM.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, the reason why I asked that question to my guests, or just in any conversation really that I'm having, is because the journey is never straight. There's always so many twists and turns that you don't anticipate, and that's actually the real juice of what goes into making a person who they are. But yeah, just a brief overview. Like I grew up in London, ontario, it's always been my home.
Speaker 1:London, represent.
Speaker 3:Yes, London, stand up and loved it. But around the age of 17, 18, left and went down to the States for school, did four years at Pepperdine University, loved it down there in Cali and then turned pro national teams or Olympic team at that time and also overseas playing professionally. So I started in Turkey, played in Turkey for three years, one of the best leagues to play in for women's basketball and same for France. So I spent the next eight years in Southern France. Had it real rough, real rough in that beautiful part of the world.
Speaker 1:Nothing but delicious food and cheese and breads.
Speaker 3:Yeah, all of the good things in life, right.
Speaker 1:No culture at all in France.
Speaker 3:I know how did you survive? It was rough, let me tell you. And even Turkey, like I, was so pleasantly surprised, like going into a place where I didn't have a lot of ideas going into it, love the food, love the people, the culture. There's so much history there. Yes, it was just a really, really fun and exciting time.
Speaker 1:You glossed over some medals. You're just glossing over things yeah, you don't.
Speaker 3:To be honest, most of my medals and all the the paraphernalia that comes with sports is it's all in my parents basement in the basement, in the you know those little like cardboard boxes that you use to store things.
Speaker 3:I'm not I it's always strange when people hear me say this but I'm not really award driven. I'm not even really the most competitive person. No, I'm usually the least competitive. I'm very competitive against myself, right? I'm always trying to do better than the day before and hold myself to a really high standard, sometimes too high of a standard. There's always like the flip side of those kind of traits, but not especially competitive or super into sports either. But that's the thing about like paths Like you can't anticipate the journey that life takes you on and you kind of take a step and another door opens. And that was my path in sport. Like I was good at it. When I was young I played all sorts of sports soccer, you know, track, cross country volleyball. I played volleyball all through school and played club volleyball as well before I decided on basketball.
Speaker 1:So you played a number of sports. What made basketball the match for you? Why was that the one that kind of became the one?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think I narrowed it down to basketball and volleyball. Whether that was just skill and desire at that time, I think that's what made that choice. And then, honestly, volleyball is my favorite sport. There's just a certain joy that comes with it. It's just a lot of fun. But at that time at least there were more opportunities for a career in basketball as someone coming from Canada to both go down to the States and to play overseas and earn money playing professional basketball, and then also with our our national team as well. So the the logical side.
Speaker 1:Sorry, I'm going to note that you just glossed over something else and I'm not here to. I'm not here to pump your tires, playing with our national team. It says here that you're a captain. You're just glossing over these pieces. I know, I know, I know You're being humble. It's a very um, canadian and London trait, by the way. You're just glossing over it. I'm just saying that. I'm just throwing it out there. You don't even have to comment on it. I'm just saying that that is also.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's what you're here for. You hold me accountable, like you said. Yeah, that's. Another beautiful thing about sports is that you step into a lot of roles and positions that you wouldn't have maybe otherwise been exposed to, and sports certainly built my character in ways that I'm eternally grateful for, like just hard work and resilience and, you know like, pushing past your limits or your self-imposed limits, and leadership is one of them as well.
Speaker 1:That is one of the things I wanted to ask you about, and it's funny because you've you opened a whole bunch of you kicked open a whole bunch of doors and I'm like, which ones am I going to walk through right now? But the I guess captaincy if that's a word to use I mean it is about leadership. And is leadership something that you've embraced? Is that something that you found came very naturally, or is that something that was cultivated and had to take a lot of work?
Speaker 3:I put myself into the camp of a reluctant leader and I take solace in knowing that some of the best leaders are the reluctant kind and not to say that I think I'm one of the best leaders. But I think it is helpful in keeping a sense of humility in that role that I think actually does make you better. Not thinking that you have all of the answers, but seeking collaboratively to work together towards a goal makes a team and I'm coming from a team sport background really powerful. And there's also different types of leadership, right, and that's part of the path of building your type of leadership, of discovering what are the skills and traits and strengths that you bring to your position. Because if I tried to be what the captain before me or my coach, how she displays her leadership, it's not going to be quite true. It's not going to ring true in the same way, right? So my type of leadership was a little bit. You can probably already tell just how I present myself. It's a little bit calmer.
Speaker 3:You know, I tend to be a grounding voice. I like to redirect and refocus the group towards the overarching goal, which can oftentimes get lost, get lost in the sauce, especially in a high intensity sport. You get caught up in the moment. You're like, oh, I need to catch up if we're behind, or we need to keep doing this or push this, and and the energy level because it's sport is physical, so physiologically things are taking over your, your mind, in a way that sometimes you can't always control if you don't have the strategies in place. So being able to reset and refocus in those moments is really, really important.
Speaker 1:Oh, you pivoted to resetting already and I don't want to. I want to keep talking about basketball, but we'll get to that. But I wanted to ask you your thoughts on the growth of somebody who's been kind of how do I put this forefront in the basketball, the Canadian basketball scene, while we've witnessed this tremendous growth in the last. Well, I can say I always think about the kind of Vince Carter era showing up, you know, when the Raptors were dropped in our backyard. All of a sudden Canadians' view of basketball became different and it's evident now by how many basketball players we export. So I wonder if you could comment on your view on being an ambassador of the sport as a Canadian during this period of time and then also on the growth that you witnessed throughout your career. It's pretty incredible, incredible time to have been part of the Basketball Canada family.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's been a huge step since before I was involved in the basketball world and also since, even if we just take the women's basketball team, when I came onto the scene we were maybe like 23rd in the world or something like that. When I retired after the Tokyo Olympics, we were fourth in the world and we still are fourth in the world Medal contenders, making it to the Olympics, qualifying every time and performing on a global stage.
Speaker 3:So underdogs to medal contenders is quite quite it's pretty amazing yeah uh, stride, and so I've watched some of the things, um, that have helped us get to that point, some of the things that maybe made the route a little bit longer and weren't effective, but that's part of the process too, right, um, and then, yeah, just in canada in general, like you mentioned, the Vince Carter effect you know, same with our recent championship was really exciting. We also had Pan Ams in Toronto in 2015. So our team was able to play on Canadian soil. The amount of times that I've actually played on Canadian soil in an important game is like I can count them on one or two hands. Um, we, we are typically overseas, so bringing it the game home yeah for people to see and watch and get to know us.
Speaker 3:like we had the Vince Carter effect, then we had like the Kia Nurse effect, because people actually saw her on TV, they saw us on and so they can relate to the story, they get involved, they start following on social media and that's how sports grow and that's really how women's sports will continue to grow as well and be like, oh, we actually see them, we know who they are, and then then it grows like that. So it's been really exciting to watch that grow. And you know what? One other aspect of the growth of basketball and I'd say, soccer or like football for the Europeans out there, is just the rise of, you know, immigrant families coming to Canada will or import, I guess, is import to export. The import to export, yeah, is like that's why we see, um, basketball fans are some of the most diverse fans that we see in Canada. Like you look around a basketball game and that's that's Canada, it's a yeah, that's true slice of of Canadian citizens citizenry.
Speaker 3:Um, so that's really exciting and and the way that basketball is going and it's just really beautiful, a beautiful thing to see.
Speaker 1:Oh, is it? It is. I'm actually really excited for the future of the sport and I have a six-year-old who she told me that two things she said soccer and basketball are her favorite sports. I said, okay, well, let's start playing. She was like I don't want to play. What do you mean? She's like I just want to play with my rules. I don't want to play with the rules. I'm like, okay, well, Don't we all. That's fine, We'll get there. We'll get there.
Speaker 1:Now you alluded to something in leadership style. We were briefly discussing leadership style. You were talking about the mental preparation versus the physical preparation and then getting re-centered. And I want to pivot to kind of some of the things that are occupying you these days and that is kind of your focus on mental wellness and empowerment and coaching in that space, your time, let's say, in those critical moments, in those mission critical moments while you're playing a sport, the ability to refocus and get prepared. How has that prepared you for your coaching, your post-retirement life and coaching people through wellness? How has your journey from like teaching yourself how to recenter in the middle of important game moments? How has that kind of translated into your coaching post basketball?
Speaker 3:it's a great question and this is another piece of beauty of sport is that it serves as almost the perfect analogy or anecdote for a lot of our biggest struggles. Right when things aren't going great on the court or you're not in a great mind space on the court, it shows up almost immediately in how you play. When I think about so, to your question around okay, how do you recenter and how does that play out in your life today? All the lessons and all the strategies that I use today come from my failures and mistakes on the court. Those are the most effective lessons that we have.
Speaker 1:What was your favorite failure?
Speaker 3:Those are the most effective lessons that we have. What was your favorite failure? Oh, I like how you phrased that. My favorite failure, One of the most difficult times in my career and I speak about this a lot when I talk to people, especially youth, because I think it's important Was when I was recovering from a pretty traumatic injury when I was playing overseas my second year overseas in Istanbul, Turkey. Just in practice, one day, one of my teammates I don't know if she was looking where she was going, but she slammed into me from the side. I don't know what happened immediately after that, but the days and weeks that followed I was just in excruciating pain. I couldn't sit, I couldn't stand, I couldn't lay down without pain. I was in constant pain and also because I was in a place that I wasn't familiar with, the language. We didn't have a good medical staff. It was non-existent. I didn't even know what was wrong with me, right? Okay.
Speaker 3:Fast forward. Months later, when I get back to Canada, I realized that I had a herniated two discs in my low back. Oh, okay, and then continued to try to play professional basketball, which is wild, but you think about, as an athlete, you're used to just rubbing some dirt in it and getting the job done, but when you're seriously injured it's hard to do that and continue to do it at a high level. So I was continuing to show up physically day after day, but my body was like really, really just trying to push back and protect myself from from me Um. But you can see how that can quickly devolve into um.
Speaker 3:I wasn't playing in the way that I wanted to. I start thinking about are other people noticing that I'm like I can't finish this because I physically can't do the thing? And again, at that point in my mind, for whatever reason, I don't, I'm not connecting one with the other, I'm like I'm not good enough, I don't have what it takes to play professional basketball, there's something wrong with me. So confidence plummets, obviously, sleep plummets because I'm in pain all the time, so that you can see how that those are the makings of a poor mental and emotional state.
Speaker 3:And that's the moment in my career when I really realized the connection between the mind and the body and how one dramatically impacts the other.
Speaker 3:It took me quite a few years to recover from that, both physically and emotionally, of how I showed up, because you have to be really confident to step on the court, you have to be really calm to step on the court so that you are able to analyze and see and predict and let go of the basket that you just missed. But that was the start of my journey into okay, like, do I have control over that? Do I have control over what I'm thinking? Do I have control over how I'm like breathing, you know? Like, can I relax myself? Can like, why am I keep getting in my own way? So then then you go down the rabbit hole of mental performance and mental wellness and they're really intricately linked and I've always had this passion about getting better and being my best self and reaching my potential and hopefully encouraging others to do the same, and so it just all like wrapped up together in a perfect storm, and that's kind of why I do what I do now. Daddy, it's time to take a break.
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Speaker 1:It's actually pretty remarkable. I think there was one of your podcast episodes I was listening to and you were talking about giving yourself grace through those moments that are challenging. I think you called it buckets of grace, pouring buckets of grace over yourself, and I wonder how much of those lessons learned? The reason I ask about your favorite failure is because I played sports not like you, not at all on your level but one of my favorite experiences was losing, because I think you learn a lot from losing, especially if you actually tried, if you learned and you, if you lost and you didn't try, I don't know how much you learned, other than you got to try harder, but if you're really there and you showed up and you were passionate about it, it didn't work. Some things don't work out, and that's another kind of important lesson to learn, which I think is another one of the in your mindset Mondays. Another one of your coaching tips is that sometimes it doesn't work out, and that's also okay.
Speaker 1:So how you talk about, how this all kind of culminates in this kind of peak understanding of where you are, and so I you know I can I can see that for a while the idea of holistic health and the connection between the mind and the body is something that's kind of been percolating under the surface. So how has that influenced your coaching methodology? When you're speaking to somebody who say, in my position, a lawyer, a you know other people that you're that you're coaching like, how does that manifest in your day-to-day coaching?
Speaker 3:Well, you know a lot of the people that I work with, as a great example, lawyers in particular. It's a whole different breed. Let me tell you. What do you mean?
Speaker 1:We're totally normal.
Speaker 3:Oh for sure. But a lot of the people that I work with and this resonates, so everything I say is a reflection of myself as well are like highly ambitious, type A, sometimes perfectionist tendencies, are working really hard towards their goals. But in that area, with those type of personality traits, you can also easily become bump up against burnout. You can easily become overwhelmed because you take on a lot. Maybe you you don't have some flexible boundaries. In some spaces where you need to have a little bit more firmer boundaries, you're taking on a lot emotionally and physically.
Speaker 1:I don't know what you're talking about. Killing me softly with her song Sorry go ahead.
Speaker 3:Just preaching to myself too here, you know, and a lot of what we work through is also just like breaking, like bringing it back into like, okay, what am I doing on a daily basis? That's helping to helping me to take on all of those challenges I put on myself. Sometimes it is reducing the workload, sometimes we're just doing a little bit too much, if we have the flexibility and space to do that. But sometimes it's just prepping our mind and our body in a way where we're better able to do the work in front of us. So, like, it sounds so basic when you say this, but like are you getting good sleep? Are you eating well? Are you physically moving your body?
Speaker 3:Because we know that the body, a fit body I'm not talking about shredded, I'm talking about like, do we move? Do we get out in nature? Are we doing the things that make us feel good? That actually enables you to be a better worker, more focused, more sustained energy and a better person overall, because it's usually a little bit more chill. And then to break it down, so we have those kind of foundational elements about like, okay, just on a habit level, what are you doing? And then, another major area that we're usually really focusing on is just emotional regulation. So, whether it's the overwhelming stress, stress comes up a lot or, you know, frustration on a day-to-day basis. How do I make it a little bit less up and down and how do I just ride the waves of equanimity, if you will?
Speaker 1:Ooh, I love that word I love it too. That's a great word.
Speaker 3:Because equanimity doesn't mean that everything is good in your life and we need to take a pause to recognize that life isn't always going to give you what you want. But equanimity means that you're able to find calm and balance and peace, whether it goes good or whether it goes poorly, like you were referencing earlier.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so I guess there's like, oh man, three questions that are branching off, and the first one's a short one and I can only speak to the people who work in my profession. But do you find challenges breaking through the stigma with mental health and mental well-being? Because I find a lot of people in our profession. I mean, we know it's become a topic that people discuss but people don't talk about it, that people discuss but, like, people don't talk about it. So do you have this initial barrier where you're like, okay, we got to break through this part where we're talking, where we're going to talk about how you're feeling, we're going to talk about how you're thinking we're going to, we're going to work on that. Is that a barrier that you have figured out some artful ways to navigate, or do you just soothe them with your voice?
Speaker 3:You know what, in one-on-one conversations, I don't find it takes too long to get there because, like we're all humans, we feel the things. It just takes one question and maybe a follow-up question to be like okay, but like how are you really feeling right now? I find it more difficult in the public sphere and I don't know if this is a self-imposed worry and I just need to do a better job of kind of just owning it but, especially in the performance sphere, sometimes talking about mental wellness and just a holistic approach feels soft Right. People want to know the answer, they want to know the strategy, they want to know how this relates to the bottom line and I'm like it does relate to the bottom line, but it's a second and third order consequence. People have a really short term vision. You need to. It's the iterative process that's going to impact the whole. You need to. It's the iterative process that's going to impact the whole. And that's a little bit harder and a little bit more nuanced to explain in a soundbite.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a hard thing to explain to people that you are what you do consistently, and so if we spend a lot of time ignoring certain issues, you can only shove it under the rug so much, until there's a giant lump under the rug that the entire organization is going to trip on essentially. Right, so I wonder if you have.
Speaker 3:I mean we glossed over your career highlights, but do you have any early highlights in this second career of coaching? There's not a lot of questions that I haven't been asked before, but that's one of them that's so fascinating. You know what I'm gonna like kind of flip the question back to what you asked before of like my favorite failure, and I'll apply that in my this second career space that I'm in, because I've been learning a lot about myself. We were briefly talking about this before we hopped on here and just like transitions in general are are difficult and and um, but exciting.
Speaker 3:And you referenced grace before and I've had to remind myself again and again that I need to have and we all need to have grace when we are trying something new, when we're learning something new, when we're stepping out of our comfort zone in a different way. And I've been doing all of that over the past two years and have failed in so many different ways that maybe people don't see, because maybe it's not quite apparent or it's under the surface or I'm able to soothe voice my way out of it. But I think the learning and being willing to stay in a state of uncertainty is a big accomplishment for me. It's a big growth area for me, so that's been a highlight, but that's going to be continual growth and work as we go into.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's one of my. It's not quite phrased the same way, but it's one of my favorite things to repeat to myself, which is, you know, the old, the saying that we have it's kind of like a trite saying there's no pain, no gain. But I think in the mental health space, or even in actually just in the personal progress space, is you have to tolerate discomfort for growth. You're not always going to be comfortable, things aren't always going to be great, but that's part of the journey and the process. And so I mean you know we touched on it just briefly here how are you finding this transition, this?
Speaker 1:You're talking about the challenge in transitions generally, but the transition into retirement and I put that in quotes because you know it's life is is multifasic, it's kind of just, you know, it's kind of more like reading a book, switching from one chapter to the next. Not really retirement, but how are you finding this transition from retirement? Um, we had spoken before the camera started rolling, so to speak, that for athletes there is this a certain amount of your identity that's kind of tied up in being an athlete. So how are you transitioning out of this and stepping into your new role?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's been a process and a half. I always say, and it will continue to be, I think, for for many years to come, Cause it's not a one and done type of thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, um, it's. It's been quite fascinating and eyeopening for me because I I never was a ball is life type of person. Um, like I said, said I played a lot of different sports. I had a lot of different interests, I did a lot of stuff in the community and I was a big nerd. I was just like academics was my thing, but I was also like, oh, I can get a free education with sports Amazing. So basketball or sport in general wasn't, wasn't the thing. So I didn't feel like my, my identity was wrapped up in basketball. Um, and maybe it was a little bit prideful coming out of, uh, coming into retirement thinking like, oh yeah, I think I'll be good because I'm not ball is life. But I found that more of my value and worth than I anticipated was actually wrapped up in what I did, because, if you think about it, I had been constantly given acclamation no acclaim or like affirmation for doing well in sports. You're like good job.
Speaker 1:I do want to mention, though, before you finish, that all academics honors for the conference three times Just going to throw that in there, because you're not going to say it yourself. Okay, go ahead.
Speaker 3:I certainly wouldn't. But yeah, so you get all this feedback and praise really for being good at sports. So then it's almost as if your value and worth as a person is tied subconsciously.
Speaker 1:Yeah, whether you acknowledge it or not and whether you believe it or not, it's very, almost Pavlovian. It's like, hey, as you mentioned before, you step out on the floor and people cheer for you and there's not a lot of professions where people just get excited by you being there or wearing a certain like jersey on that day, or it's like a certain shirt, like, nobody cheers for me when I walk into the office. So sorry, go on.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, exactly. And so that has been a journey in and of itself, kind of unraveling those reactions and now showing up in a space where you know I'm trying something new and I don't know if it's gonna work or if it's gonna resonate with people. If it's going to resonate with people and you really have to have a different sense of confidence in yourself and just, I guess, following through on those deeper qualities that I did build through sport, that resilience and that determination and the hard work and all of that, it's just considering it in a different way. I found the whole process has been really prompt me to be even more reflective than I usually am.
Speaker 1:That is the general default.
Speaker 3:But also action oriented, because sometimes you just need to do the thing Like we can't think about it to no end. You reach a kind of point of no return. So it's been a balance of both of those things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was something you mentioned, because I've had a chance to speak to a couple Olympians and again, there is this kind of world stage. I mean, it's a big stage to step out on and, as you said before, you need calm and you need some sense of assuredness to step out and perform when you know the world is watching. So I have to imagine that there's a certain amount of confidence that is inside of you when you're stepping out to try something new anyways, because it's in there. If you know what I mean, it's years and years of repetition and having the sense, at least underneath, that you are excellent at something, having been told a number of times that you're excellent at something. So I imagine that helps to transition through, probably more than an average person who would say, okay, I'm going to transition to something else right now. So you already covered that off. This idea of confidence kind of exists when you walk into a space, so you feel a little more um, prepared to at least respond to, um, to what's thrown at you.
Speaker 1:I do have a question for you. Um, it's from our listeners. It's not from one of our listeners, I'm just, it's from me. Um, you, you mentioned, uh, in one of your podcast episodes that you quit TV. Are you still on? Are you still um off of that drug called the TV?
Speaker 3:You know I've I've had an on again, off again, relationship with TV, and thank goodness that Netflix makes it so easy to flip back and forth and cancel your membership and come back on. I still like I don't, I don't keep a TV in my house, which sometimes weirds people out. They're like almost subconsciously searching for, like the centerpiece, because it is like the centerpiece of many of our living rooms, right? So I like the idea of not having that default of coming in and turning something on to like numb your emotions, but I won't pretend that that doesn't sometimes get filled in with other things and these come in kind of rotations or cycles, right? Sometimes that can be TV, sometimes that can be social media, sometimes that can be whatever your drug of choice, so to speak, of the day is.
Speaker 3:Whatever's peddling dopamine to you at that time 100%, and the reason why I said that I had quit TV and sometimes do or quit other things that I feel like are taking up too much of my time and energy is just like just really recognizing the psychological and emotional effect of like numbing those emotions, shortening our attention spans in a way that isn't really conducive to mental health or mental well-being. Yeah. Where we can't even sit with our own thoughts for more than two minutes.
Speaker 1:It's funny because I had mentioned this to people all the time. I remember sometimes being in like the waiting room of the dentist's office or the doctor's office, and what did you have to do? Read the magazine that was there, or stare at the wall and wait for them to call your name. And now, when you go into a public space, basically anywhere, you look down if you're waiting, everybody's bent over at their neck and they're staring at some screen. Maybe they're doom scrolling, maybe they're doing something useful. I'm not.
Speaker 1:I'm not always certain, certain, but I I mean I kind of I asked that question kind of in a cheeky way to transition into the things that you had mentioned in one of your Mindset Mondays, which was about removing things that maybe sometimes are impinging on your mental wellness, and so one of them you mentioned was the TV was part of one of those things that you kind of got rid of we also had there. It was alliterative, complaining, cramming and comparing, and so I want to just like kind of circle in on the comparing part as we talk about the transition into the, your like as we flip the page into this new chapter, that that of the book that is Miranda I Am, that is, do you find yourself ever comparing yourself to other people in your space and how do you recenter yourself back to? Well, no, I am. This is the journey that I'm on and these are the people that I'm helping that's been a huge learning process, probably throughout my life.
Speaker 3:Even in the sporting world, you have to be very conscious about comparing yourself to the best player, because Well, and in sports it's actually it's easier because it's very stat driven.
Speaker 1:So it's easier to fall into that trap, to say, okay, these are the stats, these are the numbers that I'm chasing, and feeling like you're falling behind, but I think a little less, a little more malleable, kind of in the space you're in right now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely Like. So in the in the sport world I was very undersized post weight wise. I'm 62, so I'm not. I'm not a shorty, but I was never the tallest on my team. But one of my skills was because I was more slender, I was quicker than other people in my position. So you identify something in that way. But if I was comparing myself to the person, that's like pounding it in the post and try to emulate my game after that. Not helpful. I'm not going to be as successful as I was in the areas that were my strength. So there is a carryover there in what I'm doing now. And especially and this is a word of caution for people who are going through transition and change.
Speaker 3:Sometimes we are looking for examples. When you're going through a period of uncertainty, you do look for examples of like oh, how can this kind of help me or what do I need to do? That can be useful, but what is not helpful is the comparison game of OK, I need to do that and be that and all of those things, and I need to get all my ducks in a row before I can finally arrive, and I need to get all my ducks in a row before I can finally arrive. Sometimes we just need to sit again in the uncertainty of it, in the like miry clay of you forming yourself into this new person. But it's not really a new person, it's just you're drawing on all those things and skills of the past, as well as your personality, as well as you know different strengths that you have that come together in a way that nobody else can do, which is kind of cool, like a cool commentary just on the human condition.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean we are all kind of we're all uniquely located, whether we acknowledge it or not. I mean we are all kind of we're all uniquely located, whether we acknowledge it or not. You know there's not going to be another. Your journey is not anybody else's journey. So your perspective on things that will be helping me, let's say, as a personal coach, would be different from somebody who is born and raised in Australia or born and raised in so and so, with a different kind of journey, to view me as a coach. But I wonder oh, there's something you just said and you're talking about arriving and and I think I know what your answer is going to be anyways but I'm going to ask you how do you know when you arrived? Because you said you know, and then you arrive and you're waiting for this moment how do you know when you've arrived at where you're supposed to be?
Speaker 3:Well, let's see if this is the answer you're predicting Like we've never. We will never arrive, I think. Boom.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean. Life is a continual process of learning and growing. If you think that you've arrived, you're severely confused, to put it lightly right, like even when you're thinking about, like the corporate ladder if you will, you're at the top, you're the CEO, you're in the position, the job that you've gone after for however many years. Have you arrived? Do you feel like you've arrived? Are you the best person that you can be in that space, even if you are excellent at your job? How are you treating your friends and family around you? How's your health? Yeah.
Speaker 3:Like spiritually, emotionally, like are you good? Because there's always spaces where we can improve and we can do better. That will actually make that process. So that's always my thoughts when it comes to that. But I will say there's a balance between constant aspiration of getting better and also just being content, and that's a philosophical struggle that I think about often because it's a delicate balance.
Speaker 1:I think we all do. I mean, there's something else that you I actually listened to this one there's like a five-minute chunk of one of your interviews and it was it kind of circles on this idea of contentment, which is, how often do we get to sit alone with our own thoughts and be comfortable with our own thoughts? And I think the answer, in a busy world, is actually less and less and less every single day. So there is, I guess there's two, I guess there's two. I, by the way, that was the answer. I thought you'd say um, which I think is probably the transition from athlete into coach, into whatever else, into whatever else, into whatever else. That's continuing evolution of who we are until we're done, until we blimp out of existence. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Um so, um, yeah, anyways, being alone with your thoughts. Contentment versus arrival, I think, is actually a very important concept, but that's like a much deeper philosophical question and I don't know that any of us really fully understand that.
Speaker 3:I do think, though, that's part of the key to kind of showing up in those, those spaces where you want to show up well, whether it's performance or just in your day-to-day life.
Speaker 3:It goes back to that, that idea, like I think contentment is almost linked with equanimity and like releasing, letting go of the end result, which we know is often correlated with actually achieving the result, in a kind of backwards, counterintuitive way, and this weaves into just emotional regulation as well, of like, okay, I see the greater why, but I also need to let go of the tense feeling that I need to accomplish it. That reduces a bit of the stress, that reduces a little bit of the over-anticipation and over-achieving, and it just allows you just to show up in the moment and do the things that you need to do, and that kind of leads you to the result that you want to. I'll give Go ahead. No, yeah, I was just going to give a analogy to make it a little bit more practical. Like, we'll bring it back to the basketball court, because that's my, my space. The goal of the game is to score the most points. Right, we see that visibly on the board. 82 to 60 means the team with 82 points won.
Speaker 3:But if I'm playing the entire game looking at the scoreboard and not paying attention to what's in front of me and being in the moment of what actually I need to do right now, I'm not going to win the game, I'm not going to score the point. So the goal, the objective, the result is important, but I'm not going to get that if I'm looking at that.
Speaker 1:You answered the question before I was going to ask it. You're talking about being present and I was like, how important is it to be present? And you're like, hang on a second, I'm going to answer that question?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was my next question. I think it's a very challenging thing in this day and age because our attention is pulled in so many different directions and that's a real challenge. So best of luck in navigating that one. A couple more questions. I appreciate all the time you've given us today. But you had mentioned you said I'll take it back to basketball because that's kind of you know your space. What is your happy place now? There's probably a lot of comfort over the years and being on a basketball court and having a ball in your hand and that feels very comfortable, very normal. What's your happy place now? Like if you close your eyes and like, say, snap your fingers and you can be somewhere else. Like what does this happy place look like?
Speaker 3:My happy place now and it was before as well, but I just had less opportunity to indulge is just being out in nature. Um, I've, I like to get out for walks or hikes and just really get, feel like I'm not in the city anymore. It's extremely grounding again, like I'll have my phone on me but I'm not looking at it. It's a way to disconnect and we know that, like, being out in nature has links to reducing stress, reducing depression, anxiety, all of it. It's wild how much just looking at a tree can soothe us. I don't know why, look into the studies and all of that but it's so fascinating and so I find that really peaceful. I've always really just been drawn into nature, probably because I grew up camping in Algonquin Park with my parents.
Speaker 3:So that's always been a soothing place and also is a way for me to get out and move in a way that feels good, because, again, that's another piece of the transition out of professional sports is I like battered my body for 20 years and was in very good shape, obviously, and rediscovering what movement means post sport and on knees that don't have much or any cartilage is a different question. So getting out hiking, moving in a way that feels good and doesn't feel forced, is pretty awesome. Daddy, it's time to take a break.
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Speaker 1:Okay. So looking forward I mean I already asked if you had any early highlights in this new coaching career. But looking forward, how do you see your coaching practice evolving? Are there specific areas that you'd like to add to it? Are there areas you'd like to explore? You know other medals you'd like to win and then stash in your parents' basement, but for coaching, yeah, well, since I'm not super medal motivated, okay, what motivates you?
Speaker 3:Impact, encouraging those around me being the best person I can be on a day-to-day basis In the coaching space. I really do enjoy connecting with people one-on-one. Just learning about this story and seeing how we can build strategies to help them move towards their goals is really rewarding. Towards their goals is really rewarding. And then, on a more like broader scope, I do also a good amount of public speaking, which I think is also impactful in a different way, and I think the anticipation would just be, or the goal. The next goal would be to just continue to lean into this new story, this new chapter, as you mentioned, and sharing that as we go along, because my mom has this saying of you're blessed to be a blessing, and I think I've been really blessed in my life and I want to continue to pay that forward in any way that I can.
Speaker 1:I think that's a good place to end. I appreciate you so much and I appreciate you being here today, and I'm looking forward to seeing the impact you continue to have as we continue to read the story that is the life of Miranda. Thank you so much for being with us today.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much, appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to this episode of Anything but Law. I hope you found it as inspiring and insightful as I did. This episode is recorded at Charterhouse Studios in London, ontario, with sound design and editing by Aaron Murray. Our theme music is by the Macaulay Boys. Special thanks to the marketing team at Learners, especially Natalie Davis and Dylan Willems. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform.
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