Let's Play! The Mindset Coach for Athletes Podcast
Let’s Play! is a podcast for driven athletes who want to take their game to the next level.
Hosted by Mindset Coach Jojo Allred, this podcast focuses on building confidence, consistency, and trust under pressure. Each episode helps athletes understand what’s holding them back mentally and how to move through it so their hard work actually shows up in performance.
Jojo works closely with athletes through one-on-one coaching, getting to know who they are, how they think, and what they want from their sport. That same approach carries into this podcast — real conversations, real mindset shifts, and practical guidance athletes can use before, during, and after their season.
If you’re an athlete who loves your sport, works hard, and knows you’re capable of more, Let’s Play! is here to remind you that you’re not doing this alone.
Let's Play! The Mindset Coach for Athletes Podcast
Let's Play with Mistakes
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What if mistakes aren't as scary as you're making them?
In this episode, Coach Jojo talks about why so many athletes fear mistakes and how that fear often has a bigger impact on performance than the mistake itself. Instead of trying to eliminate mistakes, athletes will learn why mistakes are an inevitable part of sports—and why learning to respond to them is what separates confident athletes from everyone else.
Coach Jojo dives into the relationship athletes have with mistakes, why we tend to resist negative emotions, and how avoiding feelings like frustration, embarrassment, and disappointment only keeps us stuck. Rather than running from those emotions, this episode encourages athletes to understand them, feel them, and eventually learn to coexist with them.
As athletes become more accepting of negative emotions, they'll discover that mistakes don't have to create panic or self-doubt. She explains how this shift can move athletes from emotional reactions to a place of neutrality—and eventually to a mindset where mistakes become opportunities for growth instead of threats to confidence.
She also provides 3 tools:
1. Name the mistake
2. Information received
3. Reflection question on the mistake
If you've ever let one mistake turn into an entire bad game, struggled to bounce back after an error, or felt like mistakes define the kind of athlete you are, this episode will help you build a healthier relationship with mistakes and start competing with more freedom.
Let's play with mistakes!
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I'm really curious to see if people are going to click on this episode because who wants to play with mistakes, right? The thing is that we do play with mistakes and it's inevitable. Like we, no matter what, are going to make mistakes. So I'm going to talk about let's play when we do make the mistake. On my podcast that's called Let's Play Imperfectly, I actually say in it, I'm like, I wonder if you guys are also going to click on this episode because we want to play perfectly, and maybe that's what intrigued you guys. It was actually a really popular episode. And so that's what made me think of this episode. I was like, let me name this something where it's going to intrigue you guys and where it's going to be like, okay, wait, is it okay to play with mistakes? Because I know when I was in the mindset when I did not want to play with mistakes and I was scared shitless to make mistakes, that scared me so much to even have a possibility of being going out there putting, I play basketball, so like going out there on the court and having opportunities to make mistakes. But the thing is, is that it's inevitable to not make mistakes. We are going to make mistakes no matter what. And the only way that I could prove that to you guys is by asking you or telling you, look at your life. Has there ever been a time? Don't even think about your sport. Has there ever been a time where you haven't made a mistake? Humans are meant to make mistakes because we could learn from them. And that's exactly why I want to talk about this episode. This is something that I think a lot of people are going to benefit from. I see the downloads that I get for my podcast and see which ones are popular. And the ones that are popular are the let's play imperfectly and let's play without fear. You guys really like that one. Um, let's play confidently. This is, I think, an episode where yes, it's a really like scary name. Let's play with mistakes. What why would I want to play with mistakes? But I think the people who click on this episode are the people who make mistakes and are people who are like, okay, let me try to figure out how to keep playing and get past the mistake and just to be in a mindset where I'm stronger than that, where I'm not gonna step on a court, step on a field, step on a track, and I'm not gonna get super scared for these opportunities and for, you know, we can't predict the future. And so hopefully you're somebody that wants to get past that. And I am here to help you. That's what this podcast is for. That's why I became a mindset coach for athletes because I have been in your position where I never wanted to make mistakes. But now being a mindset coach, I realize that we can't stop mistakes from happening. And so we have to play with them. We literally have to play with mistakes and we have to learn how to manage our mind when a mistake happens. We have to realize that when you make a mistake in a game or in practice, it's really not that big of a deal. And I know that if I were to tell myself that when I was in the mindset, when I was not a confident player, I was super scared to step on court, um, I was super scared to make any mistake of any kind or just even make a good play. I didn't even have the confidence to make a good play. And if I were to hear that it's not that big of a deal, I would have not believed that could be a thing or that it's not a big deal. I, in that mindset that I was, in that player that I was, I didn't think that I could get to a point where mistakes really didn't matter as much and where I didn't carry this heavy, almost like guilt and um disappointment in myself when I did make a mistake. And I'm just gonna try to teach you guys in this podcast how to deal with emotions because that's the bottom line. The bottom line is that the reason why we don't want to make mistakes is because we don't want to feel negative emotions. And that's that's the core issue of what we have to fix. When that's my biggest thing is that if you could understand your mind, you are set. Like you are so good. You could figure out so much shit on your own. You don't need other people to help you figure out shit if you know how to manage your mind and you know what you don't like and you know what you like to do. So let's dive in. Let's really get into this podcast episode. And I think you guys are gonna like this one. Let's go. So the biggest emphasis I need to make on this podcast. You don't need to learn how to stop making mistakes. You need to completely change your relationship with mistakes. You need to completely change how you are reacting to it and how to change your perspective to let yourself know, yes, I am going to feel a negative emotion, but that's okay. It is okay to feel negative emotions. And I need you to repeat that to yourself so many times over and over again. Right now, you see a mistake as a threat, and that makes complete sense because you don't want to make a mistake. We all don't want to make mistakes, but they're going to happen. So we have to stop treating it as the enemy, and we have to be like, okay, this is going to be part of me. That's how I believe that you end up loving yourself is that you love yourself not because you're perfect, you love yourself because of all the flaws you have, of all the mistakes that you do. And you're like, yeah, well, I'm not fucking perfect and I'm going to make mistakes. And I love myself because of it, because I learned to grow from these things. And yeah, it sucks that I maybe sometimes you're gonna make the same mistake five times in a row. I'm that type of person. I am not a person that makes a mistake and learns from it after I make the mistake once. I literally have to make a mistake five times. Sometimes I literally like I know this seems crazy, but sometimes I have to make the mistake seven times. Like, I and that's one thing that you have to know about yourself. I understand myself to the point where I'm like, okay, you know, it's gonna take me a few mistakes and a few times for me to like correct myself and to figure out how to grow from this mistake. So this is a question that I really need you guys to ask yourself. And of course, I tell you guys, you know, my other podcasts, ask yourself this question and this question, this question. But that's why it's so important. Like, always ask yourself questions, make up questions for yourself, ask questions, try to understand your mind so much because you're asking yourself so many questions. And sorry, I'm gonna sidetrack for a second here. I'm always interrupting myself. You guys know this. If you guys listen to my podcast episodes, but I was in uh Target uh last week and I got a grateful journal from there. I actually posted about it on my Instagram. I think a grateful journal is so great. Um, I have I preach about needing to be grateful because it literally makes us happy. Um, Mel Robbins have has done multiple podcasts about how important it is to just have a grateful journal to say three grateful things um before you go to bed. And that's a sidetrack of the sidetrack. I just really want to preach that. Um I'm just here to give you guys any tools that are going to help you. And anyway, okay, back to the first sidetrack. When I got the grateful journal, I also got, or no, I didn't get this, but there was a book there that was, I think it was like, I think it was like 3,000 questions about yourself. And it just asked you the most random questions. But the point of the book was that you were supposed to get to know yourself in a way. And I actually, I think I'm gonna go back and get it because I think that you don't, you don't even some of the things, some of the questions, because I was reading some of the questions, it was asking things that I've never even asked myself and that I didn't even know about myself. And I'm like, but I should know that. Like, why wouldn't I know this thing? And I I'm forgetting the questions, but it would just be like, who what's like if you had to go to a concert? Oh my God, this is so, this is so basic. But like if you had to go to a concert, who are you going to see? And then it was like, for how many hours would you be there? And who are you going with? And it was just like it kept getting deeper and deeper with the questions, and it was a silly question, but like, I want to know that about myself. And why do I want to go with those certain friends? How do those certain friends make me feel when I'm at the concert? When how do they make me feel when, you know, on everyday life? And why do I choose this group of friends? You know, so it's just, I'm saying all this, and this is my huge sidetrack, but like ask yourself as many questions as you can and love to get to know yourself. Love to know in your sport, why do I react this way? Why do I hate mistakes so much? And that's exactly what I'm asking you. This is my question to you. What is your relationship with mistakes? Are you so scared of making a mistake? Why? Why are you so scared? Why are you so scared to feel something negative? You're not dying. You're not dying. That's the worst thing that we could do in life is like not be here anymore, right? So that's the worst case scenario ever. Maybe you're embarrassed to make a mistake. Why are you embarrassed? And okay, that's fine if you get embarrassed. Do you realize that? You get embarrassed by a mistake, you're still alive, you're still living. You have to move on. You have to move on no matter what. But are you moving on with anxiety? Are you moving on because you're living in the past and you're still thinking about the mistake? That's going to affect your future. That's going to affect how you're going to play in the next play because you're thinking about the mistake that you just made. Why are you doing that? Why are you dwelling on the past that already happened? Are you going to learn from it? And that's like me. That's what I had to ask myself my senior year. Like, I started to get to know myself a lot better. And I had to be like, am I going to actually learn from this mistake I just did and not make myself feel guilty about it, not feel disappointed, not feel embarrassed and just be like, hey, it's almost kind of like sucking it up. And I don't mean to, I actually don't do a lot of tough love as my method for mindset coaching. Um, of course, if I get to know you personally and you like to do that, that's what I do. But I don't usually do the tough love. But honestly, like suck it up. Like you got the it was, it's more like a you got this. Like it's okay like to feel this negative emotion, but we have to move on because if we dwell on it, it literally affects our future. It affects what we think of the future. If you are thinking about the past and the future, then you're not playing in the present. And we need to play in the present when we're playing in our sport because sports happen. You need to play your sport in reaction. You can't play your sport even if you're a second delay. If you're thinking about the past and the future, then that means that you're going to have a reaction that might just be slightly delayed. And then you can't react, you can't play the way that you want to play. When you try to avoid making a mistake, you are hesitating. That's what I'm trying to say. When you're hesitating, that's that delay. Even if it's 0.5 seconds of a delay in your sport, it's not going to make you play like yourself. You're not playing with your instincts. And oh my God, guys, I love, I think I think I say this all the time in my other podcast episodes. I love the episode I did on Let's Play with Your Instincts because I just think it's a perspective that unlocks in your head that it's like, right, like it's almost like we have been, and I say we because I have been in the place that you guys are at where you're scared to make a mistake. We are so caught up in our mistakes and feeling embarrassed and not wanting to feel embarrassed and not wanting to make a mistake or like, you know, just getting judged by other people that we lose the the point. We lose the whole point of our sport, and that's to just play freely and that's to play with our instincts. If we're playing without thinking, that's something that we really need to do. Just you have to play without thinking. And I know I can't just say, well, and I actually just did a actually a podcast episode on this. It's called Let's Play Without Overthinking. And in it, I say, like, well, you I can't just sit here and tell you guys, don't think about overthinking, or just don't try to think about not thinking. And I get that concept, but it's obviously going to take practice for you guys not to think and to just play with instincts. But what it comes down to, honestly, is you dealing with your negative emotions. If we could figure out this core issue of it's okay to play with our negative emotions, it's okay to get embarrassed, it's okay to move on. That's actually something that I dealt with. I think that I wanted to analyze everything about my mistake and analyze how to make it better and try to literally guess what people are thinking of me and guessing how I'm being judged because I don't know. It's like it feels it feels like control. And when we feel in control, we think that it's going to control good emotions. Like we're going to unlock good emotions if we could control everything in our life. But as you guys know, literally look at your life. Have you been able to control so many situations? Like you're not able to do that. And a lot of times I think it's hard to force positivity when you want to be negative. And that's exactly why I'm trying to tell you guys think negatively and be okay with it. Like that's the difference. I think that this is what I learned when I was studying to be a mindset coach that it's okay if as long as you're aware that you're being negative and you're accepting it, that's how you can move with it. And when we're trying to avoid being or thinking negative thoughts or feeling negative emotions, when we're trying so hard in our power to not feel those things, that's what's gonna make us anxious. That's gonna, that's what's gonna make us stressed. That's what's gonna make us feel, you know, not like ourselves and super insecure because we don't know how to handle it because we're trying to avoid those negative emotions so much. So that's why I'm preaching. It's okay to feel negative emotions, but be aware of it and choose to be negative and know that it's okay. It's okay. And I just am trying to repeat myself so many times because that's honestly all that needs to get in your head. It's not me saying it in a certain perspective, and maybe it is, but like if you hear that enough, if you hear enough, and if you're repeating to yourself, it's okay. It's okay to feel negative emotions. You know what? This moment sucks right now. I just made a mistake, I just messed up in a game, coach got mad at me, coach started yelling, he's gonna take me out. Yeah, that fucking sucks. But guess what? I could do it. I could do it. I have so much power in me. That's what gives us control. That's what's going to feel like control is if we tell ourselves, I feel negative and I fucking got this. And that's honestly a perspective change right there. Not only do I want us to really focus about being okay with feeling our negative emotions, I really want us to focus on how just that mistakes are good. And I really want you guys to know this and to know that if you're not making mistakes, one, you are not trying hard enough. You are not competing at your full potential. And two, if you are not making mistakes, that means that you're trying to avoid them, and that means that you're not playing with yourself and you're not playing with your instincts. So I need you to start believing that mistakes are good. Obviously, you are not going to want to. I'm not trying to sit here and say, okay, make all the mistakes that you want. But honestly, if you're in practice, get all the mistakes out. Whatever you're feeling, especially if you're somebody right now that's not a confident player, right now, you need to heal yourself. You need to heal this part of you and to gain a new perspective. And the only way that you're going to gain confidence is by being brave and taking these scary opportunities. They are scary, but by taking these opportunities and just learning more about yourself and growing with yourself and knowing that you could handle anything. And yeah, it's going to take some, you know, you're going to go down the hill a little bit. But in the next week, if you are practicing this over and over, you're going hard. You are competing at your highest full potential and you're making mistakes and you're like, it's okay, let's go, let's keep going. And within a week, you're going to be such a better player because your mindset has changed. Our sport is 95% mental and 5% physical. And all you need to do, you have the ability. You have the capability to be the player that you want to be, but you have mental blockage. I literally have an episode called Let's Play Without Mental Blockage. You need to, I always say this, get rid of that layer of fear. And the only way you're going to do that is by being brave and by actually experiencing things. I can't sit here and just tell you to stop feeling, you know, stop having fear or stop, you know, overthinking. Like you have to be the one that goes out there and experiences these things and starts to trust yourself. You need to start trusting yourself by making mistakes and by letting yourself know, yeah, that felt pretty negative. I'm okay. You have to teach yourself this. And we also have to realize that there are the most confident players on this earth. There are the most confident and well talented, most talented. What the hell can I even speak and get that out? There are your role models that are making mistakes. And I actually want you guys, as a little homework assignment, I want you to watch, you know, your favorite team play, your favorite player play, and count the mistakes that they make. And also that's another thing. When we see this great player and we see this confident player, we don't immediately think, oh, they make mistakes. Oh, they make turnovers, they do, you know, whatever it is in your sport. We think of them as greatness. But the thing is, is that if you guys watch film on them, they make a lot of mistakes. And maybe there's our slight, right? I also want you to see, sorry, I'm like, oh my God, literally interrupting myself. I get so fired up when I talk about this stuff, but I also want you to see their response to their mistakes. Maybe I do have to say, like, I'm a huge Steph Curry fan. He will sometimes drop his head, but you could even see, like, yeah, he has his moment. You could see him accepting that, yeah, I made a mistake. And then his head's back up and he's playing hard and he's going. And he's like, yeah, but I gotta play with that. I gotta move on. You got you have to move on. And the only way you're gonna move on is by accepting this negative emotion and by realizing that it's going to be okay. And that not only, I don't want you guys to also try to make up for the mistake because I think that that's also a really bad mindset to get in. That's not, that's also like the same mindset as like, I made a mistake and I'm gonna try to not make that mistake again. But when you're also trying to say something like, oh, I made that mistake and now let me go make up for it, you're you're honestly overcompensating for who you are as a player. Just play the way that you know. And the only way that you're gonna know how you play is practicing right now, going to practice and competing at your hardest level and learning so much about yourself. And yes, it's going to be scary. This is going to be scary to jump in and just let go and to know that yes, maybe you're going to overthink a little bit, but it's going to be okay and you're going to survive. And again, it's not going to take that long. It's going to take a week of you making a lot of mistakes and you're going to learn so much from it. And I promise you that you will. And the next week comes and you're like, okay, wait, I'm feeling myself again. I'm feeling confident again. I'm feeling like I can make mistakes and I'm going to be okay. So this is what I really want you guys to do. So I'm going to give you guys three tools right now. And um, they're very simple because that's what we need to do. We just have to make this all simple. We have to, we don't, we shouldn't be overthinking as much as we are in our sport. And I understand why we do, but let's just make these tools really simple. The first one I have is name the fact. Name the fact that the mistake happened. I've been saying this this whole entire episode. When you make a mistake, literally say what the mistake was. Like, for example, in basketball, if I missed a shot, I'm going to say, I missed a shot. That's it. Like make it that simple. And if you can make it that simple as like that's a neutral statement, then you can move on. And you could just move on with the next moment. And you have accepted that, yeah, I am saying that out loud. I'm accepting maybe you're gonna feel a negative emotion. Hopefully, you get to a point where it's gonna be a neutral statement for you. And that's the point that I got to. I was never, I never felt positive after I made a mistake. That's not what I'm trying to say. I think it's very difficult to be positive. But what you can do is get to a state where you're going to be neutral about it. And so that's what I want you guys to get to. And if you can get to a positive mindset, that's amazing. I think that that's very, very, very possible to start to feel positively. But first, we need to feel negative and be okay with it. And then we could get to neutral, and then we could get to positive. All right, for tool number two, I need you guys to know that when we make a mistake, that means that we're getting information. We are getting data, literally getting data from for what we have to learn and for, you know, it's kind of like getting proof for an experiment. And so something that you could say is like data received, or I just received some data. I just received some information. I inflammation received. I know that's like I'm putting it in such like a nerdy kind of robotic way. But honestly, and I'm not saying to be robotic, but like if you think of sentences as robotic, I guess, and with like emotionless and just like neutral, that's what we kind of want to get to. But again, I'm not trying to say like, don't try to not feel emotions. Like, you know, like I just said in tool number one, we have to know that we could feel negative emotions before we could feel neutral, and then we could feel positive after that. So maybe you just have something that's just like information received, or I don't know why I'm I literally am saying it in such like a literally robotic way. But um, you could say something like that. You could just be like, okay, that's I'm learning from that. All right, that was some information. Let's go. I'm gonna keep that data in the back of my head and I'm gonna learn from it. Maybe I'm not gonna learn from it next time, but maybe. Maybe the time after that. And then for tool number three, this is something that you guys, I want you guys to analyze yourself a lot. For the next week, I want you to stop obsessing over how many mistakes that you're making. Instead, I want you to think about your recovery time from a mistake. How, and not even recovery time, but just like, how are you feeling after a mistake? And how quickly did I come back to myself? And how quickly did I come back to the present moment? And I want you guys to just, that's what I want you to evaluate. I don't want you to evaluate how many mistakes you're still making. I want you to understand yourself. I want you to go out there and be like, did I move on? And you're gonna want to say yes. You are going to want to say yes, I moved on because you're trying to convince yourself of that. And I understand that. I completely understand that. But be honest. Be like, yeah, I tried and so much of my power to, you know, think positively, to think neutrally. And I just couldn't. Don't force that. Let it happen. Evaluate yourself and know that it might take some time before your mind starts to become at ease and to know that it's going to be okay with these negative emotions. And that's a, I mean, I guess I shouldn't say that's tool number four, but like be patient, literally be patient. And it that's why I love to work with athletes. I say this all the time. You guys know that it takes work. It takes work. It it honestly probably took you a long time to lose your confidence over time and it kept going bit by bit. And all of a sudden now you're at the bottom right now, and you're like, how did that happen? And it was over time. Things, positive things aren't gonna just happen like that. Like you're not just gonna be healed within a day. That doesn't happen. You you didn't become this person and this player right now with a very negative mindset in one day. That happened over time with experiences. It's the same thing with getting a positive mindset. We have to be patient and know that it's going to take to take experiences and to take mistakes in order to grow, in order to build. So, just as a reminder, as I want to leave you guys today with this podcast, I want to say and just emphasize your goal was never supposed to become an athlete who doesn't make mistakes. Your goal is becoming an athlete who isn't afraid of themselves after they make one. That's your exact goal. And I want you guys to remember that. Write it down, honestly. Like write it down, see it above your bed every single morning, and just know that this is what we're building. It's okay to make mistakes, you guys, and we're going to. That's the thing. We are going to. So let's play with mistakes. We have to. I mean, there's no other choice. There's literally no other choice but to play with mistakes because it's inevitable. So just stop trying to eliminate them. You that that will come with time. Okay. That will literally come with experiences with you being okay to make a mistake. You're gonna realize that these mistakes are going to become less and less and less. And if they don't, eventually you're gonna get to the point where you don't care. So actually, no, it will. You guys will stop making so many mistakes when you accept that it's okay. And also don't force it. It's going to take some time, like I was just saying. Okay, guys. So stop trying to eliminate every mistake when you should be learning how to exist with these mistakes. Um, yeah, that's all that I have for you guys today. Thank you so much for listening. Thank yourselves for listening. It's so amazing that you guys took the time for yourselves to work on your mind and I really hope that this is going to help you. Um, listen to my other podcast episodes. I have so many talking about things like this. I go into more depth about other concepts that I've talked about in here. And look at my description. I have so many links for you guys. I have so many free resources. I'm coming out with courses, um, a confidence course, and I'm coming out with so many other courses for you guys. I'm just here to help you. That's all that I want because I have been in your shoes. I have been where you are, and that's why I'm a mindset coach today. Um, yeah, just reach out if you guys have any questions. I respond pretty, you know, in an efficient way, and um, or an efficient timeline, and I hope that you guys are building confidence and just know that it's going to take time. So be patient. All right, I love you guys, and see you guys in my next episode.