Hello and welcome to the swim brief. I am Chris DeSantis, and today I'm joined by Ashley Eckerman. She is the owner of Maximize the Mind, a mental performance coach, and somebody with a swimming background who reached out to me to come on the podcast. I was intrigued. And now here you are. Welcome, Ashley.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_01So before we get into any kind of like I'm I'm very interested in getting into a um talking about the mental side of sports, especially swimming. But before we get into that, like I always think people listening to this, they want to know who they're hearing from. So give us a sense of your career as it relates to sports. Like I found you on LinkedIn and I saw one of your first jobs was actually as a swim coach. But but give us an idea of like the five-minute version of coming into coaching and then what you're doing now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, um, I actually always knew that I wanted to go into sports psychology. Um my dad uh played um professional golf, and so I saw him struggle on the tour with talk about a sport with a mental gain.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_00Right. So he struggled with frustration and the pressure of like making the cut. So as a young kid, I was exposed to something like in the early 90s that a lot of people just thought only existed for pro athletes. And the average athlete, which is you know what I wanted to help the high school athlete, the college athlete, the junior high kids, um, age group athletes in swimming, just didn't have access to it. It's not that it didn't exist, they just didn't know how to get access to it. And so um when I graduated from college, I didn't have enough money to go to grad school at the time. There's five kids in my family. So I got into teaching, I got into coaching. That's what I knew. And um I was really good at it. So I stayed longer than I anticipated and I enjoyed it, but I truly think I am good at what I do today when I finally went back to grad school, got all the credentials, had my own practice because of years of coaching. So I was a coach for 14 years, and when you see the side of a coach and an athlete, you can really help because you get all the angles, and a lot of times not everybody gets all aspects. So I think it helped me be better at what I do today because I took a nonlinear path.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I had 10 years myself in coaching before I started uh Christasantis coaching and got into this side of it, and then even recently um during the pandemic, I went back to coaching full-time, and I think like both of them actually feed each other, right? Working um working in a in a mental performance uh aspect, it it'll make you a better coach, and coaching will also make you better at the other side of this. What what were some of the things you saw, right? So you had this experience with your dad. What were some of the things you saw as you got into your coaching career that maybe you didn't have time for? You know, like you're you're the coach of a team and you see what kids need, but like I know, like my last coaching job, I had 40 kids in my group, and I had a ton of them where I was like, ooh, they need my help with this and that, but if I start doing that, all of a sudden I don't have time to live. So, what were some of the things you saw that um that you think is better served by what you're doing now?
SPEAKER_00Um, I think the thing that really killed me the most was I mean, I think most coaches face so much um burnout because they're overloaded with responsibilities. And I know you know what that's like. And I coached high school, I have coached summer leagues, I've coached club, I've coached lots of different things, but it was, you know, four or five hours on a pool deck, and then also write your workouts, and then also figure out your dry land training, and then also um what you're gonna do for nutrition, and then how are we gonna pack and how are we gonna travel? And yeah, you're just expected to do so much. And so for me, getting in a different role, I was able to specialize and then be the expert and be like, I have time to help you with this, and I'm not wearing all the hats and trying to do everything because I don't think it's not that a coach doesn't care about mental aspect or sports psychology, they do and they know it's so powerful for how those kids meet their potential, but they don't have the time, they don't have the research or the resources to be able to go into it with them. Because I have coaches reach out to me all the time, like, hey, I want you to work with this kid. You're probably gonna tell them the same thing I'm telling them, but they're gonna hear it differently from you. And having the opportunity to share it in kind of like a different capacity, that's what I think is so impactful. And I think when you work with coaches, with sports medicine doctors, with trainers, and you have this like village of people that come together to help a kid, that's when you have incredible impact and you're not just relying on like one resource, you know what I mean? Because it's just like swimming. You could do all the physical training in the world, but if you do not tap into recovery and nutrition and so many other things, like you know, strength training, then you're really not meeting your potential. So I think that probably is the biggest thing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, I I I I hear what you're saying, and it's like I got my education in 2009 and I was coaching seven more years. After that, I think one of the most frustrating things was knowing what to do, and then just simply not being able to prioritize it. Like, like you said, there was so many different things that like if I stopped to prioritize what I what I was strongest in, you know, I was simply letting other kind of essential things just fall by the wayside. So I was constantly frustrated, right? That that I I can I know I can do something about this, but um it doesn't actually make sense for for me to do anything about it. Like I I like I I gotta hold off. And um ultimately I think that's what led me to doing it. You you talked about working collaborative. I love what you say about it takes a village. I love it. I mean that's that's um that's 100% what I believe as well. Have you run into the same thing I have, which is sometimes there's a little bit of friction from coaches because they don't want or they think they don't want a village to help them. Try to put that very positively.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so okay, I'll say this. Um I have coaches that refer kids to me all the time. Uh we don't advertise, we we are filled to the brim. I have coaches that work with me because I've had such a good relationship with coaches. And obviously, being a former coach, I know a lot of people in the industry, you know what I mean? So people send people to me because they trust me or already have a relationship with me or know me. But I have people that will find me, you know, through Google or Instagram or whatever, and they'll be like, Well, my coach is kind of skeptical, or my coach is, you know, not real sure, or a parent will come to me and they want me to work with their son, but their son is just kind of resistant. And I always kind of start out with, I'm not trying to replace your primary coach. That's not my job. Okay. Um, when swimmers come to me, because obviously I was a swimmer growing up, um, you know, that's super exciting to me. I love it because I know every in and out about the sport. But I work with rodeo kids, I work with football players, volleyball players, soccer players, baseball players, I work with every sport you can imagine. And it's not that you have to know the sport specifically. I'm the brain expert, right? I'm the mental coach. I'm the person that's gonna give you brain hacks so that you can be more calm and be more composed and you know, not have poor races just dwell forever and ever. Like I have a different type of role. And so when coaches are like, I'm just not real sure, I'm like, I'm not trying to correct technique. That is no longer the role that I fill. Um, I know how to do that, and so that might come up sometime in a certain sport, but really that's your job. I want to complement what you're doing. I want to, you know, be another resource because I think we can't know it all. And when you hire expertise in that field, you're going to be so much better. Nobody is, you know, I don't know, just knows it all. I don't know how else to say it. So I think having those conversations and trying to say, you know, this is how we can help each other, because ultimately, don't you want your kid to get that futures cut? Don't you want to get that sectionals cut? Don't you want them to get a college scholarship? Yes, you want that. And who is the first person that they thank and celebrate? It is typically, besides God, their coach. And so, you know, a lot of times I'm in the back burner. They're there, oh yeah. And also, you know, Coach Ashley helped me with this. But really, they're thanking their coach that they spend every single day with. And so I think sometimes just stepping back and going, I want help making my athlete better, it's it shouldn't be a threat. But I think if you don't know what you don't know, it can be. I don't know, does that make sense?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, I mean I I I sometimes I see it as a bit of a filter, right? Like, so listen, I I don't really want to work with anybody who thinks that I'm going to be uh ruining all their stuff for them. Like I that's that that's that's fine. At the same time, I I I I don't see that as what I do. I was talking to um so I I coach both athletes and and I work with coaches as well. So I was talking to a coach yesterday and I was sharing with him um something that I learned from a mentor of mine that that was really, really influential. It's a a guy in uh swimming Milt Nelms um who lives in Tasmania and he he gets uh frequent mentions on this uh podcast. He's just a master of teaching, I would say. He and he's very very much like a self-taught person. And I was watching him I got the chance to just watch him for an entire weekend when he was working with a team. And you know, he was running, he would hate that I use the word drills, but it and it'll it'll it'll come up in this story. Like I was watching him run people through what what most of us would understand as as drills, and he was using all these weird names for it. And I went to him and I said, Milt, like why do you come up with all these wacky names for the stuff that people are doing? And he goes, Anytime I'm trying to teach somebody how to do something, right? If I use if I just tell them what it is, right, if they think it's like something they've already done, they're gonna go, oh, it's like, you know, like this is how our brains work, right? We associate, we go, oh, it's like that. And then they'll just do it the way they did that other thing. I'm not trying to teach them, I'm trying to teach them something new. Right? So I want them to I want it to have a new name in their mind. The flip side of that is when when something exists in somebody's mind already, it's there, right? And so when you come in as another coach, um, you say something, people are also design designed to like distinguish, right, and find conflict. And um so I I I spend a lot of time with athletes that I work with going like, I'm gonna say some stuff, and you might trip off in your mind, like, oh, that's uh the opposite of what coach says. The point of what I'm doing here is not for you to find the stuff that we disagree about. Maybe I said it a little bit differently, and it sounds like I'm saying something different than them, but the reality is you're actually supposed to be trying to associate the stuff together, right? Because really the role of most of what we're doing is either we're trying to teach something new and then it is entirely new, and they've never heard it before, or it's supposed to be associating with something that they're already uh working on. And I think when you look at it like that, there's nothing threatening about either of those things to somebody who's um who's sort of an existing coach for an athlete.
SPEAKER_00Sure. I'm I I'm gonna piggyback on that for a second. So um I love what you said, okay, because repetition is the mother of all learning. And they do need to hear it, but they do need to hear it in different ways. And I do the same when I'm teaching tools, it's not like I, you know, first of all, it's not like I made them up. Everything's researched, but it's I will come up with funky names because, in my opinion, I want you to go, oh yeah, that thing is different. And then I pique your interest because you're all of a sudden like, oh, I don't know that. That's something new. But in reality, I'm repeating something just in a different way, and now I'm making it more appealing. Um, we do this thing in our practice called the no positive thinking challenge, and I get eye rolls all the time. They're like, What? You don't you don't recommend positive thinking? Like, what? That I thought that's what you do.
SPEAKER_01We're gonna get into this in just a second because this is what trips me about you. I can't wait to talk about this. Okay. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Okay, well, what I was just gonna say is when we do this challenge, the name surprises people, but I tell them the deal is I want to pique your interest. I want to make you curious. I'm going for like the um surprise attack, right? Because typically athletes come to me and somebody drug them in to see me. A coach sent them to me, a parent, um, a sports medicine doctor. Because most, let me rephrase that, my older athletes, my professionals do choose to come see me. But most of my high school athletes, your age group athletes, they don't want to come because they think something's wrong with them. They think they're in trouble or something, right? And so they think um, you know, sports psychology or mental performance coaching is positive thinking and they're hesitant to work on it. And so the reason we kind of came up with that name, and we just do it a couple times a year, but is I say, you know, I don't believe in positive thinking either. And they're usually like, wait, what? So I don't care if it's a FaceTime session because we work with athletes all over the country, or if it's they're coming into my office and I'll say, Hey, I just want to tell you, I don't believe in that positive thinking crap. And they're like, wait, what? And I'll say, here's the deal: you're not gonna repeat something you don't believe. So what you do is you just ignore the mental aspect of training altogether, and then you wonder why you're not improving. Okay, if I really want you to be in the middle game and developing the right mindset, I'm gonna have to teach you how to do it without being positive, without being fake. So, our whole deal at Maximize the Mind is like, let's teach you strategies that can help you stop overthinking, help you ease tension, but ultimately I need you to know it's not just positive affirmations in the mirror because that's what they've decided won't work, they're not good at, and they're not gonna do. So that was kind of like our same like idea. I feel like your coach probably has that, you know, same theory.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, so this is the part I really that piqued my interest with you, and I'm glad we're just like we naturally we just rolled right into it. So this is um, I mean, so my my education, it's funny, um, my education is I have a master's in applied positive psychology.
SPEAKER_00I saw that! Yes, yes. Well, I'm not against positive psychology, I'm just against the angle.
SPEAKER_01No, because but like I I'm about to say, I actually agree with you. And this is one of the most frustrating misconceptions that I think, you know, like we we run into a conflict, all of the people that I speak with that also have a background in positive psychology and are actually out there practicing stuff. I I would say there's quite a bit uh in the positive psychology community of people who are wonderful theorists, who um whose knowledge is all classroom knowledge and wonderful in theory. Um but for people who have been out there practicing, right, one of the things you run into right away, and I I like hit this hit me like a brick wall, um, was you have a sense of you know what positive psychology is, but man, when you use that word uh out there in the real world, the people, the stuff that people associate with it is just dead wrong. So I'm always working on two things, right, in that respect, is like I I want people to understand what positive psychology is, right? Because I think it's good. Um but I also accept that you know people will associate it with something like, oh, well, positive psychology is you say positive affirmations to yourself in the mirror. That's what positive psychology is. And if that's what they think it is, then I got a lot of work to do to do that. And so just just for the purpose of discussion, beyond beyond what you said already, why do you think so many people think that something like positive affirmations works?
SPEAKER_00Why do I think they think it works or why do I they don't think it works? Because the interaction that I take.
SPEAKER_01Why do they think why why why do we have a per I guess why is there a perception that it works?
SPEAKER_00Um I I will tell you that m almost everybody that comes to me thinks it doesn't work. And that's why they've decided they don't want to do it and they don't um want to participate in it, so they're not open to it. You and I both know through the research, it's absolutely incredibly impactful, powerful, and it can change your life. I believe in the idea and I teach it, but I teach it very innovatively and very creatively because I know that that resistance is there. Um, I think a lot of people that come and they're not sure are like, well, I'm just not, I just don't have confidence, or I'm just not a confident person, or I just wasn't born with it. I go, oh, cool. Well, the good thing is nobody's born with it. You can manufacture it. And then it's uh I'm not sure. And so it's not that I'm not teaching them things that will better serve them, I just call it productive thinking, I call it constructive thinking because I think you know, toxic positivity is fake. And so I get a little more innovative in like teaching specific language to rewire their subconscious brain. I'm doing the same thing, but I know what they're open to because it's just like um, you know, if I was to tell a 17-year-old guy, you know, hey, I want to teach you some medic meditation strategies, he would roll his eyes at me. He would go, oh my god, that's too woo-woo for me. And I would say, I know this is. Yeah. So I will tell you, I do do it. Hey, I totally get it. I didn't do it for years. And I don't lead with it. And I will it will be sessions and sessions in before I would ever even bring up something like that because I know the resistance. If you are not willing to meet your audience, which is athletes for me, where they are at, they will never be receptive to anything you're saying. So for me, it's like I think most people think, I'm just gonna use toxic positivity like as an example. They make the mistake of forcing positivity upon others. So my goal is to teach athletes how to repeat phrases that are more genuine, more authentic, um, because I think people think, oh, positive mindset, that means I've got to get over everything bad. And no matter what my circumstances are, I'm just gonna deny all emotions and it's not okay to feel anything. And I'm just gonna slap a positive phrase on top of them. And that's ridiculous. It's like putting a band-aid on a damn bullet hole. You're not gonna do that. And so if you don't actually allow them to move forward, but like lead them, they're gonna have that resistance. So I see coaches and I see parents do this like, you know, just be more positive, or just get out of your head, or you know, other people have it a lot worse. Or, you know what? You should really be more grateful. And like, that's not bad advice. And and damn it, that's not negative. Okay, that's good, but the problem is how it's received. So staying positive does not mean everything is gonna turn out okay. That's crap. It's knowing that you will be okay no matter how things turn out. And so my goal is to aim for more like neutrality, and I don't want you to be dependent upon how you feel. So if someone says just be more positive, I'm like, you don't get it, you don't know what I'm going through because that's instant resistance, right? But if I throw out something like, okay, you know what? You've prepared for this, or that feeling is temporary, or yeah, that situation is tough, but so are you, or let's talk about how you prepared, or let's talk about how you're capable, then all of a sudden I can receive that because it's not fake. I I do want you to acknowledge the emotion, but I want you to hold on to something that's easier to repeat because we believe whatever we repeatedly say. Does that help a little, or is that okay?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, so so it's like I I worked with um a team earlier this year that um I think the day after they were working with me, they were going to an improv class. And I think of like improv with what you're just talking about. I mean, um, anybody who has any kind of familiarity with improv, what's the first rule of improv? Don't deny. Right? So, so like all of that stuff that I think you you rightly put under the label of toxic positivity, it starts with somebody being like, you know, I'm I'm angry, I'm sad, I'm not feeling very good, and it goes straight to denial. Like you just deny, and then you try to like shift the perspective. What you're talking about is there has to be some kind of acknowledgement of how people are feeling, and then there's an opportunity to pivot after that, right? And I think that's a crucial part of the step. I always teach um athletes and coaches uh your emotion in any given situation, and people get into so much trouble with this, right? Because they they think that their emotion is the is the problem. But like your emotions are what they are, uh, and they're they're not within your control. You're gonna feel a certain way in certain situations. But you can influence what you think after them. And it's the it's the spirals that come out from How we think after we feel something that lead us to act in different ways and repeat different patterns and get into different sets of consequences and all of that versus the emotions in the first place. But I think a lot of people tend to mean like it's just it's just a simpler way to think of the emotion themselves as like, oh well that kid's, you know, he always gets mad when he doesn't do well, and that's the problem. No, the problem is what happens after that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I like kids that are mad when they don't do well. They really care about how how they're doing. I I tell people all the time, I will coach a team. If you if you offered me, um, I'd take a hundred out of a hundred kids that are nervous before a meet. Those are a hundred kids that really care how they're gonna do. I don't want anybody that's that's like, eh, I don't care about, you know, I don't care about this meet. That doesn't make any sense. But yeah, but sometimes we get those two things really twisted.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I think the biggest thing is acknowledging the emotion instead of trying to escape it, you're never gonna not feel nervous, or else you're right, you don't care about what happens. I I want to excite that, I want to bring that up, but I want to tell you how to uh channel it better. That's kind of my goal because if we say, oh my God, I wish I didn't feel so nervous, or oh my gosh, I wish I didn't feel like I was gonna puke right now, then we teach our brains that we can't handle it. And so ideally, you want to give your brain instructions on what you want to happen, how you want to feel. I'm not promising you are going to feel confident, but you can funnel your focus because again, your brain still holds on to what it heard last. Typically, that last thing you heard is the first thing you do. So if you move your thoughts in that right direction to form a new neurological connection, you are gonna set yourself up for the thing that you want to do versus what you're trying to avoid. So it's just kind of sitting with stuff. Okay, yeah, I'm gonna feel nervous. I really shouldn't be surprised by that. I'm in the A final, I'm in lane four, I am literally the target. Okay, that's reasonable to feel nervous. Let's talk about what we want to think about or you know, fuel so that it works for you instead of against you. Yeah, I mean, I totally agree.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, so uh how hard do you does your entire body tense up when you hear the phrase fake it till you make it?
SPEAKER_00I I don't know. I got good and bad things on that one, I guess. Um I'll say Okay.
SPEAKER_01I've I'm I am not a fan, so you you sell me on what's good about fake it till you make it.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Um, yes, I think a lot of uh people in this industry would be like, oh, absolutely not. Um the way I look at it is if you say it enough, we know that we will believe it, right? We that I mean it's literally neuroplasticity. The brain will constantly rewire to whatever you repeat. So it doesn't matter if you didn't believe it years ago, you can rewire your brain constantly. So if I'm saying something that is kind of hard for me to believe right now, and I know I repeat it, I will believe that. And so I think it can be good if you're faking the right things. If you're faking something that's not you at all, then you're always trying to emulate or copy somebody else and you're not being genuine, you're not being true to yourself, you will not tap into your true potential. But if you are faking what you want to become, I'm okay with that because we are trying to become something. I teach a lot of developing alter egos and tapping into the brave athlete that you want to be, even if you don't feel like it right now, because there's so much science on what you can become, even if I don't feel it. And just as an example, I may not repeat, I'm so confident behind this, you know, 200 fly race. Okay, I get you. Um, but you could say, I deserve to be more confident, and then I'm focusing on the confidence, and that is probably always true. You do deserve to be more confident than you feel, or I'm developing my confidence, or I'm working on my confidence, and then all of a sudden you're faking something, but yet you're channeling where you want to be. That's kind of my take on that. Like if you're doing it the right way.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it sounds like though it's not really faking it in that situation. Like, I I I think again, we we've gotten to a point of agreement here, which is what uh instead of I think people internalize fake it to you make it, right? They they think, okay, well, I've got to fake some level of positivity in this situation where naturally my thoughts are not that positive, and what you're actually teaching them how to do is find something that's more productive. Uh, you said productive thinking earlier, and I love that phrase. You've what's some found them found a way to replace that with some kind of more productive thought that's maybe not perfect, right? But it's it's a step in progression to something better, to the place you want to be, I think is another great way to um phrase it. I think the the association I think a lot of people make with fake it till you make it is like, okay, my negativity is a problem, therefore I have to do something about it, versus like I would benefit from more positive thinking. That's something I would like to do, I want to do, right? And the different psychology around, I often put athletes in this scenario works better the older they are and the closer they are to actually this point in their lives. But I'm like, you know, like imagine you go out and you get a job, and you know, your boss at your job is just like, here's a list of things, and you have to do all of them. You have to do, like, and I don't care what you think, how you feel, whether you're sick today, you have to do them. I said, does that sound like a nice place to work? No, you know? And I said, but so many athletes they're setting that up for themselves, right? That's that's actually their their self-construction for how they think about what they're gonna do. So, all my negative thinking is a problem and I have to fix it. Versus, no, you don't have to fix it. You can keep doing what you're doing. It's not really working that well, but you can keep doing it if you want to. Um, or you can want something else.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um, I'll I'll say this. We uh advise our athletes, we're really strategic on certain words that are triggers for the brain and um will cause us kind of to uh freeze or have um just analysis by process kind of thing. Uh process by analysis, you know what I meant. But I the idea on have to is the brain feels like it's a chore. We feel obligated, we feel like we're, you know, we have no other option or we're gonna die. And you and I both know that's not true, but that's how the brain receives it. So we'll talk a lot about let's get rid of have to's and need to's and shoulds. And let's say I want to, and where they maybe fake it till you make it comes in, is I'll say, you might not want to say, I want to go to practice today. You would say, Oh, I have to go to practice today, or oh, my coach is gonna be mad or something, right? But I have to means it's a it's a chore. You're probably not gonna have a really good practice. So I want to go to practice. If you don't believe that, then put a phrase on the end that's like an incentive. So I want to go to practice so that I get into finals. I want to go to practice so I get this cut. I want to go to practice so I get recruited. I want to go to practice so um I can improve my time, whatever, right? So if you get more innovative, it's not that you don't want to because that might be fake. I'm never gonna say I want to clean my closet, but I want my closet clean so I can sit on the couch or I want my closet clean so I don't have to worry about it. Do you know what I mean? So I think the innovation in what your self-talk ends up looking like because a lot of people just don't know what other options are because they're just so used to saying it one way that they've always done. Another example, I think I hear coaches say a lot, um, and I did it back in the day too, before I knew, but like, you know, don't breathe off the wall. Oh dear God, we all have heard it, uh, or or you know, don't false start or something like that. And it's not that it's bad advice, but the problem is if I'm hearing what I'm not supposed to do, I have a real hard time transferring it quick enough to the brain to go, what am I supposed to do? I have to make a decision in a split second. So instead of don't breathe off the wall, give your brain instructions for what you're wanting. So I don't know, focus on the breakout stroke, five underwaters off the wall, breath control, or for don't fall start, you might just say something like explode or be alert or be ready. The idea is saying what you want instead of what you're trying to avoid or whatever you felt obligated to because then you're no longer in what you're doing, and you just make it harder on yourself.
SPEAKER_01Right. The scenario I always give to athletes is I I say to them, I say, um, imagine you actually believe that I I have magical powers, right? And so I say, I'm gonna cast a spell on all of you, and everybody's going to swim fast. The spell only has one catch. Between now and when you swim, you have to never think about a white bear. Everybody just thought about a white bear, and now the the spell is broken, right? So when you tell people not to do something, or not to, or you try to not think about something, what are you gonna do?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the first thing you think of.
SPEAKER_01And you're gonna do it. Yeah. So it's it it feels satisfying for as a coach, it feels satisfying for your ego. You're like, I I saw that person doing the wrong thing, and I'm telling them that they're wrong. It's so satisfying for your ego. Doesn't really help anybody to get better at anything. Um, unfortunately. Uh the stuff that that satisfies our ego isn't always um isn't always the same thing that that's really effective in any given situation. Um I want to pull back a little bit and ask you something. Um as you look at, you've been you've been doing this for a number of years. Um, and I think I've I've been doing this uh solely since 2016. Again, I had a little interruption there in the pandemic, but I I kept one foot in the game. Um I I've seen a lot of change over that time period. Um and especially uh uh post-pandemic. What have you s seen as sort of the big changes in the landscape as it comes to sports psychology, uh, mental performance coaching, and the way that people perceive it or what people are how people are engaging with it?
SPEAKER_00Um I think it's becoming more accessible to the everyday athlete. And I think it's becoming um there's still a stigma attached because something like that is just so hard to just totally shake. But athletes, let me let me back up a second. Famous athletes, okay, professional athletes, are talking about it in interviews now. They're talking about it to the media, they're not um hush-hush about it, they are open about how it has absolutely changed their performance. Um, uh more people I think are receptive to this doesn't make me crazy. If I'm talking to something, it doesn't mean something's wrong. It's like, okay, it's literally the competitive advantage. If I'm not utilizing, you know, these strategies and tools or working with someone, then am I really training as hard as I could be to get what I say I want? Like your actions have to match your goal. And so I think more people are just open to it. The thing that we hear the most is I had no idea this type of coaching existed. And it's like, oh man, yeah, that's good. I want you to know. Tell your friends. And that's we have a booked-out practice, but one of the reasons we started doing um like the challenges and workshops and on-demand courses, because we have a lot of resources for athletes. One of the reasons we did that was because I want people to know about it, and you know, a one-on-one session is not always accessible to everyone, so we wanted just more people to realize like what was out there, and I think people are curious about it and not as much maybe shame attached to it. I don't know if I love that word, but I think that would be like maybe the biggest thing that I'm seeing in like this shift.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I would say it there's there's been a lot, um, is interesting because I had an entire business that was based around me doing things in person, and that's why I had to go back to coaching in the pandemic. I just couldn't quite make the the pivot at that time. Um, and so I said, like, you know, it sort of it it it it taketh and then it giveth. Um because on the other side of it, there's all sorts of people like who I think wouldn't have considered um getting coaching like this virtually prior to 2020. Like everybody all of a sudden is like comfortable talking about stuff. I mean, and because this is you you talk about the layer of uh stigma and the sort of uncomfortability. I always felt um at the beginning of doing this that you know, and maybe I was just putting this on people, but that they were much more that that they weren't gonna be comfortable doing something like this online. And I found just people afterwards it's just like they've just sort of switched. Um and that's great for me because I can coach people all over now, right? I'm not limited to uh a geographic area and and you know, driving and and sitting in somebody's living room, right, and and talking to them or having them come to me, right? Um we can just meet up just like you and I did for for this podcast. Um one thing that I have observed that I'm I'm still in the process of thinking through, and I hear this especially uh from college coaches, is as the discussion of what's going on in people's minds, um, as particularly with high-end athletes, as that has grown and sort of penetrated uh the dialogue a lot more. I noticed that a lot of the terminology around it, maybe this is just me, I've I want to get your perspective on it, but me bringing my positive psychology bent to it, is a lot of the terminology is like the terminology, it's it's pathology from the the psychology world, right? So like our our words for describing like I'm really worried about how I'm gonna do in this meet is I have anxiety, I have pre-meat anxiety, right? Or um I'm persistently not feeling well, I'm really depressed about X, Y, and Z, right? So that the the the common vocabulary, um and I see that as an opportunity for me, both on the end of in terms of of right, you do have people, I I and I love those things being destigmatized, but not everything is a pathology, right? Especially um, especially with athletes, you know, at the core, sports is not about trying to, to me, is not about trying to fix something that's wrong with you. It's trying to be the best version of yourself. And that's not about pathology. Um, but I wonder, like, what's your perspective on on all that?
SPEAKER_00Um, well, I will tell you the thing that we probably get emailed the most from parents is do you teach more than just you know being better as a softball player, soccer player, swimmer, or whatever? And I always say, well, I only work with athletes because I I want to be super specific. I enjoy that. Uh, and if they come to me that's outside of that realm, I'll refer them to people. But yes, of course we work on life skills. Of course we're teaching other things because yes, you're right. Your sport teaches self-discipline, it teaches organization, it teaches you how to problem solve, it teaches you how to work with other people, how to get along with people you don't like. Dear God, that's called life, that's called your job in the future. So, yes, everything that we teach is life skills. And that's why it's so valuable to like, you know, yeah, you have this maybe container that you'll get to use it in in your sport if we're teaching things for confidence or pressure or, you know, letting go of mistakes. But ultimately, it is about how you will perform as a student, how you will interact in relationships, how you connect with other people. And I think that is so incredibly powerful because in schools today, we're, you know, regurgitating information for test. And I'm a former teacher, so I can say that, but um we really want to be teaching communication and authority and um you know self-worth, and we don't take the time for that. So that's one of the things that I love is teaching just skills that I think every human could be better at that we don't take time for in education.
SPEAKER_01Right. No, I mean, I and I think those skills are more important than they used to be. I mean, I I so uh uh I have this background in uh positive psychology, um, but before that I studied history, and one of the things I think about is you know, if if you go back like a hundred years in history, I mean life was life was rough for most people. It was really, really rough. Um the chances that something that um something really that we would view as like earth-shatteringly traumatic would happen to you, you know, your sibling would die or your parent would die young or you know, all these horrible things, like that was pretty high. And I think, you know, the the sort of latent pessimism that we all have as human beings, it was designed for a world that was a lot harder than the one we live in today. I don't I'm not trying to argue that anybody's soft, you know, that that kids are soft these days or people are soft these days. I'm just saying we've we've succeeded in making life a lot more convenient, life a lot easier, um, some of this stuff less likely to happen, and then it's all the more important that we actually develop some of these social emotional skills because um that is what you will use in a world where you're not constantly worried about the worst possible thing happening, and it's actually legitimately could happen, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. Um, and I think um, you know, just talking about the the rise of anxiety in um kids is huge, and I think you know, there's a lot of things I think I can contribute to that, and we would be here for nine hours, but people want to avoid things that scare them, and then you know, that might be in a sport, so they're like, oh, I don't love this sport anymore, oh, it's not fun, but in reality, that's going to transfer over to uh making connections with people and they're stuck on their phone or um trying new things because they're afraid to fail. So avoidance always increases anxiety and nerves and exposures treats it, exposure treats it. So I think what's important is not trying to um, I don't know, just eliminate like symptoms and things like that, but teaching people how to respond, not react, and that that actually is a skill that can be learned, and you're not just sucky at it or not good at it, right? Um, we're not trying to fix it, we're teaching you how to manage it. And I, yeah, I think that's really powerful.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I was thinking about the exactly what you said there about avoidance. I mean, I I I had a sometimes I record podcasts on my own, so I think the next one is going to be all about uh distraction is not a strategy for improvement, right? Oh, yeah, avoidance is not a strategy for improvement. Maybe you're overwhelmed in a situation, and the best you can do is avoid it. But in the long term, if you want to improve at something, you you're you you should figure out a way. I there I use the should word. Um, you know, you want to figure out a way to engage with it, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, uh we teach um emotional fire drills all the time because they're like, oh no, I don't wanna, I don't want to that to happen. And I'm like, I know, but you don't know if it will happen or not, right? Nobody has a crystal ball. Right.
SPEAKER_01You can't control, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, let's figure out what we're gonna do if it does happen so that you're not caught off guard, so that you don't shrivel up and feel like you're gonna die, right? And so that you know your response before you need it, and maybe you don't need it, but I think when you teach them that, it just empowers them more than they realize what you're actually doing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. All right, so we're getting to the end of our time here. I want to make sure if there's any ways that people can find more information about you, I want to give you the opportunity to share those before I uh s say goodbye. So if people are interested in learning more about you, what you do, um, what kind of services you provide, where should they go?
SPEAKER_00Just go to maximizethemind.com. Uh we got a ton of stuff up there.
SPEAKER_01What a great URL.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Maximizemind.com. Why didn't I get that one?
SPEAKER_00Well, okay, so you know what's good. Um I got that's on your website, but it was taken in a couple different social media handles. So we have all different handles because I was like, oh man, and then you go and you find someone, but they're not actually using it. And I'm like, can I just have that? Can I have that from you? Because I'm I'm using ours. But yes, our website is just maximizethemind.com. And we pride ourselves in actually having um great resources. We got free stuff for you, but we have so much reading material, blogs, and good things that you're not just like, okay, what do they do? We are not the kind of people that are like, well, you have to email us, we gatekeep, and you want to know what we charge, you want to know what something is. It is all on there. Um, because I just don't believe in making people have to search and work hard for things.
SPEAKER_01No, no, or get a surprise uh later on. I think that's absolutely um that's that's what I I went I did some poking around on your website, and it's another thing that appealed to me about what's I was like, oh thank goodness one of these, like where they actually have some transparency about what the heck is going on here.
SPEAKER_00You know, but is that much so true?
SPEAKER_01Right. Just book and you'll find out like the where the mad where the magic is done. Like, what are you doing?
SPEAKER_00No, that's crazy. No, one of my values is transparency and integrity, and I just believe you need to put that out there, and I wish more people did.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, this has been a blast. I mean, 45 minutes blew by doing this conversation. I uh I really appreciate you reaching out um to come on this podcast. Thank you so much, and um good luck.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much. It was so good to get to know you, and I love talking swimming and just all things when you know uh it it's different than maybe what you do on every day. I just really wish more people would explore things that they don't know because you don't know what you don't know, you know?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely, absolutely. All right, thank you to everybody for listening, and uh, we'll see you again soon.