Hello and welcome to the swim brief. I'm Chris DeSantis, and I am joined, as I usually am, by the powerful, the resplendent Joel Rawlings. Joel Howard.
SPEAKER_00I'm glad you got the Thesaurus of the Day calendar up and running. That's awesome. I'm doing well. Thank you for asking.
SPEAKER_01You well, I mean, look, you say thesaurus, but I know that you always describe yourself as resplendent.
SPEAKER_00I've already picked out my tombstone because I figure maybe I got like five, six more years anyway. Resplended is going to be the first one I'm going to have on there. That's a good one, yeah. He resplended a lot, Joel Rowan. So once resplended lies here, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Yeah. Um before we get into the podcast today, uh, I want to give a shout out to our sponsor, Pro Swim Workouts. Um, if you're like me, then you've had a lot of moments in your life where you sat down to write a swim training session and suffered from a bit of writer's block. Um, maybe you're not satisfied with what you've been doing, you're looking for inspiration to solve a problem in a workout that you haven't yet. Um, whatever's going on, pro swim workouts can be a great resource for that. Um, they have sessions organized by type of team, developmental level, type of workout, equipment needed, and course. And so you can always find something that will help you with what you need. And more than anything, um, I always say this, I'm happy to have them as a sponsor because the guy behind the site, Nico Messer, who by the way greatly enjoyed last week's podcast vis-a-vis AI, as I thought he would. Um he he's one of us. He's a coach, he's got a lot of curiosity. Um, he made the site because he was looking for a way to get better. And uh right now, Swim Brief listeners can get a discount on Pro Swim Workouts membership if you use code CD SwimCoach. And if you do so, you support this podcast. So that makes me happy too. Um makes Joel happy, even though I don't kick any of that back to him. I just make him make him make him do this for free. That's a joke, people, by the way. I did um I did offer Joel some sponsorship money once, and he um he rejected me. Right, Joel?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, is that how you remember it? Okay, well we'll we'll we'll finish that up. That'll be a different podcast. So, what's this podcast gonna be about? What's it what are we gonna talk about on this podcast?
SPEAKER_01Okay, so people who have been listening, people who follow me on social media know that um I have recently um launched sign up for a course. This is the first of five courses I'm planning on offering in positive psychology in coaching. And you know, it's I I've realized since doing that, I've gotten really great response. Um but I've realized since doing that that there are people that even even the one those that follow me on social media, people that listen to this podcast, people that know me, like my friends, right, who I just kind of assume like, hey, you know, you know what this is all about, right? Are going, so what's that course all about? And um, so I want to talk a bit, but really what I want to talk about is along the lines of some of what we've been discussing writ large on this podcast, and and it has to do with why I ended up making the course, because I actually think it's uh really necessary. You know, it goes way beyond um it goes way beyond any kind of business aim for me. There's a there's a lot of other ways I could make money, but I talk to coaches every day, usually multiple coaches per day. And you know, I try to do more listening than talking. And what I'm listening for is, you know, what are the hard parts of what you're doing right now? Like what parts of this are making doing something that like because I think a lot of coaches you get into coaching because you know, you have a love for the sport and you love you love coaching, right? Common saying is nobody gets in this to get rich. Your your wife says there's no such thing as a big time swim coach, right? So people get into it because they love it, um, and because they love the meaning of what they're doing, and then there are things that chip away at you and wear you down. And I hear about those all the time. You hear about them. Um and I think I can help. I think I can help. But it struck me that a lot of what I was offering through Christandis coaching had a pretty high barrier of entry, right? It was really expensive. Um, a lot uh in comparison to this, right? There were a lot of engagements that with me that were basically in the thousands of dollars. And again, some coaches, not the richest population in the world. So it created like a a a big putt um for a lot of these people to engage with some of the help. So I want to get it though into some of the issues that um I I see, and we're gonna have a conversation about it. I always love talking to you um and and the questions that that come up. So one of the things that I see that's going on is I think that uh coaches are under immense increasing pressure to be quote positive, right? Um if you're a coach in a club environment, you probably have a board that is telling you, you know, like we want a real positive leader for the young people, you know, inside our organization. You have parents of kids every time that um a kid's having a hard time going, you know, like I wish you would lift my kid up and you know, be more positive and have a more positive leadership style and and have a more, you know, have a better environment, all this stuff. Um, if you're working within a college athletic department, um you know, the most cynical take on it, you you've got an administrator who's like, listen, don't say anything stupid and you know, make trouble for me, right? Don't don't put your foot in it because you get frustrated one day on the job. Um, and so like there's there's an overwhelming uh pressure on coaches, right to be positive. And I just want to like validate that that is there and that what I see in a lot of that messaging, and this is what I'm curious to have you respond to, is to me, it just seems like everybody is operating out of a place of fear. If I go back to that uh administrator example, you have these administrators, right, who are just sort of like the they're not really operating out of like an authentic, like, hey, I just want this to be the best place for you know student athletes to participate. They're like, no, don't cause a problem for me. And you have parents who like are going like my kids upset and I don't know what to do. Let me like push it, you know, fix it, fix it for me. Like I'm freaking out. Do something, do something, be more positive, right? You have organizations all the same thing. Um what do you see in in terms of because I'm curious because I, you know, I'm like in my own bunker when it comes to the term positivity, but what do you see out there in terms of the messaging that people have around us?
SPEAKER_00I think uh kind of a couple things. One is like when you're saying, I hear that you know, I definitely want more positive. I want this, this, or like I've gone on interviews sometimes, and it'd be interesting if you interview it in with a board setting. Like, so we'll throw something out there like we need more positivity. He's like, okay, so the coach yelled at your kid. Like right away, I'm thinking, like, what's your angle? Why are you on this board? Because I just and again, I've already kind of got that cynicism going in that I assume if they ask a question, whatever it is, is basically they're like, we didn't think Coach X is providing this, therefore we want you to provide it. But it's like when you say positive, it's such a huge word. It's it's basically like, hey, coach, we want you to be more orange. You know, just might might as well just say that because it's like, what do you mean, more positive? Um, and and then what I've seen is a lot of times, like I talk to people that I know that that coach, um, when they're like, Yeah, they told me I've got to be more positive, or I have to be more this, I'm like, I am that. And right away we kind of take that defensive stance of what do they mean? I create a positive, you know, I'm smiling, I do this, I do this, I do this, I do this. And I think that's one of the the rules of having a consultant come in is the idea like having someone that's again not emotionally attached to that situation because your club is your baby, you you've been there for longer than the parents have been. You've been there for 20 years, this parent's been around two years, and you're seeing more positive. So having someone that's detached from that situation, because obviously they have the emotional attachment of their child, and deservably so, and you got the emotional attachment of your job, and you have someone come in that's gonna say, This is just what I'm seeing, and this is what we can do to be more effective, is like um I worked at Phillips 66 down in Bartlesville, Oklahoma for a while, and um it was a pretty cool swim club because all these people were like really, really intelligent parents, like involved in like you know, finding oil, like petrochemical, like all this chemistry kind of thing.
SPEAKER_01Chemical engineers and stuff.
SPEAKER_00Brilliant people, and this one guy was saying that um they were they were clearing out his department, like a lot of people are getting laid off. They had a new new product manager, and then he just comes in and he's like, Listen, uh, you know, just want to find out what everyone's doing here. Like, what's you know, what what's your next big creation that you're gonna come up with? And so it's like so basically he's like, so you have Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and day one, you've already come in and you've established that you all might lose your shelter, your ability to feed yourselves and water because you might get fired, and yet you want to know that pinnacle of creativity. What's your next big thing you're gonna think about? And do it in about 10 seconds because you have to justify your salary. And then uh, you know, it's like again, so you so the that analogy going back to swimming is we want to be more positive, and now you're already kind of put on the spot of like I'm not positive enough, that I'm not doing enough, that I don't care about your kids, and and all the stuff that comes in because positive is such an ambiguous word, that you lump in with the chance like, I've done this, this, this, this, this, and and you immediately are on the defensive and kind of like thinking, why are they coming at me? There's just one more thing. I'm exhausted, one more thing, and no one's like laying out clearly, like, you know what, you you didn't say hello to them this morning. And it could be something as simple as that, but nonetheless, it's like um, you know, and then when you get cornered on that, one day I didn't say hello? Are you kidding me? For sure. So, but but it's so I think that's the thing, is is um is just the ambiguous nature of the language, of the parents, boards and things like that, not really having a quantitative quantitative approach to that. We're like, what exactly do you want? You want five hellos? I'll give you five hellos. You know, want me to smile more? How much more? I'll I'll measure it out on my cheeks. What do you want from me?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I I think one of the things you're getting at too is I I think that a lot of coaches see some of this talk, and the reason why I think it's super toxic is that it's it's it's used to like disarm coaches. So, you know, the the what's what's getting interpreted on the other end, or what the coaches are are are experiencing is like, so now you want me to get your kid, you know, to um Olympic trials, but I have to do it with one arm tied behind my back um while balancing like a dinner plate on my back foot.
SPEAKER_00Like you know, like you're going like you have to get into Olympic trials and you have to smile about it and be understanding that well, they are band practice three nights a week. And so you're gonna have to figure that out. So with a three-day training plan to get them to trials and be positive about it. Yes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and just like and like don't like, you know, so I I one of the benefits that I um am bringing to this course is of course, of course, I got an education. I'm I'm proud of my education, right? I was the first sports coach to get that education, but I think probably not probably way more valuable is the 14 years since then, because I I was in the program, right, when I was coaching at Penn. And this is one of the first experiences I had while I was going through it. I remember I confronted a kid at practice and I said, like, you know, the basic version of something that, and I I actually made some social media posts about this very concept um earlier this week, the basic version of a conversation coaches have to have all the time, which is you got a kid, they've set a goal, and what you're seeing from them in practice is not what you think is gonna get them to where they want to go. And so I was having, you know, I was having some version of that conversation. And the the kid immediately, you know, smart, smart kid from Penn was like, Hey, you're the positive psychology guy. Like, why are you being so negative with me by pointing that out. Right? And um, so I've had 14 years to work on that problem because I think most people run into that quite a bit, right? You get to a point where you as a coach, you are making people uncomfortable. And we all know that there is uncomfortability in improvement, right? If improvement were comfortable, we'd all be on a glide path to improvement all the time, right? Like it, you know, like because it'd just be like, oh, I'm just I'm just getting faster at swimming just by kind of doing my thing, right? Like it doesn't work like that, right? So you have to get to points where people are going to be uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_00And so now taking that example, and again, saying that basically he has to be uncomfortable, uh, putting in like a club setting or something, how would you go about either again, not now you've got him going one direction now? He's he's saying that you're not being positive. Is it something like you should have addressed earlier, which would probably be a yes? You know, there's there's gotta be a maybe there's a step you can do earlier, but now you let's just say you've gotten to that point. You you you're talking to one of your athletes. Listen, you've got great goals, you're not you're not doing what you need to get to those goals. You know, is there a way that you can preface that in a way where you're gonna pull that pull that plane out of the nose, you know, out of the mountain, or or is there a way that now that he said you're not being positive, what would be some steps that you can go, you know, that basically I think what you're trying to do is you're telling them that you believe in them and you believe in those goals, but you also believe in the sport. You know, you respect the sport as swimming enough to say that again, you your your training is what we're gonna fall back on, not your desire.
SPEAKER_01Well, listen, like first off, I think anytime you elicit, well, essentially is just a defensive response. Like, I I made somebody uncomfortable, right? And they immediately went like stop. I mean, that's a version of like, hey, stop, back off. Right? They're using some, you know, they're using some rationalization to get me to stop, which is you are the positive psychology guy, so you should not say anything that makes me upset. But really, what they're you know, like what the person on the other end is, you know, that swimmer was communicating to me was what you're saying makes me feel upset, and I want you to stop. Okay. So, you know, realize that, like, first off, you're gonna do that. There's there's no perfect coach out there that can just go around and say all the perfect things and all the at all the perfect times um and develop perfect relationships with everybody. But I would say, you know, in that specific situation, right, like you have an opportunity to pull back and look systemically, like, why is the athlete on the other end feeling defensive? Right? Like, why, when you are pushing them to that level, do you get do you get that response?
SPEAKER_00So not so much what the words are, but why have we already gotten to this point of this defensive wall? And kind of the idea that I I've talked to some coaches about is we always think like I should have like a mountain of goodwill behind me, all the stuff I've done, but then one comment like that, all of a sudden we have that defensive wall. And so so that's that's kind of what we're talking about. So it's no longer so much about the you don't believe in me, so much as like, why are we always why are we already at this wall?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And I guess that like that gets to the heart of why, like, okay, why positive psychology? And one of the reasons why it's extremely hard to sell to people, okay? Because you ask a question, you go, then what do I do now? And a lot of what I'm talking about is stuff that you are going to work on to like make that scenario less likely in the future. But like, you know, our minds have a really hard time with that, right? We like, we're we're, you know, creatures of survival. So it's like we see problem, fix problem. Right, right. Right? Like, tell me what to do to fix the problem. I'm focused on the problem that just came up right now, not right, what what actually like rationally we understand as coaches, which is like that you don't go like, oh, I'm I messed up my flip turn at the meet. Well, like let's work on, let's fix my flip turn right now. Right. That you actually have a process for fixing on the flip turn. It takes a long time. It it involves like it involves looking at a big picture of things. So a lot of the positive psychology solutions are about you know, creating the conditions for a better outcome down the line, um, and not necessarily about being reactive in the moment, right? So, you know, it's kind of like uh another way I've always described it is it is like it's mental prehab, right? Do you want to wait until your rotator cuff tears, or do you want to have that joint, you know, secure and ready to push really hard? Like again, most of us would want that would say rationally we want the second, but then a lot of people just wait until their shoulder rips up and then get you know surgery and rehab and all that piece of it. So um it and it it's it's harder, it's harder to get people to do the prehab than the rehab.
SPEAKER_00So, what kind of things would you do to lay down the groundwork for like let's say whatever team you're starting up with? Like you're at a senior team, you're at a college team, whatever it is. What's kind of like the the way to kind of like lay groundwork so that communication doesn't get to the point where you know you're creating I obviously it's it's not gonna be a catch-all where you can just say this is the one thing you do, but so that you get to the point where again they will kind of remember the the idea that you know that this is a person that has my best interest at heart. This is someone that's trying to get me better, this is what his or her outcome is for me. You know, how do we get that versus the the end point you just said where all of a sudden, how come hey, positive guy, how how come you're not believing in me? You know, so so like what is what are some of the the groundwork that you would do to initially to kind of lay this out? Where again, uh, you know, I I would get to the point sometimes with the kids at the goal meeting, right away they kind of knew that, or they not knew, they they felt like, because it's been done before, that this is something that's gonna be thrown back in my face as soon as I misstep. You know, that they'd be like, once I put this down, man, he's gonna be on me 24-7 about it. But it's in in our kind of world now, I think it's it's become that kind of a structure where when I was at a university, I felt a lot of the things I needed to do had to have some sort of empirical backing to it, you know, because that's that's what the end of the day the AD wants. He wants, okay, well, your performance evaluation, you had you know, 20 graduating seniors, 19 are great, one was bad, that's awesome. This is your percentage. You know, as a coach, I was like, what was the bad one? But really, for the for the AD, they're just like, we want a 98% approval rating kind of thing. They want those numbers. And so for something like a goal, it wasn't a sense of like a quantifiable way of going, you know, your goal is just say like a five-minute, 500 freestyle, yet I've never seen you go faster than a 105 in a practice ever. You know, how how are you going to pace double O if you can't even go 105? You know, and and so for them, it's like this getting thrown back in my goals, my dreams getting thrown back in my face. But again, how how do we get that earlier on where we like they understand when you've gotten to this point, it's because you you're finding at a pretty critical juncture that they they make some changes.
SPEAKER_01So two two things I want to address in that question, because I think um really you are asking two questions. The first off goes to the nature of why positive psychology exists in the first place. And then I'm going to ask actually ask the more specific question, which is about like what, you know, what in general you would do or sort of what the process would be from the outset. I mean, so I think a lot of times positive psychology gets rolled in with um self-help. And that's because a lot of the concepts that are discussed are um you know like they sound the same to a lot of people as what you know like what you might expect for instance from like a Tony Robbins conference. Right. But I think the difference with positive psychology is, you know, Tony Robbins essentially is like a performer who I think is amazing at what he does and can absolutely go out there and coach people and elicit responses from them and stuff. But the foundation of what he's doing um is not really scientific whatsoever. Positive psychology was an attempt to say, okay, like we're there's a lot of stuff, there's a lot of existing research that is sort of hasn't been collected under one nomenclature to figure out what some of this self-improvement stuff is or the stuff that people are using to create a better life or create better mental well-being, the stuff that you're not not trying to fix problems, but actually just get better. And let's actually let's actually give that a name and let's actually like scientifically research and test some of this stuff. So you know so that exactly so that institutionally we can say like this is not just my opinion man, right? But this is this is actually something that people have tried to figure out like what works and what doesn't work. And of course that stuff like I'm the first one to say that that stuff has limitations, right? That's I mean look that's why we have PhDs and that's why we have MDs. Okay. The PhDs you know push the envelope in terms of like what um what solutions we might come up with in the future that the MDs actually have to practice medicine. Right. You know and coaches are out there they actually have to practice coaching. They're not they're not researchers they're not out in the field they actually have to um they actually have to do stuff. Okay, so what would I do? Well this this gets to the heart of what the actual course is because I think the first step um for changing sort of some of this stuff within your organization is working on the concept of emotional regulation. And I I I tell a story about myself in a lot of contexts when I talk about emotional regulation. And that's actually from my first year of coaching something I seldom actually talk about in this podcast. It's kind of like in a lot of forums I just sort of glide over it. But I I graduated from college and I worked at an all-boys school for a year. And um it was kind of a unique situation. We had a pool on campus and I could run swimming year round. So I was really excited about it because even though it was a high school swim team, the kids were there. It was a boarding school and we could swim all through the school year. So it's a little bit unique in that sense. And again it like was in the middle of nowhere and I had the key to the pool. So so like the pool was open whenever I wanted it to practice was never whenever I wanted it to had a lot of freedom in in that respect. And I took it probably because at that point that was what I thought I could do to satisfy my swim coaching fix. So I still had to teach history but like I was completely uninterested basically in teaching history. I just wanted to coach swimming which is why I only did it for one year. Because it's not a good idea to be a teacher when when your main focus is not teaching right and that that really was really was the job. But um we had like the one of the weird things excentricities of this job is that we had a weird hodgepodge of championships in the year we went to like some private school championships and then we went to some like local championships and we had some kind of like local county championships um coming up and uh just so happened I had just started dating um my now wife Kate and she was coming to visit on the weekend of this championship. And um I was driving on a western Pennsylvania highway on my way to meet her in my 1997 Red Subaru Legacy and all of a sudden like it's like a two-lane highway you know outside of who knows where it was like an hour plus drive I just see headlights coming straight for me and you know like when you're both probably going like 50 miles an hour very little time to react to that stuff. So I swerve out of the way at the last moment a guy collides with me I did a full 180 into the other side of the road um you know my uh my driver's side door was like impacted within inches of my body I walked away totally fine and the guy unfortunately behind me in the car um took it head on it was like one of those police cruiser cars and the guy was driving like you know a Toyota Corolla and his car just got totally smashed and um we were just in the middle of nowhere and um remember the guy behind me he uh he had you know whatever that fracture of your leg is where like the bone is completely broken and you know his friend was screaming at him like you gotta help me like pick his leg up the reason I'm telling this whole story was it was a pretty pretty traumatic experience at the time um and a couple days later I have to go to this championship meet and like I have like really no expectations I don't know what the heck's going on at this meet um for what's going on but we are like all the way at some point like we've made it to must be the second break of a high school meet and we're in first place like we're gonna win but um I've used up all my best swimmers so I have nobody left for the 400 freestyle relay and by the way in my wife is on the pool deck watching this happen so she can she can verify this place. And I was like I melted down I completely melted down. I um I could not figure out for the life of me what was what I was supposed to do and somehow decided to uh split the two relays that I had when I could have just gone with my four best remaining swimmers and we lost the meat by two points. Why did I tell that whole story? Because what I see over and over again in life but you know specifically in sports and with coaches and with athletes is you have these moments where emotionally you're just overwhelmed and when you're overwhelmed emotionally like you do not make the best decision. You don't you don't and that's that's why um I start with teaching coaches actually like what is emotional regulation talk actually about what emotions are how they're formed in the brain how um how the uh thinking how the cognitive parts of our brain respond to emotional signaling sorry and um then how you can interrupt various loops that you have right where you get caught where you're like where you get a big emotional response it leads to certain cognitive thinking on the other end and then causes you to act in a certain way and then you know that situation just sort of wash rinse repeats a lot of times. The cool thing about positive psychology is that it has a lot of really good tools for uh changing things on the cognitive level. So changing things on the level where you're thinking and therefore breaking patterns um within you. And and frankly I think it's important for coaches to learn how to do that themselves. Everybody wants like when I go out there they what they say they want is they want to be able to teach this to athletes um the most important thing for me was working on it within myself as as has never been uh teaching other people like that is important as well but um the continual like internal process of it extremely extremely important and um that's why I I I start with that as uh as a beginning point and that's where I would start if you're looking at a team and you're sort of you're caught in these extremely frustrating loops.
SPEAKER_00Yeah especially like you see coaches all the time where um you know they can kind of see it coming you know and that that's always been the worst part about being a coach is like you see the train train wrecks coming and there's not a thing you can do to stop it. You're like this is going to happen, this will happen this will happen. And and and like trying to figure out the way to like get that to not line up is pretty hard. And um a lot of what you're saying it makes total sense in that it's a very scientific thing and like the brain is set up you know like basically we're still hunter gatherers to the brain especially at the deepest part of the brain. That's just how we are and so everything that attacks us whether it's a a lion or in a sense like something has just become like that lion to us like whether it's like a parent or a sound like that that's going to elicit the same response that the lion does the same negative hormonal response the same brain response and are are basically kind of going back to that primitive brain of surviving like what do I do to survive? What do I do to get myself out of this safely? And that's not going to be the diplomatic you know did you get 98% on your scantron of of end of the season evalves you know this it's completely different things to quantify it but it is it's it's it's what you are in that moment. And some coaches are able to compartmentalize but I think in their ability to compartmentalize uh they create that distance a little bit and I see that a lot now with like Division I swim teams where you're merging programs of one and two of the men and women and things like that and the coach becomes more of the CEO. You know and like that's not really what we got in is you know if you're a good coach doesn't mean you're a good business manager or a good CEO. But that's what you kind of have to become and you have to assume that role and that role becomes you trying to become more detached because you might have to fire that assistant. You might have to cut that swimmer you have to figure out the budget you have to figure out all these other things that are in a sense business decisions and not what you got into the whole coaching for and so you see sometimes where the coaches become devoid of emotion in a sense as a protective mechanism I think.
SPEAKER_01Yeah and I I I I had another thought about something you mentioned there as I was walking around today, walking and thinking um which is something I try to do a couple times a day highly recommend to other people as well you talk about you know how like the the the brain is perceiving um threat regardless of you know whether the the threats are what most of us face on a daily basis versus you know like historically ancestrally sort of like real um life threatening stuff. You know an observation that I had that you and I and a conversation you and I had offline last week is I was watching the video version of this and editing a bit and I just said to you like I was like hey Joel you look great like what's what's up like what you've been doing and you and I had a little I'm not going to get into all the details of it but you and I had a little um uh talk and I know I've been talking to you too about stuff that um I've been working on with myself and um you know I I had a podcast earlier this week where I I talked about my return to swimming and I said you know one of the things I said in there is like hey everybody's got a goal for their body. I don't care like you might be listening to this to going like I'm not gonna go swim okay that's fine. But you you have a goal for your body like you want to be able to do certain things. You want um maybe you want to look a certain way although that you know comes with its own consequences. But I think one of the things that people are dealing with that's really challenging in that respect and I'm gonna bring this all the way back to our minds is we live in an environment where it's never been easier to eat poorly right like the the accessibility of delicious terrible for you food has never been better. Right? So that does create a challenge I know it creates a massive challenge for me in terms of eating what I want well this the mind is not that different from the body okay it's a lot more similar than it is different. Right now in the era that we're living right now it has never been easier to do things that are bad for your mental health right like we literally all almost all carry around devices that we know are not good for our mental health and we look at them a lot. Right. Okay um that's just like one example of something so you know in the same way like you may be noticing like hey I'm I'm I'm not having a great time doing this or I'm not enjoying this as much as I do or you know like rationally on a certain level I know my life is pretty good but like but it doesn't feel like that okay realize that um you know changing that is an intentional process right um and like that's what I heard when you were telling me back everything that you were doing it was like first I started with this and like I was intentional about this for a while and then I changed this and then I changed this and then I changed this and it was all sort of at a systemic level um of like pulling back versus being reactive like I'm fat I'll starve myself to right right right like that that doesn't work. It's certainly some people can get themselves to do it in a short term but you know like being purely reactive to some of this stuff rather than thinking like okay how do I actually want to set this up better from the outset is different. And I think a lot of what I'm gonna talk about in the course is is on that level for the for the mental side. And if you as a coach if you work on that within yourself well first off you're gonna be in a better position to make good decisions. Like you're just gonna make more good decisions right and like if you think about you know whatever whatever the best decisions you've made you know like wouldn't you like to have more of those? I think everybody would agree with the statement like that. But you're also going to be leading by example the way that you are is going to have an influence. Like it you know I think so many coaches if we go all the way back to your very very specific example you know they're they're looking at that kid who's responding defensively or or or scared or feeling threatened and they haven't considered all the ways in which they um they feel very threatened and uh are you know are responding defensively and um are are I I think there's no better lack for it but I I I I want to find a way to help coaches have more respect for themselves. Because so often a lot of this stuff they go like well let me like get something for the swimmers get something do do something for yourself man like you you are um like you said you're somebody that's hopefully going to be with this team for 20 years. The kids are going to come and go like you will be here for generations of people and um so everything that you invest in yourself that pays huge dividends to everybody that you end up coaching down the line. And I I've seen a lot of people who don't end up making that investment in themselves until they step away from coaching. And I want to find a way to get people to do it while they're while they're still in the game.
SPEAKER_00Yeah I think um kind of try to maybe summarize kind of what you're saying like it's kind of that that analogy of the boiling frogs where if you just you know put put frogs in water and you don't want them to jump out and you keep turning the heat up heat up heat up eventually they'll they'll boil themselves live versus if they hit the hot water like they're getting out right away. The same thing with the coaches I think you know we kind of set ourselves into that rule of servitude of like you know we have to you know for the team we need these kids to do X, Y, and Z. We need to do this. And so I'm going to live by this example. And it's the same thing as like what you're saying of as far as like you know setting up like these base things to make ourselves healthier we set up base levels each each step of the way making us unhealthy in a sense of like you know you gave up a little extra time doing this. You know you got in that car accident and probably the first thing you're just like I got to get to that meet what do you mean help that guy with the leg? I've got to get to a meet. I've got a swim meet.
SPEAKER_01Kids are going to be swimming soon and I suppose helping the you're like well I mean I was immediately I was worried that I was like Kate's at the airport who's gonna get her exactly like it's like it's I almost died literally office death versus this.
SPEAKER_00Yeah and that's the thing is we we we and so when you step back and you look at that you're like well that's ridiculous. But in the moment again you you've set all these little steps along the way to put yourself in a position in coaching where you're not gonna be you know all right I'll come in someone's gonna come in for an extra practice I'll be there for that kid. Someone might be there 15 minutes early I'm gonna be there 30 minutes early I'm gonna see 15 minutes late I'm gonna push against these other things like well there you know so many times like I don't need to eat lunch I got to finish this work and then I I don't really need to do this. I you know working out that's back burning you know all the things for yourself for for me from a personal standpoint I would always go the things I would do for myself I'd be like that's not as important as the stuff that I'm doing for the team therefore I need to step back away from that and that became my time reservoir and I'll just make it up later much like you're saying you know I'm 40 pounds overweight I'm gonna lose it all tomorrow. It's like I set myself up by the end of the week where like now I'm so far behind what am I going to do in one day to fix that so I'm I'm already immersed in this. And so you you we set ourselves up with these incremental bad habits and those incremental good habits whether it's for the team emotionally or incremental for ourselves are far more important. Again like like if you're talking about losing weight the best thing is you know you don't have a hundred calories worth of snacks every day and it's going to take a long time to work 25 but that's really all it is is you set up that discipline because the emotion for the stuff is not going to always be there. The emotion of I'm gonna do everything right now that fades. You know that love of getting up for the 5 a.m swim practice you know first week you're like this is great good to have the kids back it fades and so eventually that discipline of doing the things needs to take over but we want to make sure that we set up healthy um healthy boundaries healthy steps towards that so again we are giving as much as we can but understanding that it's it's a marathon it's not a sprint. We've got a career to think about we've got a family to think about we've got a lot more kids than like one kid making possibly Olympic trials versus 100 kids on the team kind of thing.
SPEAKER_01Well see in a and I even like I'm I'm hearing a few triggered coaches in what you just said because I think some people they're gonna go Chris and Joel like yeah Chris I'll sign up for your course so you can tell me to stop working so far. Right, right. And you know like not no that's actually not what I'm saying. That's actually Not what I'm going to help you to do because I for so long believed I I would have the same response. I would have the same response. I'd go, like, yeah, okay, you know, I I know I should do X, Y, and Z, but like I gotta do this. I have to do this, that you know, no, no, and what I'm realizing finally is that by actually being disciplined about working on myself, I actually have more to give. Right. So like the the process of giving more to the to the people around me, which is what I like that's at the core of most coaches. They want to be giving, they want to give of themselves to the to the world. Well, like somebody's gotta build you back up, and the really the only person that can do it is you, right? And so when you when you actually have a process for building yourself up, then yeah, you have even more to give. And it's not like you're constantly, you know, at the end of the day, like, oh, like that's that's it, that's all I got, you know.
SPEAKER_00Like, no, and I think even more basic of an analogy, because like when I was saying what I was saying there is like, again, when we're talking, you understand where I'm coming from, and I never think that anyone might actually listen to this. It is again the idea that um that that does sound selfish, but from my standpoint, it's it's the standpoint of like the more basic, like most coaches start out as lifeguards. You can't save someone if you're exhausted. You know, I I remember um right one one of your favorite assistant coaches uh was on my swim team, and he was out in the surf way too far, way over his head, getting slammed by waves. And the lifeguards were on the beach because this is like you know 50 degree California water during the during the wintertime. The lifeguard's like, you know, I know your kids can swim all right. However, those are some bigger kids. I'd rather help a distressed swimmer than have to go make a save. So if those guys need to throw their hand up and say they need help, you know, that that's not being less of a man, that's just helping me out a lot. And it's like that thing that he said like makes a lot of sense in every aspect of your life. It's like it's a lot easier to be like, you know what, I need to set some boundaries uh and do that early so that I have enough energy to be able to, you know, get back to shore, or in this case, to make that save. If you want to help someone else on your team, again, what the whole, you know, what our podcast started was the idea that you're sitting there, you're exhausted, you're tired, you're emotionally spent, and you say one thing that in your head doesn't sound bad. You know, the one thing is like you're you're not living up to your goals, I think we can do better. And in their head, whatever day they had, they brought in their emotional baggage and they just heard Chris hates me. And he was like, I didn't I didn't say I hated you. Chris yelled at me. Chris doesn't believe in me, he hates me, he yelled at me. Yeah, and and that's what he heard. And and again, we we've talked about this on a previous podcast that there's there's a possibility of many different realities. That reality in your head is true. You you believe in them, yeah, just they're not living up to their end of the goals right now, and we got to adjust that because I believe in you that you can adjust those goals, otherwise I would have said those goals were ridiculous. And his reality is Chris doesn't believe me. So again, it's like you can't say the kid's a liar. That's what that's how he interpreted what you said, you know, and and so that's that's what we have to address is that what we say isn't always what's in our head, and especially when we're tired, it's gonna come out wrong. It's gonna have a tone to it that we didn't mean to have. You know, you're reading an email when you're exhausted, and my tone is always like, I can't believe they're grinding on me about this.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00And it was like, how are you feeling today? What do you mean by that, you sarcastic? You know, you're like again, it's it's one of those things we we take so much into an email, we do the same thing into a conversation. We we think that there's a look, we think there's a tone, but that's kind of what we put into it. And so I guess that's a long way of saying is is again that that arrest isn't just being lazy, that rest is creating a rest where you're able to kind of take a step back and go, you know what, um, I don't think they meant this. Why don't I ask for clarification? Which takes a lot of energy to do when you're tired. Like, can you clarify what you just said? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, well, and even in the example that you're you're citing here, like, okay, I would love to live it. Like, I think that most coaches, if they, for instance, were coaching like 10 people versus 30 people at a time, sure, they could um say something, you know, they could make a mistake in what they say a lot more often because their relationships would be better and they would have time afterwards to go like, oh hey, I saw you're pretty upset when I said that. Like, what's going on? You know, like they they know how to do the relationships. Unfortunately, most of us are not operating in situations where we have all day to like build relationships and do all sorts of stuff. Like, I would love to live in that world, but like, you know, let's find a way to structurally build something where you're less likely to find yourself in that situation because that's that's um like we can work on both at the same time, is really if you're working on this podcast, we're advocating for both.
SPEAKER_00Well you're allowed to have your personality while when you coach.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I I was thinking about this, like um, I think I was watching one of those uh things with Ricky Gervais, and he was talking about I'd rather have like a joke that like 10 people in the audience really laugh hard at than a joke where a thousand people kind of chuckle at. And it's like, in a sense, that's kind of like what coaching has become is like you can't say something really hard driving, like we need to get you to the Olympic trials, you're not living up to your goals because now you broke, you know, now you got 900 people not laughing, or 900 people not getting that message. And sure, one or two are getting that message, and that's great, and they're gonna do great things, but now you have you alienated the other group, and you want you know your emotion to come out, you want your fire to come out a little bit in the sport. However, far too often we've heard coaches you know use that same. I was, you know, I'm just emotional about the sport, I'm just fired up by the sport, and that's their cover for being an asshole, you know.
SPEAKER_01Well, no, but I say I say hold on to it. I'm gonna help you hold on to it. Right.
SPEAKER_00And like you channel channeled a little bit.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna I if you take this course, I will help you continue to push people as hard as you want to push them, but feel like feel better about the fact that you are a positive force and that you are um coaching in a in a positive direction, that you are building people's belief in themselves, that you're building them up, that you are aware of what's going on, that you're empathetic, like you can be confident in all those things and push people really, really hard. Right, you don't have to actually sacrifice that value um on the path to doing that. And and I think that's again, if I go back to the beginning, some of the toxic messaging um that I see around that, where where coaches get, you know, like you you be more positive, and implicit in that is stop pushing people so hard. You know, like which which just like grates against the values of coaches. They know that their high expectations are actually a key part of why they're successful. If they came in and just go like everybody, just do you know, do some hundreds on whatever. Like they know that that that doesn't actually help people to get faster. So um all right, I think we're gonna cap cap it at there for today. Joel, thank you so much, as always. Um, thank you everybody for listening. If you want to follow uh for more positive psychology, quick, quick bite content, you can um go to Instagram.com, Chris D underscore coach, uh C D swim coach on Facebook. If you go to Chris D coach and uh click on positive psych education tab on the top, you can sign up for the course. Uh still spots available for that. And uh I'd love to have you, uh especially if you if you listened here and uh feel like this is for you. And uh thank you to everybody for listening. Thank you to Pro Swim Workouts for sponsoring this podcast, and I'll see you guys all next week.
SPEAKER_00Thank you.