Debrief: Megan Devito

Megan Devito, a high school swim coach and performance mindset coach, joins to talk shop on the value of coaching.

Debrief: Megan Devito

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Hello, and welcome to the swim brief. I'm Chris DeSantis, and this week on the debrief, where we get inside the mind of somebody that I've encountered through this podcast, through my travels, through appearing on another podcast, and, you know, mutual friends and all that piece of it. We bring somebody on here, we try to learn from them. And my guest this week is Megan DeVito. Megan is a performance mindset coach. She's also a high school swim coach. You've been a teacher in your past. I want to talk about all of that, but first, just welcome Megan.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

Thank you. I have been so, so excited to be able to get on here and talk with you. This is going to be a lot of fun. Well, a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

This is this is, I mean, I I don't blame you. This is the nerdiest, in my opinion, podcast, especially for swim coaches out there.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

I love it. If we can nerd out on things, I am into it. Let's do it.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Yeah. If you want to target those people, but we don't we don't talk a lot about like, you know, we don't do like sets and all that piece. I mean, you've seen the outline of what we're talking about today. Because to me, a lot of that stuff, I mean, and I I I feel like I'm not stepping out a too far with you in saying this because I because of what you're doing for a career. I mean, don't get me wrong, that stuff is important, but it's not what I tend to focus on because I think there's a lot of different things you can do training-wise. The important question for me is always how, right? How you actually put these things into practice, how you actually get people to do the things that you know are going to help them to get better. And so that's why I love talking to people like yourself. I think we're going to have a great conversation. At the outset, let's let's talk a little bit about you. Because as I mentioned, you know, your current career, but also your background. Just talk about uh because I was like pouring over your LinkedIn, right? And I I have this Yeah, I have this narrative in my mind that, you know, like Megan, that you you finished college and you were going to be a teacher and you started you started teaching, and somewhere along the lines, uh coaching came to you, and then you made this decision to step outside of the sort of institutional bounds of what you're doing. So, first off, correct any part of that story that's wrong, but tell my audience a little bit about how you got to where you are uh today and doing what you're doing today.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

It's a big question to start with. I love that you mentioned my LinkedIn. It's a process, right? Like of narrowing down. And I maybe it's that process of becoming. Yes, I I was a teacher. I graduated from Purdue. I was a teacher. Um and I taught in an alternative school for at-risk high schoolers for a long time. I created the curriculum and it was great. Uh, you know, when it started, it was fantastic, very teachery sort of way. You start out very high in the sky, and we hope that you end high in the sky, but the burnout rate, it's pretty, pretty big, especially with the crew that I was working. So I would teach, and then I would I would change what I was teaching, or I would change how I was teaching, always trying to evolve into something else. And the entire time, well, for most of the time where I taught, I was raising my kids. And I was a swimmer. My kids were all swimmers. And while they were swimming, because I I could do it, I knew how to swim. And they were like, oh Megan, you you were on swim team, you can coach. So I started out by coaching at RY and then coaching club while I was teaching. And as I moved through that whole process of figuring out what I want to do, I loved, loved being on the pool deck. Like I I would get, it was my break from teaching. And I knew that I was in the process of working my way out of the classroom, especially post-COVID and all that went into that era and really working myself into what am I gonna do? So I I just started figuring myself out. Um, I think added on top of that, I grew up with a really long history of anxiety. Like on my website, it talks about like I was never the fast kid on the team. I loved it, but I was the kid that like I was an anxious mess. And that went on for most of my life. And as I started looking for something else to do outside of the classroom, I heard about coaching and I'm like, wait a second, I'm already coaching. I could do this. And I went into it with this level of naivety, I guess is the word that I'm looking for, maybe. Like I was very naive about what I was going into, but I knew that I'm like, I could teach anybody anything. Like I've literally taught every subject. I've coached everyone from five year olds to 18-year-olds. I can do this. So I have in my head this like, I coach, we coach, we I'm gonna do this. But I think that the coolest thing that happened as I went into that process of leaving the classroom and already being in the swim coaching world, moving into life coaching was that I figured out how to regulate my nervous system. And I literally, I swear to you that this happened in this precise moment on my little county road that I'm like, I just bopped myself out of an anxiety disorder, which was not intentional. I thought it was just something I was gonna feel for the rest of my life. And so in that process, I was able to leave my teaching job, start my coaching practice, and really start looking at a lot about what I thought, about how I felt and how I dealt with what was happening in my life. And I started translating it to my swimmers and saying, hey, wait a second, how are you doing right now? What are you actually thinking about before you race? What are you, you know, wait, what if I know that you're anxious. I know you feel like you're gonna throw up in the pool, but have you ever just stopped to think that maybe you're not gonna throw up in the pool? And I started doing it with my kids first, right? My 17-year-old, she'll be a senior. I'm like, sis, you're having a panic attack. Like, you're not going to throw up in the pool. And her coach is like, You're fine, you're not gonna throw up in the pool. So working through all of those mindset things with her and just gradually expanding it and moving away from why am I coaching on anxiety when everything I'm doing is so related to people's jobs, whether they were executives or they were in finance or they're in whatever they were in, right down to my swimmers from the fastest swimmer I've ever coached to the absolute beginner who's six years old and afraid of sharks in the diving well. I mean, there's all of those things all at once. It's all performance mindset. And that's really how I got where I am.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

Yeah. Uh there's a lot of resonance in our stories. Uh I feel like I've been talking about this every other podcast. Maybe it's just the guests I'm bringing on. But I also like I I really started from the bottom when I in my own career when I was a swimmer. Like I was, I was not not just not, you know, one of the best, I was definitely one of the worst when I started, right? I I and I've talked about this a lot in in other contexts. And one of the things that created for me, I mean, and maybe the same happened for you, is, you know, as I got really invested and worked hard and and I think swimming, one of the reasons why I love our sport is because it truly is a sport where if you put yourself into it, you will get a lot back out. I mean, it is incredible. And so I really committed and and I got a lot better, but the second I got good was when that anxiety just like overwhelmed me. Do you know what I mean? Like they come, they come hand in hand. And I'm sure now you've seen it kind of like I I was again poking around your stuff, and I could see you talking about this as well. It really does a number on so many people because their expectation is the opposite, right? They go, well, if I get better, well, like when I'm really fast, or whatever that means, right? Like, I'll be chill. I'll just be come back there, I'll be cool as a cucumber, no problems. No, this stuff ramps up on you, right? Right. Where what happens with a lot of people, right, is and I I think sadly, they never quite get past the point where it just becomes kind of overwhelming for them. There's not a lot in a lot of systems built in. I think a lot of athletes are, you know, developing to the point, I just to generalize about a lot of high school athletes, they're developing to where they potentially can perform at an incredibly high level. They're in amazing shape. They're like they're on some level ready to go fast, but the psychological development lags behind where they are physically, and they get stuck. You know, they just sort of get stuck not realizing their potential. I want to go back to ask you something because you said something pretty amazing in your whole intro about yourself that you just sort of like yada yada over in like 15 minutes.

SPEAKER_00 9:07

Yeah, I'm like, it's well, this is me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

You were like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I had an anxiety disorder, and then I bought myself out of it, moving on. Anyway, I help other people. I think this is a really important insight because a lot of coaches, right, they they they carry their own baggage into coaching. Maybe they, you know, never really do that kind of self-examination or or work on themselves to kind of move past maybe even where they were psychologically as an athlete. To what extent did you have a sense as you were, you know, taking this new leap uh coaching wise, that I really gotta I gotta address my own stuff, right? Because I don't want to carry this forward. Or was it or was it just an accidental coincidental thing in that moment?

SPEAKER_00 9:55

Yeah, it's so funny. Full disclosure, the book I was reading is You Are a Badass because I wanted to be one and I didn't feel like one as I was teaching, right? And so I'm reading this thinking I'm an anxious mess. I don't want to be doing this for the rest of my life. What do I think I can actually do? I just so much negative self-talk going on in there and really dealing with this idea that, like, well, I feel anxious all the time. And I'm reading this, or I guess listening to the audiobook, and it was all about what you're thinking about and how I don't think it had ever dawned on me, even though I realized that the thoughts that I would have, those anxious thoughts weren't necessarily true, that I don't think anybody had ever said, listen, Megan, here's the deal. You don't have to believe everything that you think. And I was like, shosh, why would anybody like, what was it, worry is wishing for what you don't want? And I'm like, well, why would anybody do that? Right. And then I was like, wait a minute. It was just one of those things where I was like, oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, it's optional. And so it, I may I say it happened just in this like blip in time, but I think that realization and then learning more about all of the things that were happening when I was anxious and realizing that every time I feel that feeling, that's a clue. And then I would see my swimmers feel it, or I would see my kids feel it, or my friends feel it. And I'd be like, hey, you know what's going on right now, right? When you feel that, you are not allowed to buy into whatever it is that you're thinking. Um, if I had a swimmer that they would get up and they would say, I feel like, I feel like I'm having a heart attack. I don't think I can swim. Something's really, really wrong. I'm like, hey, have you ever felt like this before? When's the last time you felt like this? And they would start to see that pattern of, and I'm like, hey, that's your clue. That's your clue. You have a physical. We know that you're healthy. We know that you're a strong kid, that you've had lots of practice. We don't complain about this in practice. What do you think's going on? If I get in there and I have to swim next to that kid, I can't do it. Everybody's gonna see it. That that's the real problem. So, really, that process of saying, I understood how horrible I felt, and then recognize that as those two things are connected and being able to help those swimmers make that connection to say, wait a minute, just because you're thinking that or feeling that, one of those things is feeding the other, whether it's your body first or your head first. And I think that that was like it was a natural progression to be able to say, I noticed it in myself, and then to be able to take that to my swimmers. But even before I left the room, I was doing it with my students and they had some big, I mean, coming from their backgrounds and being in an at-risk program, that we had a lot of mental and emotional health issues to deal with in that school. So I kind of let my students be my guinea pigs and my my swimmers be my guinea pigs, and I was my own guinea pig. And it's gotten to the point now where I'm like, oh, yeah, I know what that is. And it's just we detour around and it's it's not a problem, right? The feeling's not a problem if you don't make it a problem.

SPEAKER_01 12:41

Yeah. And I think it speaks to the power of coaching, right? Like one of the things that I find myself pointing out to people I work with all the time and a big insight for me is that these like this negative self-talk has a kind of coherent logic when it only exists within your own mind. You know, when you start to have to externalize it, right? Even like let's just say you are a really anxious person, when you have to start justifying out loud some of your anxious thoughts to somebody else, yeah, maybe even yourself in a way, like in the form of like a diary, or yeah, it just doesn't quite make as much sense, right? And and it's strange that somehow bouncing around the corners, you know, of your skull, it seems to be like, oh yeah, no, but that's that's totally right. That's exactly what's happening, you know. And so you do need some kind of external force to actually like challenge and get you to reconsider this. I want to talk to you a little bit because you've been referencing, I mean, your own kids, kids on your swim team, uh, students you had. Now you're working with business professionals as well. You know, one of the authors that I got exposed to when I was going through my positive psychology uh program was Jonathan Haidt, who's just written anxious, he's literally written a book called Anxious Generation. So I guess that's my prompt to you to be like, what are you noticing in particular with young people today? And is it really just young people today, or is it part of a bigger, broader societal phenomenon from your management?

SPEAKER_00 14:24

I think that our young people get a bad rap. I think that we look at them and we're like, just put your phone away while we are holding ours. Right. Right? Like, how dare you sit there and look at your phone at dinner? I'm like, okay, but what about us? Young people, definitely, adults, definitely. So, no, I don't think it's just young people. How did it start? I mean, do we bam do we blame a pandemic? Do we blame the rise of social media, the collapse of civility and society? I don't know what caused any of those things first. All of it, the perfect storm, maybe it was a perfect storm. I do see us coming out the other side. I do see the kids are smarter than we are, maybe a little bit right now. I mean, I I'm seeing kids put their phones away and I'm seeing them go out. There was an article recently about Gen Zers are going back to the mall. And I'm like, bless them. They're gonna go hang out at the mall and eat pizza or play video games. I don't know what they're gonna do. Yeah, so I do think that it is, it's not just kids. It's we're so overexposed. And to the idea of we're that idea of all those ideas bouncing around in the corner of our brains, there's so much more to bounce around right now. We have access to so much information at all times. I mean, we don't need to know most of the things that we know. And if there's anything that scares you, you will definitely accidentally scroll upon it and the algorithm will catch you and it'll make sure that you are fed that same scary scenario in a thousand different ways over and over and over again. So yeah, I don't think it's age specific. And I don't know that anybody certainly nobody did it on purpose. Okay, maybe the social media companies did it on purpose, but we didn't do it to ourselves on purpose, right? We're trying to be well-informed people, we're trying to be caring people, we're trying to do all of these things. And the more that we do that, our brain is like, and this will kill you, and this will kill you, and this will kill you, and this will kill you. And to protect ourselves, we've just stayed glued to the things that are making us feel miserable. And now that we're aware, we have a new piece of information and maybe we can step back. But it's I d I certainly don't think it's just the kids. There are plenty of anxious adults running around out there, and we see them throwing fits and sometimes doing awful things because it's a mess.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

I mean, I even see it. My mother-in-law, God bless her, she's 71 years old. Uh-huh. And she will like she will say, like, oh, you you know, you let your I let my 10-year-old, this a couple of years ago, I let my 10-year-old daughter, she could ride her bike. We live a mile from the library. She's like, I want to go to the library to get a book. I was like, okay, cool, see you soon. And she she said, You let her go there by yourself? And I was like, Joyce, like you rode the bus in downtown Baltimore, you know, in the 1960s. And you know what she said to me? This is like I keep laughing about it. She goes, Yeah, but it was a lot safer back then. I go, no, it wasn't. 1960s, Baltimore was not a safe place to be taking the public bus around. Like it was much, much more dangerous than my little suburban town. But our perception of threat has been heightened, right? So the the actual situations are not scarier, but we are we are facing kind of more stimuli that is scary, that is signaling to us maybe you should be scared. You know, maybe there is something to worry about here.

SPEAKER_00 17:45

And we took the face on a milk carton concept from lunch and put it on and made it an Instagram feed. I mean, it was like you ate lunch, you're like, wow, that's really scary that it happened to that one kid on the milk carton. But now it's just a scrolling milk carton. Like it's it's everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 17:59

Well, and this gets to me another central question of coaching, and I'm really curious to get your take on it, okay? Which is so as and I I think another change, societal change that we've we've seen, and we both have kids, you know, we're we're I think we're of similar age, roughly, is you know, people talk a lot more about mental health than they used to. Certainly in and then in my childhood. But sometimes where I see that conversation going, and I'll bring it back to what we're talking about here, is they'll go, okay, well, you know, social media, as you referenced earlier, like social media is making kids anxious. So, like, let's just, let's just ban social media, right? Let's just put the genie back in the bottle. And I'm like, is that gonna work? So what do you think, Megan? I I know I'm asking a very leading question here.

SPEAKER_00 18:46

I am so glad you actually asked this. Ugh, get ready. First of all, I want people to stop diagnosing themselves. I mean, let's just stop that right now. Like, I I think that the it's there's value to being diagnosed, right? I I would not say don't go to therapy, don't get meds. Do those things to help yourself, please. But really? Are you? Or does that a really comfortable way to get you out of something that you don't feel like doing or that makes you feel uncomfortable? Because there is such a resistance to anything that doesn't feel uncomfortable. That makes me uncomfortable. I'm like, good, go do it.

SPEAKER_01 19:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

That if it makes you uncomfortable, figure out why. Figure out if it's actually real. And if it's not, go head on. I just did a podcast with Sav Wilde, and that girl is all about putting herself into an uncomfortable position. I mean, don't ever ask me to do the things that she does. She's she's an ultra endurance runner and she runs like a hundred miles with no shoes on, and I'm like, you're insane. Bless her though. But she's like, you have to go to go into it. And I think there's such an intolerance for discomfort or anything that we feel like just a little off about, and suddenly it's like, that triggers me. And I'm like, well, if it's a trigger, untrigger it. Like we can go into those things. And the sooner we do, and the less that we allow those things to influence our lives, the sooner we can like really work our way through it and say, Oh, yeah, that situation usually makes me uncomfortable. And then we get to the point where it's like, I don't know why I was uncomfortable. I actually could do those things, but we've shut ourselves off to so many opportunities. And so, in terms of putting the genie back in the bottle, I'm like, let it roll. Because I am one that says you have to learn how to handle those things. I don't think that we could if we wanted to. I think there's a lot of value to social media. Um, I think there's also a lot of really bad things about it. And I guess that leads me to the whole AI question. Do we want to put it back in the bottle?

SPEAKER_01 20:38

We can't.

SPEAKER_00 20:38

Kinda.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

We can't. That's the, you know, it's kind of irrelevant because we can't.

SPEAKER_00 20:42

Right. What are we gonna do with it? So yeah, I we have to learn how to handle our bodies and our minds. And if we don't, if we don't get a little bit more meta in our own brains and be kind of like looking down from that alien from outer space and saying, oh wow, look at that crazy thing I just thought. And really looking at it instead of believing it, we're stuck.

SPEAKER_01 21:01

I think even to go to the beginning of what you're saying, like I and again, I'm somebody I go to therapy every week, I've been on psychiatric medication, so I'm not against any of those things.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

Right.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

But like, you know, you said a diagnosis has value, and I was almost want to interrupt you and be like, but explain what the value is. I'll I'll give my perspective on it. You know, for instance, I've been diagnosed with ADHD. Now, what is the value of that? The value is not, I mean, first off, I didn't I think I got a diagnosis when I was a teenager. This is a long story that we can't put on here, but really the second diagnosis was at age 39. So, like, wasn't getting me any extra time on the tests, you know, Megan. Like, it was the point of it was to understand myself and to adapt strategies to exist in the world the way that I want to exist in the world. That was the point of getting that information. It wasn't for me to walk around and go to everybody, we'll be like, hey, you know what? I'm not gonna be I'm gonna be completely. Completely disorganized and don't expect anything from me, and I can't do X and Y and Z. I mean, like, you know, I was in a situation just in in my life where, like a lot of husbands, I'm not ashamed to admit this when we had kids, I was I was not pulling my weight domestically in the house, and a lot of it was I couldn't like organize myself around it. But post-diagnosis, I figured it out. I figured out a way to be, you know, to step up inside my own family. So like I think that the point of these things is is not to be kind of like wielded as a shield, it's to understand yourself better and then go, like, yeah, okay, I'm a little bit different from whatever typical is. How do I figure out a way forward for me to operate in these situations? And to bring it even further back, that's why I think this work is so valuable. Like you talk about AI, there is a positive path forward, I believe, also in terms of AI. AI can can have impacts on us that are the opposite. If it can if it can make people dumber, which is what I think most people are worried about, it can make people smarter too. Right. It's about learning how to use it. And as coaches, like we that's about training people's thinking. How do you actually approach thinking about things? So let's get into a little bit of the coaching piece of it. Because one of the things that made me excited to come talk to you is you work with such a broad diversity. It seems weird people. Yeah. Like I'm picturing you like you coach high school swimming. So you probably within your high school swim team have some year-round exceptional, potentially national level swimmers, and they're in the pool with the same person who like, you know, last time I coached high school swimming, which was a little while ago, but it was, you know, within the last 10 years. I had a kid who's like, hey, can I come out for the team? I said yes to everybody, as I think you should. First practice, the lifeguard was walking next to him, right? Because he wasn't sure he was going to make it to the other end. You know, so you I'm I gather you have that diversity on your team. And, you know, maybe some some part of my audience has only like engaged with the elite end. What do you learn from working with that kind of broad spectrum of people all the way up to adults? I mean, like the way I phrased this question, the outline was like, what can sort of world-class people learn from the, you know, from the kid who might need the lifeguard to follow him on the side? What do you see from your perspective?

SPEAKER_00 24:31

I love this question. And when you were asked that, when you said that before about how the people that think, well, as soon as I'm faster, I'm I'll be fine. I won't be nervous anymore. And I'm actually coaching a kid right now from a different high school. I'm doing mindset coaching with this kid who is a swimmer. Um fast kid, so close to his nationals cut. Like he's there. He'll he'll have it at the first meet. Like he can do this. Um he came from a high school where he he was the fastest kid on the team. And so his club team was in a different location. He went to a separate high school than most of the kids on his club team. And he is like, you don't understand. I want to go to a D1 school where I am not the fastest. He goes, I want to swim D1 specifically so I don't have to be the fastest. He's like, Because I'm tired of having to be the one that carries everything around. And he goes, So if I could just go someplace where there's people faster than me, I know I'll get faster. And I was like, that is incredible insight, first of all, especially from a 17-year-old kid who really had that insight. But to your point, I have I've had that experience with him, which we won't get into the varying degree of people that I coach, whether it's athletes or some executive out in LA somewhere. I also have at our high school, it's a very small rural high school in northeast Indiana. We swim at a Y in a limited amount of space with very limited time. So I'm taking everything I can get in terms of time and space. And um there there's not a lot of access to water, which is unfortunate. So what I did is I called the athletic director at the high school and I said, Hey, I want you to put out a message to all the athletes in the high school who don't have a winter sport, and I want you to tell them they can cross-train with me this season. And I was like, I don't, I don't need them to be fast. I need bodies in the water to fill relay spots. So my thought is I can teach anybody, anybody freestyle, right? Like they come in, they do freestyle, they do backstroke, they're in, they get some times, they have a good time, they stay in shape for their spring sport or their fall sport, whatever it is. So I get a handful of kids that come out who are cross-country runners and track runners. I get, you know, I got a volleyball player, I get this girl that plays some kind of soccer where they're like, it's like rugby. I don't even know what she's doing. Um, so I get these kids that come in and they're like, and I'm like, okay, have you ever swam before? And they're like, yeah, I live on the lake. And I'm like, all right, let's go. They were so great. First of all, those kids who came in with I swim in the lake don't have muscle memory. And it is a beautiful thing because taking those swimmers who have been swimming since they were four years old, and you're like, but every single time you're still doing this thing. I need you to stop doing this thing. It takes so much effort for them to change those small little habits that we can look at and be like, look, if you just did, you know, if you just went in with this instead of this, it would, it would make every difference in your body structure, your body position in the water. So I have these kids who are locked in on their stroke, who are fast, that are working on like breaststroke nationals cuts, things like that, right? But then I have the other kid that's like freestyle. So what I think I hear you saying is you just want me to like, like, she's describing this. This girl was a wrestler. She's like, So you just want me to claw my way to the end? I'm like, yes. Show me what you got. Like, get in there and show me what you got. Claw your way to the end. She got in and I was like, wait, I can work with that. Like it was clawing, it was thrashing, but it was decently fast and she was really strong and she had nothing to go off of. So I was like, okay, here's what we're gonna do this time. And we just changed it enough that they had an unending amount of confidence because everything they did was improvement. It was like no matter what they did, they were cutting, you know, you've been in the water for a while and you cut like a tenth of a second, and you're like, that was amazing. These kids are like, I cut 35 seconds on my 51st time because they hadn't done it before. And they're like, I am gonna save this team. And I'm like, yeah, you are. Come back next season. So it really does make a difference because they had so much enthusiasm and so much joy in these tiny things that were, they were enormous. So they knew they didn't have the pressure of winning. They weren't there to win, they were there to stay in shape. They didn't have any muscle memory that they had to focus on. They just had to get in and figure it out and they did it. And they were excited about everything. I had a kid who came in who I swear, this kid is the hardest kid I've ever had to teach freestyle to in my life. I'm like, he's 16 years old. I'm like, just you just gotta get your legs up, man. You have we have to get your legs higher in the water. We're trying everything we can do to get this legs up. And he's like, Don't ever put me in freestyle. This kid had never swamped before. He wanted to do the 200 IM and he wanted to do breaststroke. He was legal. It was wasn't pretty, but I put him in 200 IM, I put him in breaststroke, and I'm like, I won't put you in. And he's like, and he ended up actually being a pretty decent breaststroker. He's swimming the summer, like outdoor league with me. And he's like, he's excited for next season as a senior. So that kind of stuff brings me a lot of joy, and those kids are not stressed out.

SPEAKER_01 29:28

Exactly. I think you got you you you put the the best topper on it. No, because so I spent so much of my career. I was a college coach, division one college coach. I went over to Denmark, I was coaching the elite team. I was I came back to United States. The last coaching job I had, I was with one of the best club teams in in America, but I I didn't coach the national group. I coached the the sub-national group. These are the kids that couldn't get into the national group. And it was a revelation for me because I was not dealing with the same problems that I had dealt with in all those other environments when it came time to like I just had so many kids that just showed up to the competition. They were like, All right, I'm going for it, hundred free. Here we like, let's go. You know, like so I think it's really, really valuable for a lot of coaches to get that experience and remind yourself that I think everybody starts there and they learn, they learn to, you know, build this infrastructure that sort of can tend to sometimes close in on them. It's not naturally a state of who they are. People like progress to that point. And the insight there is that you can progress them away from that point. Like it, it doesn't, it's not a it's not a stuck, fixed point of them. The other thing I hear in everything that you're saying that I think is such a good reminder, too, is when you're coaching higher level athletes, it can tend to kind of narrow your thinking about potential and who has talent and who can go. When I'm listening to this story and I'm starting to get excited about the athletes on your team, I think it's a reminder to you. You know, you you start to go like anybody can be fast. Like, like the ones that I'm seeing that are breaking through, yeah, they've had the right stuff, you know, has all come together for them. They've been, you know, things have have aligned, but it it doesn't mean that these other kids can't also get there. And I think if you don't see sort of the starting point for a while, you can tend to kind of forget that that exists. Okay, I want to ask you some some rap more rapid fire questions. Let's go. Because we're we're we're running out of time. Okay, Megan, I'm giving you a magic wand.

SPEAKER_00 31:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 31:45

You can change anything about the culture of swimming in the United States. What are what are you gonna change?

SPEAKER_00 31:49

Balance, life balance. I mean, this was I was at um I was at the 8500 last weekend with my brother and my nephew. Uh my nephew woke up Monday morning and he had to be at practice at 7 a.m. And my brother was like, it's Memorial Day, man. He's like, we're gonna go do stuff. And he swims for Carmel Swim Club. Bless them, they're fast. But they practice every day. All I mean, it was 7 a.m. School's out for the summer, and they're at practice at 7 a.m. And I realize it's Memorial Day and not Christmas Day. But I think that kids at some point have to have an identity outside of their sport. I think that there's a lot of professional athletes and otherwise that would say you need to know who you are when you're not a swimmer or a basketball player or anything else anymore, because at some point that's probably not gonna be part of your life in the same way. And I think that's letting them have that space to be who they are, where it's not just eat, swim, school, sleep, repeat over and over and over again and letting them say, What what else can we do? I think we have to we have to want greatness without having it consume every ounce of their lives.

SPEAKER_01 32:50

Yeah. I'm with you. I I so much. And I've been like the thing is if you're competitive, right? You know, that you see how it gets to that point, right? People are just competing with each other and they're trying to be the best. I mean, Carmel, you're talking about one of the best clubs consistently in America, maybe the best, you know, if you think about like that's the word producing producing, like literally, I mean, producing Olympians, I mean, they they have an amazing track record, and I don't take anything away from that. And they're just trying to compete and and and make the best out of the situation they have. I just wish like you, sometimes the system was even more stretched out, like kids had that time to choose, right? Like I think so many kids in our sport have reach a level of commitment before they can even process what they're committing to. And I think it does lead to a lot of problems down the line where you know they're 15, 16, 17, their whole identity is wrapped up in swimming, and yet they're like, Why? Why did I choose this? I also like this thing, right? Yeah. All that piece of it. Another rapid fire question.

SPEAKER_00 34:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:02

When it comes to yourself, I always love to ask coaches this. And you've been talking a little bit about this the whole time. So you I'm I'm I'm gonna push you, you're gonna have to go even further and talk about something you haven't already mentioned. But how do you approach making yourself better, right? Self-improvement in in all realms. Yeah. Coaching, parenting. I talked about how I tried to make myself a better husband and a dad. You know, how do you approach that piece of it?

SPEAKER_00 34:26

Yeah, this is a hard one because again, we can get into our head and just assume that when we think something it's true because it's our own reality, right? Um, I have had to learn to take my own advice. And a lot of times I will leave a coaching call with a client and say, Whoa, I didn't even realize that was something that I needed to work on myself, and then I have to force myself to go out and do the things that I told somebody else to do. So let's say I'm coaching somebody on but how do I go make friends when I'm always at work? You know, my job is consuming all of my time. I'm 40 years old. How do you go make friends as a 40-year-old? And then like you go out and you find your people. And so sometimes you have to take your own advice. And that might come through journaling, it might come through just giving yourself a chance to go out and look at the sky and see what comes into your head, but it's also gonna take forcing yourself to go out and getting uncomfortable on purpose. So forcing yourself to be uncomfortable because it's uncomfortable. Like I want to do this thing and I know the only way to do it is to do that. Then you have to say, okay, let's go. One, two, three, jump, and you go do it. And I have to do it on a regular basis. I mean, I joined a book club last week and I've always been like, don't sign me up for a book club. I'll choose my own books. And I went, I had the best time. And I swear that God was like messing with me because my biggest fear in the entire world is snakes. And the person whose house I went to, they literally had a pet snake in their living room. I spent half the time like scooting away in the corner, like, is it still in the cage? Oh my God, like I'm gonna maybe not survive the book club. I'll go back next time. It was great.

SPEAKER_01 35:54

Yeah. Yeah, double, double uncomfortable. Right. I I love what you said. I think it's a marker of a good coach that they they walk their walk. So like I I just don't I don't find myself buying into coaches who are, and I think you've you've referenced here in other contexts too, that are sort of like, do as I say, not as I do. Yeah. I just it's not for me. I I couldn't live with myself as a coach either if I was just like, yeah, yeah, there's this is all things that I think you should do for yourself, but I'm gonna stay comfortable where I am and not implement any piece of it. And I think too, from having to try to actually implement your own advice, you learn a lot, right? You go like, oh gosh, that doesn't work quite the way that I thought it was, and you you can tinker and adjust and get better at what you're doing. Sure. We talked a lot about the information environment, right? And I think that's something that is only, you know, like especially with AI, it's gonna grow exponentially. How do you filter information? How do you right? How do you like align your it attention so that you get the information that you need and not too much of the crap that you don't need?

SPEAKER_00 37:04

I took all social media off my phone after my 17-year-old did it. Uh I even took LinkedIn off my phone, which is like only sort of social. Um so yeah, I know I took it all off my phone. And so if I want to scroll Instagram, I have to do it on my laptop, which is a I and there are times where, you know, if I'm I don't have anything to do, I'll just scroll social media on my laptop. But I did. I took it all off my phone and I figured if my 17-year-old could do it, so could I. So that it's amazing the people who are like, no, I couldn't do it. I couldn't, I couldn't not have that on my phone. I'm like, you'll be really uncomfortable for about seven days or eight days, and then all of a sudden you're gonna forget that it was there, and you'll wonder why you have so much free time. It's amazing how quickly you'll go back into what homeostasis or whatever normal life is. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's really it for me. Like I because I know that I will get triggered by the news. I know it'll make me anxious. I know I'll doom scroll. I'll start looking up climate change. Like it's my job. Like, tell me some good news about climate change. Are you sure there's nothing that's gonna I mean, I have to put it away. Our brains weren't designed to take that much in. We're yeah, we're not robots, so less is more. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:15

And then when you get in a tough situation, what are what are your fallbacks? Like what do you what are the relationships you fall back on? Where do you go when when you're up against the wall?

SPEAKER_00 38:26

Yeah, I am lucky to have a very close family, like really maybe oddly close, but we're we're tight. Um, I hang with my mom a lot. I hang my brother lives in um Carmel. I was at, I mean, I was at the 500 with him and my family. Like our kids are close, and so I do. Like I'm blessed to have a really fantastic family around who I know will have my back and then might be like, you're an idiot, and I'm gonna have your back anyway. Like that kind of situation. But we can. Like I can, I mean, I can joke with them about things and tell them things and they are there. And I think that one of the benefits and one of the drawbacks to living in a small town is that we really know people fairly well. And that could be a great thing. They know everything about you, but they also know everything about you. But yeah, it is nice to be able to, I can see somebody like you know, if I if I feel like I just need to see somebody I know, I can I mean, I could go to the why, I could go to the grocery store and run to at least one person I know. It's nice, even just to have like a hey, how are you? Just a quick conversation so you always know that's like, okay, there's life out there outside of my head and outside of this problem that I'm dealing with right now, without tanking the energy. Like my dad passed away last fall, and I have never felt more love in my entire life than the people in my tablet stack of sympathy cards and just still people bringing up like, oh my god, he was so amazing. So that kind of thing, just knowing that people are still thinking about you, I think is really important. And I think that is also another one of those benefits of putting your phone away and going to talk to live humans.

SPEAKER_01 39:56

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Getting out there in the world and touching grass, as they say.

SPEAKER_00 40:00

Yeah, touch some grass for sure.

SPEAKER_01 40:03

It is, it is, it is amazing. You know, I was I was having a conversation even recently about, you know, even this coaching work, right? Uh it's possible to do all sorts of stuff virtually. You can do all sorts of Zooms and uh I have a coaching program that I deliver. I've been working with mainly collegiate teams with it. And I insist on doing some part of it in person. And somebody was like, Well, why do you do that? It's it's way more inconvenient for you, you know, it drives your costs up and like you're already, like, you know, the schools don't have that much. I go, 'cause I enjoy it more. It makes me enjoy my job more. I have a better time doing this, and at the end of the day, like, money isn't everything.

SPEAKER_00 40:45

Right.

SPEAKER_01 40:45

It's there's there's a part of this, especially if you're out working for yourself, make it something that is energizing to you. That like gives you life in the rest of everything that you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 40:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:59

Megan, it's been amazing. So fun. It's been amazing having you. Thanks so much. Yeah. You're a great storyteller, which is always a good good quality to have on a podcast. No, seriously. If people want to engage with you more, obviously they should not go on social media.

SPEAKER_00 41:15

No, you probably won't be able to do that. Where should they go?

SPEAKER_01 41:18

No, where should they go if they want to know more?

SPEAKER_00 41:20

I really am on LinkedIn. So you could hunt me down on LinkedIn. I do check in pretty regularly there, yes, on my laptop. But you can go to my website too. It's just my name, Megandevito.com. I do, I mean, I am more than happy to get on the phone call and talk and do audits with people. And I love hearing people's stories. I love what you said also about being like the energy, because there's something really great about, you know, you get a Zoom call with all these people on it, but walking into a room with those same people, the energy is so much better. So yeah, I mean, if you're local to Northeast Indiana, then I'll have coffee with you. I would love to drive to your coffee shop. I'm not sad. I'll like drive to South Bend, Fort Wayne, wherever. But yeah, just like get on my website and schedule time to talk with me. I would love it. And we can talk about what's going on. And I work with athletes. Um, I work with executives because they have the same problems in different spaces. So it seems broad, but everything, the whole reason I ended up there is because every call has intersected with the same things, whether I'm talking to a swimmer or an executive. So that's how I ended up that way. Yeah. Yeah. So good.

SPEAKER_01 42:24

And if people want to get in contact with me, you can email me, Crdesantis at gmail.com. You can go to Christycoach.com, my website, fill out a contact form. I am my goal is to get off Instagram. You're you're inspiring me, but I I am on Instagram, Christy underscore coach. You can find me there and you can DM me. I'm actually finally good at responding to my direct messages on that website. I'm not sure if that's something to brag about, but uh thank you so much once again, Megan. Thank you to everybody for listening, and I'll be back with you guys again in a week.