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Coaching Mind's Podcast: Perform at your best!
Coaching Mind's Podcast: Perform at your best!
#130 - Positive Intelligence Pt. 1 w/ Brenna Munson
What if the biggest obstacle to your performance isn’t physical—but the voice in your head?
In this first episode of our 3-part series on Positive Intelligence, former Division I gymnast Brenna Munson joins us to explore how mastering mental fitness transformed her approach to sports, injuries, and life. Together, we break down key ideas from Chapters 1 and 2 of Positive Intelligence by Shirzad Chamine, introducing the foundational concepts that every athlete, coach, and competitor needs to understand.
You’ll learn:
- How negative thought patterns—or “saboteurs” like the Judge, Controller, and Hyper-Achiever—undermine performance
- Why naming and recognizing these mental habits is the first step to weakening their influence
- What it means to operate from the “Sage” perspective, where curiosity replaces self-judgment
- Why mental training is just as essential as physical training—and how even small efforts can lead to major breakthroughs
Brenna shares her powerful story of navigating injury, self-doubt, and the pressure to achieve. “I would’ve been unstoppable,” she reflects, imagining the difference these tools could’ve made earlier in her career. Whether you're an athlete or simply facing your own performance battles, this episode will challenge you to start training the part of you that matters most: your mind.
Are you an ATHLETE looking to take your training to the next level? Check out our website to learn more about 1-on-1 training opportunities:
mentaltrainingplan.com/athletes
Are you a COACH looking for an affordable year-round mental performance training program? Check out the MTP Academy available through our website:
mentaltrainingplan.com/academy
Welcome to the Coaching Minds podcast, the official podcast of Mental Training Plan. Help individuals perform at their best when it matters the most. Today you got a very special guest. Brenna, thank you so much for joining the show. Would love to just start by having you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for having me. So I'm Brenna now Brenna Munson you might know me by Brenna Hauser as my maiden name recently married. I'm currently living up in Michigan with my husband and I practice as a pediatric SLP. I did the flag football, I did basketball, baseball literally anything to keep up with my brothers. So sports has been a huge part of my life and with sports I've had a lot of opportunity to learn more about my body and, as I gotten older, how my mind influences my body, especially when, as many older athletes will know, your body starts to slow down and you're not as flexible and able to bounce back like you used to be. So I'm really happy to be here to talk about the power of the mind, the power of positivity, and I would love to. One of my goals in the future is go study that further, get a PhD, do some research and really dive deep into what it means to take control of your thoughts.
Speaker 1:I love it, really dive deep into what it means to take control of your thoughts. I love it. So you and I both happened to be reading the book Positive Intelligence why Only 20% of Teams and Individuals Achieve their True Potential. And you know this was a. This was a newer resource for me.
Speaker 1:Your dad actually suggested this book to me, said that it would probably be worth a read.
Speaker 1:Uh, and, to be honest, as I was going through it the whole time, it was like, oh my goodness, this, this needs to be, like, rewritten and tailored toward athletes, Like at you know, as I'm, as I'm reading through the different saboteurs and things like that, it was like, oh my goodness, this is that person and oh, this is, you know, this is what that person is struggling with.
Speaker 1:And so today we were just kind of, we were hoping to sort of kick off a I don't know if a book study, a book review just just kind of talking through this book and the power of positivity. Because, I'll be honest, I feel like there are a ton of coaches and athletes who when you, when you, start to talk about positive self-talk or being positive, that that just feels like a bunch of fluffy crap, just a bunch of nonsense that it's like well, that's neat, you go sing Kumbaya and sit in a circle and hold hands, but we're trying to actually achieve at a high level. But I know this was a book that you actually used and read while you were an athlete. Give us just a little snippet, maybe, of that backstory.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I read this book my junior year of college. I was coming off of two years being injured, not really competing as much as I would like to, and I noticed that not only was my body taking a toll, but my mind was in the gutter. It was gone. So I also turned to my dad, who happens to be one of my biggest mentors, and he's like, hey, I read this book, like you should read it. And I was like, okay, okay.
Speaker 2:So I started reading it, and the first time that I read this book, I went in and I was thinking I have so much doubt, I have so much fear, and I struggled with those thoughts as an athlete of I don't deserve to be here, I'm not good enough.
Speaker 2:And so when I was reading this book, it really transformed the way I participated in my sport. It wasn't that I wasn't good enough, it was that my mind was telling me that Brenna, like you, can't be here, and then being able to label that gave me so much power and freedom. And so throughout that year, I actually ended up getting to compete and contribute to our Mac championship team back to back two times, which is really exciting. But throughout that book, I really learned that it's not me. You know like those thoughts aren't who you are. Sometimes your brain is just sabotaging you and being able to label the enemy gives you an easier target. And I still use all those strategies. Today I'm reread it a second time and I plan to reread it year after year to really remind myself that you know I have the opportunity to control my thoughts because your life moves in the strongest direction of your thoughts.
Speaker 1:So, starting there for sure, and I think it's so important for athletes to hear from other athletes and specifically higher level athletes, professional athletes, you know, division one, college athletes who are struggling with stuff on the mental side of the game and are and are wondering, am I actually good enough? And when I mentioned that that's maybe a possibility to some of the younger athletes that are sometimes doing one-on-ones with me, it's like they don't even. They don't even believe me. I was. I was listening to somebody on the radio today, just some. Uh it was. It was a.
Speaker 1:It was an interview with a guy who has written multiple, multiple, multiple books, has written multiple, multiple, multiple books and some, some big names that people would know, uh, like Jim Trestle, for example, and he's he's written all these books and he was talking about how, on his radio show he will sometimes, when someone asks a question, he'll sometimes doubt well, you know, I don't.
Speaker 1:I don't know if I'm really the expert that can answer this. I don't know if I'm really like this guy's been in the room, been in the room with some of the most brilliant minds that that I can, that I can think of, and he's struggling with this, this same doubt. Talk, talk to us a little bit about you know I, I know you. You briefly mentioned, as a former one, a division one gymnast, that obviously you had to train your body relentlessly. But but what about training the mind? Like, aside from you just reading this book because your dad told you that you should Were there other ways that you guys were intentionally strengthening those mental muscles, that you guys were intentionally strengthening those mental muscles.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I feel like, as an athlete myself and maybe even just the sport I was in, it's based on physical repetition. So you train your body, you do the reps, you do routine after routine after routine, build muscle memory and then it's you like you earn the right to be confident in yourself. But with this book that's all backwards. So we didn't really do mental training, we did the no, you just got to put in the numbers Like you'll feel better when you put in the numbers, like get the experience. But then really being able to sit back and be like you know what. I can do, this, I can see myself doing this, I believe I can do this.
Speaker 2:And the way my athletics changed when I took control of thoughts first, a lot like MTP, like we're flipping the cycle, the top down to bottom up, like we're flipping it upside down, and finding that there's so much more peace, being able to go into a situation knowing you can't fail, knowing you can't fail Cause, even if you fall, my sage which we'll talk about, the judge in this age, my sage was like I wonder why that happened, what could we do differently? And so a lot of peace came with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I I feel like this book. So, like I'm I'm actually using this book, work working with three different individual athletes right now. Two of them are are division one athletes and one of them's high school athlete and I feel like this is the perfect compliment to the focus cycle, because the focus cycle is, like, in my mind, it is the the best tool out there to give 150 kids in an hour. Like, in my mind, it gives you so much bang for your buck. But there are some times that those, those voices of negativity are so strong that I feel like this is an entire book written just on the one little section of self-talk from from my book. And I feel like this is an entire book written just on the one little section of self-talk from my book. I feel like it just dives in deep and it's such a great resource for that.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I loved that they started off with in chapter one was just some of the evidence. Current breakthrough research in neuroscience, organizational science and positive psychology validates the principles of positive intelligence. And then it goes on. I mean it's got salespeople with higher PQs, so 37% more than their lower counterparts. They've got research on negotiators. Workers take fewer sick days. Doctors are able to make more accurate diagnoses and faster diagnoses. Students performed higher on math tests. In the Navy squadrons that were led by higher PQ commanders had more annual prizes for efficiency and preparedness. All the way down to like Catholic nuns whose journals in their early 20s showed higher PQ levels lived nearly 10 years longer than the other nuns in their group. Like this, this to me kind of blew the door open on. I've got an athlete that I'm specifically thinking of right now who I work with and she just tells me positivity feels fake.
Speaker 2:Yeah it does. I think it gets a bad rap, like people associate positivity with happy and that's not the same thing, you know. Positivity is knowing that there's a way and that you can be in the suck but you're going to be fine because you have the tools to get through. And I felt that as an athlete, like just think, think good thoughts, tell yourself you can do it. As an athlete, I was like seriously, like shut up. Like just be happy. It's not that easy.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 1:But no you know, just like, just like on the on the physical side, sometimes we'll just say, oh, if you're stressed, just take a deep breath, yeah. But then we skip over like, look, the vagus nerve runs through all the major organs in your body and you can't control any of them. And when you get into fight or flight mode and that fire alarm is pulsing up and down that nerve, you can't turn it off very quickly without diaphragmatic breathing. Like that's literally the fastest way to neurologically and biologically make that happen. That's not, that's not opinion. Biologically make that happen. That's not, that's not opinion, that's fact, and I think it would be.
Speaker 1:I think it would be beneficial for more of the facts behind positivity, not just not just false happiness, like you said, not just, oh, it's okay, everyone be happy with being mediocre, but instead choosing like look, when this situation happens, when you know this 2016 Westfield football team loses a second game in the regular season, we've got two choices. We can either get stuck in negativity or we can say you know what we're going to do something about this. Here's what we're going to change. Can you explain kind of the difference for everybody between IQ, eq and PQ that they talk about in the book?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So PQ is obviously the positive quotient. I say obviously we're going to get into that the positive quotient that this book focuses on. So when we talk about IQ, it's how smart you are, right, like your knowledge, your intelligence. We talk about EQ, our emotional intelligence. That's how you can recognize and manage your emotions. But where PQ differs is it's your ability to recognize your thoughts and then control those thoughts so they act in your best interest.
Speaker 2:So I had a hard time at first understanding the difference between emotional intelligence and positive intelligence. So emotional intelligence how I think of it, is I'm happy, I feel happy. This was what happy feels like. The positive intelligence is my thoughts are saying I feel happy as a result of X, y, z. I can take this thought and I can hold on to that and I can bring awareness and I can feel how my body feels when I have happiness. And that way, when it comes back around again, you're able to recognize it, control it. And it all comes back to mindfulness too, like when you bring awareness to your body and how you're feeling, you're better able to control those thoughts, which is really where PQ comes in.
Speaker 1:And I just I think, I think it was powerful when you know, I think, I think it was powerful when you know a little bit later on they talk about a resource where you can go and take a test or take an assessment, and I did that and you know, evaluating during these, during these little moments throughout the day, is your brain helping you or is your brain hurting you? And they talk about you know the about the saboteurs and the sages. Some people have talked about the critic or the coach that's in your mind. I mean, neurologically, you can get into.
Speaker 1:We could put you on a functional MRI machine and we could watch different parts of your brain light up and we could tell, when you were given certain prompts, if you went negative and you started to judge what was going on, you started to. I don't know if I'm good enough, I don't know if I have what it takes or if you're using a positive part of your brain to say, well, yeah, that's tough, but here's what we're going to be able to do about it. I mean again, not not opinion, that's, that's the scientific facts behind it. So you know, as a, as an athlete who achieved at a high level, you know, when was it that you realized, oh, maybe the physical skills aren't enough? Let's go a little bit deeper into that part of your story.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I struggled with growth spurt and injury and they related to each other. Late high school, early college. So many people know gymnasts are short, like they're short, stout. I was short and stout and then all of a sudden I was 5'5", which some might say isn't tall, but for a gymnast I was the tallest on my team, and so I struggled with adjusting to my body and reteaching myself how to do all the skills I've been doing since I was four years old, because all of a sudden you're working with different proportions and then, put on top of that, you move to a different school with different coaches, different equipment, different expectations.
Speaker 2:My body couldn't catch up and it was taking a toll on my brain. I was struggling with how I felt physically, how strong I was, how I was able to adjust to different settings and like we had like bar settings, beam settings, wall settings, things of that sort, and so I knew that I couldn't work myself and work meaning physically work myself any harder than what I was already doing. I didn't have any resource left in that area, and so a lot of it for me was setting my pride aside and saying I can't do this. The nitty gritty be tough way, I had to fall back and dig deeper within myself, where it's like what am I even thinking about here? Like how do I get through this if I'm telling myself I can't do it? But yeah, I'm trying to push myself past my limit, and so a lot of it for me was I was failing physically and I had no other option but to turn to the mental aspect.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's fair. So do you do you think that when you think back to some of the other teammates that you had, were were there athletes that just naturally had a high PQ? Is that something that some people are just good at? Is that something that everyone has to train that? Do you think that that comes easier for some than others? Like what, what was your experience as a just a teammate?
Speaker 2:That's a tough question, cause I feel like, even going back to the physical, there's some people that you're like they just get it, like they're just good. I think of my little brother, micah, where it's like I watched him eat Doritos and a Dr Pepper and then go destroy people on the football field Like he just had it. But then with the positive intelligence, I feel that some people it comes easier than others and I think there's a lot of contributing factors to that, maybe upbringing, prior experiences. You know, we're all wired a little bit differently. I do think that there were some people, some people I came in contact with, were like you're just chill, like all the time, like how do you do that? You're not stressed, um, but for the most part I felt it was the default. Most people were anti-positivity. It was like this sucks, I suck, I hate this. And so we talk about a team's PQ and what that did to people around them. It makes it really tough to excel, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of the one of the things from the book that I pulled out, the there was a study of 60 teams that found team PQ was the strongest predictor of achievement, which you know I I've seen the studies before that linked um. You know whether it was like some body language or some team camaraderie like there. There've been studies done before that looked at teams that had. You know how does giving high fives in a sport to each other correlate to wins? And it was like that. You know there was some, there was some research behind that, but I just I felt like time and time and time again it it just kept coming back to like higher PQ equals better salary, stronger relationships, improved health, more creativity like not even within the athletics realm, just in real life. Here's what all the research says, while lower PQ is going to lead to higher levels of stress, poor immune function, high blood pressure, pain, higher risk for conditions like diabetes and strokes. I don't understand how this isn't talked about more.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I agree, I feel a lot of it comes down to. It takes a lot of work, work, and I feel that many people, especially young adults, myself included, we fall into this victim mentality, which is one of the saboteurs. It's like why is this happening to me, like you need to change. This is hard for me, and we're only looking at the things in our life that are hard, and, with positive intelligence, it forces you to look at the things that aren't just hard but are going well as well, and so it takes a lot of responsibility and intentional effort in order to build this sort of mindset. So a lot of it comes down to awareness and seriously, just effort.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I love the Aaron Rogers quote in there your body is only as strong as your mind. Like, I feel, I feel like that's, I feel like that's one of those things that would be up on a poster in an elementary school, like, yeah, everyone achieves more team. And we, we read this and we see this and we're like, yeah, that's neat. But then it doesn't go any further and we don't actually do anything about it. Or, you know, we get used to hearing parents say, oh, it's okay, honey, settle down, just take a deep breath, but then we just sort of bypass, like, oh, diaphragmatic breathing actually would be able to help me in this situation.
Speaker 1:So you know, it got into later on. You know, 22.8% of us adults experienced mental illness. Like that's one in five, that's. That's wild to me. You know, I know that mental health is getting to be more of a buzzword. But if you could, knowing what you know now, you know if you could go back and add mental training somewhere into your athletic career, what do you think? What do you think that would look like?
Speaker 2:athletic career. What do you think? What do you think that would look like? Oh my gosh, I think about that often. I would have been unstoppable. And I say that with confidence, knowing what I have inside of me that I wasn't able to access at the time. So you're I said it before like you're only. Your life moves in the strongest direction of your thoughts. Take control of your thoughts, take control of your life. And I fell into that victim mentality. And so if I were, if I go back to college and really just like nail in this idea of like OK, brenna, you can do this like we can recognize these thoughts, we can evaluate them, we can pivot. We can do this Like we can recognize these thoughts, we can evaluate them, we can pivot, we can move forward.
Speaker 2:I remember being so scared to compete, not knowing what the outcome would be. I didn't even feel control of my own body after doing the routine, for I don't know ever I did the same routine for like five years and like not even feeling confident in my ability to do it one time, when I had done it 20 times that week. So I can only dream about what I would have been able to accomplish as an athlete, but what I can say as an adult and out in the working world. I have achieved so much more than I even thought was possible and what I'm able to handle now I even thought was possible and what I'm able to handle now and I say handle meaning like I don't know, like stressors in my life, something that would have kept me up all night I'm like no big deal, like we can get through this, and the shifts of that used to really tick me off. I'm not really upset about it anymore. These skills go past athletics.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:So beneficial as an athlete, but you need them in real life.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, without a doubt. I've I've talked with my wife before, like, when I sometimes reflect back on the things in 20, you know, 2013, that like really caused me to have the, the some of the worst anxiety that I'd ever had. Um, you know, over the next couple of years there, for that stretch, there's times where I look back on that now and I'm almost like it's almost like embarrassing that some of that stuff caused that big of a physical and mental and emotional just devastation in my life. But it's like I'm not even remotely close to the same person that I was back then. But here's what I, here's what I love about this book.
Speaker 1:So next, the next chapter. It starts introducing the saboteurs, right, and so we're not going to go through all of them, but like some of the, the ones that I thought as I was reading through, it's like boom, that relates to athletics. Uh, you know, the judge and everybody's got this. This kind of self-criticism, you know, am I doing this well enough? Do I have what it takes? Did I make mistakes? Guilt focused on you know things?
Speaker 1:In the past times you've come up short. The hyper-achiever believing that you know, self-worth only comes from success, the controller needing to be in control at all times and fearing uncertainty, the restless saboteur, this idea that you're never satisfied, you're always chasing the next goal. You never appreciate progress, the stickler like this perfectionist, this fear of failure, this procrastination due to high standards. What I loved was it took you know where. Whereas we, we talk about self-talk in the focus cycle, this goes so much deeper and starts to really categorize. What are these? Categorize, what are these these different saboteurs in your mind? Doing, saying whispering to you were there, were there any of these that that you related to the most?
Speaker 2:um, yeah, no, everyone has a judge right. Like we all have a judge, we judge ourselves, we judge the others. I am a classic hyper achiever, restless, and, my friends and family might say, a controller. Um, I am always, I know I am okay I know, I know I'm a controller, but a controller, but it's something I'm actively working on.
Speaker 1:There, you go.
Speaker 2:But I would say that, being a gymnast in particular, I do one of the only sports where you only can get points taken away from you. So to be anything less than perfect is unacceptable and that has created a lot of saboteurs for me and given them a lot of power. And, like I'm a hyper achiever because the score literally tells me how not perfect I was, you know I'm a stickler because, again, I have to be perfect and I'm always achieving more, um, but yeah, we all have saboteurs and we all have characteristics of all of them and it's going to be so exciting to get into and get into all of them deeper, yeah for sure, I loved the.
Speaker 1:I loved the quote. Saboteurs thrive on fear, stress and self doubt. The first step is recognizing them, so they lose their power. As you, as you think back to like when you first started reading this book and you first started going, oh my goodness, Like that's what, that is what, what did that? You remember what that felt like for you?
Speaker 2:I like relief, felt lighter, um, I think it felt like a breath of fresh air and it changed the way I talk to myself. So sometimes athletes will talk to themselves and like I'd be like, okay, brenna, like you got this, you got this, you got this, versus saying I got this, like I myself, right here, I have this. And then to put that in reverse, it's not like I can't do it. It's not, brenna, you can't do it. Oh the judge, they say that I can't do it. They, you can't do it. Oh the judge, they say that I can't do it. They have no power, they're separate from me. So it's just being able to like, see it in that perspective really gives you a lot of power and feel that you are in control of your actions and your body and your thoughts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I really liked. I'll be honest, I don't remember if it was this chapter or if I'm skipping ahead, but when it was, when he was talking about how there's nothing wrong with a productive reminder, like there's nothing wrong with hey, you did this and that wasn't good. Or hey, this is coming up and you should prepare for it. And then you know it's like, oh, that's yeah, that's a good idea, I should come up with a plan for that. Or, oh, you know, that wasn't very good in that game.
Speaker 1:So we do need to practice this intentionally and deliberately this week and you know, whatever, but when it's at two o'clock in the morning and it wakes you up, that's no longer being helpful in any way. When it's just constantly, all day, over and over and over, and over and over, that's that's not helping you. That's now becoming a distraction that's taking away from your ability to perform, prepare, be present, all of those. So the on the on the flip side of this, we have this concept of the sage. How would you, how would you describe that voice in the mind?
Speaker 2:Yeah for sure. So if we were to break it down, I feel like the judge is more of like that fight or flight. And then your sage is your, your rest and your digest. So the sage is the part of your brain that's bringing curiosity, curiosity, empathy, um, really like the calming feelings. And again, not to confuse sage positivity with happy, because you can be upset while still curiously navigating a situation. And so a lot of what this book talks about is like identifying that saboteur, weakening it, it and then strengthening your sage and those pq muscles. So the sage is the judge's worst enemy I just I, I can't help.
Speaker 1:But but going back to the, the 2016 season, where you know, we lose a second game, we have this team that we feel like is going to be phenomenal and we lose the second game, and it's like all of the, all of the saboteurs in that moment just wanted to say, well, maybe we're not actually as good as we thought, maybe we don't have what it takes, maybe, maybe this senior class really isn't as mentally tough as we thought, maybe we don't have the, maybe we don't have the athletes, maybe we don't have, maybe we didn't prepare well enough, maybe we didn't, maybe, and just on and on and on, where the sage is able to just separate from that and say you know what? We came up a little bit short again. So we're going to have to change some things If we want to change the trajectory of where we're headed. Going to have to change some things. If we want to change the trajectory of where we're headed, what do we need to change? How are we going to improve? How? Where are we going to get 1% better in all of these little categories? Are we sleeping enough? What's our nutrition like? Our hydration, our preparation? Are we watching enough film. Are we watching film the right way? Are we making adjustments? Live in the game Like it's not positive?
Speaker 1:It's not just I'm positive and I'm happy and yay, we lost the game and nobody cares, it doesn't matter, no, it's. I'm not going to just spiral mindlessly and aimlessly. I'm going to have some purpose and some direction and I'm going to evaluate what happened. Where are we at and what are we doing next to make things better? What was what was in your mind? What was that? Maybe the, the example that you go back to, where, after learning about some of these tools, after learning about, you know you have these, these parts of your brain that are trying to sabotage your success and you have a completely different part of your brain that's able to help guide you and, you know, help evaluate what needs to be done to continue on this journey. What, when was it that you saw the fruit of that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can think of a couple examples, the fruit of that. Yeah, I can think of a couple examples. I can't think of one off the top of my head for athletics, but for post-athletics, CrossFit training still an athletic event, training for the MRF, thinking I can't do this. I had a goal to do the MRF with a vest for the first time and do it strict, how it's written, not break it down into sets.
Speaker 2:And I remember like my body feeling like it was failing during that training process, but knowing that your mind will go way or your mind will fail before your body, is a comforting thought to me and so activating my sage of okay, how is my body feeling? Is it really failing me? Am I really that tired? Oh no, I still have some more in me. Oh, I can do this. And just really tuning into what I feel and not what I think, because those are not the same. You know you're feeling like you can't go further and thinking you can't go further are two separate things and all athletes know that those workouts that you were like this will never end. Yeah, you got through it. You did. Your body didn't fail you, your mind trying to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think the the most important part is that our athletes have to know and understand like you can it doesn't matter where you're at you can improve, you can get better. Like the brain is malleable. By by practicing these mental exercises, you can weaken your saboteurs. You can strengthen your, your mental fitness muscles he calls them in the book. You know kind of the strategy. There's three parts that we'll dive into a little bit deeper in future episodes, but strategy number one, the first thing you can do is weaken the saboteurs, like these voices of negativity I really like in some of the later chapters when they they give the example of this had to come from somewhere.
Speaker 1:This was maybe a protective mechanism that you put in place, almost comparing it to to. You break your arm when you're at five years old and you put the cast on and that's beneficial and it helps bones regrow. But if, if you just leave it on there, it's going to hinder growth, it's going to end up being a really bad thing. But we don't teach. We don't teach kids or even adults. How do we move on past these, these frameworks or these ideas that perfectionism is so important? I have to be perfect. I can never strike out. I can never. You know, whatever that looks like. You know, we've talked about on previous episodes, just the neuroplasticity behind how, using mindfulness, you can decrease pain responses, you can decrease emotional reaction, like all of this. All of this stuff, all of this stuff backed by science, backed by cognitive, brain research, neuropsychology I think. I think that's what I love, but in my mind, a high school or a college kid can pick up this book and read about things that are, that are almost like almost human right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so really chapter one. It's okay, we're changing our brain, right. Like you have to take responsibility for the thoughts inside your head and in order to change the direction of your life, you need to change the pattern of your thoughts. And so ending out chapter one is really just, you know, like here we go, Like we're starting a journey, like any competition, like any roadmap to a championship it's day one and like we're starting here.
Speaker 1:Athletes spend thousands of hours training their bodies and a fraction of that time training their minds. I mean the, the impact if, if mental training was prioritized a 10th of what physical training is, I think I think the the results would be amazing. I'm I'm blown away by. Sometimes, you know, when we talk about hey, we've got this MTP Academy. Hey, you know, we've got it reduced down, so all you have to do is spend 15 minutes a week on it, and coaches are like, well, you know, I just I don't know if that makes, I don't know if that's the best use of our time to take 15 minutes and train the mind, and it's like, yep. But if you don't take any time to do it and you put in all this training and all these reps and then you show up at the state championship or the national championship or the fill in the blank big, meaningful, important competition, and you can't perform and you can't access any of that stuff and you don't have tools to deal with adversity, like, what's it all? What's it all matter anyways?
Speaker 2:No, exactly. I mean I can't stress it enough Like your life. If you feel like your life sucks, look at the pattern of your thoughts. You know everything that happens is between your two ears.
Speaker 1:Love it. I am. I'm excited to continue working through this book, brenna. Just appreciate your time, looking forward to the next one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, me too. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:If you have questions, don't hesitate to head on over to mental training plancom. Click on the contact us. As always. If you are interested in learning about the MTP Academy would love to have that conversation with you. You can get on the website, go to mental training plancom slash Academy. There is actually a section where you can give us an email address and then we'll shoot you over the worksheet so that you can see. Oh, here's what the athletes would have in front of them the coaches video that explains what we're doing and why during this session, and then the athlete video where we guide them through step-by-step implementing some of these tools. If you've got questions, please don't hesitate to reach out and until next time, make your plan and put it to work.