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Health & Fitness Redefined
Health and Fitness Redefined with Anthony Amen. Take a dive into the health world as we learn how to overcome adversity, depict fact vs fiction and see health & fitness in a whole new light.Fitness Is Medicine
Health & Fitness Redefined
Brain Hacks That Help Kids Win at Sports and Life
Could your child's future success depend on mental skills you've never thought to teach them? In this eye-opening conversation, Dr. Christine Silverstein reveals the transformative power of "mindful toughness" techniques that can help anyone overcome life's greatest challenges.
Drawing from her 29 years as a peak performance coach and her background as a registered nurse, Dr. Christine shares her remarkable personal journey—from using self-hypnosis to overcome multiple pregnancy losses to developing a comprehensive system that's helped countless athletes and individuals achieve breakthrough results. Her near-drowning experience in 2021 became the catalyst for documenting these powerful techniques in her book, "Wrestling Through Adversity."
The pandemic exposed an alarming mental health crisis among young people that Dr. Christine believes stems from a fundamental lack of resilience. Her mindful toughness skillsets—breathing techniques, progressive muscle relaxation, visualization, and mental rehearsal—provide practical solutions anyone can implement. Through compelling stories, she demonstrates how these methods helped transform a struggling wrestler into an undefeated champion and enabled a college athlete to overcome debilitating pain after knee surgery.
Perhaps most revealing is the discussion about modern parenting approaches that inadvertently prevent children from developing crucial coping skills. Dr. Christine emphasizes that children must learn through their own experiences rather than being shielded from all discomfort. By teaching mental resilience early, parents can equip their children with tools that will serve them throughout their lives.
"You move in the direction of your dominant thoughts," Dr. Christine explains, highlighting how our mental focus shapes our reality. Whether you're an athlete seeking peak performance, a parent concerned about your child's resilience, or someone facing personal challenges, these accessible techniques offer a pathway to transformation.
Ready to discover how simple mental techniques can change your life or your child's future? Listen now and learn how to harness the incredible power of your mind to overcome any obstacle.
Learn More at: www.Redefine-Fitness.com
This is Health and Fitness Redefined, brought to you by Redefined Fitness. Hello and welcome to Health and Fitness Redefined. I'm your host, anthony Amen, and today we've got another great episode for all of you today. Hope you like our brand new 10-second intro. We've got a new outro today to you guys. We're moving up in the world all because of you. Really appreciate you guys sharing this show, making it blow up those in-person episodes we've been doing. Some of them have gone viral, so absolutely love it. Just want to give a quick shout out to everyone that does listen, because you guys really do make me want to continue this and 300 episodes later, we're still kicking. So, without further ado, let's welcome to the show, dr Christine. It's a pleasure to have you on today.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much for inviting me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, love the topic we're going to talk about today. I love what you're doing and I think this will be a doozy for a lot of people to listen to, especially with a lot of the adversity has been a signal topic for us over the last two, three weeks. It's just something that hits home and I think a lot of people could relate with. And then something you mentioned pre-show is the new generation is kind of showing that, like you said, it's a lost generation. So really interesting topic to talk about, why I believe that way, why you believe that way, and see how we can ultimately help. But so, with that further ado, just give us a little background about what got you into this field to begin with.
Speaker 2:Well, I've been a registered nurse from the age of 19. I went to nursing school at 16, didn't know what I was doing, but I wanted to help people to heal and to be well, and that was my intention. When I was 15, I witnessed my friend having an epileptic seizure on the street near the candy store we were going to, and I didn't know what to do. He never told me he had epilepsy and so after that I never saw him again. He never talked to me again. He was so embarrassed that he had this episode. So I went home and I told my mom about it, and she always wanted to be a nurse, because when she was 15, she had a ruptured appendix and she almost died from the infection because there were no antibiotics at that time, and so she never got to be the nurse she wanted to be. She had got married at 21, had five children, but that was one of her regrets, you know, in her life. So I'm the fourth daughter in my family. She said well, christine, so maybe you want to be a nurse and find out how to help people. And that's how I started at 16, graduated by 19.
Speaker 2:And I was also had many, many challenges with fertility. I had four miscarriages. I had this inability. I had the ability to become pregnant, but then I would lose the baby some months into the pregnancy and by the time I got to the fourth pregnancy I was really, really scared this would happen again, like in the middle of the night. So I was sleeping at that point on a bed, on the mattress I knew had blood on it from a previous hemorrhage from a miscarriage, so it wasn't very positive. And here I am pregnant again, and so I learned what to do with meditation. And also the other thing that I changed in my life at that time was I learned self-hypnosis, which helped me to get through the night and get through the pregnancy, and from there I had four healthy children, even though the doctor told me, the gynecologist I went to the specialist told me I needed to take diethylstilbestrol DES, which I knew at the time as a nurse was could cause cancer to both me and my offspring. So I didn't take. I took the prescription home but I ripped it up, threw it in the garbage and I said I'm going to do it myself and use the power of my mind, which is what I did.
Speaker 2:So I'm a very big proponent of getting in the zone this way, and when my children were getting to be teenagers I had four children. My oldest were having challenges with their sports. My son was a wrestler, my daughter was a gymnast and my other children played piano and ran track. So they were having these challenges that teenagers have, you know social challenges, school challenges and also that lack of confidence in themselves in the big tournaments, the big matches. So I really said I want to help them help themselves. I didn't think they needed therapy in that sense, they were just having average challenges that teenagers have. But I brought one of my children to a psychologist to see what he could do to help them and he told me that I was the one who needed the therapy. There was something wrong with me and my husband should join me too. And so I said forget this, I'm going to learn what to do to help my children.
Speaker 2:And I had a history of helping myself when I was a little girl. When I was 10 years old, my dad, who was the athletic director of the police athletic league in our hometown, told me there were no sports for girls. But I found out when I was in the playground the public playground that I could be in a skating race roller skating race and girls were allowed there and I ended up winning the local championship and then the Queens championship. And then I placed at the city championship in New York City, in Central Park, and I coached myself, you know, and I fixed my equipment and I, you know, my roller skates they were metal, my equipment and I, you know, my roller skates they were metal and also strap them to my shoes and practiced and imagined myself going over the finish line first and having little Pegasus wings on my heels, and so I won. And then my dad was saying, oh, I better help her, you know, because she's doing so well. But my point is, I knew what to do and I used the same techniques today to help athletes to win, using your imagination.
Speaker 2:So when my children were having challenges, what should I do? I couldn't find anybody to help me, so I decided I was going to start my own business and become a peak performance coach and learn what to do to show them a peak performance coach and learn what to do to show them. And so I started with my own children and then I branched out to other people's children, at the gym, at the wrestling clubs and then also nationally, you know, working with whole teams. And then I realized, oh my goodness, this is important, not just to win in the sport, but to win in life, because over the years I've been doing this for 29 years Over the years, the young people who I work with, they come back as teenagers. They come back in college. They come back after college and say, okay, now I'm going to my first job, so what should I do now? How can I use these mindful toughness skill sets you know and apply them, you know, to this internship I have in college and things like that. So that was my impetus for starting my work.
Speaker 2:But during the pandemic, I was watching the TV, like some of the people might have been watching, and it was a horror to me when I first started writing my book in 2022. And all these things happening the teenagers in the emergency room and no treatment. They were there for months with suicidal ideation, and even children as young as two had challenges and they were thinking what should we do with them? I mean, what do you do with a two-year-old? They were talking about putting them in groups of up to 12-year-old kids. You know what I'm thinking? How can a toddler manage that one? But at any rate, I decided that I knew what to do after working over 25 years at that point and that I was going to talk about it in my book.
Speaker 2:But one of the main things of why I started writing my book was that I had a near drowning in the Outer Banks in North Carolina the Labor Day in 2022 and I just it was in 2021 actually and I came out of the water. This man, he saved my life because I was walking on the shoreline in a storm and the beaches were closed, but my ankles were just covered with water. I wasn't that deep into the water and a riptide came and swept me out and I was on my back and I couldn't stand up and and and water sand was coming over my face and I thought I was a goner there. My husband came in to try to help me and he fell, too, into the, into the water. But this nice man who happened to be on the beach on the lounge chair, he was reading the the Count of Monte Cristo book. He was a professor and he heard my screams and he came into the water and he gave me his hand and he pulled me out.
Speaker 2:So I knew then that it was time to write my book because years before, I had promised my dad that I would be an author and I would be a writer, and I knew it was time when he put this book in front of my face and he said, look, this is a thousand page book. And I said, oh, my goodness, I have to write my book now. So that's when I started March 1st 2022, when all this was going on with the pandemic and parents didn't know what to do and, of course, the food shortages and also worrying about the price of gasoline during that time and so I started to write it, thinking that now it's time to say what I mean and help people writing of my book and also starting. I was inspired to write the introduction on a trip in the nile river. I had tried to write the introduction many times and I failed.
Speaker 2:So I took this book off the shelf here in my office called uh, wrestling with life, and it was about an autobiography of a wrestler who died from cancer from the World Trade Center, and he is right there. His quote from his book is right there about what it was like and how he was at Merrill Lynch on that day and how he saved his life by running through the smoke, and we all can learn from him. So he was an inspiration of what to say in my book, because he didn't live much longer after that, but he did start a wrestling school in between. So I was inspired by him, and also inspired, of course, by my dad, who had passed away many years before.
Speaker 2:And then I said this is the time and just in life you know when it's time to do what you have to do, and so that was the beginning for me, and I've been working to promote my work to help people to know that there is something you can do. And once you learn these simple techniques, they're free as the air you breathe, so you don't have to worry about will Medicaid or Medicare or your insurance pay for these things. You've learned these techniques and you start to incorporate them in your life. It does entail for adults to look at their lives, the traumas that they've had, release those so that they can be free to do what they want to do in life, and then they can help their children to do the same. And they're very simple things I call mindful toughness skill sets.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you had a full life there.
Speaker 2:Yes, I did, and that's only a small portion of it.
Speaker 1:I love the saying that you're only given what you can take and make better so a lot of people are given really hard things to deal with.
Speaker 1:Like four miscarriages is a lot. That's what stood out for me, right, and going through that and constantly worrying about that and just know one more, just know one more and he kept going and going and going. It's like that. Put you on your path and if that didn't happen, would you be where you are today? And ultimately it was a horrible thing to go through, but was it worth it to get to where you are today? Help as many people as you've helped and it's something I think I've reflected in my own life and I started since I did that episode and I answered yes, like I would go through everything again.
Speaker 1:I started asking people if they took their worst childhood trauma or their adult trauma and would they relive it to get where they are today, and I got to say a lot more people said no, they wouldn't go through that, and it just ties into happiness. And then you start seeing those people that said no, but it relates into they aren't happy with the things going on in their life. They're very worried about what people think of them. They obsess over things that they shouldn't obsess over, and I see it with friends, family, it's just like okay. So maybe if you learn to embrace what happened in the past, even if it's 20, 30 years later, you can realize that that got you where you were and there's a lot of good around you and you start being more grateful for things that happen and things that go on.
Speaker 1:I I'm not going to say my life is perfect and it's all butterflies and rainbows kind of deal. Right, I have my, I have my pain and everything like that. Does it suck, yeah, but you know what? I have so much good in my life that it just doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:And I would go through every single pain point all over again if it meant that was the only way to get to where I am today and I think that's really hard for people that understand. I think that kind of reflects directly into your story.
Speaker 2:Yes, it does. Well, they say the greatest storms make the best sailors, and so we shy away from these traumas rather than embrace them, as you say, and learn from them. So if our children don't know what to do, even if you're the best parent ever, you know you stayed home with your child and raised them. Now they're going to the first grade. They might encounter being bullied in the schoolyard and they won't know what to do. They haven't learned and that's what happens. And we have more serious things than that, like school shootings. Now, when you go back to school, even in the first grade, they're teaching you what to do in case there's a school shooting, and it doesn't reflect well on where we are in our society to having to do that when you're going to learn your ABCs and also how to save your life if there's a school shooting. It doesn't go past these children. They pick up everything, and they pick up everything that we say, everything that we do, how we speak, what we know because of these mirror neurons that they're born with in their brains. And so if we think we're sneaking by and they're not noticing, that's not the truth of it, and since I work with a lot of sports. I know that I have to always work with the parents as well as the children, because of their expectations and what do they expect from their child. And the most important thing is for them to have fun in the sport and not to be so like in a regiment, in the army or something like that, where they're so busy with that that they don't have the gratitude, as you're talking about, in the fun and the love of the sport, so that they can play it for the rest of their lives or enjoy it. You can go to the baseball game and enjoy baseball. Even though you didn't become, you know, a professional baseball player, you can still enjoy the sport. So it's all about that and showing your children what to do and knowing that you have some challenges too, knowing that you have some challenges too. And it's like I have spoken on the TV during the main shooting that I was called to speak about. So what should parents do after the main shooting and where some teenagers were killed in the bowling alley there when they had a date with their fathers, you know, to have some fun in the bowling alley and the shooter was still at large, so nobody could leave their homes. They were in their homes. So the parents had to do the talking to the children before the social workers and the psychologists from the school you know could talk to them. And it's about knowing yourself first and settling yourself down before you talk to your children about it, because it's to them. And it's about knowing yourself first and settling yourself down before you talk to your children about it, because it's about them. You need to put yourself in your children's shoes and so often we don't do that.
Speaker 2:I have this procedure when parents bring their children to my office, or the teenagers in particular. So the parents might be sitting on one sofa and the teen on one by themselves. And I asked the parents so okay, so why are you here? Why are you bringing your son here? What are the challenges? So the mother might say something, or the guardian, or the aunt and the father might say something and oh, I want you to do this and I want you to do that. And usually the teenager might agree at some level because they know they're having challenges. But when I asked them, they just look and they say, okay, you know, recently there was one who came he's 17.
Speaker 2:He was having challenges on the wrestling mat in the previous season, mad. In the previous season he didn't win a match that everybody thought he should win, including the parents. And he told me his story once he got into the private room where I worked with him. But the parents were saying but look, and you went to the prom and I know you had a drink and I know I found vaping equipment in your room. And they're questioning him and saying look, how irresponsible you are.
Speaker 2:And here's the teenager. He's very muscular because he's a wrestler and he looks like an adult, although his age is 17,. He won't be 18 until next year and shaves, so he looks like an adult. And the parents were saying, at one point he's a teenager. Another point well, why don't you act like an adult? Because he's not one. So I had to tell them that your child, even though he looks like an adult, he's not. He's a teenager and his brain is developing. He has this amazing brain. I can work with that so that he develops into a very mature adult by using the power of his mind.
Speaker 2:So, anyway, he comes into my office and we talk about this one match that he felt so bad about. His head was hung low and I said so what happened there? And he said well, the whistle blew and I took down this opponent and I didn't think I was able to do it, but I did. And then I didn't know what to do and he took me down and I lost the match. But my body? He said he went into fight or flight response His knees got so weak he couldn't stand up and he couldn't breathe, and this never happened to him before. He had been a martial artist champion for many years.
Speaker 2:So this is somebody who knows how to win, you know, in competition. So he said that's what happened. But he said so. I said so what did you learn from that? And he said well, I learned that I have to know what to do when I take somebody down and then I can win. And so that was his biggest learning experience, although the parents didn't see it that way. They just ignored the fact that he went into this fight or flight. And there were thousands of people there, of course, and probably some of them booing him. You know they didn't, they didn't want him to win. So so, at any rate, this one person, it just so happens. I taught him that night that breathing easy, the first step of how to relax, focus, to get in the zone to access your skills and he did great in upcoming tournament with his teammates.
Speaker 2:And just recently he came for the mental rehearsal, the second session, and when I went through some of his moves that I said here you need to have your plans of action with your wrestling moves plan A, plan B, plan C he developed those. We mentally rehearsed them and he opened his eyes at the end of the session he said I got it, I could see everything you know. And he took that and he won a championship. He was undefeated. You know, and this is somebody who is so low thinking I don't know if I should quit. I mean, I only have one more year to prove myself in my senior year. So it's about using the power of your mind and also teaching your children what to do and leaving it in the hands of professionals a coach such as myself, just to show them. And teenagers love these techniques. They say why didn't anybody show me this before?
Speaker 1:So give me the techniques you talked about prior right. You said there's a handful of techniques that everyone needs to do.
Speaker 2:Yes, and readdress themselves.
Speaker 1:So what are those techniques?
Speaker 2:Well, they're very simple. As I said, I teach self-hypnosis first of all to get in the zone, and that's through these exercises that I give them. But also I work every time in my office to show another technique. The first one is called I call it breathing easy, which is just a matter of eye fixation on something in front of you, which is a hypnotic intervention, and then to start breathing, imagining that you're breathing in to your lungs, expanding your chest and abdomen like a big balloon, and you stop breathing while you're fixating. I use a happy face in my office to fixate on, you know, with the soft focus, and then, as you breathe in and as you breathe out, you also have your feet flat on the floor and you circle the fingers on your non-dominant hand which in this case was his left hand and I mean circle, just make a circle like this, and that can be used as a trigger to focus and relax later on when you're on the wrestling mat or in school. So this is multi-focus. It's not just to relax, it's muscle readiness when you're an athlete, and you know that as an athlete and as a trainer, that it's not relaxation like you're sitting on the couch at home watching TV. It's to be muscle, ready to go into action when you need the energy. So then you start the breathing in, breathing out, and on the exhale you say to yourself that word easy. So that's another trigger to think that, oh, this is really easy, I can do this, you know. So you take the second deep breath, you do the same, you breathe in, you breathe out easy and the third deep breath, you breathe in and you hold your breath and you count backwards three, two and you breathe out Easy. And then I take you, in the first session particularly, I take you right into a progressive muscle relaxation to relax the muscles, starting with the head, going even into the brain, connecting both sides of the brain.
Speaker 2:I use a whole brain approach because the cognitive aspect and also the imagery aspect. As a hypnotherapist I intend to reach the subconscious mind through self-hypnosis and that is the five ways through images, metaphors, sounds, stories and symbols, and that is the language of dreams and that's how you get in the zone. So at any rate, I bring them through the body from the top of the head, imagining there's a light shining above into the brain, coordinating both sides of the brain. And that's particularly with teenagers, that's important in young adults and then down the rest of the body, the arms to the hands, and I make suggestions about how the back is very relaxed and you're breathing in, the oxygen is going into all the areas of cells and everything in the body A reference to the abdomen and the muscles and the gut feeling that you're a winner and presenting images, and I bring them to special places like the Redwood Forest. I bring them to where they can sort out their issues, their history, and that might happen on the first session, and they can feel very strong, very strength, from a giant sequoia, for instance, that they're sitting next to. And so these are all images and metaphors that teenagers are learning how to process because the changes in their brains. And then from that I go from the top of the head all the way down to the bottom of the feet. The body's relaxed and I have them also even get more in the zone by counting backwards from 100 to 97 and telling them when you get to the number 97, you're totally relaxed in the zone like that and it works beautifully. These are all hypnotherapeutic interventions. And then you're in the zone and then I speak about the imagery, whether you're on the wrestling mat or you're on the basketball court or you're going to surgery.
Speaker 2:As I said, I've worked with my program, operation Heal, so I might take them when I'm going to the progressive muscle relaxation. I might take them to a point where they have injury, like in the knee or shoulder, and I show them how they can send energy in and imagine little elves, you know, putting medication on and really numbing the area and showing them techniques like putting your hand in ice in your imagination and then putting it on the shoulder wherever the injury is, and that's called glove anesthesia. So I use these techniques depending on what the challenge is and you know what the sport is, but they're all basically the same. So that's the first session and then I always bring them into this space. I use music for sound that was composed to slow the heart rate down and that's another thing I have to do sometimes with very anxious people like this wrestler and other people in the past, where they have very rapid heartbeat and they can't perform, and that's the fight or flight. That's autonomic nervous system. So you have to go through it in different ways than you do in. The cognitive mind would say I have pain, so I'll take this pill. That's a cognitive function, but with me it's okay. Let's go right into that space and see yourself there, feel yourself there and you can transfer like one.
Speaker 2:One person that I work with, she was a soccer player and she played also lacrosse in college and she had this really severe injury in her knee, so much so that she had surgery. She had the cartilage replaced with stem cell surgery and she wasn't doing well. Her mom called me from the waiting room of the physical therapist's office because her daughter was in the room with the therapist and she was screaming and she said can you help my daughter? So I said, of course, you know, have her make an appointment. And she came to my office. She was 21 years old and she had really big challenges besides the knee, but she was crying because she was in pain and she said it was so painful to go to the therapist because they wanted her to bend bend the knee and she couldn't do it. She would just scream out in pain. The doctor said, oh, maybe we should do the surgery over again because it's not working. So that didn't help her, you know, to feel good. So what I did with her was I helped her in many ways, along with this discomfort, to get her to bend her knee better and to be in the zone. When she got to the physical therapy, I showed her what to do and also I had this wooden tiger. It had joints in it right and he was sitting on the table in my office and I could show her how the tiger was bending the knee joint and how you could do it too and transfer the uninjured knee feeling to the injured knee and before she knew it, she was able to go to therapy, be in charge, start bending her knee and feeling so much better that it was healing, feeling so much better that it was healing.
Speaker 2:And on top of that, she was in her senior year in college. She was in an internship. She wanted to get a job when she graduated, she wanted to keep her grades up for graduate school and she was also coaching a high school soccer team at the same time. So we worked on all those things. I showed her how to work with the student athletes on the high school team, using mindful toughness skill sets that I taught her. I showed her how to participate in the internship so she could get a job afterwards and keep her grades up so she could go to graduate school. She wanted to be a social worker and work with children, so this was perfect for her.
Speaker 2:So after um, I don't think it was more than 10 sessions one hour sessions where she she accomplished all these things and she was able to walk and feel comfortable with her knee and it healed. So using the power of the mind can really help people if they just know what to do. And using your imagination, you get right into the zone and you can heal. And I know this for myself because I've used these techniques many times. Besides having those miscarriages, I had four cesarean sections and the anesthesia was ineffective for all of them. So I had to find ways to get through the surgery when I was in a great deal of pain and and that that was the. The result of that was my program operation heel many years later, that I was talking about earlier yeah, that's uh, that's a lot in there, right so?
Speaker 2:a lot. There's a lot in there. There's a lot in there.
Speaker 1:Yes, there's a lot to unpack. Yes, there's a lot to unpack from that. I think the moral of all of it just going back to that athlete you worked with and then yourself and everything else related is what are pain signals? I think that's the best place to start, and people don't really realize that it's your brain sending a response from an area it's like oh, it's not working properly, oh, maybe it's pain, oh, pain, pain, pain, pain, pain and that's all it is. It's just a signal response that we're receiving because ultimately, without pain, like we'd be dead, uh, there's no people that have a condition I forgot the name off the top of my head but those that can't feel pain. They don't make it past the age of 20 just because it's a response oh, stove hot, take a hand. They don't make it past the age of 20, just because it's a response oh, stove hot, take a hand off stove, don't keep it there and burn through. Or you add that into those that do have type two diabetes With neuropathy syndromes.
Speaker 1:Like you, step on a nail, the area gets affected, it starts hurting, but you don't feel it because you have neuropathy and then you end up getting gangrene and losing your leg. So it's all related and it's necessary. But then you can actually stress your body out with anxiety, with outside forces, and make little things worse and you see that there's a direct correlation to cortisol levels and how much someone experiences pain. So you just light up your CNS or your central nervous system, and it's just overstimulated by things going on, whether it's trauma or stress from work or spouse, whatever and then all of a sudden everything becomes worse. Oh, I hit my head, or I hit my head.
Speaker 1:And then I think the caveat or the bread and butter thing you kind of said but didn't say, if I heard you correctly, is the child is the one that had to go through it and how to learn. And parents, if not good intentions, don't give the best answers to these things. To have them direct, get themselves through to these things. To have them direct and get themselves through. And what I mean by that is looking back. My parents wanted to do the best for me, but when I learned the most was when I did it myself, and I see it with people that are my age. I think my age was the start of when things got. I don't want to say bad, but people stopped taking responsibilities for themselves, especially kids, and then the suicide rate went up was directly correlated. It's because they wanted the helicopter. Oh, everybody wins, there's no winner oh there's this, oh, there's this.
Speaker 1:So kids took no responsibility to do better, be better, and therefore, when things did stress them out when they became an adult, it left them hopeless, because now it's oh, what do I do? I?
Speaker 1:oh I never learned this as a kid Like when my son, who's nine months, falls I mean obviously barring, like falling down the stairs, like he doesn't do that, but it's a little like hits his head. Let's say he's learning to walk, I'm not. Oh my God, are you okay, let me pad and make everything soft. It's like okay, let's get back up. I pick him up and we start walking again. And then he looks at me, realizes that I'm not making a big deal out of it, and then doesn't cry anymore and is smiling, giggling after that. Whereas if I picked him up when he was crying and whining and oh my god, it's okay, let me kiss that and make that better, he's going to say oh, if I fall and hit my head and I cry, I get more attention from my dad and I cry, I get more attention from my dad and my mom. So I'm going to now cry and make this correlation inside of my head.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's very important from the very beginning, as you say. You know, with a young child, what you show them, what you say, is going to be influential for them when they get older. And I believe you need to start at a young age. But of course you can be a teenager, a young adult, or you can even be 80 years old and still learn things you know about yourself and be able to have an end of life, you know, when you're 90 years old, knowing that you accomplished what you wanted to in your life and that you had a great life you can be grateful for. But you know what to do to help yourself. And sometimes at the end of life, you're not going to heal on all levels, but you might heal spiritually before you die.
Speaker 2:And I work with that end of life issue with my clients as well. You know I've done that being a nurse since the age of 19. That was part of my work Even when I was very young. I knew that that was important to learn what to say, learn what to do and to help people value the lives that they lived, whatever it was that they did, you know, in their lives. And I've done that, made sure I did that with my mother and father before they passed, and even my sister, who recently passed away. But the only thing because she had a dementia, the only thing that she could remember was the words to songs because she was a singer. So she kept that memory right until she passed away, even though she couldn't remember my name and she couldn't remember much about her life, but she could sing the words. The last song she sang was on 2024 and she sang God Bless America. At the memory care facility. She remembered the words.
Speaker 1:That's so cute. I love that. Yeah, same thing with my grandfather, who doesn't have Alzheimer's, but he's still alive and he's starting to get early on like dementia. He's 93 years old. He sang his whole life, so Ave Maria was the song he always used to sing, like at church.
Speaker 2:That's my sister as well. Yes, yeah.
Speaker 1:That was his song and he would sing in italian and english and he, even though he forgets things to like oh that's a table he can still sing that song. So it's pretty cool seeing how, like the human mind, like you, can wire your brain to do what you want and learn what you want, and it really depends on how you approach it. You want to do what you want and learn what you want, and it really depends on how you approach it. You want to be happy. You can wire to be happy. You want to be less stressed. You can wire to be less stressed, and it's just a willingness to want to do it and no parent, even though they want the best for you, can make you do it. You have to want to do it.
Speaker 1:And that intention is everything, and without that intention you'll never, truly get there, because you'll never fully understand how your mind and everything works and you'll always create a caveat or a place to retro back if you don't want it.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and that's so true. And I found in my life, as I said, when I was 10 years old and I was the roller skater, to envision that I would win to, to see the Pegasus wings on my heels, imagine them. And when I won the Queen's Championship, I got a jacket I was so proud to wear to school and it had on the on the on the left side of the chest. It had a picture of roller skates with Pegasus wings on them. So that was my prize, right? So I was imagining that even before, ever before, I had one.
Speaker 2:So that you move in the direction of your dominant thoughts and that's the law of attraction. So we have to understand that what we think, what we see, what we say will move in that direction, whether it is positive or negative. If we think, when we go into an exam, that it's really hard, it's my worst subject, it's math, and my friend he's good in math and he didn't do well, so I won't do well, and you go in with that attitude, your chances of not doing well are very high, right. So you need to put the intention there seeing yourself, feeling yourself and then figuring out what you have to do to improve and putting it on. I also use a feedback loop, and the feedback loop is not just like what you do if you're practicing to be at bat and what you're doing to practice to be at bat in your swing, but what were you thinking when you were in the last inning and you struck out? What were you feeling at that time? And guaranteed, if you were thinking and feeling that you were going to strike out, you do. But you can imagine yourself, conversely, that you're going to hit a home run or a grand slam and that can come about as well, and I showed that in a little video that I have.
Speaker 2:It's an animated video of when I worked with a young boy who came to me. He wanted to be on the baseball team and he had just gotten pinned in a championship wrestling match and he's saying I suck at wrestling. And then he was saying he sucked at baseball and he wanted to play third base. So I helped him to be a third baseman and I taught him all the skills and, as it turned out, he went to Cooperstown for competition at the end of that baseball season and I got this note from his mother what happened there?
Speaker 2:At first he wasn't doing well, he was striking out, they had five games and he wasn't doing well. He was striking out, they had five games and he wasn't doing well and he's down on himself. So I told the mother you have to put my recording onto his phone so he can listen to it. And he made sure he did, and the coach was there making sure he did that. So he goes to the final game. The team isn't doing well, but he gets up at bat, he hits a grand slam and then two more home runs after that and he became the Hall of Famer and he could take the baseballs home in a frame. And so that is very significant. And that's after working with him, showing these techniques. And you can see that on my website, drchristinesilversteincom. I have the little video there of how I work with him. I named him George after Babe Ruth, of course.
Speaker 1:I love it. I think, christine, the final thought on this before we wrap the show up, and an exercise everyone can do, is if you ever get a new car, you get a black truck, let's say, and then all of a sudden you're driving around and all you see is black trucks, or something else happens in your life.
Speaker 1:You see a blue car, and now all of a sudden you see all blue cars. Or you see a school bus, then all of a sudden, you always see school buses. It shows that everything's around us. It's just choosing out whether we're paying attention to it or not. And that's the same thing with thought is, if we look for stressful situations, that's all we find. If we look for positive ones, that's all we find. So it's really about how we're framing and making our body pay attention to the things we want it to pay attention to.
Speaker 1:You don't see opportunities around you, you never see opportunities. If you see opportunities, you always see opportunities. So I'm going to ask you the final two questions. I have everyone, just to wrap this up. The first one is if you were to summarize this episode in one or two sentences as a take home message, what would that be?
Speaker 2:That there's something that parents can do to help their children to not only win like competitions, but to win in life, by using simple techniques. I'm talking about mental rehearsal, positive self-talk, feedback loop analysis and mental recall, along with the earlier exercise, breathing easy that once you incorporate those into your life, it makes it so much easier to focus on what you want to score in your life, whatever that may be.
Speaker 1:I love that. And then, Christine, the final question how can people find you, get a hold of you and learn more about your book?
Speaker 2:Well, my book is Wrestling Through Adversity, Empowering Children, Teens and Young Adults to Win in Life. It's on Amazon, it's available in softcover, e-book and also audio book and it's available in any place you would buy a book and, in addition, you can visit my website, drchristinesilversteincom. Addition, you can visit my website, drchristinesilversteincom. I have information there about my motivation for writing the book and the chapters in the book and also the video I just told you about. And idealperformancenet is my clinical website that you can go to, and I have a YouTube channel called the Young Navigator and I'm always adding things to that to help you to navigate life and to get through the toughest storms.
Speaker 1:I love it. Thank you so much, christine. Thank you guys for listening to this week's episode of Health and Fitness Redefined. Don't forget to hit the subscribe button and share. It's the only way this show grows Until next time. Thank you guys for listening to this week's episode of health and fitness redefined. Please don't forget to subscribe and share this show with a friend, with a loved one, for those that need to hear it. And ultimately, don't forget fitness is medicine. I'll see you next time.
