Latest / The BIG LIFE / Sports Performance and Mental Resilience Coach Nick Holton Shares Game and Life-Changing Tips

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Sports Performance and Mental Resilience Coach Nick Holton Shares Game and Life-Changing Tips · The BIG LIFE

0:04
All right, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of The Big Life.
0:09
You know, I was going to start counting, and then I have lost count.
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So season two, episode something.
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Jordan and I are back from multiple countries.
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Jordan, you're in Canada. What's going on? I am in Montreal visiting a teammate.
0:23
And yeah, I mean, we just, it was so good.
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We had to extend our trip. I was supposed to be home Sunday.
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Now I'm not leaving until Tuesday.
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So I mean, I'm having the time of my life. My teammate Sophia's worth,
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I think is the best planner ever.
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Like, I don't even know if there's anything left to do after we leave here.
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Like we have checked all the boxes.
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It's really weird though. Cause it's like, everyone speaks French.
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Like the main language is French.
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Everyone speaks English too. But like we went to soccer practice with her the
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other day and like all the rules, instructions, everyone's yelling at each other
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in French and we're just kind of like standing there like, who knows what's going on?
1:02
I felt like you, I can understand you better now. You're like so welcome to
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every single day of my life.
1:07
I have no idea how you do it. Like I went from one practice and I'm like,
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just my heart rate was like tripled from what it normally is.
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I'm like, I don't know what's going on.
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Yeah, you get used to the extra mental exhaustion that does come from the constant
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translating and understanding.
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But yeah, it's definitely a different animal sometimes.
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But it's worth it. Yeah. I'm trying to learn a little bit.
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We've gotten the basics. I can ask where the toilet is and say, hi, you're welcome.
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And that's about it. That's the most needed thing. So you're doing fine,
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especially for a week. So I'm happy for you.
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Thank you. Thank you. All right. And yes, things are going down good in Stockholm.
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We're in Sweden over here. We are currently sitting at fourth on the table,
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which is super exciting for the club. And we got another win on the road this
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week. And so, yeah, it's been a big week.
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Somehow we teased it last week. I did go to Taylor Swift yesterday,
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Stockholm night three Trey and I ended up on the barricade.
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So front row Taylor Swift in Stockholm.
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There was a lot of emotions that happened last night.
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I saw you guys posting and it looked like you could literally touch her.
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Yeah, we could like I felt Swift sweat like come down on me.
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That is insane. I mean, like, how? How? How did you?
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Considering it was such a last minute decision, you're like,
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maybe I'll go to a Taylor Swift concert. And then you're right there.
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Yeah, like, okay, I would like the purposes. I love Taylor Swift.
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I'm a very big Taylor Swift fan. I'm like, I wouldn't say I'm a full on Swifty.
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Like, that's a whole nother like degree.
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Love them. Like, that's great. But like, you know, I've never self categorized.
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So it was like, last minute, like, let's go to Taylor Swift. It's once in a lifetime.
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And we literally just won the bingo or the lottery of StubHub.
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So like when we bought the tickets, like they're not allowed to add like extra
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information. So it's just general admission standing.
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So like, yeah, we'll stand like we're athletic, whatever. We just want the cheapest
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seats. And in Europe, the cheapest seats are like the standing ones. So we're like, dope.
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We get the tickets back. They're VIP tickets. And we were like,
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oh, so we didn't know that.
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So we didn't get any of the other VIP perks, but we got the early access, which is what we wanted.
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So we got into the arena an hour before like the general admission did.
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So people who are like lined up starting at like 3am, like they're doing for
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general admission, like we got in before them.
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So then it got we got even luckier because I live in North shipping,
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which is about by the time you take public transportation, it's two and a half
3:27
hours to get to Stockholm.
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So we were like, you know, I had a game the night before we had come in from
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a road trip, like we weren't trying to camp out whatever we were getting,
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we were lucky with getting especially with the price we paid for these things,
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like we did not break the bank.
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So then we get there and we find out that Sweden We then did something like
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really weird. We don't know if it was like on accident or not,
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but like there's VIP left and VIP right.
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And there's like 2000 VIP tickets. Instead of doing like a thousand and a thousand.
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Stockholm did like 1600 on the right and 400 on the left.
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And we were lucky enough to be on the left.
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So by getting to the concert at like 1.30 for the concert that started at 6.15,
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we were the 50th person led into the arena on the left side.
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So I don't know, like, who, like, karma, someone was looking out for us.
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But yeah, we had amazing seats for Taylor Swift that we just completely looked into.
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Oh, my God. That is, like, I don't even understand, like, how lucky you are
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right now. Like, I need to get, like, a lottery ticket.
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Like, I need to do everything right now because something is working my way.
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Definitely. You need to, like, yes, hit the casino, go bet on some horses. I don't even know.
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Do it all. Wow. Did Trey end up wearing the karma shirt?
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He did not wear the karma shirt. It's been a big debacle in our apartment right
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now, but he had the time of his life.
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So we'll take it as a win. We'll take it as a win.
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Well, enough about my extremely lucky Taylor Swift that I just kind of had to
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rub into everyone's faces.
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We have an amazing guest on this week's podcast episode.
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And honestly, one that I was so grateful we got to talk to because I felt like
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it applied to a lot of my life right now.
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And And it really hit home in a lot of spaces.
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And Jordan, I know you were able to bring this guy on. So just talk a bit about
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what he does with your team before we go into the interview.
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Yeah, yeah. Our team is lucky enough to be able to work very closely with Dr. Nick Colton.
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He is kind of like our go-to person for being able to learn and improve our
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mental aspect of the game.
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He goes and he has a program called the Anti-Fragile Academy, Anti-Fragile Athlete.
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And we go and we have a program with him and he'll come in and he'll do in-person
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lessons and he'll answer questions with you and do one-on-one interviews if you need.
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And he's just kind of like our go-to guy for improving the mental aspect of the game.
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And it's been huge for us, you know, talked about more and more as the game
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of soccer is growing and becoming more popular and mental health is becoming
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more of a conversation and just really acknowledging the mental aspect of the
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game and being able to learn and grow row and utilize that because it is such
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a large part has been huge.
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And yeah, we're very, very lucky to work very closely with them.
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Yeah, I think one of the coolest parts about this is Nick will say it himself
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in the interview. He's not a sports psychologist.
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You know, he's not who will you go to to get one on one clinical therapy.
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However, he specializes in sport performance. And there's such a thin gray line
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between those two balances of area.
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But to really go into the sports performance aspect and how mentality and all
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these things are derived from and come on the field.
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I thought it was a super, super unique conversation that I was so excited to
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have and I can't wait to bring to all of our listeners.
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Absolutely. And I mean, nobody's going to be able to introduce him better than
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himself and what he has in the website.
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So, I mean, I'm just going to read his bio for who he is, essentially. So Dr.
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Nick Holton is an international speaker, consultant, trainer, and coach.
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His work focuses on helping individuals become better versions of themselves
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through the application of the cutting-edge science of human flourishing,
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a synergistic development of both peak performance and overall well-being and fulfillment.
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He works with individuals, teams, businesses, and organizations ranging from
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professional athletes, NCAA programs, educational institutions,
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first responders, and Fortune 100 executives.
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He also co-hosts the podcast Flourish FM, which is sponsored by the Human Flourishing
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Program at Harvard and the Department of Education at Oxford.
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Nick has worked with clients, given talks, and delivered trainings across the
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U.S., Europe, India, Australia, Uganda, Singapore, Mexico, and South America.
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So absolutely amazing. So excited to have this guy on. What a guy to bring on the podcast.
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So everyone, without further ado, Dr. Nick Holton.
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All right. Thank you very much. We have Nick Holton here, Dr.
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Nick Holton, or as we like to call him on my team, Skeets.
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Works very closely with our team, sports psychologist and good friend of Jeff's.
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So we get the privilege of seeing him here and working with him.
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So Nick is a sports psychologist, and we get a lot of questions all the time
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about how the mental game goes hand in hand with the physical game,
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especially with women's soccer, which this podcast is mainly about.
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So can you give us just a little bit of background on your journey and how you
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got here and what you kind of do?
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Sure. Yeah. Well, first and foremost, thanks for having me. I'm happy to be
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here. My privilege to be here. And thanks for sharing my middle name.
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You have the privilege of being able to call me that since you're friends with
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a friend or play for a friend.
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Yeah. So like the long and short of how and why I got to this place is,
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I mean, I can go all the way back to like even sixth grade and helping myself.
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I was a pretty good soccer player.
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Um, you mentioned a lot of the audiences kind of maybe soccer oriented, but not exclusive.
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And I could have played college, you know, I played high level club, that sort of thing.
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So just helping my sister one day, you know, kind of learn a few things here
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and there. She went out, had this great game.
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And I just remember my takeaway being, oh, I did that.
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I created sort of that change and that felt good, right?
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Not, not necessarily in a selfish way. Although when I say it like that,
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it sounds selfish, but it was like, oh, I can, I can take something that I like
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and I'm pretty good at and can use it to help somebody else feel better.
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Like experience some sort of pleasant emotion. Like, okay, cool.
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So fast forward, that eventually led me into education and classrooms.
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But neither of you are that far removed from academia and certainly not from high school.
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And so that experience isn't always a super positive or pleasant one or one
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that really develops our best potentials.
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And I say that as a longtime teacher.
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So I eventually went back to get a doctoral degree.
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And that's where I discovered things like well-being sciences, resilience.
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Flow, peak performance states, essentially the psychology and the neuroscience
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of what helps us feel our best, perform our best, and do hard shit.
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And all three of those things are going to play really, really important roles
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in life in general. all. Right.
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And, and certainly for this audience sports specifically, and we can talk about,
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you know, sports, um, at that granular way, but these are, these are ultimately life skills.
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Again, how do I generally feel good and build stuff into life that makes life
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worth living and raises the quality of it?
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How do I do hard shit so that life is rich and that I grow and develop into
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my best self, even if it doesn't feel pleasant along the way,
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that's an important and dynamic.
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And then how do I kind of, you know, day to day, week to week perform,
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not necessarily always perfectly or optimally, but perform well or perform at
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a sort of like minimum floor level.
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In the things that I care about, not just my sport, but in my relationships
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and in the classroom or my professional life or whatever it might be. Right.
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So that's, that's kind of it in a nutshell. show. So as you go through this,
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you are the co-founder of the Anti-Fragile Academy. Can you tell us a little bit about what that is?
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Yeah. So the way, right, I just laid out three things.
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So let's call it wellbeing, build the good, resilience, navigate the bad or
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the unpleasant, more specifically, and then performance.
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So we would make the argument that if you're building up all three of those
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capacities, strategically building the good, right, learning skills to help
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you navigate and use the bad and then learning strategies to help you perform well consistently,
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then you're building up a capacity for anti-fragility.
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Now, what is anti-fragility?
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We always tell this story with two kind of two famous characters from Greek
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mythology, the Phoenix and the Hydra.
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So the Phoenix, right, and not knowing the age of your audience,
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but if you want to, Harry Potter fans, right, Phoenix bursts into flames,
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right, falls to ashes, and then it can be reborn essentially like as its same
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self, okay? That's resilience.
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It's navigating and returning more or less to kind of the similar thing we were before adversity.
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But the Hydra, the Hydra was this multi-headed sort of serpent-like creature,
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right? And if you would slice off one of its heads, it would grow back two more.
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That's anti-fragility. So what we're talking about doing is trying to help athletes
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and parents and coaches proactively build up a capacity for robustness,
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for anti-fragility, to take on the hard shit that life throws at us and be able
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to use it, be able to learn from it, to be able to grow from it.
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So that when adversity inevitably does strike, that capacity is built in.
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We can still maintain certain levels of performance and grow from it,
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but it's not just about the adversity, the moments in between,
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you're also developing skills that help you make and build a life worth living,
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right? So it's this really integrated approach.
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Anti-fragile sounds like mental toughness and, you know, like rigidity and,
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you know, I can't feel anything.
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It's, and I think, Joe, you can speak to this, having gone through some of our
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stuff for the last couple of years.
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It's not like that at all. We're really trying to focus on the entire human
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being because we think that's really the only way to do it.
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And you, you, you asked the question right at the start, Joe,
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the connection between mind and body. And you hear us say bio psycho social all the time.
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You got to be thinking top down or the brain bottom up or the mind body connection.
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And then outside in the relationships, the environment, those sorts of things.
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When you, when you consider a an entire human being
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right so all i'm hearing out of this is that
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you're definitely a slytherin i mean with like talking
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about yes yes yeah yeah it's happened to harry potter understandably
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i can see why you get that impression yeah everything i said sounds very villainous
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doesn't it so in all seriousness like jordan said so much of our audience and
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i think jordan and i navigating the highs and lows of athletics in general itself
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know how important than this mental side of the game is. And it's being talked
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about more and more, which is incredible.
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At what age do you personally feel like this mental game really needs to start
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being a factor in our athletic development?
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Needs to is a tricky question. Can start depends on the individual.
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Later today, I'm working with a 10 year old, right? She's pretty high level
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tennis player and the language is very different, right?
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But the ideas are very much the same, right?
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This little girl still succumbs to ideas like the negativity bias.
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Her mistakes stick out to her more than her successes. So, you know,
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you can start to learn, I think, at a very young age, how to kind of pick out
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different aspects of a reality to just help challenge catastrophic thinking.
15:02
Right. And just these like really overtly negative cycles.
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Most of our programming starts right around kind of first year of high school,
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somewhere in that 14, 15 age range.
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But that's really for no reason other than that's what we think the content
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speaks to, right, the most in terms of our expertise.
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We're not traditionally working with age groups much lower than that,
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at least on the psychological level.
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But again, if a young person can understand some of these concepts or you can
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find a coach or a program that packages these concepts in really accessible
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language, like anything,
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I don't think it's ever too early to start learning because when we're young,
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that's when the brain is most plastic, most malleable, right?
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I'd argue those are the times to try to get these in. Now, your age group as
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well, right? The brain doesn't stop developing until 25.
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That's when adolescence technically ends.
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But generally, I would say the younger, the better if
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that young person is at a level where they're capable of taking in you know
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such information and skills so i i think i kind of know your opinion on this
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but i want to ask because i thought it was very interesting we hear a lot about
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the 90 10 with 90 of the game being mental and 10 being the physical aspects of the soccer,
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what are your thoughts on this so you know the phrase that we like to use and
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you'll hear this out, popular podcasts.
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A hundred percent nervous system.
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Okay. So I understand the sentiment behind what you just shared,
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which I think is saying, listen, some of it is the way you move and the physical gifts on the field.
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And the other is, you know, I don't know, tactical prep, film review, right.
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Pre-game routine, discipline in the off hours, discipline around meals.
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Like you could argue a lot of that as quote unquote mental, right?
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The truth of the matter is there there's
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no cutoff point anywhere on the body where
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it's like okay now this is the head up right this is
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all all 100 nervous system
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the mind or brain if you will and the body are one and so when we look at things
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like the simplest example is this so any listener who has ever had to perform
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or show up to school or work or parent or whatever on little to no sleep.
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And all of a sudden, like you're irritable, you're crying for no reason, right?
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Like you're snapping at people, you're trying to make sure you don't nod off,
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you're reading a simple email four or five times, right?
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Like anyone I think can relate to that.
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And that's just a simple example. You don't dial in the body.
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The brain is not going to function well. And listen to everything I just listed
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off. Lack of focus, lack of what we'd call discipline or self-regulation,
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lack of motivation, lack of emotion regulation, right?
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And that's just from poor sleep.
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So if, you know, again, I understand the sentiment physical versus what I need
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to think about, but the truth of the matter is, is if you're not taking a lens
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of 100% nervous system, 100% me,
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you're, you're leaving juice from that squeeze,
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right? You're leaving potential on the table.
18:15
Yeah. I was really interesting when you brought it up in there,
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because that's a quote that gets thrown a lot and you hear a lot is the 90, 10%.
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And when you say that it does feel very, very different right and when you say
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90 10 it feels like it's a mindset rather than taking into account everything
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you're doing off the field for preparation like the sleep the nutrition.
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All those aspects that it ties together and it's all
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one thing I always thought that was really interesting and I never really thought
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of it that way no I think that's great you've worked with athletes for a long
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time now and I'm sure at this point you can almost see the things before an
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athlete almost does when they start talking about you what are some of the most
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common struggles that athletes may come to you with,
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especially around this high school starting college game phase?
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Yeah, I just said it, the negativity bias.
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It's number one, easy, far and away, especially the transition from,
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say, senior year to collegiate soccer.
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Because unless you are like 1% of the 1%, right?
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And Sam, I'm not as familiar with your game. Joe, I think you actually had elements
19:23
of this, So maybe you can speak to it, but I think for most people,
19:27
you show up and you have been for your entire life, the best player on your team.
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And then within a week or two, you might be the worst.
19:36
You might be worried about cracking, you know, the starting 11, right?
19:41
You start to all of a sudden see more mistakes maybe than you do successes where
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it was always way more successes than mistakes.
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But the negativity bias is just, it's, so it's an evolutionary mechanism.
19:54
Them. It's a survival instinct. The basic idea is unpleasant stuff is stickier than pleasant stuff.
20:03
So you are more likely to spend more time and attention on the one pass you
20:12
miss in a game or, you know, Sam,
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I don't know what position you play, but like Joe rocks the crossbar right on
20:18
a on a shot that could have been the go ahead goal.
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She might be spending the next week thinking about that.
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She might be focused on that in her training, right?
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In her personal time, right? Those sorts of things.
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And to some extent that's okay because in that case that would drive some of
20:38
Joe's desire to refine and improve, right? And grow from there.
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But the bias can kind of get nasty when it causes us to ruminate,
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get down on ourselves, get to a point of anxiousness and become rigid and tight,
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which again is why this is a hundred percent nervous system, right?
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The body responds when the brain starts to freak the F out and,
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and sometimes vice versa, it doesn't always happen in that direction. Right.
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But my point here is like you asked about one.
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So if we can understand the negativity bias, identify it,
21:13
label it and we teach different skills and mechanisms to kind
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of make it malleable right and play around with
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it then you can insert ways to calm the
21:22
body slightly and get into a zone
21:25
you need to for peak performance which is pliable and flexible and gumby like
21:30
not rigid right but but i'll just say too just because joe you asked about the
21:34
hundred percent piece like it can work in the other direction where sometimes
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you notice a racing heart or sweaty palms or hair on the back of your
21:43
neck, and the body reacts to that negativity first,
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and you might have to initiate breath work or stretching or distraction.
21:52
Right, just to get enough blood
21:54
flow up here to do that reframing work to combat the negativity bias.
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So again, to that question of 100% nervous system, it can happen in both directions, right?
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But negativity bias, I think, is the most obvious answer, just overly focused
22:08
on and almost handicapped by unpleasant experience.
22:14
You mentioned kind of the line between letting your failures motivate you versus
22:19
letting them consume you to the point where it's detrimental.
22:23
How do you, how do you tell that line? How do you figure out when you need to
22:28
lock in and focus and really, you know, do these things and how do you know
22:32
when it's becoming detrimental to your game? Yeah.
22:35
So I think, I think it's helpful to maybe not to be overly nerdy,
22:41
but to distinguish some language here.
22:42
A couple of weeks ago, you know, you mentioned in the intro that I do a podcast
22:46
through the human flourishing program at Harvard.
22:48
And so we have on these really amazing researchers from around the world that
22:52
talk about different topics. And one of them is Harvard Business School's Amy
22:56
Edmondson, who's a global top thinker in the world of business and organizational psychology.
23:01
And she's got a new book called The Right Kind of Wrong, and she distinguishes
23:05
between failure and mistakes.
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And I think that's really, really helpful in this situation and to your question, Joe.
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So a mistake, right, might be when we have the requisite skills, information.
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Experience, whatever it might be, and we fumble it away or screw it up anyway, right?
23:28
Whereas failure, right, might be that we do not have the requisite sort of skills
23:36
or competencies or whatever it might be, right?
23:40
And so there's an important distinction there between mistake and failure.
23:45
So for instance, if...
23:48
You know, Sam, if you did film prep, right, coming into, say,
23:53
Big Ten tournament, right, or NCAA tournament, something like that,
23:56
and you know, what position did you play, Sam? Outside back.
24:01
Out perfect, right. So you and Joe are squaring off on each other.
24:04
Oh, yeah, there's plenty of film on it. If you want to go back and watch, there's plenty of it.
24:08
Perfect, perfect, right? And so, you know, I've watched Joe enough.
24:12
You know that she's not a selfish player, but she wants to skin you.
24:16
She wants to make you look silly if she has the possibility.
24:19
So she brings the ball down to her feet. She's probably going to go one-on-one.
24:23
You need to be ready for it.
24:24
Instead, you came in hard charging at her. She spun you easily and was off to
24:29
the races, ends up sliding in a pass for the goal.
24:32
Sorry, Sam, but I'm Michigan State grad. Go green. I was like, ooh, I'm falling in.
24:38
So that is a mistake, right?
24:42
You had the information. You knew Joe's tendencies. You knew what you were supposed
24:46
to do and you didn't do it anyway, right?
24:49
In that case, back to your question, Joe, there should be some unpleasantness.
24:55
There should be some learning from that, right?
24:58
And if you repeat that time and time again, eventually, Sam,
25:02
Dave is going to look at you like, what the hell is going on,
25:04
right? You're doing it over and over again.
25:08
Failure would be like not having that information, right? Not knowing Joe's
25:14
tendencies coming in and, okay, you failed to kind of win that one-on-one battle,
25:20
but it wasn't because you made, quote-unquote, mistakes.
25:23
It's just you weren't armed with the information to begin with.
25:27
So part of, I think, learning from failure is first identifying,
25:32
did I fail because of something I lack or did I have everything I needed and
25:38
I screwed it up anyway? Right.
25:41
One's a mistake one is failure and
25:44
the failure part just means get more skills get
25:47
more experience get more information keep growing but
25:51
if it's mistakes because i keep doing the same shit
25:54
over and over again we got a different problem does that make sense yeah i think
26:01
i'm in a bit of shock right now these are like literally conversations i feel
26:05
like i'm having as a player who's played in the u.s played in college and now
26:08
is shifting to a european style while my coaches are telling me like,
26:12
you play to American, like we need you to shift like this.
26:15
And I'm like coming home and I'm like, what do you mean? I play like to American,
26:19
like what mistakes am I making? But my mom's like, you don't know any better. Like you're learning.
26:23
And so this is exactly the time. Like I could like channel this one.
26:26
Last episode was for you, Joe. This one's my own little break right now.
26:31
So all being said, you know, there's so many different times as an athlete where
26:37
we either have those good performances or those bad performances.
26:39
And I know for me, when I'm at my best, when I'm feeling it,
26:43
I call it my autopilot mode or what a lot of people call like your flow zone.
26:47
And as an athlete, it's the dream to hit that.
26:51
How can you work with athletes in order to kind of figure out how to get into
26:55
that flow state or what is a flow state in your opinion for athletes?
26:58
So, yeah, that's a great question. Let's do this from the top down.
27:02
So let's start with two different states, according to the literature.
27:05
One is flow. One is clutch.
27:07
Okay. OK, here's the difference. Flow feels good. Clutch doesn't until after if you're clutch.
27:14
Right. But in the moment. OK, so what do we mean by that? Was it feel good?
27:17
So first, what's creating the potentiality for either one of these states?
27:23
And they're both what we call emergent states, meaning there is sort of this
27:27
cascading of events that leads to this emergence of a flow state or a clutch state. Right.
27:33
So like, you know, Joe, you can probably relate. I think we've talked about it before.
27:38
Like if you start off a game pretty good, you get those first couple of touches are crisp, right?
27:45
You maybe dice somebody up on the first move, right?
27:48
You've gotten a shot off early in the game that starts to create this positive
27:53
emergence or this cascading effect, right?
27:56
Now, the very first step before you even get to that point, though,
28:01
is creating an ideal sort of challenge skill level ratio or scenario.
28:07
And what we mean specifically is the challenge will ideally exceed the skill level slightly.
28:14
Okay. And why is that so important? Because to get into a flow state or a clutch
28:19
state, it should demand everything of you.
28:24
Right? Total immersiveness. So it's got to be the highest possible challenge without being,
28:32
over that mark because over that mark can create anxiety and the rigidity we
28:38
talked about earlier, right?
28:40
So here's how you can think of it. And I think you, I think I've seen some reels.
28:43
I think you have a video component, right?
28:45
If I just kind of draw with my fingers. So those listening, I'm just drawing like an upside down you.
28:50
It's a normal distribution for stats nerds, right?
28:54
So what does that mean? So that on one side of this normal distribution,
28:58
we would have low stress, low challenge, calm, bored, okay?
29:07
This is your spring cup games.
29:10
This is your preseason games, right? This is playing that, like,
29:16
non-Power 5 that you kick the shit out of.
29:19
It's just, like, you can still play well because you're Division I athletes,
29:24
right but it's not demanding of
29:27
you in the way it needs to be all right
29:29
now the flip side of that is on the far side of that distribution it would be
29:37
anxiety not just stress not challenge but like oh this challenge is here and
29:43
i perceive it as something i am not capable of meeting or taking on.
29:47
So that creates fear and nervousness and rigidity. Okay.
29:52
So that might be, I don't know, like Joe, I thought you girls came out pretty
29:56
confident, but, but Sam, two years ago, Michigan state traveled down to play Arkansas.
30:02
And one of my old club players from LA was on, was on the Arkansas team.
30:06
So I went down for that game. So Arkansas is what two, three time SEC champs.
30:11
Like they had been in the SEC tournament finals four or five years in a row.
30:15
I think they They had made an elite eight or two.
30:17
That was like a big jump, I think, for the program at that time.
30:21
And I would imagine for some girls, it might have pushed them slightly into
30:25
that anxiety place, right?
30:28
But most of them got into the middle of the distribution, which is what we call you stress.
30:33
Okay. So listen, overly nerdy, but listen to what I'm saying to you.
30:37
You want peak performance and flow or clutch. It's gotta be hard.
30:42
It's gotta be somewhat unpleasant. And it's gotta be uncomfortable,
30:45
but that discomfort has to be underpinned with a certain level of optimism or
30:51
confidence that the challenge is surmountable.
30:55
Right. That's the mindset shift that moves it.
30:58
And Joe's probably sick of hearing this language from a threat to a challenge or an opportunity.
31:05
And that's the distinguishment with a clutch state. Right. When you think about
31:09
clutch athletes, it's not that they don't feel pressure.
31:13
It's that the pressure is exciting. The pressure is the moment they've been waiting for.
31:18
The pressure is the opportunity because it's meaningful and they put so much
31:22
time and energy and effort into it.
31:25
It's not something to run away from, fight, flight, or freeze.
31:29
It's something to embrace, excite, and delight.
31:32
It's a totally different stress response. boss this is
31:35
i hope every athlete listening to this is like picturing games
31:38
where it might have you know challenged them and pushed them versus those games
31:41
where you know you hit that as an athlete you know
31:44
sometimes it is hard and you have to take a couple touches
31:47
to get into that place where you do have that level of
31:50
confidence as well how can you flip the mindset
31:53
of seeing that challenging opponent and embracing
31:56
it as that opportunity to take on pressure versus fearing
31:59
it where's that flip come from so let's
32:04
go back to the initial framework biopsychosocial 100
32:07
nervous system top down bottom up outside
32:10
in so it could be thinking case in point right michael jordan infamous for i'm
32:18
going to make believe that my opponent across from me just insulted me in some
32:24
way or disrespected me in some way, right?
32:28
I'm going to literally bet players on the free throw line that I can make these
32:33
free throws with my eyes closed.
32:35
He would do things to manipulate that level of sort of stress, anger.
32:42
We call it arousal, right? You're going from default, calm, relaxed mode to action mode, right?
32:50
And so you want to take those levels of arousal, not so far that action mode becomes rigid, right?
32:58
But not so low that you're still kind of in la-di-da.
33:01
And so you can do that through how you perceive the opponent,
33:04
how you can perceive the importance of the game, right?
33:09
Like people that are self-described gamers, this is a real challenge for you
33:14
because sometimes that means practices and trainings and working on your own
33:18
isn't all that interesting.
33:19
Think Allen Iverson sort of deal, right? Right.
33:23
But I made the point earlier, it might be biological first, right?
33:29
It might be that you're confident, but
33:32
you've gotten yourself so excited and hyped up for this that you've actually
33:36
taken a little too far and you just got to use some parasympathetic breathing
33:40
to just calm the system a little bit and get yourself dialed into that sweet
33:45
spot and not just run out and get yourself a yellow card within the first five
33:49
minutes. Sort of deal, right?
33:51
It could be outside in. How do your coaches communicate with you?
33:55
How do your teammates communicate with you? What's your relationship like with
33:58
the people who influence the way you think and feel?
34:00
Let's say parents, significant others, right? Partners, those sorts of things.
34:05
All of those can have an impact on the pregame and during game state as well,
34:11
right? So I think it all matters.
34:14
Absolutely. So can you go into a little bit about what top down and bottom up
34:18
is? You've mentioned it a few times now, but. Sure.
34:21
Sure. Yeah. Yeah. To reiterate, it's kind of what we've been talking about.
34:25
So top down, we say is thinking about your thinking.
34:28
So this is perspective taking. This is challenging beliefs.
34:32
This is searching for what we call thinking traps or thinking errors or biases
34:36
or cognitive distortions. It's gratitude.
34:40
It's mindfulness. mindfulness it is anything that
34:43
allows you to sort of come outside of your own self
34:46
or body and look down at you and say
34:49
like how is this entity that is me thinking
34:53
and processing right now right and can i reach down into this entity that is
34:58
me and and stir the pot a little bit change things up with different techniques
35:02
bottom up is really body first and so there's a there's words interoceptive and exteroceptive.
35:12
Exteroceptive is our awareness and it's kind of sensing of everything outside of us.
35:17
Interoceptive is our awareness of and sensations of anything inside of us.
35:21
This is interoceptive awareness, tuning into somatic sensations,
35:27
heart rate, sweat, breath rate, right?
35:31
Tension in the body, but it's also emotional awareness or feelings leans awareness
35:36
and intelligence, and then it's just dialing in or optimizing the body.
35:40
So sleep, energy in, which is nutrition, hydration, energy out,
35:46
which is movement and exercise.
35:49
Breath work, could be cold exposure, biofeedback, but it's dialing in the vessel
35:54
that carries the brain, right?
35:57
Outside in then is the environment, right? The social settings or surroundings.
36:02
So these are things like meaning, purpose, community, social connection,
36:07
like just understanding relationships are the single greatest predictor of happiness
36:11
and wellbeing and life satisfaction worldwide.
36:14
It's not anywhere close. Number two is meaning and meaning is usually a connection
36:18
to things outside yourself.
36:20
So what I'm kind of telling you is like the two most important things to your
36:24
happiness are not fucking you, right? It's other people. I'm sorry.
36:28
Hopefully it's okay to swear on your show, but it's a big deal.
36:32
It's a really, really big deal. Cause we're talking about an underpinning of
36:35
mental health and wellbeing and those sorts of things.
36:37
You got to understand so much of it is about the other people around us.
36:41
Yeah. You mentioned a little, well, you just mentioned the mental health aspect
36:44
and if we've seen it grow and really come to fruition and be a main topic of
36:49
conversation within the athletic community these past couple of years.
36:53
You've been in the business a long time. And as we see this big push for it
36:57
and the de-stigmatization and advocacy for your mental health,
37:00
how does that conversation evolve and how has it impacted the way you do your
37:04
job as a sports psychologist?
37:07
So I am not by training a sports psychologist.
37:10
Adam is my partner who directs mental performance for the Washington Nationals.
37:15
And he also has a master's in mental health counseling, right
37:19
and has put in a lot of those hours so if anything ever comes up
37:22
let's say with you know an athlete or a program
37:24
on that end we've got some people in place who
37:27
are you know more better trained and more equipped to
37:30
handle it than me right as a case-by-case scenario
37:34
if you're talking about the larger conversation
37:37
what we're trying to do in our place in
37:40
it i would say the following we've been
37:43
around young people and athletes for
37:46
decades we see the change
37:49
we understand and sympathize with the change and we want to help as many athletes
37:55
and parents and coaches as we possibly can and not everything is trauma not
38:02
everything is i am anxiety not i have anxiety I am an anxious person.
38:07
Not everything is ADHD.
38:11
Not everything is depression.
38:14
And so I want to take all of those seriously.
38:18
And there is real research around ideas like social or behavioral contagion,
38:25
where when someone has something miraculously, it pops up in other people too,
38:31
supposedly. Supposedly.
38:34
So it's not an either or. It's a yes and. I don't want people to misinterpret
38:38
what we're saying. We take this very seriously. And.
38:42
We should not feel all the time like bricks are just falling on us and that
38:47
there's nothing to be done.
38:49
That's what we would call a self-fulfilling prophecy. You're screwing yourself
38:53
if you take on that attitude.
38:55
Shit hits the fan. If you're feeling miserable, if you need help,
38:58
we sympathize. We get it. Get up and do something about it.
39:02
That's kind of the attitude we're taking, right? Yeah. Not disregarding, just trying to empower.
39:09
Absolutely. yeah I think especially at least
39:12
like on my tic tac for you page I feel like everyone's like
39:14
self-diagnosing with like the ADHD and you
39:18
know and things of that nature I do think there is maybe an
39:21
over self-diagnosis in these areas as
39:24
it's becoming more and more popular so how how
39:29
would you go about an athlete who is like struggling with these thoughts and
39:34
ideas and maybe trying to self-diagnose but wants to perform optimally on the
39:39
soccer field but is struggling in that area listen if if you're at the point
39:44
where like oh i i'm wondering if i need to diagnose.
39:49
Okay so first let me say this i have a doc doctoral degree in psychology right
39:55
many many years reading research papers and organizing and running studies and now coaching people and
40:03
helping them learn some of these skills,
40:05
and apply some of these skills, and it is not legal for me, nor would I ever
40:11
even consider attempting diagnosing somebody with anything.
40:16
So those thinking about self-diagnosing, check yourself, and be a little humble
40:22
about what you do or do not know.
40:24
However, I'm never going to discourage someone from trying to better understand
40:29
what's going on with them.
40:31
Right. So, so read and research and learn, then go talk to a professional,
40:38
come with those questions, come with those topics.
40:42
I read this. I've been thinking about that. Do you think this has anything to do?
40:46
Like, you know, check out the local therapist, see what resources you have on campus, right.
40:53
Reach out to the mental health hotlines. Like there's so many different resources
40:57
out out there and available.
40:59
And just because you're asking questions doesn't mean you necessarily have the
41:03
super serious problem or you're mentally ill or something like that.
41:06
But if you're at the point where you're thinking, man, maybe I need to diagnose
41:09
myself, don't try to diagnose yourself.
41:11
Ask somebody else that has the training and has seen it time and time again.
41:16
That's, it's crazy towns.
41:18
And I think something that's really important to say too is in order to go see
41:23
a sports performance coach or a sports psychologist, you don't have to have a diagnosis.
41:28
I do not have to be medically ill to do these things.
41:32
I think this is where a lot of the self-diagnosis comes from is I feel like
41:36
I have to say I have anxiety to allow myself to go get help.
41:41
Whereas there's no need, there's no prerequisite to asking for something to
41:46
help perform better. And I feel like this is something that we kind of get caught up in a lot.
41:50
Correct. Totally agree, Sam. Like kind of coming full circle.
41:54
It's, you know, when we talked about anti-fragility, I said,
41:56
proactive, learn the skills and the techniques so that when unpleasantness shows
42:03
up, we can take it in, understand it, leverage it, process it. Because guess what?
42:09
Life is not intended to be fully pleasant all the time.
42:14
All of our emotions have utility fear keeps
42:18
you safe anger causes you to fight for justice
42:21
like inside out's coming out or inside out 2
42:24
is coming out soon right so they've added two
42:27
or three more of the core emotions they're actually speaking to neuroscience
42:31
scientists to help write these movies right so the original five anger sadness
42:37
fear disgust and joy are five of depending on on whose model you use the seven
42:44
or 12 or emotions, right?
42:47
So joy helps you learn, come back for more fear, keeps you safe.
42:53
Anger, like I said, helps you fight for whatever it is discuss helps you ward
42:58
off poison and who's the hero in inside out sadness.
43:03
She helps us process, right? So why do I bring all that up?
43:07
Just because you feel unpleasant doesn't necessarily mean something is wrong
43:13
and you need to run and you need to fix it.
43:16
What you might need to learn to do is develop what we call distress tolerance,
43:20
sit in it, allow it to be there, understand the point of it or its utility.
43:25
And then the real empowerment piece is learning to use it and leverage it, right?
43:32
There's nothing particularly cool or envious about just running from it all the time.
43:38
So we're trying to be proactive. We're trying to get in and just develop those
43:41
skills before stuff gets bad.
43:43
And so, and then here's what I'll say too, is when that stuff hits the fear,
43:47
the anxiety, the stress, the pressure, if it lasts forever, we got a problem.
43:53
That's where you got to talk to somebody. You got to see somebody,
43:55
maybe it's a coach, maybe it's a therapist, right?
43:58
Whatever it might be, it might be just some sort of trusted friend or adult.
44:02
But my point is like, these things aren't inherently bad. It's about dosage
44:06
and the amount of time we're experiencing them. Right.
44:09
Yeah. So when you have these young athletes who want to start taking the mental
44:13
side of the game super seriously and like getting more into this,
44:17
what are some things you'd recommend for them to kind of get started? Yeah.
44:23
Yeah, it's a great question. So trying to think of how short I should keep my
44:28
list, but let's, let's, let's start here.
44:31
If you want to become better at getting outside yourself and looking at yourself
44:37
to change behavior, if you want to get better at interoception,
44:42
tuning into breath and heartbeat and sweat and all those things.
44:46
And if you want to get better at relationships and connection,
44:49
you have to, it's a non-negotiable, you have to have the ability to be present moment to moment.
45:00
And that is the loosey-goosey, sometimes people roll their eyes word, that's mindfulness.
45:07
It is mindful of that given moment.
45:13
And so I think a lot of people hear your mindfulness, they assume it's the same thing as meditation.
45:17
Not really, right? Meditation generally is mindfulness, but mindfulness does
45:22
not have to be meditative.
45:23
You can mindfully eat your breakfast. You can mindfully drink a cup of coffee, right?
45:27
You can mindlessly do it like I do many nights by eating dinner while I'm watching
45:31
my sports show and I'm scanning my phone.
45:34
That's not mindful. That's not present, right?
45:38
So when it comes to mindfulness, more specifically meditation,
45:41
Meditation, as little as like three minutes a day for a couple of weeks,
45:44
can start to create a really pronounced change in how alert and attentive you
45:48
are to individual sensations, thoughts, feelings.
45:51
And that's got to be the starting point for a lot of people.
45:54
For a lot of collegiate athletes, I think all Big Ten athletes,
45:57
actually, you actually have free access to the Calm app, which can help you
46:01
with a lot of those things.
46:02
And then once you're better at becoming aware of thoughts and feelings,
46:06
then it turns into the skills that help you navigate those.
46:10
And so for, and I'll give you one or two from each bucket for top down,
46:15
that's learning skills to challenge my thoughts, right?
46:19
It doesn't mean your thoughts are always wrong, but think of it this way.
46:24
It's the equivalency of checking your math in high school.
46:29
I'm pretty sure my answer is correct.
46:33
And just because I'm checking my math doesn't mean my answer is wrong,
46:38
but I'm going to check my math anyway just to make sure I didn't get here accidentally.
46:43
And so in the brain, I'll give you a simple example. example,
46:47
so I've got a lot of your listeners will know the phrase RBF,
46:52
not a super nice affectionate phrase, right?
46:55
But Joe's heard this joke probably too many times. I have the male version of that.
47:00
And so I will be sitting sometimes in meetings and for listeners,
47:03
RBF is just rusting, not very nice B word face to refer to a woman who just
47:09
kind of looks angry all the time. So I have the male version of that.
47:12
So why do I bring that up? I can be in meetings, I can be in sessions I can
47:16
be with clients and they might think I'm mad. They might think I'm angry.
47:21
That all of a sudden might generate nervousness in them. They might then restrict
47:25
what they say or how they say it. They might change how they engage with me, right?
47:29
Well, if you learn to challenge beliefs through thinking traps,
47:33
you might say, hey, am I jumping to conclusions? Oh, yeah, I am.
47:37
Am I making assumptions?
47:38
Yeah, I am. Am I mind reading? Yeah, I am. Maybe I'm wrong about all all three
47:43
of these things, and I should just take an effing breath and chill out for a moment, right?
47:48
Doesn't mean I'm wrong, but sometimes, remember we talked about that distribution, that stress point?
47:53
Sometimes that's enough to bring us from outside the zone right into where we need to be, right?
48:00
But it's not always about changing our thoughts. So the second thing I'd say
48:04
is, and Adam would hammer this home if he were here, acceptance.
48:08
Not trying to remove or push back or always change unpleasant emotions,
48:13
sometimes accepting them and trying to figure out ways to move forward how you
48:18
want, regardless of how it feels.
48:22
Easier said than done, but the central premise is one approach,
48:26
push away negative, feel good, get rid of it. And sometimes that's necessary.
48:30
Sometimes we need distractions short term, but the healthier longer term approach
48:34
is allow that stuff in, feel how it feels, make sense of it,
48:38
understand its utility, and then move forward how I want to anyway.
48:42
That's real strength. That's empowerment.
48:46
For bottom up, sleep. It's got to be sleep hygiene. We spend a third of our
48:50
lives doing it. If you're not treating it like a job, you're a bonehead.
48:54
You're just missing all sorts of stuff. I'm sorry. And all due respect to parents
48:59
who are busy and losing sleep because of that, and I know schedules are busy
49:01
for high schoolers now, but it is so critical.
49:04
A third of our lives is spent in the state if If we're doing it pretty well, I gotta be a big deal.
49:12
So sleep like a cave person, old as hell, dark as hell.
49:16
Obviously, energy in, energy out, paying attention to nutrition.
49:20
And then outside in, one of the single best ways to manage stress,
49:27
to manage pressure, to keep well-being levels high, to generally feel good, is to do for others.
49:34
If you're already on a burnout trajectory, maybe you don't have space and time
49:39
and capacity to do for others.
49:40
If you're not on that trajectory and you're just looking for some pick-me-ups, go volunteer. here.
49:45
Do some acts of kindness. Take care of some other people.
49:48
The other thing I'll say, and I think this is especially important for young
49:52
people and don't misinterpret what I'm going to say, spirituality.
49:56
I am not saying religion, but I am saying spirituality.
50:01
Huge, huge protector against suicidality, against depression,
50:07
against anxiety disorders, spirituality.
50:10
That might be religion that might be
50:13
philosophy that might be nature right in
50:16
connection to parks it might for some
50:19
people you know surfing and extreme sports and flowy activities is extremely
50:25
spiritual like there's a lot of different ways you can access spirituality or
50:29
transcendence just belief in and connect into something other than just your
50:34
own like individual self right there's there's obviously so much like Joe,
50:39
you know, like we've got tons and tons of stuff, but if I tried to boil it down
50:42
to like one or two things in the top, down, bottom up outside in bucket,
50:46
that's where my head goes.
50:48
Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned thinking traps, which I think you see a lot,
50:53
you know, especially within here where maybe it's thinking traps with you and
50:58
another teammate or thinking traps with you and your coaching staff.
51:01
How do you go about navigating and managing those?
51:06
First step, memorize them, know what they are, right? So here's a good, here's a good pop quiz.
51:11
If I tried to go through the seven or eight, but you'll see different lists.
51:14
We can go through at least most of them right now. So I already mentioned, I think three.
51:19
So making assumptions, right? Why is that a thinking?
51:23
So first let's actually explain what a thinking trap is. So something unpleasant happens.
51:29
What's the brain inherently subconsciously often try to do? Fix it.
51:35
And i don't really want to feel unpleasant
51:38
so ideally my brain will fix it as
51:41
quickly as possible and in doing that i always make this joke but you know growing
51:46
up in michigan and before a time of like ways and google maps you know my dad
51:50
would try to take like back roads quote-unquote shortcuts to a lot of places
51:55
right and you know at least a time or two these were not shortcuts.
51:59
They were dead ends. They actually made things worse.
52:03
That's a thinking trap. Okay. It's the brain trying to rush to solve a problem, right?
52:09
Oh, I'm in a meeting with Nick and he looks kind of pissy, right?
52:15
So what's my brain do? Makes an assumption. Oh my God, he's mad at me.
52:19
Jump to conclusions. Oh, what did I say earlier? That might've made him mad, Right.
52:24
Externalize. Oh man. Like Nick's really being a jackass today.
52:28
Like I got to deal with him again.
52:30
Personalize. Oh, I really screwed something up. It's always my fault. I always do this.
52:35
Right. Jump to conclusion. Uh, I think I already said jump to conclusions. What am I missing?
52:40
Oh, tunnel vision, right?
52:43
Missing out on the rest of the meeting. Cause I can't stop looking at Nick and
52:47
wondering what he's thinking.
52:49
Right? Selective perception, we'd call that. So all of these are attempts to
52:54
try to address that problem and make sense of it.
52:56
So how do you do with it? Deal with it, know what that list is,
53:00
and then just kind of ask yourself, like, am I making an assumption?
53:05
Yeah. Are there other possible realities here? Yeah.
53:09
Like Nick just looks how he looks. It has absolutely nothing to do with me whatsoever.
53:14
He might not even be upset. He might just be tired. He might just look that
53:19
way. He might just have a pissy face.
53:21
Right. And so it's, that's what I said earlier about challenging beliefs is
53:25
sometimes just ask the question.
53:28
And if you want to take it a step beyond the question, challenging is about
53:31
presenting contradictory evidence.
53:34
Okay. Oh, there is this evidence. Yeah.
53:37
Nick does look a little angry, but I have all this other evidence that suggests
53:41
it could just be these other things.
53:43
And if I weigh all the evidence side by side, the reality is I just don't know.
53:49
So one of the biggest questions that I feel like Jordan and I get asked,
53:52
and there's obviously so, so many layers to this, is, hey, I am a 14-year-old
53:56
soccer player or I'm the mom of a 14-year-old girl and my daughter has zero
54:00
confidence on the field.
54:02
How do I get more confidence as if it's this like overnight thing?
54:06
What's your biggest advice for someone who's just really just struggling with
54:10
confidence and everything like that on the field?
54:13
Yeah, this is an interesting one and a tricky one.
54:16
The first thing I'm going to say is I don't know that confidence is that important.
54:20
I actually am not. I know it's not necessary to perform at a peak level.
54:27
So remember what I said about clutch state, right?
54:30
Clutch is I've had a shitty game up to this point, but I'm taking the final shot anyway, right?
54:36
And I might not be confident based on how I played, but I'm optimistic and I
54:41
trust my process and I know I put in the work and this is an opportunity and
54:45
I'm going for it anyway. It's not the same thing as confidence.
54:49
Okay. Why do I also bring that up? In my opinion, confidence better be somewhat evidence-based.
54:57
If it's not, then it's arrogance.
55:00
Okay. So why do I bring that up? If we're struggling with confidence,
55:05
the first thing I'll do with a parent or athlete is look for the evidence.
55:08
Okay. So let's take it away from sports for a second. I have this long time
55:12
client. I absolutely adore.
55:14
She is an effing badass aerospace entrepreneur, built a company into.
55:22
Eight figures, I think, maybe even nine figures, like huge, huge name in a field
55:27
that is largely male dominated.
55:29
I just think she's awesome, like brilliant, single mom, like doing all sorts
55:33
of crazy stuff. And a lot of times the confidence isn't there.
55:36
And even when you point out the evidence, the confidence or the efficacy still isn't there.
55:42
And I would say sometimes that's beyond my expertise.
55:45
Sometimes that's old, that's subconscious.
55:48
That's something that maybe needs to to be thought about, addressed,
55:51
you know, discussed via, you know, therapeutic approaches and those sorts of things.
55:57
But beyond that, which people listening aren't going to have the expertise for,
56:01
or, you know, before we even get to that point, I think it just comes down to
56:05
looking for the evidence, right?
56:07
What, when, when did I have the last good game, the last good training,
56:11
even in the last game, right?
56:14
Am I, am I doing the negativity bias? Am I lacking confidence?
56:18
Cause I just keep thinking about those couple of touches that I missed.
56:22
Right. And coaches are always like infamous for this. I think,
56:26
I think even some coaches we know do this a little bit, but when they say better touch, right?
56:30
Like no shit, Sherlock, like I didn't mean to have that touch,
56:34
right? Like those sorts of things.
56:36
And I'm just, I'm just so focused on that when the reality is there was another,
56:41
you know, whatever I played 55, 60 minutes of that match.
56:46
And probably another 15 touches that were fine, right?
56:50
And I need to pay attention to that evidence, not be overly focused on the negative,
56:55
not the inattentional blindness or tunnel vision like I talked about earlier,
56:59
not looking over to the sideline and wondering if Dave or Jeff are mad at me
57:04
because I had the bad touch and jumping to conclusions and mind reading and
57:07
making assumptions, right?
57:09
And so you can see how these things kind of layer onto each other.
57:13
A lot of it is that inner dialogue, that top-down, that story I tell myself
57:17
and those checks and balances I have in place, ultimately, though,
57:21
confidence is going to come from repeated successes.
57:25
So if you don't have repeated successes, evidence of repeated successes,
57:29
and you have confidence, you got a problem.
57:31
You're arrogant, unearned, right? The flip side is also true.
57:36
If you have a lot of successes, right, but that your confidence is still pretty
57:40
low, there's probably something else going on there that we You might want to
57:44
dig into a little bit more deeply, but in between, look for the evidence.
57:48
If you're just struggling with confidence, go back to your best games,
57:51
go back to your best times, go back to some of your highest heights.
57:55
Make sure you're combating that negativity bias. Make sure you're not falling
57:58
into these thinking traps and see what that does.
58:01
Something I found really interesting. And you talked about how the negative
58:06
was more sticky earlier.
58:08
I believe it was the Losada zone is what it's called. Maybe that's something else.
58:14
Debunked. Debunked the Losada zone. So let's get into it real quick because
58:19
I do think it still has some interesting...
58:23
Implications, let's say. Okay. So here's the idea. Losada's own suggested through
58:27
mathematical modeling.
58:28
And this comes out of some of the research from Barbara Fredrickson,
58:31
who was at that other school in Ann Arbor for when she did this research.
58:35
And then it's now at UNC Chapel Hill, brilliant researcher.
58:38
So the idea from the initial theory brought it in build is that when we experience
58:43
pleasant emotion, it broadens our vision.
58:47
And through that broadening of our vision, we take on more things and taking
58:52
on more things builds up our resources.
58:55
Okay. So case in point, you both at some point showed up to a soccer practice, right?
59:01
When you're four or five, six years old, whatever it might be,
59:03
maybe later, you were probably naturally pretty good.
59:06
So, oh, well, that gives me pride. That gives me joy. That gives me interest.
59:12
And so I'm going to come back to it because I've come back to it.
59:15
I started learning to work hard and be disciplined and train outside.
59:19
I started building up friendships and understanding how to interact with other
59:22
human beings and the social dynamics of being a female athlete that's brought
59:27
in and build basically. Right.
59:29
So then from that partner that she wrote this paper with, I can't remember his
59:34
first name, but Losada put together some mathematical modeling that tried to
59:38
identify a ratio is the ideal team or it, or one-on-one interaction,
59:44
what part negative to what part positive and the argument was made that the
59:50
minimum ratio would be three parts negative to every one part excuse me three
59:55
parts positive excuse me to every one part negative but the ideal was six to one.
1:00:00
So, later on, researchers take a look at this, they push back on the math,
1:00:05
the math is way above my level,
1:00:08
and basically my understanding is they published a paper suggesting that these
1:00:13
mathematical models were wrong and that you couldn't get it down to that specific ratio.
1:00:19
And then Losada never took up the potential reprint or retraction,
1:00:24
which in the academic world, that's not saying it's not right,
1:00:28
but it's certainly not backing up your initial argument.
1:00:30
So here's your question though, Joe, setting that aside and acknowledging that
1:00:34
as problematic, is there a ratio?
1:00:38
And what I want you to hear is yes, because of the negativity bias, I think there's a ratio.
1:00:44
Yes. It should typically be tipped towards the pleasant because of that negativity bias.
1:00:49
And because that broadens and bills and creates all good things.
1:00:54
But here's a good way to start to kind of, I think, kind of come full circle
1:00:58
and wrap as well. The ratio is not three to zero, four to zero, five to zero.
1:01:04
It's three to one or four to one or five to one. The one has to be there.
1:01:10
Psychological richness. There is a place and utility for unpleasantness,
1:01:14
but think about those ratios.
1:01:17
Yeah, absolutely. And I think the application for that would be like,
1:01:20
you know, teammates having to kind of tell you the hard truth,
1:01:24
being able to accept, you know, criticism in that way.
1:01:29
And then obviously from a coaching staff as well, and acknowledging that everyone
1:01:32
may have a different ratio, being able to apply that and knowing kind of where
1:01:36
your teammates lie, if it's closer to the six to one, or if it's closer to the
1:01:39
three to one and being able to acknowledge that and help them out in that way.
1:01:43
I thought that was really interesting when you talked about it.
1:01:45
I didn't know it was debunked though.
1:01:47
Yeah. Yeah. More or less. So, yeah.
1:01:51
All right. Well, we really appreciate you coming on and sharing all of your
1:01:55
knowledge. If there's one thing you want our listeners to kind of take away,
1:01:57
one piece of advice to leave them with, what would that be?
1:02:01
Environment and circumstances matter, but they don't determine your entire outcomes in life.
1:02:08
We have a lot more power and control than maybe you know about.
1:02:13
And so if it comes to how you feel or how you navigate hard stuff or how you're
1:02:18
performing in the classroom, outside of the classroom and relationships,
1:02:21
whatever, there's a lot of tools.
1:02:23
There's a lot of knowledge. There's a lot of mechanisms coming from real high
1:02:28
end research, more than just, you know, the TikTok universe and whatnot.
1:02:31
And a lot of it is out there for free. We've got lots of resources that are
1:02:36
available to you for free as well, outside of the sort of programming that,
1:02:39
you know, Joe, you and the program have gone through for a few years now.
1:02:43
And you can find any of that at our website. It's just the antifragileacademy.com.
1:02:49
That's amazing. And that's the one thing I want to say, you know,
1:02:51
I know even myself got a ton out of this podcast and talking about some of these.
1:02:55
So knowing that our listeners definitely did as well, where can people,
1:02:59
you know, stay up to date with you? I know you have a podcast.
1:03:02
How can people keep this education front from you and everything that you guys
1:03:06
do? Sure. Sure. Yeah. We'll be on the website.
1:03:08
So the website is going to have our assessment for anti-fragility.
1:03:11
So people like getting scores. You can check that out, get the report.
1:03:15
There's a bunch of additional resources, even some videos.
1:03:18
We're starting to push out a podcast new YouTube channel now as well.
1:03:21
Lots of resources there, but then you also can find us directly on social really
1:03:26
at this point, just Instagram starting to build that out and put some free materials
1:03:30
out along with the newsletter.
1:03:32
And then we've got a pretty good presence on LinkedIn as well.
1:03:36
So really any of those locations, or you can always get in touch with us via
1:03:39
email at info at the anti-fragile Academy.
1:03:44
All right, everyone, be sure to go check that out. Thank you so much, Dr.
1:03:48
Nick Colton, for coming on and sharing all this with us. We really appreciate
1:03:51
it. Thanks for having me.
1:03:53
I think sports psychology and just the mental performance aspect of the game
1:03:57
is something that is talked about more and more these days.
1:04:01
And it's something that's really integrated with it. My favorite part was when
1:04:04
he said the 90-10, it's actually 100% of your system.
1:04:09
And it's something that I think is really important because when you think about
1:04:13
it and you separate the mental to the physical, things get lost there, right?
1:04:17
But when you're thinking about how it's all encompassing, like you are you, you are a player.
1:04:21
It's all of you that goes into your performance on the field was really powerful.
1:04:26
And there's just so much to be learned. I think it was a great episode and there's,
1:04:29
I could talk for hours with him and just asking questions and picking his brain
1:04:32
about all the different ways to improve your game in terms of the mental aspect of it.
1:04:37
So really appreciate him coming on and sharing some of that.
1:04:39
You know, what I really think I appreciate most from this interview is just
1:04:42
his no BS approach and saying some things that may not be as comfortable or as normal to hear.
1:04:49
You know, there are moments where negatives are good.
1:04:51
There are moments where we do need to learn from our mistakes and focus on them.
1:04:55
Of course, not every night before we go to bed, but you do need to acknowledge
1:04:58
those things and how we can grow our game.
1:05:01
And I think the way that he speaks about these things are so well played.
1:05:05
I know like it makes me want to go pick up like four books about the topic.
1:05:08
So I hope that our listeners got the same amount of information and same amount
1:05:11
of like empowerness that I just did from that.
1:05:14
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for coming on. And as always, talk around. Bye guys.