Latest / College Is Fine, Everything's Fine / #14 The Life of the College Athlete: How Current Students Are Redefining Mental Toughness, Challenging Their Limiting Beliefs, and Trying to Find Balance Between Self-Care and Team Commitment

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#14 The Life of the College Athlete: How Current Students Are Redefining Mental Toughness, Challenging Their Limiting Beliefs, and Trying to Find Balance Between Self-Care and Team Commitment · College Is Fine, Everything's Fine

[00:00:00] I'm Dr. Sarah Olivo and I'm Dr. Liz Seidler and you're listening to College is Fine, Everything's Fine. Sarah, we're finally here. We've heard from a coach, we've heard from a sports psychologist, and now we're going to hear from the college athletes themselves from all over the country, from private and state universities and a lot of different sports, one of which you play, Sarah.I do. Tennis? Wait, are you referring to the best of the Tavish Fittie tennis team as me playing tennis? You're just a late in life tennis star. Listeners, if you saw me play tennis, you would be understanding why this is just a big fib on the part of Linz. Yes, I have, I have a racket and sometimes I swing it and sometimes I hit balls.Most of the time I don't. I don't know if that's what she means by. I still am not seeing you play yet, Sarah, so I think you might be either minimizing how great you are or I don't know, we'll have to get, we'll have to get some intel on your tennis [00:01:00] skills. I will say that taking Fader's advice from our last session and focusing more on the process versus the outcome has been helpful and it's fun to be bad at tennis and not care.That's the one thing I'll say. Yeah, I have a lot more fun. Lots of more laughs than actual strokes hit probably in my practice. But I have to say, talking to these students for me has been so fascinating. They had, I think, such a mature and exciting way of thinking about the sport. And it seems for me, like really progressive and evolved.They're not shitty tennis, volleyball, fencing players. They're getting scholarships. Yeah, that's probably why I coach field hockey is because I wasn't good enough to make it in college. At least I get to see the young kids that maybe don't feel the pressure of the sport. And I will say it was wonderful to see that all the athletes we spoke to, still really love and enjoy the sport itself and have worked really hard [00:02:00] over the course of their career to figure out how do I hold on to an element of like fun?Because that's what sports are supposed to be about while also achieving these really important goals. I think you touched on it, we can preview a little bit what happens when it stops being fun or you're not able to play something you love and we'll get in more of that next week. But this week we talked to them about a lot of different aspects Of what it's like to be on a team, and to be a student.And a little preview for the audience, we asked each athlete the same set of questions. What does it feel like to put on your uniform? How do you define mental toughness? Do you struggle with any limiting beliefs? And what are some ways that you manage burnout? And you know, Liz and I can't help ourselves, we definitely found some dialectics we'll share with you too.Okay, so should there be non athletes in the room? Just shut up and let them talk. I think that's a good idea. You'll hear our voices shortly. We'll share some insights and skills based upon some of the themes that we heard in their stories.[00:03:00] We're trying to get a sense of the highs and the lows about being a college athlete, and so the first thing I like to think about is what is it like for you to put your uniform on? Personally, when I first put the uniform on and I was playing for my team, I was so nervous and I played terribly because I was incredibly stressed.And I just knew that all the training that I had done in this semester previously was leading up to that moment. And so when it was finally time for a match, I was just overwhelmed a little bit and overwhelmed with the crowd. But now it's been like second nature for me. I'm nervous, of course, playing tennis, but it's more excitement.I know how to get the crowd involved now and lean on my teammates, even though they're a full court away from me, we have our little techniques that we do. So it's been a great experience overall. I think the short answer is it probably depended on the day. Uh, but [00:04:00] overall was, uh, I always felt like it was a privilege.I don't know, always felt like it was, uh, just a gift to be able to do that every day. My experience has been unique in that. It, I was actually committed to a different school before I came here. And then the coach moved and the coach that I was with previously is the coach that's here now. So my original plan was to stay at the school I was at the first time, but that just didn't work out.So I ended up coming here and it was never really in my plan to go play for a big school with lots of people and like a big name or anything. So that was. kind of nerve wracking for me the first time, like on those first few game days. Like, oh my gosh, there's so many people here, and they're all staring down at us.But now it's just kind of become this bittersweet thing. Right, I was here for four years, like I left my mark, I did everything I could, but at the same time too, like, every athlete is going to feel like they always could have given more or ended it differently in a better way. So that's just kind of, I'm battling that right now.Hey, it may not feel like I gave everything I had, but I know I did. [00:05:00] So, right. Happy to wear this jersey. I've worn it for four years. I don't know what else I would have done more than wearing. Okay. Switching gears a little bit. We next asked the athletes to define what it meant to be mentally tough.There can be a lot of definitions of mental toughness, but personally for me, assembling. Resilient is a really big one that I see, mental toughness, charming, disciplined. All of those things make up mental toughness in my own head. But I also realized that's not an automatic process. People are just born with those traits and it's something that you have to continuously work on.For anything really, it could apply to sports, but it could also apply to some things in life as well. But yeah, it's not something you just wake up and say, Oh, I'm going to be so resilient today. Because if something could happen during that day, something bad could happen and you're not prepared for it.So it has to always be a, a lifelong journey. I was smiling while you [00:06:00] were asking that because. I personally, like, I think there's a lot of mental toughness in being vulnerable and maybe not being mental tough all the time and perhaps even showing that sometimes. I think that's an aspect that is not talked about enough.It's also mentally tough to be a little bit vulnerable and I think it connects teammates. I would say mental toughness to me was knowing the, like my limits and being willing and able to push myself to them. I think there's a certain level of grit that's. Expected in, in, in really any, anywhere in life, but especially in a sport where you're.Expect it to pull your weight and do everything you can for the team. And I think those who are mentally tough are able to push themselves to that point. And I think the next level is knowing where that line is and not letting yourself cross it at least too much. I was the kid whose parents was staying up with them until four in the morning, trying to get the math homework correct and turned in the tear [00:07:00] soaked papers because I just couldn't figure it out for the life of me.So mental toughness is something that I was raised with and I was told it would push through, which. To some degree, yes, like you should be pushing yourself to be the best that you can be. That's the whole reason that we play sports is because we have this athletic physical ability that we want to train and get to be in the top of the top.But there comes a point where my freshman year, I was probably in the gym every day of the week, regardless of if it was an off day, we just got back from travel. I had classes all day long. I was in there every free moment I had. But I also wasn't sleeping enough. My body was shot. My, I ended up getting injured.Like, there were a lot of negative side effects to it. So at some point you have to realize, Okay, I'm going to push myself, but I can't let myself get to the point where this is all I'm thinking about and this is all that's consuming me. There are other ways to push yourself that aren't just getting extra reps in or going and doing extra lifts.It can be watching a little bit of extra film or watching the film from the practice [00:08:00] that day. It can be, you know, Okay, I know I'm not sleeping well, I need to go to bed a little bit earlier tonight. That's pushing yourself because that's something you don't normally do and you actually have to put thought into it.So yes, mental toughness is, it's hard to define, but if I had to, I would say knowing Mental toughness is knowing when there's further for you to go and knowing when to stop for the day.You think of any time that you notice that maybe you have these limiting beliefs that really got in the way. When my rankings started getting higher, that's when actually the limiting beliefs started happening more and more often. The limiting belief that I had was, I got lucky to be here. Like, I'm lucky to be here.I didn't do this on my own merit. This wasn't for my own effort. I got lucky playing people that were highly ranked and I beat them. And then that's when I started to fall a little bit. Yeah. The imposter syndrome. I don't [00:09:00] even know if that's like officially like a real thing. You guys would probably be able to tell me, but that is exactly like the limiting beliefs that I had.It was just constantly like, if I lost against somebody I on paper shouldn't lose to, it was like, see, you're like back to where you like belong. Or if I beat somebody that. was higher or around the same ranking as me. And it was like, Oh, they probably had a bad day. It was never really like my doing. And then during the matches, it was like, you can't lose this.We're not very nice to ourselves. And personally, I was working with a psychologist that we have a sports psych department. And so I was working with someone and he was telling me, first of all, you're a person. Imagine if you were talking to your friend like this, or your teammate, or you'd be not like the person's playing next to you.You would, I was like, I would never talk to you, you know, like that. Yeah. And he was like, you're a player too. You're on the court, you're a person. You shouldn't be talking to yourself like that. And second was just reevaluating my focus during a [00:10:00] match. It was instead of winning and losing score, how people are doing next to me, I'm going to focus on implementing the things I've been training on.So if I'm working on my forehand, I'm just going to evaluate how is my forehand doing with an objective attitude? I'm not looking for judgments. I'm not. second guessing myself. I'm just going to say, Oh, I missed that forehand. It's probably because I prepared my forehand late. I, for the better part of my first two years, I struggled with the fact that had I not been a good fencer, I would have not gotten into Notre Dame and I did not deserve to be there academically.That the reason why I was on campus was obviously, I think in the beginning, everyone deals with insecurities in college and it's a new scenery and it's tons of expectations and you're all on your own, right? So there's a lot of pressure inherently. But I think for myself, it was always, if I broke my leg and couldn't fence you, I really deserve to be here.You're taking really [00:11:00] hard classes and you're surround, I was surrounded by All of these kids who are all valedictorians of their high school, all of these kids that got in on their own accord from their academic resume, and for myself, I think until I really found it a niche academically and settled into a groove, it definitely was a bit of a hamstrung by athletics, I would say production quite a bit, but that was just, I think that's natural for any college student, once you feel comfortable and you feel secure and you have your career.You have your group and you feel just secure in who you are. I think everything becomes a little bit easier. Oh, every day for the last four years that I've gone into practice, even in a warmup, I look over and it's like, we're just warming up trying to jump for the day. I'm like, I'm not jumping as high as she is.I need to go harder. I need to be better every day. And that's just, it comes with the territory because sports are set up in a way that you are competing and competition is a great thing, but you also kind of End up comparing yourself to your competitors. And instead of looking at it from the perspective of, okay, they ran faster than me today, I'm going to run faster than tomorrow.It's, they ran faster than me today. I'm [00:12:00] never going to be as fast as them. I can't do anything. And that spiral is a lot stronger in a lot of athletes because everyone, like even your coaches, like they're not going to sit there, if you, you know, Brand second fastest and like, great job. That's not what they're going to say.They're going to say, okay, when we get back in the gym, we need to be working on this or that to get you faster. So just not being hard on ourselves. It's never going to go away, but the external pressures are definitely something that needs to be in the back of our minds, but something that we're not listening to all the time.Another thing you hear a lot about in the college athlete world is perfectionism. Because apparently I'm a perfectionist. I don't even know the adjective. Perfectionist then. There you go. Thank you. And there's this silly example, but I was maybe like. Eight years old, I had this math test and I just remember I got questions wrong and I was bawling so much when I got out of the school [00:13:00] that my dad like genuinely thought that something was terrible had happened.And that was my experience growing up with anything I did. And so tennis was no different. And I've gotten a grip of it now that I'm older, but it is something I've always struggled with. It's been a big part of just. Who I am as a person and I'm still working on it. Very perfectionist. Yeah. With everything from school to decorating my room when I was a kid, it had to exactly be perfect, even though I was like eight years old and I was not even picking on the paintbrush, but I was looking at each line, making sure it was perfect and it's translated up to tennis as well.It kind of. Honestly, I'm going to take this in a different way than I mean, I did. And I feel like there's also a culture in sports that like has to be perfectionist, which is not a great mindset to have, especially in sports culture, where it's no, you haven't, you can't leave the tennis [00:14:00] court. You can't win the basketball court until you make 10 perfect serves.Like you can't leave until everything is perfect. You're going to have to leave on a good note today. And it's not based on. The effort that someone puts in, it's sometimes based off of luck. So it's unnecessary in my opinion, because if you're at a high level of sports, you're probably a perfectionist anyway.So we don't really need other people coming in and telling us that unless you have a perfect day, this was a terrible practice. It was a waste of time. So unfortunately, a lot of sports, a lot of people know personally, other sports have also felt like this. So I know it's not just a tennis thing. Tennis is definitely.almost helped growing up because you were just bound to miss and you had to be okay with that. In a sport like fencing, I don't know how familiar you guys are with it, but fencing is all about the cleanest of, the tiniest and cleanest of movements, [00:15:00] right? So it's about really perfecting the repeated motions.So I think perfectionism as it relates to my sport is. almost normalized, because it's just understood that if you want to be good at this sport, you have to focus on the millimeter level of movement and detail. I would say that maybe my perception of it is skewed to the positive, just because it's what I always grew up with.I think that it goes in school life, whatever, like in fencing also, like there comes a point where it's like, I've reached the level that I need to reach and all right, we're good, can compartmentalize that, stop worrying about that, move on to the next thing. But it's, relentless pursuit of that like 99.99999999999999999999999999999999 percent perfection is Factionism is definitely something that every team talks about at some point because especially with volleyball, the perfect attacker would go and kill every single ball. That's just not how volleyball is played though. Our score specifically, [00:16:00] if the first team to make 25 mistakes.You just are trying to make less mistakes and a shorter amount of time. So that's, oh, that's an interesting angle of it from volleyball. Um, but I can talk about that for hours. So kind of on a more personal level though. Yeah, the first like year or two that I was here, I was playing at a collegiate level.I'm watching these, you know, 23, 24 year old girls going up, hitting the ball so much harder than I am being able to make plays that I wouldn't be able to make and just things like that ties back into that. I'm just not good enough idea if I can't be perfect like these girls are, but something that really helped me is I love weightlifting in the weight room.You either move the weight or you don't. And that's perfect in and of itself. There's nobody else for you to look to or for you to blame. It's you have to hold yourself accountable. At the end of the day, the only person I have to answer to is myself. And if I'm happy with the work that I'm producing and whatever aspect, that's all that matters.And that's about as perfect as it's going to get.What are some ways that you manage [00:17:00] burnout? I personally try to make sure I do everything I can before it gets to that point. I feel like self care is always seen as, Oh, let me do like a face mask and a bubble bath and everything will be okay. It's more of getting the sleep that I need. So trying to go back to things that make me feel good.And because I feel like we lose track of it when life gets busy, it just goes so fast that I personally always forget to just settle down and take a second for myself. For me, it's recognizing that I'm burnt out too. If I keep ignoring it, if I keep shoving it down, saying, no, I can't be weak. I have to be tough.It just ends up so much worse in the long run because it's just, it adds up a lot. And then also another thing I would add onto that is advocating for ourselves because The worst thing that you can do is just let people push you around a little bit when you're feeling like that. For example, I never thought that my professor would understand where I'm coming from.And there was one day that I just, [00:18:00] I had so much on my plate that I knew I was not going to get this assignment done. And being the perfectionist that I am, I could not submit this without knowing that I put my full effort into it. And on just a whim of mental, just strategizing, what am I going to do? I just sent an email to my professor say, Hey, I'm so sorry, but I have had the worst day I've had everything piling on top of each other and I just need to take another day on this assignment.And he got back to me in 20 minutes and he said, Isabel, take a week. You don't need to just put this in in one day. It's okay. Trust me, glad you reached out and I'm glad you're taking care of yourself. So it's advocating for yourself and maybe putting yourself in a position that might be uncomfortable, but it could also lead to better things.I'll put this on a timeline because I feel like it's easier to explain. My first year, two years, when I was not doing my best, it was harder to be excited about the sport. Naturally, when things aren't going [00:19:00] well, the common response is to work harder. That's, oh, this isn't going well, I need to practice harder, I need to practice more, I need to study more, I need to work harder.So, You find yourself in this like vicious circle where you don't like your sport because you're not doing well so you're doing it more and you're working harder and you're almost like forcing yourself and this is what I did my first two years and you try to like really force yourself out to eventually get to whatever get the results you need and for me it definitely brought burnout into play because over a year things didn't get better quickly but And you also, in your first year or two, you are not comfortable asking your team or your coach for like special treatment, be it a day off from practice or, and practice a little early or just take a little mental health break or work a little less hard, right?Not established enough to where you feel like that's not a thing that you can do. When I became a junior, I became a senior and now I'm a leader on the team. I was a [00:20:00] captain, results came back. I guess maybe it's because I academically I started feeling comfortable. I don't know what the chicken or the egg was, but it was easier for me to proactively budget in time where I could feel a burnout coming on.And I would talk to my coaches and say, like this Friday, I think I needed to end practice a little bit early for whatever reason. And I think I had at that point, I had the trust of my teammates, the trust of my coaches, and it was never an issue for me. It was also about carving out time to just totally log off, but it took me a little while to get to that point.Like I didn't wake up with that on first day of freshman year. I was really bad about it until about two years ago. And then I would say two years ago is probably when my mega burnout happened. I am a victim of putting things off until it gets too big to handle. And then having a full mental breakdown, having to put the pieces back together.So once I recognized that pattern, it was like, all right, yeah, this is not normal. This is not. Healthy, the biggest thing for me was sleep. I [00:21:00] just was not sleeping enough and try to take naps in the day. I just don't have the time for it. I'm not tired during the day, but it became a, okay, if I'm normally in bed by 11 tonight, we're going to be in bed by 10.Once I can get comfortable going to bed by 10, we're going to go to bed at night. So I feel more rested and can last a little bit longer before I hit burnout. But another thing for me was I adopted two fur babies during the pandemic. And they have been a humongous help for me when we get back from a bad practice.Oh, here you are, you're up against my leg and now I have to pet you. Or you need food, or you need something else, something, someone else that I need to take care of. Literally does nothing but bring me joy. It's something that helped for me a lot, but before that was an option. And when I was in the dorms, little things like cooking, like now I cook almost every night.It was something I never really thought to do, but I had time and I just needed to do something to get my mind off of thinking about how bad practice was or how that game didn't go, how I wanted it to go, so really just trying all sorts of little [00:22:00] things and you're going to find ones that stick and that speak to you and you get something out of.But making those a regular practice too, not just, Okay, I had a mental breakdown this morning. Guess I can go to bed earlier tonight. That's not how that works.What are some common dialectics you noticed being a college athlete where two things that seem opposing are true at the same time? When someone is injured, it's really hard, especially to be the person that is injured, to seek practice. Because that's where you want to be. You're missing your sport. You see your teammates playing, they're having fun.They're playing some games and that's just what you want to do. You want to be there. But then at the same time, I'm sure there's people on the team might be having a rough week and they're probably looking at that person sitting on the bench and just saying, wow. I wish I could just sit down and have a break.Colleges where you hear growing up all the time, it's where you're going to go and figure out who you are and find your lifelong friends and all that [00:23:00] stuff. It's 10 times harder when you have somebody or really eight different people telling you from the day you come in on report day where you have eight hours of just straight meetings.Being told, here's what you need to be in class. This is what you need to be making. Here's what you should be eating to perform. It's hard because this is also the first time you're trying to figure this out. As your own person, your parents aren't there to remind you to go to the girlfriend store, remind you to do the laundry.Around my second year was where I was like, okay, I'm not getting to play like as much as I thought I would be, or as much as like I feel like I could be doing, but I'm still being told that I'm just as important on this team, and we contribute to the wins and losses. How am I contributing if I'm standing on the bench?And that became something that was Really hard for me. And around my second and third year, I sat down for a while and was like, I don't really know if I want to do this anymore, but at the same time too, it's all I've known for half of my life. So how am I supposed to switch out? So this past year has been very pivotal for me in realizing that my sport is not who I am.It's just a part of [00:24:00] who I am.We don't want to review all the amazing wisdom that these students had. And at the same time, there were things that. We could perhaps add to and supplement one of the things they talked about was how diversifying what they do outside of the sport helped with things like burnout, allowed them to have a better, more flexible definition of mental toughness.And Liz, you talk about this a lot, the how to diversify the activity diet. Another way we describe this is the whole brain approach. Yeah, I think what we heard was how I think a lot of them have these like light bulb moments where they realized that maybe they were paying attention too much to their sport and that they weren't paying attention to other aspects of their values and their priorities and that The potency, let's say, of some of the activities that they were doing were losing their value.And [00:25:00] that a lot of them spoke about having to be more mindful. What ingredients am I going to put in my week that are going to help keep me happy, reduce burnout, keep me physically healthy. And I think that was, it was, It's great that we had this kind of a longitudinal kind of aspect that they were able to talk about just by chance we talked about people that were later on in their college career, so they were able to talk about the pitfalls as well as the lessons they've learned, which was definitely not doing the same thing all the time.They talked about cooking, spending time with pet, just friends outside the sport. I think that leaves next to something Fader talked a lot about. He discussed perspective taking, zooming out. And seeing the whole thing, that everything has a beginning, middle, and end, and that this particular match in and of itself won't define you.And if you have a diversity in your experience, I think it's easier to have some perspective. One of the things that Fader also mentioned in his interview, and we heard about this from some of the athletes, was the [00:26:00] importance of developing consistent daily habits. And whether that looks like meditation or calling a friend or, I don't know, mindful coloring or painting or doing some hobby related activity, that the consistency of these habits when they accumulate over time help reduce our emotional vulnerability.Another thing we heard a lot of, and I feel like I, I don't know about you, Sarah, I drill this into my patients, is the importance of sleep and nutrition. It is really difficult to be emotionally and physically resilient when we're not eating and we're not sleeping well, and a lot of the athletes spoke about that as well, that they've had to pay really close attention to those factors, even in a situation where you would think the environment would really value eating well and sleeping amongst college athletes, given what they're doing with their brains and bodies every day.It's almost as if it's this invisible. Skill [00:27:00] that oftentimes people don't actively put into program. They say, okay, get an a, we see that we say, get this score. We see that. And I think people assume, Oh, those things are happening. It's because the person is feeling grounded and okay. But a lot of times that's happening.At the risk of getting little sleep, but at the risk of getting nutrition time, a coach is asking about those things as well as practice. I think that shows you a good coach. Two of the things that we talked about a ton, and this is where we could have a whole episode on limiting beliefs. They discussed comparisons.They discussed, do I deserve to be here as a student if I'm. An athlete, right? Maybe at a school where I wouldn't have gotten in just based on grades alone. Also, am I contributing? If I'm sitting on the bench, am I even part of this team? We obviously talked a lot about the YIPS thinking instead of doing with Vader and his episode last week.So just starting off about the ways that we talk to ourselves in our mind and how much that can impact our performance, [00:28:00] whether it's in school or on the court. One of the things that we, Liz, you and I know talk about a ton is first of all, noticing what those are. And then I always ask people to say, okay, is this thought helpful?Is this thought actually getting you towards a goal that you want? Or is it actually hurting you? And a lot of times when you look at the limiting beliefs, so many people try to maybe say, no, I'm the best tennis player. No, I'm the worst tennis player. They try to kind of find evidence for one of those two extremes.And I found it's a lot of help. We'll just be like, is this thought helping me in this moment right now? Is it going to help my serve? Is it going to help my stroke? So that's one of the things about limiting beliefs that I think no matter what the belief itself is just going at it to say, is this helping me?Is it hurting me? Is it reaching a goal of mine in some way? And typically answer is no, it's not helping me. Yes, it's hurting me and no, it's not helping me reach a goal. It's pretty consistent. And then we get into perfectionism. Oh boy. When I'm working with anyone who has perfectionism, the truth is that almost always perfectionism [00:29:00] has helped in some way, or at least they've identified that they have been able to do what they are doing because they have tried to be as good as they possibly can at something.Do you find that? Yeah, I mean, it's the hardest thing about perfectionism is that it's reinforcing, it's adaptive to a certain extent, and it's likely a personality trait that a lot of successful people, including college athletes, have one of the interviewees spoke about since a very young age is I've always been perfectionistic, whether it was like second grade, and I didn't get all my math facts correct.And the reaction I had was so extreme that she's had to work really hard on figuring out, like, when is this helpful and when is it not helpful? And coming up with some sort of decision making tool around how is this working for me? And then where is it working against? So many times that I'm working with people who ascribe to the kind of, they bought into their perfectionism.[00:30:00] I say, I'm guaranteeing you that the worry and anxiety you feel around this idea of getting everything perfectly. Some people might say, if I'm not a perfectionist, then how will I get it a straight A's? I'm really dedicated to that. I'm thinking there's probably a value outside of your worry. That's important here.Dedication, work ethic. We talked to Jonah, who was fencing, who said perfectionism of the particular stroke is built into the sport and to be able to get it just so within a millimeter is helpful for the sport. I'm thinking, okay, I can also be disciplined and. it doesn't necessarily need to be perfectionism.And so that idea of perfectionism as being one big thing is actually probably a lot of different values you have in your life. And if you can identify what those values are and untangle them from the idea of perfectionism, then it's a bit more malleable. Suddenly you can say, okay, I strive to committed, or I strive to pushing myself to that limit, but knowing where my limit is.I think [00:31:00] that can be really helpful because the truth is that people who are perfectionistic. Have tons of other values too. There's so much more important than I need to be a hundred percent in all things. Yeah. And I think as you were saying that Sarah, when we heard about a lot of the limiting beliefs and particularly around this perfectionist equality to them, they were very outcomes focused.And I think a lot of where some of the athletes talked about being able to work around them was doing exactly what you said, right? Which is okay. I'm going to focus on my effort. I'm going to focus on this specific behavioral goal I have this week around my sport. Okay. And I'm going to dedicate myself to that.And I'm going to do it a hundred percent. And it really gets them away from this dichotomy around, I'm going to win my match versus not win it. And if I don't, what does this mean about me as an athlete? It goes back to what Fader said. If you have the just win the mentality, it's never ultimately helpful, but full send is something you can go for every single time.So that's what I would say to any sports related perfectionist or [00:32:00] any sort of perfectionist where you think, okay, I've been almost in a. Benefits in my where I think you've attached almost a positive reference to perfectionism is to say, wait a minute, can I switch from a just win to a full send? What does that look like for me?A hundred percent. I love that. So that wraps up our current athletes episode and stay tuned next week. We're going to be talking to people who no longer play college sports, whether by choice or not, and hear about what it's like to shift and identity when that happens. Thank you to our guests for sharing their stories and advice.This podcast is for college students and we want input by college students. Please reach out by text, email, or voice memo to collegesfindpodcast at gmail. com or 929 500 2231. 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