Embrace Your Brilliance: A Journey of Self-Love
In today’s world, we often feel pressure to conform to social norms, making finding the courage to embrace our unique selves a daunting challenge. Yet, it's precisely in our individuality that we discover our true power and purpose!
How to Series; Adapt and Adjust
In our current world of sports and life, the ability to adapt and adjust is a cornerstone of success. Whether it's facing unexpected challenges, overcoming setbacks, or seizing new opportunities, the capacity to pivot and find effective strategies is crucial. Today’s How to Series will explore the importance of adapting and adjusting, providing practical tips to help athletes, teams, groups, individuals, and parents alike develop these essential skills.
Pause is Power
Athletes, especially those in the public eye, feel a tremendous amount of pressure to perform up to the standards set for them, regardless of whether those standards are internal or external.
Hunt for the Good Stuff
It is an unfortunate part of human nature (in my opinion) that we tend to focus on the negative things first. The mistakes we made, the mess ups, the things we said that aren’t sitting well - we sometimes dwell on those things and let them linger. I’ve done this many times, and I can honestly say that very little benefit came from dwelling on them.
How To Series; Self-Care
Self-care is a conscious act we can engage in to promote our own mental, physical, and emotional well being. Self-care has become such a hot topic in recent years, and for a good reason - we should all be making self-care a priority! In order to be our best when our best is needed, it’s important that we’ve taken care of ourselves so that our best is available.
How To Series; Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is the ability to monitor your internal (thoughts, feelings, emotions) and external self (the physical, i.e., tension, soreness, etc.). Cultivating your self-awareness is an important first step to developing your mindset so that the mental skills techniques required to perform consistently can be tailored and customized to your needs.
My Parents Don't Understand Me
One of the challenges is that youth/teenagers don’t yet understand themselves, so it can become hard for them to articulate what they are experiencing or for you to know how to empathize with them. It can feel a little like riding on a roller coaster at times.
Do Hard Better
In my life, I’ve found that at times I’ve waited for things to get easier; the workouts, the long days, the back to back to back meetings, the mom life. But what has actually been happening all this time is that I’ve been learning how to handle hard better. I have been evolving, transitioning, and becoming better everyday.
Coaching from the Stands
The point of youth sports is for your child to grow, be challenged, learn from mistakes, improve, develop a lifelong love for sport, and most importantly, have fun. Winning is a by-product of all those things. It’s not that winning is less important, it’s that winning is not the only thing that sports are about.
Changing How We Talk To Our Youth
Our youth are still figuring out their self-esteem and how to think about their experiences. They are primarily emotion focused, and therefore it is our job as parents, guardians, and coaches to model how they can think about their performances. Facilitating healthy performance reflection in their youth years will set them up for healthy performance reflection throughout their lives.
The Relationship Between Frustration and Effort
There is a direct relationship between frustration and effort. When someone gets frustrated with something, they appraise whether or not their continued effort is worth it. Therefore, when one becomes frustrated and appraises the situation to be not worth their time or effort, they might make the choice to decrease their effort and as a result their performance also decreases.
What To Say On The Ride To The Game
In your mind, this may seem like a great time to talk to your youngster about strategy, tactics, and how they can contribute to the game, but oftentimes what they hear are the expectations you have of them and the pressure being placed on them to perform well from your perspective. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to talk to your kids about their games. But there is a time and place, and some do’s and don'ts, as well.
Mentally Train for Your Next Challenge
Most of the world’s best didn't get to the top by luck. It took many years of hard work, preparation, commitment, and focus. It took working on both the mental side of performance and the physical, technical, and tactical. It took sacrifice, vision, resilience, grit, and purpose.
A Runner’s Inner Voice
I learned to talk back to my inner voice. All this time, I had believed what my inner voice said - slow down, this sucks, I need to stop. But why? I knew I was capable of more and to achieve more I had to control my inner voice.
Staying Focused Under Pressure
Feeling anxiety during performance is normal. We all experience it. But when it prevents you from performing at your best, there are steps you can take to make sure you stay focused on what’s in your control.
Mind over Matter
As we started up, I quickly realized that I would be challenged in ways I hadn’t experienced before. This is where Mind Over Matter came into play for me, and why it’s relevant to having a Fit Mind. I thought I had a tough mindset, but soon realized on this hike that there’s always room for growth.
Positivity Can Be Exhausting
Is positivity important? Without a doubt! It is the foundation that will take you to where you want to go and who you want to be. Positivity is a choice, and there are positive take-a-ways from every situation.
A Really Good Day Out
Before my summit of Mt. Shasta, I had a ton of fear thoughts. What if I fall? What if I can’t do it? What if I’m scared? While these thoughts were a necessary part of my process, I had to shift my focus from the emotion of fear to the important mental and physical prep fear can also initiate.