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084 - Thought Defense: How to Train the Mind w/ Shenna Jean
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We train our athletes' bodies religiously—but what about their minds?
In this episode, I sit down with Shenna Jean [@shennajean], founder of Make One Day Happen, to explore why the mental training gap in athletics is costing our athletes performance, confidence, and long-term well-being. Shenna brings sound visualization, breathwork, and nervous system regulation to everyone from Division I teams to pro athletes to corporate leadership groups—and she's pulling back the curtain on what actually works.
Here's the reality: 90% of Olympians use visualization as a core part of their success, but the rest of the athletic world? They're being told to "just go visualize" without any real training on how to do it. It's like telling someone to get stronger without giving them a program or a barbell.
In this conversation, we cover:
- Thought Defense strategies - Zone defense (gratitude & affirmations) vs Man-to-Man defense (anti-thoughts for specific limiting beliefs)
- Why we're over-meditated and under-visualized - The difference between mindful awareness and conscious creation
- The 90-second emotion rule - How to separate body sensations from the mental narratives we attach to them
- Shame vs Guilt in coaching - Why leading with shame keeps athletes in fight-flight-freeze instead of flow state
This episode is for coaches who want to:
- Give their athletes mental training tools that actually work
- Understand how to regulate their own nervous system so they can lead with composure
- Help athletes build intrinsic motivation instead of performing out of fear
- Create team cohesion faster in the age of transfer portal and NIL
*NEW* Education - Captains & Coaches course, "Why They're Not Listening - Coaching Today's Athlete": http://listen.captainsandcoaches.com
Training - Old Bull Program - 7 Day Free Trial - https://bit.ly/old-bull-train
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Transcript
Introduction to Mental Training Deficiencies
00:00:00
Speaker
What if the mental training we are giving athletes is only half the equation? Welcome to the Captains and Coaches podcast where explore the art and science of leadership through the lens of athletics and beyond.
00:00:10
Speaker
I'm your host, Texan Wilkoken, and today I sit down with Sheena Jean from Make One Day Happen. We get into why telling athletes to just visualize is like telling them to just get stronger without giving them a barbell or a plan.
00:00:27
Speaker
Sheena brings sound visualization, breath work, and nervous system regulation to athletic development. From her work with Division one field hockey, professional skiers,
00:00:39
Speaker
to even our friends at Team Builder. What she's uncovered is wild. 90% of Olympians use visualization as a huge part of their success, but everyone else, they're getting almost zero training on how to actually use this tool.
00:00:55
Speaker
We're gonna dive into Thought Defense, the difference between meditation and visualization, why recovery is the fuel for performance.
Olympians and Visualization Techniques
00:01:03
Speaker
Plus, she's going to walk us through a breathing and visualization practice at the end of the episode that you can use today.
00:01:11
Speaker
With that, take a deep breath and hand off to Sheena to help us raise the game. Ready, ready, and break. Right. It's nice to be on the other side of it, to be honest. I get this side of it, you know?
00:01:24
Speaker
i I like both sides. Yeah. like asking questions because now I selfishly learn. This whole rigmarole is just selfish. big ruse. Yeah. Yeah, I get it. That's a lot of the reason why I have a podcast as well. it's like, but A, let me... Mine started originally to have be able to share the lessons that I've learned. But then it's like, yeah, let me invite people on that I want to learn from.
00:01:47
Speaker
Yeah. There's excuse. To network. Exactly. love it for networking. And speaking of networking, we're live. Oh, okay. you with Shout out team builder. Yes. We love you, Huey.
00:01:58
Speaker
Y'all were doing your resort, literally a football throw from my house. That was amazing. And I'm like, I got to ping the team. So reached out to to my pals that are on the team and then Huey and then He's like, hey, come on over.
Discovering Sound Visualization
00:02:11
Speaker
so that's That's the beauty of the internet. Like, there's pros and cons to it for sure, but, like, that's, we get to be so connected like that. Yes. And you were brought in by Team Builder to do a very special experience. Did you bring your bowl, sound bowls here? Oh, I did. They're in the car. Oh, my God. We might need to get one. Maybe.
00:02:31
Speaker
As a demonstration, I just want to do a practice to close out. Yeah, we can absolutely do that. Yeah. Oh. Yeah, yeah. we can We can do the breathing ground technique and grab a bowl.
00:02:41
Speaker
So let's let's start with that. They brought you out for your technique specialty to then help them with future visualization. Why did they bring you out? Okay, so Hewitt and I actually met at the and NSCA conference in New Orleans in January. And so we actually had this conversation a lot this weekend because There's all these sliding door moments, right? like I was there too. Oh, you were? Yeah. I was the chick walking around in the big wide brim hat. everyone was like, who is this girl? So i yeah, I've been doing guided visualizations for but close to 15 years now at this point. And in the last year, it's like I really got clear that
00:03:20
Speaker
working with athletes is an opportunity, a passion, and like, let me go figure out what's going on in the world of visualization and bringing sound baths to athletes because nobody knows what that is. And so in this discovery phase of like, okay, well, who do I need to be talking to in different programs? And like, is it going to be the head coach? Would it actually be? There's so much performance and recovery gains from this that I'm like, let me talk to the strength and conditioning coaches because that's who gives, are we all allowed to swear?
00:03:48
Speaker
Well, certain words. Just avoid the hard stuff.
Team Builder Experience
00:03:52
Speaker
OK. OK. I can censor myself completely, too. um But yeah, like who gives a crap about performance and recovery the most? I'm like, all right, strength and conditioning. So let me just go to this conference and start talking to coaches. And it was a way easier approach for me rather than just like LinkedIn spamming people um to be like, hey, can you talk, ah will you tell me about the visualization practices that you're using? People are like, what who is this lady? So I go to the and NSCA conference and go to their booth and have a lovely conversation with Jeff. And as I'm walking off, someone's like, hey, did you get a pair of socks? And it was Hewitt. And I was like, I did And so we strike up a conversation. He's like,
00:04:33
Speaker
no offense, but what are you doing in here? You don't, you know I've never seen you before. You must be like new to the scene. And you know, I'm not wearing the workout gear. And he's like, are you a coach? And I'm like, i am, but not, not like the kind of coach you're probably thinking of. And we just really hit it off and shared more about, you know, sound visualization for athletes. And he's like, this is fascinating. And my background is leadership development and wellness facilitation. So I come from a background where I work with companies and their teams and executives. And he was like, I definitely want to learn and more. yeah um And he was at a point in, you know, his journey and development of his company. It's like, yeah, this is actually like, I'm really interested in this. I want to see if my team would be interested in it. And so we kind of did a intro workshop.
00:05:19
Speaker
They loved it. So for the last six months, we've been doing a monthly workshop and a monthly coaching call. Not just this retreat? Not just this retreat. Yeah. So yeah, we've been working together six months and keeping it going. And yeah, the whole, this was the first time they brought someone in to help facilitate something at the retreat versus just getting together as a team to add a little bit more structure. And, know, we've been really focusing a lot of nervous system regulation, co-regulation as a team, yeah energy hygiene, how to use visualization. And some of these,
00:05:51
Speaker
i don't I hate calling them soft skills because I feel like it has such a negative connotation, but there's, yeah, there's the more squishy skills that aren't like your Excel and coding and marketing and all the things that typically you do business trainings for that it's really important. I i believe that personal development and professional development are just two sides of the same coin. And when we start to actually bring more personal development into the workplace, we're not waiting for an employee to take that upon themselves.
Combining Techniques for Parasympathetic States
00:06:20
Speaker
And then as we develop a whole human, we're going to have a better team. We're going to perform better. Like there's, we just get to grow and develop, um, as a unit just makes every, everyone stronger. so
00:06:32
Speaker
so that's, that's the backstory of how I got here, we got here and now here we are. Yeah, strong message coming from the top. So known Hewitt for more than decades. So yeah, appreciate seeing the whole growth of his team. and It's incredible what he's built. Like I've never, like,
00:06:51
Speaker
four hours into the trip, I had had already four people who were like, I want to stay at Team Builder as long as they will have me. You just randomly came up and said that? Yeah, like through conversation, like they just, you know, how long have you been here? What's your role? And kind of having those moments and like, yeah, I never want to leave. I hope that like I'll work at Team Builder for life. And like that is just such a testimony to not only Hewitt and James' leadership, but just the culture that they're building and what they've created. Like, you know, I work with a lot of different companies and I haven't had that. We had one guy get tattoo of the logo, the Team Builder logo. First tattoo of the night was Brian getting the Team Builder logo tattooed on his arm.
00:07:31
Speaker
For context, for the people that weren't out Hewitt brought in and rented a tattoo artist yeah for the evening. And... Yeah, we got flash tats. I got a tattoo. It's called flash tats. Yeah, so when it's a flash tat, there's like a sheet of predetermined designs that you can get so that an artist can move through pretty quickly versus someone being I want this. And you have to like sketch it out and make the stencil and kind of all of those things. so it's A list of... What did you get with? um So this is a little paper plane with a heart on it.
00:08:03
Speaker
At the end of the future self sound visualizations is like my traditional kind of event experience. I give people the opportunity to write their future self a love note. And then I hold on to it and... You hold on to love notes? Oh yeah. Well, hold on to them and then I mail them out at random times.
00:08:22
Speaker
And so it's a really special thing to get something like that and something besides a bill in the mail. So this is actually, yeah for me, this represents um a future love note to myself.
00:08:33
Speaker
Just like that reminder of when it hurts, when it's painful, when it's a grind, when there's the enduring season of life that inevitably happens. Like, just keep going. My future self is so grateful for me in this moment that I continue to persist and show up and have faith that I'm moving in the right direction. And so that's what my little flash chat represents.
00:08:55
Speaker
Love it. Yeah. And now... Let's enter into the visualization meditation sound bath practice that you did with that team. Yeah. And one 90 minutes. What was the the time? Yeah, so the one that we did was about an hour long. And I i have 10-minute sessions that I do with people.
00:09:15
Speaker
we can even just do a five-minute session, three-minute, whatever. But the 60-minute sessions is where you can drop really deep and explore different levels of consciousness and start to ah really navigate different brainwave states and get into new territory when it comes to like really finding you know the parasympathetic side of your nervous system, most of us don't experience that unless
Visualization with Pro Athletes
00:09:40
Speaker
we're sleeping. and And so many people have trouble sleeping. And it's like, how do we actually access a parasympathetic state and be productive in that, which is kind of an oxymoron, ah obviously. i call sound visualization a you know productive rest because there's so much happening if you as you teach yourself to get into that state of consciousness. And so I use a pair breath work.
00:10:04
Speaker
a sound bath with sound frequency from crystal singing bowls with guided visualization and yoga nidra or what Huberman calls non-sleep deep rest. So there's these four modalities that are all backed in research, all evidence-based and solid research, peer reviewed stuff behind it that I know sounds a little woo woo when I come into the athletic space. um But they're incredible modalities. And once you start to combine them all together and can really help someone navigate their nervous system and moving out of
00:10:35
Speaker
that fight or flight, which inevitably we're all in a lot. We're going to spend a lot of time in that ok today. Okay, cool. ah Yeah, so getting into that space where you can visualize. Like right now, I've talked to, at this point, 60-plus coaches at D1 and professional levels. I was like, how are you visualizing with your teams? What are the tools and the protocols and the practices? And it's literally just telling people to go visualize. Mm-hmm.
00:11:00
Speaker
which I teach adjunct professor for a behavioral aspects of sport, which is like sports psychology. So then I have what is taught as visualization, like in the textbook. Oh, my gosh. I'm excited to see this. I know. I'm going to bring it out. I'm really excited to see that.
00:11:16
Speaker
Just play some tango with with what is taught and what is applied. I think that's the gap, right? Like there is stuff that's taught. But then when you get into the weight room or the gym or you know wherever you're at on the field, it's like just go visualize.
00:11:34
Speaker
And that knowledge is not getting... passed down to the athletes themselves. And there's this massive gap where Olympians are getting the knowledge and the training and the tools and the protocols because 90% of them are using it. And then 97% of them say, that's a huge part of my success. But everyone else that's not making it to the Olympics is not getting adequate training and tools to support them in actually doing it. It's like telling someone to go get stronger without giving them a barbell or ah a plan, right?
Team Visualization for Cohesion
00:12:06
Speaker
A training plan. So like, how do we, what what are we doing here? So that's where, um, yeah, I come in helping people get to a state of mind and rest in their body where it can be effective. Um, and so the, what we did with team builder is a future self sound visualization. So we time traveled a year into the future and you get to see,
00:12:28
Speaker
um Just kind of a little snapshot into what a day in the life is and watch, you know, I talk people through like watching what you're doing in the morning to really set yourself up and kind of build your own energy cup before you start pouring out to others, kind of feeling into the atmosphere of your space and who's there and how you're contributing to that. Then we move move into the purpose part of the day. you know, for some people that might be work, for some people that might be parenting or school or whatever it is, but that place where you're really intentional and purposeful and like the big chunk of your day. And who are you collaborating with and what are you creating and what is the impact that it's having? And then we move into watching your future self play and rest because that's just such a forgotten art and not something
00:13:12
Speaker
that we tend to prioritize and once we do prioritize, we unlock a lot of creativity and energy and um connection to self. And so we visualize some of that and then you get to ask your future self some questions and that's usually a pretty profound experience for folks. And then we take this, we time travel on a neon cloud to get to the future, P.S. So that's one of my, when people are like, what do you do? was like, take people time traveling on neon clouds for a living. They're like, what? I'm like, yeah, it's fun.
00:13:41
Speaker
Yeah, it does sound cool. Like that's that's what I wanted, where it would just be, instead of just writing goals, right now we are putting ourselves with a completed goal or maybe on our way to complete the goal.
00:13:52
Speaker
That's a great question. because so And people often ask me, like, how you get into this? And I'm like, well, i actually started as a vision and goal coach. And goals are great. If you don't have a vision that they're leading you to, though, you're kind of just spinning your wheels a little bit. And so this is an opportunity to ah drop into a deeper vision for yourself and like get more zoomed out so that you can use the goals to zoom in on how you're going to get there and yeah getting that bigger picture from a deep place within you know i think like everybody's like what am i going to be when i grow up or what uh what's the next season of life and like we tend to look outwards for answers and talk to mentors and compare ourselves on Instagram, whatever it is. Right. But like your answers are within it's about learning how to get still
Visualization for Personal Development
00:14:44
Speaker
enough and listen from a new space to really understand what are the desires of your heart? What is the vision that's been placed in your soul to come here and carry out? And you can only find that going within and going, our society has made it very, very hard for people to go within.
00:14:59
Speaker
Time out. Coach, have you ever felt like your athletes shut down, tune out, or just too cool for coaching? You want them to listen. You shake them. You know this attitude and approach that they're taking with their training or their practice in front of you is not going to lead to success on the field or off the field later in life, and you have to change it.
00:15:20
Speaker
Athletes today are operating on a different internal system and we need to course correct on how our approach is going to land with them. And that's why I wrote the new course, Why They Won't Listen, Coaching Today's Athletes.
00:15:36
Speaker
If you want to learn more, head to listen.captainsandcoaches.com for this online course. If you want the first lesson free, see how I break down and combine whiteboard lecture and practical demos, movement-based lessons,
00:15:52
Speaker
that you can bring them to your practice and your training environments. Again, head to listen.captainsandcoaches.com to learn more and get that free lesson. And now, back to the show. Ready, ready, and break.
00:16:04
Speaker
Let's start with visualization. Okay. And me crack open this little here. Cheers, PS. Cheers. To the Yeti mugs. Shout out, Yeti. We love you. Shout out, Yeti.
00:16:17
Speaker
Local team, Dripping Springs started. All right. Yeti started in Dripping Springs. Get out. yeah Oh, I did not know that. They claim Austin, but OGs know the truth. Oh, wow.
00:16:30
Speaker
All right. So they do consider visualization and ability. So this is... There's a whole chapter. I'm literally going to have to like take pictures of the whole chapter. Yeah. so they okay So they define it as imagery.
00:16:44
Speaker
Sure. Mental imagery is definitely the the terminology they love. Yeah. And aim is to enhance sports performance. that's That's essentially the bottom line. So their definition through imagery, you can recreate positive experience or pictures, new events to prepare yourself mentally for performance. um They're big points.
00:17:08
Speaker
Key characteristics of success. Modality. The senses used in imagery. Perspective. The visual perspective taken. First person, internal, or third person, external.
00:17:20
Speaker
Angle. The viewing angle when... Imaging from external perspective above behind front side agency the author or agent of the behavior being imagined and Deliberation the degree to which imagery is deliberate or spontaneous and then my other highlighted piece is Developing the ability so this is there how they view application and Came to image with the help of sports psychology consultant individuals begin LSRT by generating the simple image of a specific situation.
00:18:02
Speaker
So what's LSRT? It is layered stimulus response training. Well, here's stimulus response training. i think that was what a study labeled it. And now that's the scientific term.
00:18:16
Speaker
I like imagery better or visualization. Okay. Uh,
00:18:22
Speaker
So before imagining a scene, example, a tennis player hitting a service ace, individuals are asked to verbally describe it in as much detail as possible. Where, when, and what.
00:18:32
Speaker
The scene is then imagined. Then you reflect. Imagining the scene, individuals are asked to rate the vividness, controllability, and clarity of the image on a scale of 1 to 5.
00:18:45
Speaker
So now they're self-assessing their ability to to educate and stay focused.
Practical Applications of Visualization
00:18:51
Speaker
And then development. Based off this reflection, individuals will either remain and within the current image, re-image, or further modify the the content or the characteristics.
00:19:02
Speaker
So they're putting a feedback loop into it. and So trying to get a coach to an athlete describe what's in their mind to a coach and then the coach guides them.
00:19:12
Speaker
Interesting. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So then there's some scientific mumbo jumbo on how it works, but that that's their application is you talk to me, you tell me what you're thinking and I'll, I'll guide you. Correct that.
00:19:28
Speaker
Yeah. Interesting. That's the extent of it. Then it's just like research on, then they're just stating research stuff. That's it. One, one, two, three things. Yeah.
00:19:40
Speaker
It's wildly overlooked. And the research is so solid on the impact that it has. um
00:19:49
Speaker
Yeah, that's, you know, when I create custom sound visualizations for athletes, I just made one for a pro skier who, yeah his story is great. I've been working with the Aspen Valley Ski and Snowboard Club. His name's Kelly Hillickey. And he, before this past season, didn't use visualization. And this last year I created a track for just kind of a sport agnostic track, but specific for athletes to like use on the chairlift or sled right up as they're preparing for their competition.
00:20:25
Speaker
And so he started using this and went from crashing 75% of his competitions, which is not all that abnormal. You know, you crash, crashing out in the ski, you you fall, right? Like that's just part of that sport. He goes from, yeah, crashing in 75% of his competitions over the last couple of years to this last season where he visualized and used this track before every competition to winning five out of seven, no crashes this season.
00:20:51
Speaker
All right. made the pro circuit, then has um an accident and breaks his C5 and C6, which is a massive injury and has a fusion. So now he's in injury recovery right now. And so we've made a recovery track, which is I think you know the recovery aspect alone is just insane for how this can support it. Right? So um the track that I made for him is helping visualize, A, the nerve endings, like just fully firing and functioning and visualizing that from an internal perspective of like what's happening in your body. And can you just like visualize like a white light, a clear, clean cable of your nerve And, you know, kind of he's also having some like strength things happening in his arms. So like just visualize doing some reps and feeling what lightweight feels like doing left versus right, doing both. And then just like getting the actual reps in, in your mind without that physical load is still going to be training your muscle memory. And then we transition to him on the hill and moving forward.
00:21:53
Speaker
in between first and third person of feeling what it's like, feeling the stability of the neck and your core and just feeling super strong in your body, but then also watching yourself stick the landing on the 360. And so kind of toggling back and forth between that internal and external perspective because The mind does not know the difference between a internal experience and an actual external experience. right like That's why when you have a very vivid dream and you wake up and you're like, I was literally just falling off the cliff and your heart's pounding and you're sweating and you're you're having this physical reaction because your body just thought you were there. So if you can get to a still and quiet enough space and visualize these things, you're, it's the matrix yeah in essence, right? You're just downloading programs. You're creating the neural pathways that your mind needs to just be executing in a flow state once you actually get there versus if you're doing it for the first time, then you've got all the cortisol and the adrenaline and all of the stress hormones pumping through you. But you can actually get that part out of the way with visualization so that when you show up in the real live experience, it's like, oh, I already know how to dodge these bullets.
Thought Defense Strategies
00:23:04
Speaker
So. You feel there's difference between training an individual, like a skier, swimmer versus a ah team sport. So basketball, football. ah Yeah, I think there's a massively underserved market for team visualizations. And that's actually what I'm most excited about to bring into the industry, because I've been over here working with corporate teams and reverse engineering product launches two years from now in Q4,
00:23:35
Speaker
you know, contracts and all of these things. And when you align a team, when you co-regulate a team on the same wavelength and you're all collectively putting your energy towards a shared vision, the sync up that happens is crazy.
00:23:52
Speaker
Absolutely crazy. I worked with the Indiana University field hockey team for their spring season. Very cool. And went in, did a sound visualization workshop to kind of talk through the science, how this works, what to expect. And beforehand, I had talked to the coaches. Okay, like, what are your three biggest desired outcomes for this spring season? And they had just lost 75% of the team to graduation, lost all but one captain. So they were Just brand new build up, right? And this is something that especially with NIL that teams are facing at an unprecedented level at this point. It's like, okay, whole whole new squad. Like, how do we get them to performing as quickly as possible? Yeah, transfer portal.
00:24:33
Speaker
Everything. Yeah, exactly. um And this is where my background in team development really comes into play. There's something called Tuckman Stages of Team Development. Spelling? ah Tuckman, T-U-C-K-M-A-N-S.
00:24:48
Speaker
And it's a pretty simple model that any team that comes together is going to move through these different stages of development. You start with forming, then you move into storming.
00:25:00
Speaker
Storming is where a lot of people get caught up. I know it's where the Kansas Jayhawks basketball team got caught up last year. And then once you get out of storming, which is trying to figure out what's my role in this, like who's you know kind of jockeying for position and starting lineups and all of the things, then you get into norming and you can find a normal rhythm with what's happening. And then you get into performing. So now we're asking ininging all the inks, all the inks and the orms, form, storm, norm, perform.
00:25:32
Speaker
Ormings. The Ormings. Nailed it. So we're now we're asking teams to move through this at a rate that they've never had to move through this before. right And we don haven't given team development tools to the teams.
00:25:46
Speaker
And so that's where visualization can come in to really support this in a way that I don't think coaches... can quite see yet ah because it's giving it's giving a common goal and vision to align around versus hoping that everybody gets it on their own and now we're just managing egos and new people. It's like, no, actually, this is the defense that we run. This is our preferred offense. this is These are the values of the teams. These are our pillars of play and what we want. And like that's what we're aligning to, like get on board or get off. versus trying to manage all the different components of the players and getting it to work, right? yeah So the field hockey team, yeah, coaches were like, they played incredibly. Their first, it wasn't a game since it was spring ball, but like the first scrimmage out, like they it looked effortless for them. Like they've been playing together for years because we sat down, we visualized the three biggest outcomes. We talked about those pillars of play and all of those things. And then they were also getting this insane amount of rest, which is something that is especially D1 athletes, like you just you don't get. Yeah, it's like beyond. It's like three full time jobs just to like be a human and an athlete and a student. Like it's crazy. So there's so much value in pouring into the team versus constantly pulling out
00:27:06
Speaker
performance from them. Yeah. Right. Like it it is that it helps that balance of recovery in a massive way. And recognizing that recovery is actually the fuel for performance.
00:27:17
Speaker
I think that so often we're just so focused on their performance and the output that it's like you got to have energy in to to output anything. And so how do we think about recovery differently in a way that supports that energy but getting put back in in a more productive way? Mm Yeah, a big part of the course that I'm teaching. So how it works is they have the the course material and then I get to teach lectures based off real world experience and application. Cool. And then the two big learning objectives are that psychology's effect on performance and performance's effect on psychology. Ooh, good.
00:27:56
Speaker
So aiming to bring in this chicken or the egg human element to it. But I mean, every ah athlete's career ends. For sure. the matter of pro college high school so can the the the ability to communicate and work through storms and build your team together that's a skill can they take that into their career and their family exactly and that's there's also in my opinion a huge underserved market for supporting athletes in that transition out of their career like that is a massive identity crisis for most athletes and it's why a big part of why athletes are seven times more likely to suffer from mental health and substance abuse issues because you've been this thing your entire life. And there's this there's this beauty to the discipline and the focus and like the intention, intentionality that it takes to really compete at high levels and even just compete in general, right? But then when all of a sudden you're not that thing anymore and you haven't spent any time thinking about who else you want to be and what else you want to do in the world, there's...
00:29:03
Speaker
that can that's a devastating transition. And so that's where the future self sound visualization comes in, right? Like there's an opportunity to like, hey, visualization is a tool. And what I would add, what I would want to see added to this textbook is the idea, Dalton. He's like, yeah, this is the good stuff. I want to be in here
Emotional Intelligence in Sports
00:29:20
Speaker
for this. What I would add to this textbook is we can use visualization really in three ways.
00:29:25
Speaker
We can use it going back to the past and reexx re-experiencing things from our past that maybe we made mean something back then that doesn't actually mean anything or doesn't mean the same thing anymore. So like we can really do a lot of like subconscious reprogramming. Like if there was an experience that happened in your past and you made it mean that like, ah, because you didn't hear me, I'm not lovable. And it's like, oh, let's go back and tell that five-year-old version of me that like, you're actually very lovable. And like, let's give her hug and like remind her like, we're here, we're cool and reassign that emotion. And that is a very healing experience.
00:30:03
Speaker
we can use visualization as kind of like a present moment, like then this is really the bigger sports application of whether ah whether it's a game or whether you're a founder pitching to investors or you're practicing for a job interview or whatever it might be. it' more of a present moment performance based visualization and then we can use the future tense of visualization and like let's go out and start to imagine what my life looks like one year, five years, ten years from now and get some insights from inside about how and who I want to be in this next season of life before
00:30:39
Speaker
we get to the next season of life and we haven't thought about that at all. And now it's like, oh crap, what do I do? Who am i What is this? Right? So I really am excited about that application of the future self sound visualization because if we are normalizing visualization as a practice, then it's like, hey, this is a tool that you carry with you the rest of your life. And here's how you use it to transition into different seasons of life and Find answers that are yours, not what I'm telling you to do or your parents are telling you to do or whatever it might be.
00:31:11
Speaker
Yeah. Parents. Parents, we love you. ah Yeah. can't live We can't live with you and we can't live without you. I do want to highlight, and you've mentioned this many different times, and I found this and interesting growth perspective where you said seasons of life. Why I love sport, it's a new season, new team. Every single year there's new problems to solve. yeah What I want to aim to do is help the kids understand, teenagers, that...
00:31:41
Speaker
this This season is the season of life because high school, everything is life or death. School, so much stress. Yeah. College, this relationship, all this stuff.
00:31:53
Speaker
So aiming to help them understand, like, Can we take everybody's loss? Can we get the lesson? how How would you mentor a teenager in that respect to like, hey, this season is just a season. Let's learn from this so you can take this into your future self and just be awesome.
00:32:12
Speaker
Yeah. That's a good question. I mean, I'd probably just sit them down and have them do a sound visualization, right? like Because, again, i don't have your answers.
00:32:23
Speaker
You do. I can teach you how to get... i I tell clients all the time, like, I don't got your answers. So if you're coming to me to get answers, this is probably not going to work. I do have a map. I have a flashlight. i got a really good road trip playlist and snacks. Like, I'm a great adventure buddy to, like, help you find answers, but I don't have them.
00:32:42
Speaker
And so I think that's what... um I really love about being a coach is like, I can't do the work for you. I can't tell you what you're going to do in this next season of life, but I can teach you the things that help you get quiet and learn how to listen from a different place so that you can start to find your own answers and direction and clarity on where you want to go.
00:33:04
Speaker
So that's, that's typically my approach is like, I'll give you some tools and frameworks to Find answers um because everyone's answers are different. there's There's not a prescriptive, like, here's what's next. Yeah. You know?
00:33:24
Speaker
Like that analogy, visualization, and then explaining that it's still on them. Yeah. You still got to do the work. writing your story. Yeah, exactly. can be a spirit guide. Yeah. well You got to cross that.
00:33:36
Speaker
Exactly. You got to do the work to figure out what it is your soul wants most in this lifetime. Or you don't. Like, that's also a choice, too. But, you know. You're not wrong.
Shame, Guilt, and Athlete Development
00:33:47
Speaker
ah For now, within the realm of the team builder team you worked with, they were mature adults with careers, families, and ambitions. Mm-hmm.
00:33:57
Speaker
There's a lot of teenagers out there that are not mature, maybe can't see past high school or past college. What would be like a starting and they like being silly?
00:34:10
Speaker
And i've I've tried visualization practices, meditation with teenager boys. It just turns into like a giggle fest. Yeah. If one loses it, it's like a contagious bomb going on. So what what would your, as the professional within this realm, take to then...
00:34:28
Speaker
setting up and getting a teenage team like a so a starter kit for visualization? Yeah, that's a great question. And I'll be honest, and team builder team, I'm saying this with like the most amount of love and respect, but like, do we ever grow out of like our silly teenager selves? No. You know, that was basically a room of a bunch of teenage boys. not wrong. Getting back together, right? And skepticism can be really high. That's where sound frequency is super helpful. Like the sound frequency itself is what's shifting brainwave states. And what's happening for most people is like we're just too stuck in our head to actually drop into a visualization. So then we're having these thoughts and then we're chasing the thoughts. And, you know, i would also probably tee up with specifically teenage boys. Like let's talk about thought defense and why that's important. that was going to my transition. Yeah. But you brought it up. Yeah, like let's talk about the landscape first. And that's where I also find a lot of my work is more effective when I do a leadership development workshop before trying to put someone just lay them down to visualize because when people understand the why behind it and some of the how behind it, they're a lot more bought in. They're like, oh, okay. And like then you start tying in some
00:35:44
Speaker
Oh, and so-and-so has also done this, which is, I love the copycat nature of sports for that. Like, like. Oh yeah. Your favorite player does this. Yeah. What? Yeah. Like, oh, I did this with Chris Harris Jr. And then James was, team builder's like, what? That's my favorite player. And like the way he leaned in like so much faster and like, right. There's just immediate buy-in there. So, um, yeah, i I would start with talking about the landscape of the mind and how, and in a way that they can relate to. Right. think that's the other part of why wellness and sports are so segregated is like there's not a ton of wellness teachers and breathwork teachers and sound healers and yogis that actually even know what a fourth and one is. And like what what breath pattern am I going to give someone? How am I going to help them visualize a fourth and one situation if you don't even know what that is? Like there's a language mismatch and like miscommunication that happens that like
00:36:40
Speaker
why am I going to align my chakras? What's that going to do for me? But in my, what I'm doing, like we're aligning your chakras. I'm just not telling you that. Right. But it's what's happening through the process of what we're going through. Because when your energy centers of your body are all aligned, like you're going to perform better. It's just how energy works. Right. And dissonance and resonance. And so I've been hearing the word resonance a lot. Yeah.
00:37:06
Speaker
make a note for that, but keep going. Yeah. So talking about, yeah, like the the landscape of the mind is crazy. There's an estimated 60,000 thoughts a day. And I think that that's from the Cleveland Clinic. And then the National Science Foundation has estimated that 80% of them are negative and 95% of them are repetitive. And then there's a pretty wide known psychology understanding that 95% of what's happening in the mind at any given moment is unconscious.
00:37:35
Speaker
So when you start to just like sit with the weight of that, it's very heavy. It's extremely heavy. And it's like, it's one of the stats in my lifetime that I want to make a dent in because once we bring awareness to it first and foremost, and we start to recognize like, oh, wow.
00:37:53
Speaker
Oh, wow. I, I'm on autopilot more than I recognize. And it is really interesting actually for the age group of teenagers because most of our programming and our subconscious beliefs are actually formed between ages zero to seven. Yep.
00:38:10
Speaker
Based on the brainwave states that we're experiencing. And like that spongy subconscious is when we have a lot of theta brainwaves present. And so that's where when I'm talking people through this, I'm like, we're going to theta land. We're trying to get to that space where your body's asleep, but your mind's awake, because then we can go in there and like,
00:38:27
Speaker
you know, kind of add new neural pathways of what you want to be experiencing versus looping on all of these thought patterns that you don't want to be experiencing. So um I often talk about the thinking feeling loop and understanding that we have an experience, um a stimulus that could be internal or external, and it kicks off a subconscious thought that fires so fast you don't even know what's happening. That's triggering emotions and feelings, which are two very different things. Uh-huh.
00:38:55
Speaker
Guy cards, error. Are familiar with this? No. Oh, wow. There was a a psychologist, his name's Descartes, and he felt that this side of your brain is for thinking, this side of your brain is feeling, and they did not meet.
00:39:09
Speaker
So then there's this famous Descartes error. It's a point where, like, no, he got it all wrong. So then hundreds of years of research and experience was wasted because this one man's belief.
00:39:22
Speaker
Interesting. That's a good one. I'm gonna to go deeper into that. it is it is It is crazy deep. And one example, there and this is a famous example, man got a a spike through his brain that then he had a family, marriage, he was very, like, by the Bible, by the book, living his life.
00:39:47
Speaker
And then a a freak accident at work s severed that connection. i've heard about this yeah he lost the part of his brain so then he started to gamble away started to just be unfaithful towards his family and not act in his character so then they connected it to losing this part of his brain um so that that's just one piece but very famous stories and then business uh now business thought leaders are diving into it um Thinking Fast and Slow is a book. Yes. Very dense book. Yes. But they they battled these, like, buyers act with their... they Buyers in business act with logic.
00:40:31
Speaker
And you're like, no, no, no. It's all emotion. It's all... yeah And feeling. Okay, so A... I don't... I've have i've never known how to say that.
00:40:41
Speaker
Dijkart. Dijkart. I would, yeah, I would struggle with that. would be like, is it Descartes? Descart? Okay. So now that I'm seeing, I'm i'm a visual learner. Shocking. The visualization lady is visual. So seeing things in spellings help definitely helps me recall and remember. So yes, I have, this is all coming back to me now. And there's, ah you know, one of the things that i love helping people understand, and this is,
00:41:11
Speaker
Fact check me, don't fact check me. I don't know if this is more of like an intuitive knowing that I've just been speaking on versus like having seen it at some point or just like been pulling information to arrive at this conclusion. But I believe that emotions and feelings are two completely different things. Like in the sense of emotions are... the sensations and the biochemical experience of what's happening in the body. So right, like when I get angry, I'm going to get a stress hormone, I'm going to get a tightness in my chest, I'm going to get tunnel vision and, you know, your body sensations might differ slightly from mine. So that's why it's important to start to learn to tune into like, okay, what is the body telling me right now? And emotions are
00:41:53
Speaker
our energy in motion and last about 90 seconds, the reality of the experience of the emotion. And so if you can just learn to ride it out, breathe, ask your like pause and not get sucked into the automated response that the feeling, the feeling is the narrative. The feeling is the story that we attach to the sensations that we're now experiencing. And I think we interchange the words emotions and feelings all the time. and we conflate the two and they're they're happening on top of each other. But like that's where we get to start getting more emotional intelligence is when we recognize like, oh, okay, I'm having a body sensation right now. I'm getting pissed.
00:42:35
Speaker
or I'm feeling grief or I'm so excited or whatever it is. And like, what are the sensations here? Let me be with it. And let me separate the story that I'm telling myself about this. Because the story, when we get in our feels, it's not because we're just like still feeling the sensations of anger. It's because we're looping on a mental narrative now around it. So pulling those two things apart, I think is a really important thing to teach kids as early as we possibly can. distinguish between the two of those. Speaking of my language, big John Bradshaw fan, he wrote E-motion, E-motion, energy and motion.
00:43:14
Speaker
And then, yeah, a lot of stuff I teach is anchored in that four to seven window for child development, social emotional learning, independence and interdependence. And then um i refer to as social emotional leadership now when we apply those same child tools to teenagers yeah and college kids uh and let's be honest adults because we haven't been talking about this stuff not wrong this yes you know it the the target is the kids because then coaches are more willing to give these lessons to their athletes than
Coaches' Emotional Impact
00:43:50
Speaker
they are themselves and then eventually get to themselves if they're willing and in my experience if you're a college coach you already know
00:43:58
Speaker
It's my kids that are the problem. So then I just create a bunch of stuff for their kids. It's a weird. But hey, i eventually I'll find the right coaches, which is in time. but That's interesting. and We'll circle back to that.
00:44:14
Speaker
We will. ah We mentioned thought defense, and then we were hanging out at the the social, and then you said this word, and I'm like, What are you doing this weekend? Come on the mean, just lit up. That's the greatest ah like tool. Because what I want to do is effectively hand off tools through sport that then they can go and lead and be awesome in life. Yeah. So thought defense, I mean, that that you need that every single day against the Every moment. Against the internal. Yeah. And...
00:44:44
Speaker
that That is one thing i want to highlight. So in you in your mind, this sets the stage for visualization. This helps make connection with people and then leads to visualization. Well, I think when we understand that unattended, our thought landscape is pretty dicey. hu Once we have an understanding of what's happening in our mind, that's where visualization is a really powerful tool. So I define meditation as mindful awareness. When we're meditating, we're actually getting a little bit more clear on what are the thoughts happening, what are the sensations happening. Maybe you have a specific focus with a breath pattern that you're
00:45:24
Speaker
But like you're locked into like understanding the internal landscape if... And this is where a lot of people just conflate the two again. And this is where I think we're doing ourselves a massive disservice by not kind of teasing these out and understand when do you want to meditate and then when do you want to visualize. I think we're over meditated as a society and we're very under visualized. We got all of these people that know how to sit and feel their feelings and stay rotating on their feelings. But it's like, once you know that you've got anxiety and the anxious thought loop is taking you out, go visualize something different that you'd like to be experiencing. Because while meditation is mindful awareness, visualization is conscious creation. if You are literally creating new neural pathways. You are giving your brain a blueprint of what you want to experience. And you're showing it how to have that. so that it starts to magnetize those experiences. And again, you get not dropped into the dojo like Neo and like you've already been there. You're like, okay, cool. This is, we're ready for this. We've been priming ourselves for this. And then when you're not, that the reality is that we're all visualizing all the time anyways. When you're thinking of anxious thoughts or if you're worried and kind of projecting into like, oh like you're visualizing, you are rehearsing something in your mind, you are giving your mind mental images of how it's not going to work out.
00:46:47
Speaker
And so how do we take some real intentional time to sit down and and focus on what we want instead of what we don't want? That's the crux of it. So like when you really start to paint that landscape for people, um it's like, oh, okay, yeah, you're right. Like I do need to go start thinking about and practicing mental rehearsal in a way that like is focused on what I want. And that's where that visualization starts to help.
00:47:11
Speaker
um You know, as I teach kind of going back to thought defense though, like there's basically like two ways that you can really think. I'm a big basketball fan. grew up in a basketball family, rock, chalk, Jayhawk, go KU. And, uh, so I use the lens of basketball defense and man to man versus zone. And so your zone defense is going to be gratitude and affirmations and gratitude gets kind of a lot of the things that I teach can be a little bit easily dismissed. And I'm so grateful for neuroscience. Like What it has shown us in the last 10, 15 years is just absolutely incredible that our we can rewire our brains. Neuroplasticity is real. Gratitude changes the structure of your brain. And gratitude is one of the fastest ways to get yourself out of the negativity bias and focus on what is working versus staying stuck on what's not or what you don't want. And so gratitude is just wildly underused in my opinion, wildly underused. So if you can intentionally practice gratitude every you're laying a zone defense that's just starts to become impenetrable, right? um Affirmations can help as well. um
00:48:24
Speaker
But then we all have some crappy thoughts, the subconscious beliefs that we've picked up and all of us usually have two or three that are really taking us out that we haven't brought into conscious awareness. And so figuring out you know how to watch the thinking, feeling loop and understand how to pull yourself out of that and identifying a thought, then you want to create what I call an anti-thought, like the direct opposition, because you've basically had a affirmation a negative affirmation that you've been playing on loop subconsciously for you know as you get into
00:48:58
Speaker
you know, our age of decades, it's been happening. And so you need the exact opposition to that. You need a man to man defense for that because you need to go against this one specific thought. And it can't just be a store bought affirmation of I am love and lighter. I am strong and powerful. You know, like there's, you want to find that, specific opposition to it and like have that like I know what you're I know i i know your weak side I know which way I need to force you to go in this like you want to have like kind of everything down so that in those moments where you get triggered triggers are the treasures
00:49:33
Speaker
They are the treasures. When we get emotionally triggered, we want to make it about someone else. And it's almost always, unless we're talking like this is excluding like violence, harm, abuse. That's not what we're talking about. But when we get emotionally triggered, it's pointing towards something in us that is like, we need to take a look at this. Like, oh, I'm actually feeling some sort of insecurity or it's pushing on a button of mine. That is a subconscious belief. And that's why I'm getting this emotional reaction about it. And so,
00:50:00
Speaker
When we can start to use an anti-thought to be like, oh, you know what? No matter if you hear me or not, I am valuable. No matter if you hear me or not, I am valuable. And remind ourselves like, oh, this is not that situation from when I was five. Even though my nervous system thinks it is and is trying to protect me in that.
00:50:17
Speaker
Like, I'm actually okay in this moment. i don't need to get as upset as I normally did. And now you've just successfully run an anti-thought defense to combat that specific moment versus...
00:50:30
Speaker
Gratitude and affirmation is just kind of laying a foundation and and baseline for that. i love it. Especially the the analogy. And that's that's... Those are tools that I can again bring to... Yeah, please. Spread it. Spread They understand that.
00:50:45
Speaker
And they're they're battling that. What I like is... Observing acting in behavior versus acting out. So I practice good if a kid is he's disruptive. He's that age regression that you mentioned throwing a temper tantrum or Just acting out towards others and teammates or coaches like that They're searching for boundaries.
00:51:10
Speaker
It's a it's a cry for attention and help and they're They trust me enough or the team enough to act that way. So it's like, all right, let's let's talk through it. But then acting in like these where I feel zone and man to man can really play a factor.
00:51:25
Speaker
This is where it's it's typically from my experience, the the lead by example kits. So they are always on time. They're always fighting for perfectionism and they want approval from coach or parents.
00:51:39
Speaker
Yep. And winning equals success to them. So when they make a mistake. Winning equals worthiness. Winning. I'm going to steal that one. Please Winning equals worthiness in their mind. So when they make a mistake, now they start to act in. And it's the shame, the internal. And by the time that I am seeing them act out, like hit themselves in the head with their stick or speak like, I'm worthless, I'm this.
00:52:04
Speaker
By the time I'm hearing and seeing these things. Oh, it's been on it's been, it's been happening. So early in my career, I would be like praising the behaviors where they're always on time and, oh,
00:52:16
Speaker
Be it more like them. They're leading by example. Those are the kids that are really the acting in. So even teaching the whole team these tools, now aiming to get ahead of it.
00:52:27
Speaker
So like by the time I hear those words, uh-oh. Yeah. yeah Man. And then seeing against opponents and other teams how they react. Because in lacrosse sidelines, it's like basketball. We're right next to each other. Yep.
00:52:42
Speaker
So I can see and hear everything. Well, the energy hygiene transfer is real. Yeah. Energy. So I would love that because i I talk about science at the sidelines. I'm always looking over. Good. Are they tired? Are they leaning on their their knees or hands on their heads? They're fatigued.
00:52:57
Speaker
Are they lose? Is their coach losing it? And I draw attention be like, hey, we got them. Yeah. So I'd love to read that. What'd you call it one more time? Energy hygiene. Energy hygiene. Yeah.
00:53:09
Speaker
We're constant. We constantly pick up on people's vibes. Yeah. I do energy hijinks.
Effective Visualization Techniques
00:53:15
Speaker
oh tell me more. If I hear them, ah this is this is interesting. So, coached it against the coach who would, like, scream absolutes.
00:53:27
Speaker
So, like, defense is always wrong. That's an absolute. Well, defense can then shut you down, make a play, or understand what you did from watching film, and then...
00:53:39
Speaker
counter or make adjustments. We see it every time in professionals. So like right if I hear during a game that absolute Then just drop up a play or make a call or make an adjustment to then stop the absolute.
00:53:52
Speaker
And then i say the opposite. Defense is always right. or You just ran an anti-thought. ah Yeah. I've been doing by energy hijinks. So I just use their absolutes and just the constant coach traps against them. yeah Really get under their skin.
00:54:10
Speaker
And then they start dropping F-bombs and it's it's like, all right. And I'm very friendly with referees. So it's like, sir, we... And moms help us out on the sidelines. So it's like, we can't be can be using that language in front of my parents. sorry. Yeah. Like, are you going to allow this?
00:54:27
Speaker
So now speaking to the referees. Yeah. yeah that's a that's a That's a good playbook right there. Oh, I have a lot of fun because, like, this is just high school sports. It's not the end of the world. Right.
00:54:39
Speaker
So... For some coaches, it feels like it. And that's that energy. I don't want the kids to get that. Okay. So this is this is brilliant because that's where energy hygiene comes into play. And this is what gets really fascinating is like when coaches like when coaches are acting in versus acting out, right? That's going to spread to their team.
00:55:01
Speaker
Yeah, that is going to be a direct reflection of their leadership and like where. Yeah, it's interesting that you say like coaches want to pass the lessons down, but do they want to integrate the lessons for themselves?
00:55:13
Speaker
And how do we get more tools for coaches in that? ah Same tools. That's the same. Right. And OK, so how do we get more accountability and.
00:55:28
Speaker
What's the word I want to use here? and think it just comes down to account of like accountability and integration, I would say. Like, how do we actually get coaches to... I've got a friend that's working on the composed coaches curriculum, right? Like, how do we get more composed coaches on the sideline? Like, that understand that, like, oh, I've got a ripple effect of energy that if I can hold my ground, my team can hold its ground. Mm-hmm.
00:55:56
Speaker
And through... Through practice, like that's the time that we get to go through these rollercoaster of his emotions and learn how to differentiate feelings and emotions. I like that as well.
00:56:08
Speaker
um I spent a lot of time recently aiming to understand shame. So then this is shame versus guilt. And there's a psychologist, Tim Fletcher, who describes it where guilt is a feeling and shame is a belief.
00:56:22
Speaker
So the feeling like, oh, I feel bad. I made a mistake. Shame is I am a mistake. who So then as a mentor, if they feel guilty about a decision or maybe how they treated ah ah a teammate or made a decision on the field, we can walk back to that fork in the road when they made the decision and then visualize what could have happened if they were nicer to the person or...
00:56:45
Speaker
um read or saw the open person on the play. We see that in football, like watch film, go back to the sideline. That guy was open. We're going run that play again. Yeah. um That'd be like, i feel bad, but I'm going to use that energy on the field.
00:57:01
Speaker
Shame is I always make a mistake. I'm always going to do this. I can't do this. The self-limiting beliefs. But then more often than not, especially here in Texas, the coaching culture is to lead with shame.
00:57:13
Speaker
For sure. Now, this is what we get into, fight, flight, freeze. Kids are now making decisions because they don't want... to be shamed. To be shamed. They don't want to get yelled at dad in the car ride home. They don't want to walk to the sideline and face coach. Yeah. and Which then only leads to fight, flight, freeze versus flow state. Yeah.
00:57:37
Speaker
Yeah. It's crazy what we're doing to kids. yeah yeah ah it's Are you familiar with Dr. David R. Hawkins? No. Awesome. he's got ah His book, Power Versus Force, is really interesting, and he puts emotions on a scale of consciousness.
00:57:54
Speaker
And so shame is actually, as he describes it, the lowest vibrational emotion. And then guilt is really just right above that. And then it's a logarithmic scale that if you start to learn how to nap, like, yeah, where am I in these range of emotions and like the vibration of them? And how do i release some of, i mean, we can really go off.
00:58:19
Speaker
The emotion code is another thing that I'm really big on because we trap emotions in our bodies and we we are electromagnetic beings. So you can actually pull those emotions out with magnets and intention, which sounds crazy, but I'd be love to hear your thoughts when you go down this rabbit hole. Yeah, when you go go down the rabbit hole and we'll circle back on this one. um Yeah, like we are holding emotions in our bodies that we've never processed because we weren't taught that an emotion is just 90 seconds. And if you can be with it, then we internalize the emotion of shame into I am shame. And I have a whole word diet wormhole that we can go down. But like I am are the two most powerful words in all of language.
00:59:02
Speaker
Anything that comes after I am, we are creating. And so this is, again, where it comes back to thought defense, where you got to take every thought captive and understand, like, what am I saying about myself? Am I saying I am a bad person or I am feeling bad about that? And like, you made a
Cultural Shift towards Emotional Intelligence
00:59:17
Speaker
beautiful distinction there on how we have to start separating the two and recognizing when we're saying i am x like one of my favorite lines, hey, don't talk about my friend like that. When people get to the stage where they're verbalizing it, you know it's bad.
00:59:30
Speaker
yeah You know it's real bad. If they're verbalizing it and can't hear themselves in it, then you know that the internal landscape is way worse. um And so learning how to parse that out, learning how to um find words that actually don't serve us and swap those out because words are energy as well. Everything is energy and everything's carrying energy, emotion.
00:59:53
Speaker
So our bodies are holding emotion that we haven't fully cleared. That's attracting more emotion because it's all a frequency and a vibration. And so when we're holding a lot of shame and guilt, and I think that that is just rampant in our society, especially within sports culture.
01:00:12
Speaker
And how do we give, and not to make this a male versus female thing, but I think that there is something, you know, to make a sweeping generalization, men haven't been given permission to feel their feelings and emotions like women have. And then women have been weaponized for it. Right? So, like, we have this interesting...
01:00:35
Speaker
collective awakening to emotional intelligence that's happening right now that I think is so important for humanity. It's so important that we create safe spaces in sports for guys to feel their feelings and emotions and process them in a healthier way. It's so important that we don't demonize women for the emotions and feelings that we do express, right? So like there's this beautiful thing and i think sports is such a good training ground for that.
01:01:00
Speaker
Like there could be a cultural revolution in sports just around emotional intelligence in and of itself, because that's where so many of us are learning these things. It's the fun part of our day growing up, hopefully. But then we've got so many coaches out here that are bringing these energies because they haven't processed their things that it's just continuing to cycle.
01:01:23
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's what I'm going after with social emotional leadership. Yeah. It's bringing that in. And then, yeah, shame is a big part of that. So helping these kids understand it. So when they are shamed from the outside world or, ah you know, school, parents, bosses, future, whatever, they now have the self-belief and strength to say, that's yours. That's not true.
01:01:50
Speaker
Yeah, and I love to quote Big Daddy at times like this where it's like, you're not mad at me. You're mad at your dad. have you So, yeah, and understanding and and seeing that, especially in the age of social media where people are jumping into comment sections and then... like We were talking about that last night, Brooke and I, where it's like... People, like...
01:02:12
Speaker
What is going on in this world that you you've got time to do that, eh? And that's how you want to spend your time is like going after people in comment sections about just read like just don't like don't watch this if you're going to get upset or triggered by it. Go watch something else. Like there's endless amounts of content for here for you to go enjoy versus like put energy towards like it's we live in a wild world.
Guided Breathing and Visualization Practice
01:02:38
Speaker
Which then while sport can be used a tool and vehicle for sure prepare them for future. We are same page Susans.
01:02:49
Speaker
Yes. I don't know where Susans came from. but It's alliteration. Betsy Benz. we werere just i do i yeah I do love a little alliteration. It's one of my favorite things. Yes.
01:03:00
Speaker
What I do want to spend a little time with to wrap up is ah sample for the listeners at home to then walk themselves through a visualization, whether it's five minutes. Yeah. We don't have to do the sound bath.
01:03:14
Speaker
Okay. Yeah, we can... I'll share a link. Okay. So that, yeah, if listeners want to like do like a 10-minute version that does include sound frequency, we can do that. But I can walk us and close us out now with what I call my breathing ground technique. Okay. And this is... um It's pretty simple and it's it's scientifically designed to regulate your nervous system from any state, right? Like I think there's, you know, there's learning about like, am I in a freeze state versus am I in fight or flight and recognizing those are two opposite sides of your system. And so you actually need like,
01:03:47
Speaker
different tools sometimes to do that, but this is designed so like no matter where you're at, like it's going to bring you into this centered moment. um Are you ready? I'm ready.
01:03:58
Speaker
Do I close my eyes? We stand up first. Yeah, I know. I know. Okay. So first and foremost, we got to start shaking. So shaking is something that like, yeah, get the get a booty jiggle, thighs, wrists, flop the elbows and the arms and just like really, you can like bounce it out. Like, you know, like when you see an athlete on the sideline, like getting it ready. yeah Yeah, it's like, exactly. So you're shaking this out and animals shake the, like if a gazelle gets away from the lion, it goes into the bushes and it shakes and it's releasing stress hormones. It's getting you out of your mind. We're gonna start twisting side to side and get a little spinal twist. Spinal twist activate your vagus nerve, which is the longest nerve, biggest nerve in the body. And that signals that to your parasympathetic, like, okay, we're slowing down. We're, we're getting safe. And then we do a few head rolls, release tension in the neck. We hold a lot of it there. Stress energy, go the other way.
01:04:56
Speaker
Once you feel sufficiently shooketh now, we'll sit down. Get shook. And find like feet flat on the floor, shoulders stacked over hips, nice tall spine.
01:05:10
Speaker
Bring your right hand to your belly, left hand to your heart. And start to come, if for those of you are listening, if it's safe for you to close your eyes, please do so. Otherwise you can just find some place to like softly gaze.
01:05:24
Speaker
Start to come to the bottom of your next exhale. Empty all the air from your lungs. And we're going to do a diaphragmatic breath first. So start to inhale through the nose and fill up your belly first. So like a big balloon, expand the diaphragm.
01:05:36
Speaker
Then start to pull that up into your chest, expanding the lungs. Sip in a little bit more air here. Go past full. Soften the shoulders. And now we're going to do a physiological sigh. hi Perfect. Let's run that back. So inhale into the belly first.
01:05:55
Speaker
Then start to pull it up into the chest. Sip in a little bit more air. Soften. Exhale, let it go. ah Beautiful. One more biggest breath so far today. So inhale into the belly.
01:06:09
Speaker
Start to pull it up into the lungs. Sip in a little bit more. Hold a little bit longer.
01:06:18
Speaker
Let it go. ha Start to move into box breathing, originally known as samabritti. So inhale for three, two, one. Hold full of air for four, three, two, one.
01:06:31
Speaker
Exhale through the nose, four, three, two, one. Hold empty for four, three, two, one. Let's repeat that. Inhale, four, three, two, one.
01:06:44
Speaker
Hold, four, three, two, one. Exhale, four, three, two, one. Hold, four, three, two, one.
01:06:56
Speaker
Take two more rounds at your own count, your own pace. Trust your breath to be your guide.
01:07:28
Speaker
I love it. At the end of this second round, just want you to pause and notice where you're at.
01:07:35
Speaker
Notice the fluctuations of the mind. Kind of let thoughts start to pass by like clouds.
01:07:43
Speaker
Start to observe any sensations in the body that might be happening.
01:07:51
Speaker
And I want you to bring to mind one of your most favorite flow state memories ever.
01:07:59
Speaker
Moment of peak performance where you were just so aligned in the flow. Time slowed down. Start to really relive that moment through your mind's eye. Start to feel what was happening in your body.
01:08:21
Speaker
Kind of toggle back and forth between that first person perspective and that hovering above third person perspective.
01:08:34
Speaker
Take a deep breath in. Imagine you can smell this place.
01:08:42
Speaker
As you exhale, really sink into that flow state.
01:08:57
Speaker
Start to gently wiggle your fingers, your toes.
01:09:04
Speaker
For the sake of time, I'm going to pull us back out of this.
01:09:09
Speaker
Start to come back into the room, opening your eyes.
01:09:17
Speaker
There's a little mini taste of how you can regulate your nervous system to start to visualize. like I think the the trap is that we just tell athletes to go visualize and they don't know how to calm their mind down to a space where then they can actually just focus on the visualization. So using that breathing ground in moments of emotional dysregulation or to prepare the body to like, okay, let's clear clear the slate so that we can actually focus on this.
01:09:47
Speaker
ah Yeah, that's what I'm going to take people through every single time. Love it. Yeah. If people want to continue to learn from you, where do they go? at At make one day happen is, um yeah, Instagram. I've got a podcast. got an app.
01:10:07
Speaker
got an app for that. So we are, I'm actually working on a custom app that will create custom sound visualizations and kind of Amplify and scale that process right now I do if you know if anyone's listening wants to work on a custom thing together specific for an injury or a sport or a goal Whatever that might be um They can reach out on Instagram. I'm also Sheena Jean looks like Shana. It's pronounced Sheena. It's a whole thing But I'm sure we'll put all of this in the show notes. Yeah, I am obsessed with visualization and helping people identify what that one day vision is. like That's kind of where that comes from. It's like we all have that like, oh, one day I want to be in the Olympics or own that land or whatever it is. We all have different one day visions. But like finding clarity on that and then helping people make that happen is amazing. my life's purpose and passion and so there's any way i can be of service and that i would love to connect sweet yeah well namaste thank you for coming out to dripping springs absolutely you so much this is just one of those amazing
01:11:14
Speaker
universally divine, cosmically timed, just, okay, yeah, let's do it. So thank you for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity. Oh yeah, this is, I got a lot of notes, a lot of fun. And thank you for tuning in.
01:11:28
Speaker
I forgot about that one. it's Okay. Thank you very much. Hey, this was amazing. Thank you so much. There's still lot left to cover. We can run it back. can, we can absolutely run it back.