Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Especially for Athletes podcast, where we explore essential principles that empower athletes to learn life's most valuable lessons through sports.
Speaker: Hi, everybody. Welcome to the Especially for Athletes podcast. I'm Dustin Smith here with Justin Miller, who's filling in for Shad today. And our special coach, Virajo Bustos, also known in the in the mental and sports psychology world as Coach Vijay. Coach, thank you for joining us.
Speaker: Yeah, excited to dive into the conversation today. A little bit about coach. um and and And if I mess this up, please, please correct me, coach. But I see here that you've got degrees, bachelor degrees in exercise science and sports psychology and a master's degree in human performance from Adams State University. Is that that's right, right? That's right. Yeah. Awesome. That's a lot of school right there.
Speaker: How long did that take you to get that all done? Well, you know, I was able to double major in my undergrad during my time there. um So it's kind of cool. The high school that I went to in New Mexico, I was able to get a lot of those college credits before I even graduated high school. So I was a little bit ahead. And so at the time, you know, there wasn't like the you can work toward your graduate degree. Like there wasn't any of that really. Well, I was an athlete still. So I double majored. I got two bachelor's degrees during my time. And then I went overseas to play in Greece. And once I got back, then I decided, okay, I need to get my master's. And so I just, they, uh, Adam state had a human performance, um, master's at the time. So I said, okay, I'm going to get that while I still know some of the professors and all that kind of stuff. So it was kind of cool. I was an assistant at Western state university while I was getting my master's at the same time. That's cool.
Speaker: Well, you say you played overseas. You were a three-time All-American in basketball at Adams State. And you also, it looks like you did some track and field, did the high jump. Is that right?
Speaker: You know, it's funny the way that happened. um Yeah. So Adam State, if you guys don't know, Adam State is kind of known as a powerhouse and cross country and track and field and that kind of world. And so the coaches, they knew that I had been doing the high jump in high school. i was a state champ and they got wind of that and they, you know, do all the metrics and legit like, OK, we're going to be we were projected to be two points short. And so they came to me and said, hey, would you be willing to do this? We just need you to place like fifth place or something and then we'll win. And so it's one of those where a senior year finished my basketball season. I think I practiced for like three weeks, went to the conference meet. I don't remember what place I got, but that place got me like second all com or second team all conference, something like that. We ended up winning. That's the only time I have a conference championship was the three weeks I practiced with track and field and was able to get a conference championship with the track and field team. How about that? Well, that's awesome. That's, that's awesome. And hey, kudos to your coach for recognizing that you could come in and do that. And in three weeks to be all conference, that's, that's amazing.
Speaker: let's how long i was still on shape ah yeah yeah How long did you play in the EuroLeague over in Greece? Just one year? Did you play professionally? Yeah.
Speaker: I was there for one year and it was one of those where it was an amazing experience. I got so close with um my coach at the time to where I went back and I was the maid of honor in his wedding. um i largely consider them my Greek family. And that's literally kind of what the premise of my book is about, was about my experience playing overseas in Greece and some of the adversity, not some of, a lot of the adversity that was faced during that time. And just a little bit of strategy of how I overcame that was some of the things I knew at the time with mental performance. um yeah
Speaker: strategies and techniques and knowledge has increased probably 20 fold since then. So I'm in the process of writing the next book. But if you've written a book, you understand how tough that is to really hone in on what the messaging is and all of that kind of stuff. Okay. Awesome. Well, that's going to be perfect because we want to hop into some questions in relation to that. One of the things that we work with our athletes on and with the parents of the athletes is this idea of of how do we teach or or help kids learn how to be resilient. um
Speaker: Resiliency is something that we all know in life. you don't have it, you're going to probably get trampled on at some point. And and we learn to be resilient. I often say that we don't know how resilient we are until we have to be resilient, right? We might, you might think we're a resilient person until life kicks us in the teeth. And then we find out really quick if we really are not. Um,
Speaker: with what you teach and with what you talk about and do, you know, how important is resiliency with athletes and what are some ways that you think parents and coaches can, are there some ways that we can help kids learn how to be resilient other than just letting them live life? Is there, is there are there are there things we can do to teach them resiliency? Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, for sure. And where I always kind of like to go with this and when I'm working with groups, working with athletes, even corporate athletes, as I like to call them right, even adults when I'm working with. The first question I always like to start off with, like, is what does resilience feel like?
Speaker: Right. So think about when you're in the thick of adversity, when you're going through hard times, what is having to be resilient actually feel like? Does it feel good or does it feel bad?
Speaker: Right. So when you're in it, like you're in the midst of adversity, it never feels good in that situation. right You're having to be resilient. It means that there's some kind of challenge or opposition or something in your path that's causing you to not be able to do what you want. You're not getting the outcomes or something in your way, right some hard thing, some obstacle that you're having to overcome. And in these situations, I think it's sometimes just teaching that resilience doesn't feel good. When we come on the other side of it, that's when we you know get the confidence and everything once we're on the other side of it, once we've summited the mountain. But when we're on the climb, when there's all of these obstacles in front of us, that's where sometimes I think we lose ourselves because we think, well, I'm not resilient. I must not be resilient because I don't feel confident right now or because I don't feel good right now.
Speaker: But it's mostly just teaching everybody, not just athletes, but just us as humans in general, that when you're in the midst and the thick of adversity, it doesn't feel good in that moment.
Speaker: And when you do have doubt and frustration and discomfort and discouragement and all of these feelings, that's the human emotion when you're in it. But it's in continuing to persevere and continuing to stay disciplined and move through even with that discomfort, even with that discouragement.
Speaker: That's again, where you're building your resilience and building your evidence to continue moving forward through the next hard thing that you go through. And so what I would say when it comes to this resilience is like, yes, understanding that as you continue stepping out of, I call it your dead zone, you've probably heard this before in my social media. i despise the term comfort zone because a comfort zone is a beautiful place where you will never grow. And so once you're actually taking those steps outside of your dead zone,
Speaker: you're always going to be feeling some type of discomfort. You're probably going to be failing in some shape or form. And it's in those situations, that's where you actually grow. And that's where you're actually developing and becoming more resilient every time you do take a step outside of that dead zone. That's where it's one of those where you do find and get closer to your potential because you're doing the hard thing.
Speaker: Yeah. I like the way you worded that. And you said discipline, you know, when you when you're, when you're not feeling, when you're feeling that, you know, that an easiness or, or, you know, that this is difficult being disciplined. and another ah thing we talk about, in fact, it's the first chapter of our book.
Speaker: First principle we talk about with kids is winning the hour about being mindful of the moment and focusing on the now, right? You can control what's going on now and how you you know react to things, um but not worrying about what's happening in a week from now or what happened yesterday. yeah you can't You can't fix that. um And I'm sure that in your world, this idea of being present and mindful with, whether that's breathing techniques or or imagery or whatever it is to help get yourself focused. Could you talk to us a little bit about how how could we can stay in the moment and be mindful of what's happening now and not be distracted by
Speaker: what's coming up or what happened yesterday. Well, when you're talking about being present and in the moment, in my mind, that's the only way that you can really get into flow or the zone, right? If you're time traveling, whether you're time traveling into the future, that's where anxiety lives. If you're time traveling and you're living in the past, well, that's where depression lives, right? So when we're not in the here and now, that's where some of these, um if you want to call them like mental baggage kind of attaches itself to us, where we kind of end up in the mental training room, if you would.
Speaker: And just a quick differentiator, um I'm mental performance, whereas mental health is the opposite end of the spectrum up from where I'm at. Right. So just a quick analogy to help people understand what I do. Like I'm a mental performance coach. I am not mental health.
Speaker: So mental performance is like the weight room for the mind, whereas as mental health is like the training room for the mind. Now, if you're thinking about this, like as for a body, right? So just think of an athlete for their body. Both are equally important.
Speaker: You need the weight room to build up your body and you need the training room to go to fix your body when some kind of injury happens. And if you're asking a coach to pick, which is more important? how How do you pick that?
Speaker: I mean, they're both equally important, but in very different measures. And so this is kind of the same space that I attack this like mental performance. This is me helping to strengthen your mind. This is me helping. to So you develop some of these strategies and techniques on how to overcome some of these situations when you are depressed, when you are anxious. Right. Like, let's get you out of the training room by developing some of this stuff.
Speaker: And so just quickly wanted to give a differentiator with that, um that I'm not mental health. and just when I do sometimes get parents or athletes come to me as I hold hold up, like that's that's not my expertise here. You probably need to go talk to an actual therapist or a sports psychologist or or somebody in that field.
Speaker: Yeah. Well, both are important. Like you said, yeah're we're going to need both. And in the mental performance world, that's something that I, I, wish we had more accessible to young athletes. I know it's becoming more accessible in the collegiate ranks and of course in the professional world, but in the high school ranks, there is some mental health stuff available, but the mental performance stuff seems to be a major area that's that's sort of skipped or or not really investigated as much as it could be. And I think,
Speaker: it would help prevent you know so the trips to the training room, you know the the mental health stuff, which just like you said, using the body, the the more you train and stretch and lift and take care of your body, the you know less likely you are to have an injury. um And so that, that, but when you, you know, when you, when you have an athlete who is struggling with staying focused or getting, yeah um you know, anxious in a moment, a pressure moment, do you talk to him more about breathing? do you talk to him about mental imagery? Do you, do you have ah a certain, uh, um, I don't know what, uh, uh, uh,
Speaker: a method that you try to share with them to help get themselves back to being focused? What, what would you say if I came to you and said, I'm struggling with staying, and the the pressure of the moment seems to be getting to me and i I can't concentrate. What can I do to, to calm myself and stay focused on what's in front of me?
Speaker: Yeah. So every athlete is different first and foremost, right? So before I would actually pepper you with questions to figure out what's actually still in your focus. Is it actually the pressure?
Speaker: Is it the anxiety? Is it your inability to actually like, because pressure and staying focused, like they're completely different things once you unravel it a little bit too. Right. So our work as mental performance coaches is to kind of get to the issue to figure out like what's causing all of this in the first place.
Speaker: Right. So when we're thinking about pressure, first, us most and foremost, um you're thinking, okay, like these pressure situations, what's causing you to feel this way in the first place? Right. So where I like to start is oftentimes just describing and explaining what the body buzz is. I call it the body buzz.
Speaker: Okay. So oftentimes, whenever we're about to do something meaningful, the outcome is important to us and we might be judged on the outcome or the result. Okay, that's largely when pressure happens. Like I care about the outcome, it's meaningful to me and I might be judged on said outcome.
Speaker: So in these situations, what tends to happen? Well, we start to get our heart rate increases, our adrenaline, our cortisol levels, the butterflies, all of this kind of stuff. Right. And so it's just teaching the why behind it.
Speaker: And so this is one of those that anybody who has ever been to one of my keynote sessions before anybody who has been a client of mine um has heard this. So I'll give you guys one of the things that paying clients only ever get for your listeners and for your people.
Speaker: You will never think about butterflies the same way again. Okay. And this is one of those things that I wish everybody understood and knew about pressure. So again, once you're facing something meaningful and important in the moment, what your body does is it says, you know what?
Speaker: I don't need to be digesting food right now. So what it does is it sends blood away from your digestive system to your muscles and your brain. And that feeling of the blood going away from your digestive system is the sensation that you feel to be butterflies.
Speaker: And so I ask all the athletes that I work with and backtracking, I always start with confidence because for me, that's the foundation. If you don't believe in yourself, it doesn't matter what kind of technique, it doesn't matter what kind of strategy that we build up. If you don't believe in yourself in that moment, not a lot else matters.
Speaker: And so backtracking a little bit with confidence, first source of confidence I talk about is practice and preparation. Because there's two kinds of anxiety butterflies that we get. The first is if you didn't do the work, well, you're probably going to have those butterflies and and anxiety because your brain knows that you didn't do the work to prepare for the moment that's in front of you.
Speaker: That's one of those tests. Now, the people that I work with, whether it's athletes, corporate athletes, whoever it is, these people I know are doing the work. And so when it comes to this, if you have done the work, if you have practiced, if you have prepared, this is actually your body's way of telling you that you're ready to meet the moment.
Speaker: This is your body's way of telling you like, yes, I've done the work. And so this is one thing that I tell my clients all the time to tell yourself in this situation. This is what excitement feels like.
Speaker: This is what excitement feels like, right? Because again, when you think back to all the most memorable moments in your life, think about like literally all the most memorable moments in your life was not every single one of those moments preceded by some type of anxiety or some type of feeling of butterflies or your heart racing.
Speaker: Every single one. But for whatever reason, when we do get the body buzz, right, and this is again where we talk about pressure is a privilege. Pressure is a privilege, Billie Jean King. Well, again, can we unpack that? What does that mean? Why do we say that?
Speaker: Well, first and foremost, if you're feeling the pressure, that likely means you have to do the work to be able to get into that situation, to be in a pressure situation to begin with. It's easy to be a couch surfer and do nothing, just scroll online all day. Like, are you ever going to feel pressure in that situation? No. If you're feeling pressure, it means that something is meaningful. Something is important. The outcome is probably going to be viewed by other people. That's something special for the work that you've done to get to that space.
Speaker: But what happens is once we feel the body buzz, what our brain does is it says, I don't like the way this feels because the outcome is uncertain. It's unknown.
Speaker: And I don't like uncertainty. And anytime the brain is dealing with unknowns or uncertainty, what the brain says is, I don't like the way that feels because I can't predict the outcome. So we tend to take a step back into our dead zone.
Speaker: Right. So it's just kind of teaching that what we do is we stay locked up in this self-imposed prison of ours. We stay locked up in our dead zone. Anytime we feel the butterflies, anytime we get the body buzz, because our brain doesn't like that feeling because it's new, it's unknown, it's uncertain.
Speaker: But understanding that, again, when you're dealing with adversity or you're dealing with pressure, or you're dealing with anxiety, whatever the situation is, first and foremost, did you do the work ahead of time, which I know you already did.
Speaker: And secondly, it's just understanding that this is your body's way of saying like, okay, I'm ready to meet the moment, but you have to assign the meaning to it. Right. Because society has taught us the moment we feel the butterflies, we automatically attribute that to nerves.
Speaker: Most people think when they feel the butterflies, oh my gosh, I'm so nervous. I'm so nervous. I can't do that. Well, no. Right. When we've also know like the difference between the way your body responds to nervousness and excitement. I'm sure you guys have heard this too. It's all over social media. It's everything I teach too. The way the body responds, whether you're nervous or excited, it's exactly the same thing.
Speaker: The only difference is the word you choose to give it and the meaning you send to it. Yeah. We, it's so funny you said that because we just recently said, you know, maybe four weeks ago had a conversation about reframing things. And and that's kind of what you're saying here is re right. Reframing. This is the nerves and excitement.
Speaker: It's just how you look at it. Right. It's, I'm nervous. I can't do this or you reframe it and I'm excited because I'm ready for this. And it's just getting ourselves in the right train of thought to be able to deal with that. I love the way you worded that.
Speaker: um Justin, I know you have a a couple of questions you want to throw off the coach before I do that. You look really good. And I do too. And our new and collar shirts that were provided by our new sponsor and collar. I'm wearing mine. Just put, just took it out of the the box last night. Love the way it feels. So thank you and collar for the, uh, for the shirts, Justin, I know you had a couple of questions.
Speaker: Yeah, coach, you just talked about pressure a little bit, and that's something that I've been thinking about more and more. I think as Dustin and I both coach quarterbacks, so we coach youth quarterbacks down seven or eight years old up to high school and college and even some that have gone and played professionally.
Speaker: um With playoffs coming up for fall sports and high school and things like that, I think pressure gets talked about a little bit more. And you said that quote of pressure is a privilege. And I can't get out of my head a thing I listened to probably a few weeks ago, and it was talking about how we kind of reframe pressure in some ways and It was saying that pressure in most instances can just be a story of how we're shaping this in our mind. There's probably some outcome that we care about.
Speaker: And so how can we reframe pressure or a pressure situation into something that we've done a thousand times, whether it's make a three pointer or throw a strike or whatever it is,
Speaker: we have these situations of now there's additional meaning because people want us to win. We need to win this game. And so this certain aspect of my sport becomes more important to me and to other people.
Speaker: Do you feel like or do you have any insight on How do we kind of manage that story of do we want to say that there is additional meaning and pressure or do we want to avoid that and say, no, it's just something that I've done all my life and it's just another shot or it's just another play?
Speaker: How do we reframe that in our mind or keep it in our mind, but not get trodden down by that pressure feeling and feel like there's additional weight on our shoulders or that this does mean more than it does in practice?
Speaker: Yeah. So when you're thinking, again, big games, big situations, right? We're playing in the playoffs. We're talking about so talking about the playoffs. So as a coach or even as a parent, right, we're talking to our kid. If we come in and just say, this is just another game.
Speaker: Well, that's kind of lying, right? Because we know that it's not just another game. There's actually more importance and more stakes tied to this game. So instead of talking about it just being another game, because now we're lying to ourselves. And again, our brain is too smart to know like, okay, now now they're lying to me in a sense. So instead of saying like, and and taking away the importance of the game, go back to the skill.
Speaker: It's not just another game. It is a more important game. There are more stakes to this. It's winner go home at this point in time, but the skill hasn't changed. Right. So it's about where you're pointing. And I know we talk about the the spotlight a lot. Where are you pointing the spotlight?
Speaker: We don't want to talk about the game in and of itself. We want to talk about the skills that you've already trained for years and decades to come. And so it's just kind of shifting that spotlight on where you're putting your focus. And so this is where I kind of go back to talking about the definition of mental strength.
Speaker: I prefer to call it mental strength over mental toughness because I think mental toughness has kind of gotten or become a cliche in some instances. And mental toughness is thrown around in, I think, all the wrong ways these days. And so I like to call it mental strength. So if you talk about mental strength, first and foremost, mental strength is where you choose to put your focus.
Speaker: Where are you choosing to put your focus? So if you're focusing overly on the outcome, focusing overly on the game, again, and we go back to this, it's ah all about the perception and the perspective that you tie and attach to the meaning.
Speaker: So again, perception, right? We talked about, let's just talk about perception here in a minute. So you've probably heard this before. Anybody sports psychology who studied it has heard about challenge or threat.
Speaker: Okay, so the perception that you bring to that situation, let's talk about a playoff game. Well, if I go into this feeling threatened by that moment, I'm probably going to perform in accordance to.
Speaker: I feel threatened. I feel like my skills don't live up to this meaning. I'm feeling the the body buzz and butterflies and everything. And if I say, okay, I'm nervous, right? That's giving into the perception in that situation.
Speaker: And so it's mostly just, again, the hard part with this is can you help your athlete, whether you're a parent or a coach, see what the situation is. You talked about the narratives and the stories, right? The perception and the perspective with that to change the narrative to what they see in themselves without trying to become something more than they are.
Speaker: Because what I often see with a lot of teams that I work with, um, they try to be somebody they're not, right? So now all of a sudden we're playing in a playoff game and instead of playing to their role, and instead of doing the thing that they've been doing all season, they try to be more than what they've done all season.
Speaker: So now they're playing out of their role. Now they're out of their comfort zone. Now the body buzzes even more so. Well, of course you're not gonna play great because you're trying to be somebody that you're not. And so backtracking for everything. Let me just start off by saying,
Speaker: Anytime you're playing in an elevated situation, you have to go instead of a prove it mindset to a show off mindset. What a great opportunity, to right? We're going back to the perspective here. What a great opportunity for me to show off what I've been building my entire career.
Speaker: What a great opportunity for me to show off what I've been working toward, not just me, but my teammates. What a great opportunity. Now, remember, we're not arrogant here, but I am showing off with the skillset that I've been building my entire life.
Speaker: yeah And so again, it comes back to the perception and the perspective that you can bring to the moment, the narrative and the story that you attach, the meaning that you attach. And I go back to all the time, right? Confidence. It's largely what you believe to be true about yourself. Now, I'm not saying that if you believe in yourself, you're going to get the outcomes you want every time, but you at least put yourself into a situation to at least get to those outcomes sometime.
Speaker: Because I don't know of a single athlete. I don't know of a single performer in whatever arena it is that proverbial or not that you're competing in. If you don't believe in yourself, how can you be your best? Right?
Speaker: Right. So we have to have that belief first and foremost, that belief in ourselves to then go and do the thing. If we don't believe in ourselves, that's kind of when things start to fall apart, right? And we've seen this playoff oftentimes in athletes too, doubt, discouragement, frustration, those things kind of break apart. We just lose belief. That's why we stop competing because we lose the belief in ourself in that moment.
Speaker: is Is that coach, you that is that loss in belief? I mean, if you have a, if I've missed, if I've been missing free throws and now I'm on the foul line in a big game,
Speaker: ah you know um i may not be confident myself because I know I've missed this before in this moment. So is there something that you help an athlete with to sort of,
Speaker: I mean, I know what I would say as a coach, but it's, it's just coach speak. It's, you know, let it go. It's you, but you know, you're fine and we're going to make mistakes and we're going to miss shots sometime that you could, you got this, you're, you know, you're gonna knock like what, how do we help athletes forget about, or just people in general, forget about the the time they missed it so that it doesn't affect the now because they've made it before as well. But how do you reframe that for the athletes?
Speaker: This is one of those where there's like four different forks my brain just went on where I could i could take this question. yeah yeah um Let me go back to let's go back to the sources of confidence. Okay, so there's three inner sources I teach, but there's also three outer sources that I teach. So the three outer sources of confidence, and not to take this in a different area, I'll come back to it, but...
Speaker: surprisingly, when I ask, and again, i travel the country and I ask this question, doesn't matter if I'm talking to middle schoolers, it doesn't matter if I'm talking to pros, it doesn't matter if I'm talking to corporate America. i always ask, where do you get your confidence from?
Speaker: The vast majority of people have either one, never been asked this question and two, never stopped to think about where they're actually getting their confidence from. Like, where do you get your, what's the source of confidence for you? Where do you get it from?
Speaker: And when I ask this question, I'm not kidding. 99% of the time when I'm asking youth, and for me, I define youth as pretty much high school and younger, right? Whenever I ask youth, where do you get your confidence from? 99% time, answers the first three answers they typically name another person.
Speaker: My coach, my mom, my dad, my teammates, a brother, a sister, somebody they look up to, a role model. So what that tells me is that young people tend to find their confidence in our validation.
Speaker: So this is the first source of outer confidence is validation. Second source of outer confidence is comparison. And I know we can talk about this all day because you pick up your phone. That's the biggest comparison metric that we have, right? And we're comparing ourselves not now. For us, when we were growing up, we were comparing ourselves to people in oure our community, maybe our state.
Speaker: Right. If we went to these big national tournaments, like maybe once or twice a year, that was that. But now kids are comparing themselves every day to people all across the world. Right. And it's not even now with with athletes, they're not just competing with people in the USA but for scholarships now. It's worldwide.
Speaker: Okay. So that comparison. So again, comparison can largely work against us. This is why it's an outer source. Now, can you find confidence from comparing yourself? 100%. But again, this is an outer force.
Speaker: Third source of confidence, recent success. And this is where I come back to where you're talking about, okay, I missed this. Okay, so recent success is an outer source of confidence. And this is largely one of those where athletes have to see this for themselves because when things are going well, when I have that recent success built up in my past, now I'm confident.
Speaker: But again, what happens when you did miss your past four three throws? What happens if you have a four game stretch where you're averaging 10 points below your average, right? If we're dependent on those feelings, if we're dependent on that lack of recent success, well, now we know why our confidence is crap.
Speaker: And so this is where, again, this, I always start off with confidence. First and foremost, what we have to identify for ourselves is looking at these outer sources of confidence. Validation, which is a big one with youth athletics, even pros sometimes, right? And it's human nature for us to seek that validation. We want to know that we're doing good. We want to know that you believe in us. We want to know that all of these things are working in our favor, right? And it helps when other people tell us that. Comparison and recent success.
Speaker: So can you identify one, two, or all three of these, which one is stealing your focus and which one is causing your, or which one are you depending on for your foundation?
Speaker: Because this is building your foundation in the sand. This is not going to hold up under pressure. This is not going to hold up in the moments that matter. Right. And so this is where I go back to. you know And when we're talking about like, okay, yes, you got this, you've done it. Okay. But first and foremost, we got to unpack it. We got to get to the source. You're depending on recent success for your confidence.
Speaker: If you're depending on that, no wonder why your confidence looks like this. We don't ever want ups and downs, valleys and plateaus, right? We kind of want that flat line in a sense. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: I like that that's that. I just wrote that down. that's You're right. we could go We could be on here for five hours with what you just said and go all sorts of different directions. um Justin, didite did I interrupt you before? Did you have another follow-up question?
Speaker: Yeah, I think you had mentioned the one of those first sources is just your preparation and the work that you've put in. i think for me, when I played college football, there were a lot of times in my head where I felt like i had put in that work and i I didn't feel like I was lying to myself. I know a lot of people do where they they are lying to themselves and you can see it and you can see it in how they end up playing. But for me, I took a lot of pride in my preparation, but there were still times going into games where I would think, could I have done more?
Speaker: And i would start to second guess some of those thoughts of, Have I prepared enough? Did I put enough work in in the weight room or in the film room out on the field, things like that?
Speaker: What would be some of your advice in those cases where the athlete has put in the work, but they might be second guessing or are not sure if they have put in enough work?
Speaker: Let me just say that this is human nature. in these situations. Okay, so let's, let's talk about the inner sources of confidence. So the inner sources of confidence, first and foremost, is practice and preparation.
Speaker: And again, anybody that I work with, I'm preaching to the choir, i don't have to tell you to put in more time, but backtracking again, okay, this is the hard part is, um you know, we have an hour and to try to pack everything in that I did just it's just so hard. So there's three things.
Speaker: as human beings that we can train. We can train our body, right? So that's our strength and conditioning that's getting in the weight room, that's building up our body and all these things to be the best athlete we can be. We can train our craft specific to the sport that you're playing, right?
Speaker: And then we can train our mind. Now, whenever this is a cycle, kind of, and they all kind of work together, whenever one of those gets stuck, it causes the other two to go offline. So as an example for you, okay, you you built your first two and most athletes do. 99% of athletes are working on those two. They're building up their body, strength and conditioning, weight room, all the things. They're building up their craft, right? So for you as a quarterback, you built up that.
Speaker: But what about the third gear? What about the mind? Okay, so then we go back to the inner sources of confidence. Again, first and foremost, practice and preparation. That was you with the foundation, the first two, body and craft.
Speaker: But oftentimes what athletes fail to do is put that preparation with the third gear. And oftentimes, once we start getting to higher levels, and this is often why I don't typically work with youth too much, because going back to that fourth source of confidence, practice and preparation, if you don't have a minimum of 5,000, 10,000 hours, it doesn't matter what kind of strategy, technique, or any kind of hack, if you want to call it, that I can give you. If you haven't put in the work, none of that's going to work.
Speaker: As an example, I say, I love tennis. I love golf. I love these sports, but I haven't put in the work to be good at it. Now, do I know a ton of strategies and things that can help me mentally? 100%. But it's not really going to help me with that skill because I haven't trained it up to be good enough yet.
Speaker: Right. And so when I talk about the body and the craft, I put those on the bottom and the mind is on the top. It's kind of like a triangle. Well, those two are the foundation first. You've got to put in the work with that.
Speaker: So first and foremost, first source of confidence, practice and preparation. Second source of confidence. Once you have put in the work, once you have put in the time, once you have developed your mastery and competence, you've got This is the source of confidence that causes the most hurt, I guess, if you want to call it, that causes the most problems.
Speaker: The second source of confidence comes down to your mindset and your self-talk. So Justin, like you were talking about in that situation, you did put in the work, you did put in the time, but you doubted yourself.
Speaker: in that situation. That's where the mindset, and this is where you probably heard this the cliche, you got to talk to yourself instead of listen to yourself. In that situation, you were probably listening to the discouragement. You were listening to the doubt. You were listening. I call it words of poison.
Speaker: We are either speaking to ourselves the words of power or poison. And oftentimes when we get to a situation, right, we're out of our dead zone. We're playing in an important game. We're in a situation that matters. What tends to happen, again, the mind doesn't, it says, it what tends to happen,
Speaker: our mind tends to go to the worst possible outcome, right? Anytime we're out stepping outside of that dead zone, our mind tends to go to the worst possible outcome because it typically hasn't been there before. If we haven't had that recent success or that evidence, it's like, okay, this is new. Can I do this? Do I have the skillset for that?
Speaker: Right? So what we have to do in these situations, is we have to build up the second gear. We have to build up our mindset. We have to build up our ability to see the situation for what it is. How we're assigning the perception and the perspective that we talked about to overcome some of these feelings that we have.
Speaker: Right. Because once we get the body buzz, our brain kind of goes offline a little bit. And let me just give really quick the third gear. Sorry, the third source of confidence is good old fashioned courage.
Speaker: It's just being courageous, right? Because sometimes you're going to put in the work. You're going to do the work you now know you need to build up the second source with your mindset and your self-talk. There will still be situations in your life where you don't feel confident going into it.
Speaker: But remember, if you felt confident, you wouldn't need courage. And we've also heard, and you probably, everybody who's studied this stuff too, says that action is the best way to build confidence.
Speaker: right? You get confidence by doing the thing first. And sometimes you just need courage to just go and do it. 20 seconds of insane courage. I got this from the movie, We Bought a Zoo with Matt Damon, right? 20 seconds of insane courage.
Speaker: What you do is you just go do the thing. You just go try it. Once you're in it, then you're already going through and you get that momentum, right? But it's just your ability to do it. And what I would say oftentimes, and this is some of the advice that I give everybody that I work with and some of the hardest advice it is to follow for myself make somebody else tell you no.
Speaker: Make somebody else tell you no. What we often do is we discount ourselves and we Tell ourselves no before we ever go after the dream or the thing that matters to us. We talk ourselves out of it. Oh no, I can't do that. Whatever it is that you're trying to achieve in life. We talk ourselves out of the dream.
Speaker: Well, if you put yourself out there, right, that takes courage and vulnerability first and foremost to go put yourself out there. We're so afraid of being told no. We're so afraid of failing. But what would you achieve? What could happen in your life if you actually put this in practice and just go started doing the thing?
Speaker: Actually implemented courage in real life. Easier to say, a lot harder to do.
Speaker: I like that coach. Will you, um, mindset, self-talk, courage, uh, remind me the first one in confidence. It was preparation. Practice just and preparation. Okay. Sorry. I'm writing some of this down.
Speaker: Yeah. So the three outer sources, validation, comparison, and recent success, three inner sources, practice and preparation, mindset and self-talk courage.
Speaker: And the outer source is what most kids, youth, or when you ask 99% of them, it's one of those three is where they feel like they are all. of money Sometimes it's all of them and not just kids, right? Like when I work with pros too and you see it and it's like,
Speaker: I mean, oftentimes with pros, it's not just the validation, right? Like as you get older and you develop that, you don't always depend, right? It's not a dependence on that. Um, but recent success is often a big one in comparison, right? Like once you start getting to those higher levels, comparison can often be one of the biggest things that steals your confidence.
Speaker: But comparison can be a great teacher. You say courage, um, You know, we recently did a thing on courage because I think most people misunderstand, don't really understand what courage actually means. Courage isn't not being afraid of something.
Speaker: Courage is doing something despite of that fear. So I love the way that you said courage is that, yeah, you might be afraid of this fear. moment or this, this, op this thing you're gonna do, but courage is just do it. Just, you know, just get going on it. Like you said, you won't know until someone tells you no. So don't tell yourself, don't talk yourself out of it until you've actually, it's going to be hard. It's going to be difficult.
Speaker: Courage is doing it despite your fear. It's okay to be afraid of the moment or be afraid it's get in there and do it. And then you realize, Oh, okay. Yeah, I can handle this. And then You know, some confidence comes from that, right?
Speaker: it's I like that you brought courage into that because that's such a such an important word. And I think oftentimes a misunderstood word. we think we're not courageous because we're afraid of something.
Speaker: it's Of course, it's okay to be afraid of something. It's doing it, you know, in spite of the fact that you're afraid of it, that that's where courage comes. Yeah, 100%. Well, Justin, do you have any more questions for coach? If not, I got one more.
Speaker: Yeah, coach, I think my last question was, in part, where did you start to learn a lot of the techniques and things that you teach now? um And do you have any maybe mentors or people in your life that have helped you in that way? um Or whether it's like a another coach, like a Nick Saban or somebody that you don't know personally, but who are some of those people that influenced you kind of on your journey?
Speaker: I study Kobe Bryant a ton. I think a lot of like the definition of mental strength and it like got it from Kobe. A lot of the things I just, he was my favorite player growing up.
Speaker: And so there's a lot on, you know, podcasts and all like there's tons of stuff with him and his mindset and the way that he tackled adversity and the way he tackled pressure and all of that. That's kind of like the baseline for where I build a lot of my stuff. um I wish I could say that I did have a mentor who I've learned strategies and like, was you know, I'm kind of like their protege. I've never had anybody like that in my life when it comes to the mental game. and Even though I have a degree in sports psych and a master's in human performance, um I wish I could say that school prepared me for this. I don't know I use a single thing that I learned in school when I'm actually working with athletes.
Speaker: Um, but what school did teach me is that learning never stops. And so what I do is I, I'm a, I love reading. I'm a voracious reader and it's oftentimes in, in, it's in reading something and maybe listening to a podcast that you start to make connections, right? And then from those connections and, oh, this spotlight or spark light kind of goes off in your mind. Um, but yeah, I wish I could say, I will say somebody that I do enjoy listening to is Inky Johnson.
Speaker: I'm sure you guys know of Inky Johnson. I think he's very inspirational and listening to his stuff sometimes will spark a new idea for me. So I i do enjoy listening to Inky. Well, I can, I can, I'm a huge Kobe Bryant fan as well. And and I've studied, listened to as everything I can on him because of what you just said, his mindset and his approach and his discipline and his, there's a great phrase that he used that he doesn't negotiate with himself that I've used thousands of times with athletes that, you know, we, the the old Indian or American, Native Americans chief sitting bowl said that there's
Speaker: There's two dogs inside of us and they're fighting all the time. And the one that wins is the one that we feed the most. And that becomes the alpha dog. And Kobe Bryant, you know, he doesn't negotiate with that other dog. and It's, he feeds the dog that's going to help him, you know, be on and be ready and be, and we all have that other, you know, devil on our shoulder or whatever that wants to negotiate. And well, what, maybe you shouldn't do this, or maybe you should sleep in. And I loved his approach if he doesn't even give it.
Speaker: he 100% won't listen to It's hard, I mean, I'm sure it's hard to do and it's difficult, but that phrase of not negotiating with yourself was something, there's so many things he has said. And and but I wanted to ask you maybe along the lines with some of Kobe Bryant's stuff as well, because he was getting into, before he passed away,
Speaker: He was doing a lot of work with his daughter's basketball team and club. um Years ago, we did an event where we ah we had just female athletes and coaches and we and we had some other female um leaders that did the teaching. And want to do it again because I do think that, um and I wanted to ask you your opinion on this.
Speaker: Do females... do females require a different type of, or do men require a different type of of mental strength, or or do they compare themselves more? I had a coach college basketball coach tell me that her athletes were more interested, she found, or she believed, they were more interested in her validation than it then you know what was happening on the court. And she had to learn this the hard way that if she showed disappointment in her face towards something they did, it seemed to affect them more than it did the males. and And I don't know if that's just her team or what, but have you found that when you're working with females or would you tell a parent who is or a coach who's working with females versus males
Speaker: Is there a difference in the two? Do males need to be talked to differently? Do they respond differently to certain things or is there any difference there that you've noticed?
Speaker: ah What I would say, i think it's unfair to stereotype an entire gender, right? Like there are some guys who are more sensitive than some of the girls that I work with. There are some girls who definitely depend on that validation more than anything else. But I've also worked with men who have developed, you know, needed that validation. So I don't like to stereotype an entire gender. And I don't think that's fair to do. But I would say that it's human nature.
Speaker: Right. So when you're thinking about these six sources, like if I were to ask the both of you, do you sometimes depend on validation? Do you sometimes find yourself depending or wanting maybe not so much a dependence now that we've kind of grown into ourselves? We have mastery. We have competence. We have that belief and self-assurance in ourselves. And as we do that, right, we depend less and less on it. But when you're talking about an 18, 16, 14 year old kid, it doesn't matter if they're a boy or a girl.
Speaker: They're probably dependent on that. And I would even go back to it and say like, okay, so let's talk about validation between little boys and their dads. You mean to tell me that this little boy doesn't depend on that validation from dad?
Speaker: Right. So you see how we can kind of, it doesn't matter the way that you go about this. Like there's always ways that where you can kind of pinpoint it. And i and i'm not I'm not saying that all girls need validation and boys don't. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not saying it's an either or. What I'm getting at is, are there a different, do you, do you believe that there are different ways to handle the male athlete versus the female athlete? or there better tools with one or the other or or they is it just the same? You coach both of them exactly the same.
Speaker: I coach everybody the same. And even the youth athletes that I work with, I even sell them first and foremost, like for me, an athlete is an athlete. I will treat you the same way that I treat my pros.
Speaker: That means that you are taking responsibility for all of the things. So as an example, even if I'm working and I don't, I mean, the youngest I work with typically is like, you know, sophomore, junior, senior in high school type of a thing. But like, if you have an issue, like I expect you to come to me, not mom.
Speaker: If you want to cancel your monthly package or whatever, i expect you to come to me, not mom. If there's something like you can't find a time on my schedule, you know, these kinds of things where, again, we're talking ah before we started recording, we started talking a little bit about like um sometimes parents and coaches take on that protector mindset, right? Where I'm going to take away the hardships in your path so you don't have to deal with that.
Speaker: Well, if we do that, like, again, we just start spent how long talking about it's in doing the hard things, right? It's in developing that resilience that makes us better with that. And so sometimes the hard part is actually letting the kid struggle in some way, shape or form.
Speaker: And going back, like, it doesn't matter, girls, boys, um I treat everybody the same. I'm sure coaches do too. it
Speaker: Boys, girls, I just say every athlete is different. That's why I think six sources of confidence and you the way you, everybody's different, the way that I work with an athlete. That's why oftentimes there's no one size fits all answer when it comes to the mental game. We have to dig. We have to figure out like what's what's charging you? what's Where are you finding these sources? What's going on in your mind? What biases do you have? What limiting beliefs do you have? What perceptions do you attach to the moment? What narratives are you attaching onto? Right. So that's what makes sometimes the mental game a little bit hard is because as an example, like for you guys as quarterback coaches, when it comes to the fundamentals of the game and when it comes to the mechanics of the game, you can identify immediately what a quarterback needs to work on when it just comes to his mechanics. Okay. Right. Footwork, whatever it is, you can just see it when it comes to the mental game.
Speaker: We can't see what's going wrong. We can't see their limiting beliefs. we can't We can only see the outcomes of that, the frustration, the doubt, the discouragement, the negative body language, all of these things. So the hard part is actually digging in and getting into the why behind the reason why they're doing these things.
Speaker: Yeah. Well, Coach, thank you so much for joining us. We could go on and on and and take your whole day if if you gave it to us. But we've ahve we've taken enough of your time. We've gotten into a lot of lot of stuff here. is there something, where can people find you or learn more about what you provide and and the the training that you provide?
Speaker: So the athletic specific site is mentalitysolutions.com. And my speaking site is coachvj.com. Okay. CoachVJ.com. Well, Coach, thank you so much for joining us. Justin, thanks for filling in. that Everybody out there, keep your eyes up and do the work.
Speaker: Thank you for joining the Especially for Athletes podcast. To learn more about Especially for Athletes organization, get a copy of our book, The Sportlight, or to bring our program to your team, school, business, or organization, visit us at especiallyforathletes.org.
