Celebrate All Wins: How To Define Your Own Wins and Win More Often - Episode 51 w/Coach Bryn

"I looked in the mirror and I smiled at myself today. That's a big deal.

You better celebrate that." I'm excited for you to see this week's episode, but before we get to that, I have a message for you. If you're a parent of an elite athlete or a coach of a high-performing team and you want— you're looking for some help or assistance with making them more mentally resilient, perform with more confidence, be more consistent, anything like that, then this is for you. I have an 8-week program all designed to address exactly that, to help your athlete be at their best on a more consistent basis and not get tripped up by those little voices in their head and getting down on themselves for mistakes, but performing like we know they can. So what I want you to do is don't delay, schedule a— just grab a time on my calendar through this link and let's set up a time to talk about your specific situation and how what I'm offering in my 8-week program can help. Okay, so it's brindresher.com/freeconsultation. So click this link, grab a time on my calendar. I look forward to talking to you. And now on to this week's episode.

Welcome back to another episode of the Mental Advantage Podcast, here with another solo episode for you. So we all know what it means to win, right? If you've seen some of my previous episodes, we've talked about skill over scoreboard and things like that. But I have this beef with athletes and high performers alike. Y'all don't celebrate enough. You do not celebrate enough. When I work with my athletes, I have this practice where I call it CAWing, C-A-W, celebrate all wins, celebrate all wins, right? And I say, especially the small wins, especially the small wins, except a lot of people just, if you ask them like, hey, what's a win that you had today? What's a win that you had this week? They're like, oh, does it have to be this week? Oh, I got something really exciting coming up like next week. I got this happening. And every time I'm very confused because I'm like, what? A win is up to you. So today on the Mental Advantage Podcast, we're going to be talking about how to define a win. You need to be defining your own wins and you need to be celebrating more often because burnout is a real thing in sports. Okay, if you're not enjoying yourself, you're not going to continue the course, and it could lead to more drastic long-term things, right? Where you either quit on your sport, you're quitting on yourself, and then even more drastically— and we're not going to go too heavy into it— we quit at life. So we have to give ourselves these wins, right? And the way that I look at it is, if you've ever been on a long trip, I talk about how the destination is so far in the future, right? If I'm currently in California and I'm going to drive to my hometown of Chicago, right, where I was born, it's gonna take over 2,000 miles for me to get there. Now I know for a fact Chicago is there. You can't tell me it's not. But if my only time that I can be happy is when I'm in Chicago, it's gonna be a really long trip, okay? Because there's 2,000 miles until celebration. Which means I need some kind of benchmark, something to keep the fuel going, right? Obviously the car needs gas every 200— currently the car that I have access to is 280 miles, you know, for one tank, right? So every 280 miles, that means I'm gonna have to fill up at least 10 times on the trip. At least 10 times, but we don't fill our own tank. You athletes are hard on yourselves. You high performers think that only wins are only big, they have to be big. So if I can only celebrate when I get to the end, the finish line, right, then I don't have a lot of momentum to go on. So we have to get in a practice of defining our own wins. So I'm going to help you define a win today. We're going to talk about defining, redefining our and how to celebrate more often. Okay, so the first thing you need to do is you need to know that a win is up to you. You get to decide. You get to decide. A win can be anything. It can be small, it can be big, it can be anything that basically just something that happened that moved in a direction of where you wanted to go. So for example, If you're a parent and you fed your kid, if you're an athlete and you actually practiced today, you got your reps in, right? You got to practice, then you got your reps in. You had some successes, you had some lessons. Like, all of those are wins. Not just that— that's not cumulatively a win. That's a win, right? I threw up 300 shots and I made 200 of them. Okay, yeah, now a lot of us are focusing on that I missed 100, but I threw up 300 shots. I put up 300 shots in one practice session. That's awesome. Okay, I used to go to the court every morning during the pandemic, and it was my therapy to go to the court by myself, 5 o'clock in the morning, and throw up 300 shots and work on my free throws. And I enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it.. But you know what? Every day, the fact that I got up, I got dressed, I got out of the house, I got my ball, I walked to the park, I had a notebook, I took notes of every shot I took in sets of 10, and I kept track of my percentages. I, you know, I enjoyed the process. I enjoyed the process. So it's really important that we celebrate all wins, right? Because if we're on that road trip, We need to fuel our own tank. We don't celebrate ourselves enough. We're hard on ourselves. We are very self-critical, and especially high performers. You guys think that, like, you know, you got to focus on what you're doing wrong. But see, that's the opposite. You need to give yourself, your brain, some sort of indication that you're doing a good job so that it'll keep giving you signals to continue the journey. Okay, so remember, a win again is just something you did that moves you in a direction, and it is something that is going to give you like, hey, a little pat on the back. We don't acknowledge ourselves enough. We're big on telling our kids good job. We're big on telling our teammates high five, man, that's awesome. We're not big on high-fiving ourselves. This is what Mel Robbins is talking about every morning with her high-five habit. Like, just high-five the mirror. Most of us don't even look in the mirror, let alone give ourselves a high five like, "You're doing a good job." There's this great quote that says, "You're doing better than you think you are." And the best way to start to recognize that, you got it, is to celebrate your wins. So I don't want to get frustrated anymore where you're telling me, if I ask you what a win is, you should be able to come up with them. Like this. Okay, now I recognize that you haven't been training yourself around winning, right? You haven't trained yourself around, I'm a winner, I'm always winning, life is always working out for me. So you're gonna have to get your reps in. You're gonna have to have— I recommend, I, I already talk about a gratitude journal. I want you to have a wins journal. I want you to add the wins column to your journal. Okay, I want you to have a gratitude section where you celebrate through 3 new things. Uh, you give gratitude for 3 new things every day that you've never given gratitude for. Like, have you ever given gratitude for the fact that you have a separate camera? Because for some reason my DSLR is not working today, so if I didn't have this camera, this podcast would not be happening, okay? Because it's not turning on. So have I ever celebrated this little webcam that I had when I didn't have a DSLR? Working as my webcam? No. So I'm going to celebrate this thing, right? So you're going to sell it, you know, you're going to— I'm going to give gratitude for 3 new things that you haven't given gratitude for. And then I want you to have a wins column where you find 3 things that you're winning about. Like, hey, I got up today, I recorded a podcast, okay? I washed my hair. That's a big deal, right? Whatever it is, find something that you're winning at. And you're gonna— you need to do that because it's like the compound effect of more wins are going to give you the momentum to keep going through the tough times. To know that just because it's 2,000 miles to Chicago doesn't mean I'm not making progress, right? I got through, you know, Southern California, I made it across the border. Yes, celebrate! I made it to Arizona, right? I got started on the trip, that's a big deal. I got a full tank of gas, I got the tunes list. There's so many things you can celebrate. All right, so I really want people to recognize we're not giving ourselves enough credit. You're not acknowledging yourself enough. You're great at doing it for others. You're great at celebrating other people's wins. I've never seen somebody so passionate than a sports fan of a sport that they've never even played, or they used to play. And I mean, these people paint their faces, they get so excited, but they also suffer terribly the defeats. We have to get to a place where we honor ourselves, and not just the wins of others, but our own wins, right? Our own wins. Because those wins are going to help us keep going. That's the most important part. So next time— right now, actually, right now, before I finish this episode I want to make sure that you have a win. So in the comments below this video, I need you to type a win. One win, something, just one thing. Because if you don't type it, then you're not honoring yourself. And believe me, you've got one. And it needs to be— here's the other thing— it needs to be in the recent past, not in the future. So I don't want you celebrating that you're going to vacation, you know, 2 weeks from now or next week or even tomorrow. I want you to find something today to celebrate right now. That has already happened because you didn't acknowledge it, you didn't honor it, and that's not doing justice. We need to define our own wins. I tell my athletes all the time, if your only win is that scoreboard, then that is 48 minutes, 60 minutes, 2 hours depending on your sport, right? 3 hours, whatever it is, of nothing. Like no definition. Like, hey, wow, we didn't win. Sucks. We won. Yay, right? But what was your personal contribution? What are you proud of? Because if it's just that scoreboard, then you're delaying— you're not honoring yourself enough. And this is why there's so much burnout in athletes. There's so much mental, um, you know, fatigue and, and even mental health issues because we're so big on, am I being successful? Do other people think I'm successful, you know, based on what other people's criteria are. So we got to start honoring ourselves. You are the best commodity that you have. The only way that that car is getting from California to Chicago is if I'm driving it, if I'm driving it, and if I'm honoring myself along the way, even if the car has to stop 10 times, right, for fuel. I have to stop for fuel. I have to eat. I have to sleep. I have to go to the bathroom, right? So I have to feed my body. My body needs a certain amount of fuel. But I'm not giving my brain a lot to like be excited about. So if I stop at every state line that I cross and I take a picture, that could be a win, right? But then it's like, well, I don't know, Texas is a really long state. It might take me hours, right? So then I need to find other wins, right? This is why you have the car games, right? Something to give your brain like excitement, like, oh, now I'm looking around for different states' license plates and stuff like that, right? Or, or Oh, I gotta find a different car, a different brand. I'm looking for all the exciting different colors or all these things. So when in the essence of what we did for children, we need to be doing for ourselves, but how to give ourselves something to concentrate on, celebrate, have fun with so that we continue the journey. Okay, so I know now that you got it. You're gonna celebrate more wins. You're gonna write one below this video, and I'm so excited to hear about them. And from now on, when somebody says, hey, Hey, did you have a win this week? I want your hand to shoot up. I want you to be like, oh yeah, for sure. I had one today. I had one 5 minutes ago. I got up and I, you know, I went, I brushed my teeth. That's a big deal. That's a big deal. I looked in the mirror and I smiled at myself today. That's a big deal. You better celebrate that. You got up and you went walking. That's a big deal. Okay, you ate your breakfast, you stretched, you put some activity in your day. You talked to a friend and laughed. That's a big deal. All right, because those are the things that are going to help you show up bigger and better in your life. So this has been today's episode of this week's episode of the Mental Advantage podcast. Obviously, we'll be back next week with another powerhouse guest. Thank you for listening and watching and liking, subscribing, and commenting below. All right, make sure you share this with a friend, and I'll see you next time.