Mastering the Mental Game with Dr. Pete | The CJ Moneyway Show

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What's up, my good people? Welcome to the CJ Moneyway Show in association with Believe Entertainment. Today we have on the show Dr. Pete, assistant professor for the Department of Applied Psychology and director of behavioral health and wellness for Rutgers University Athletics, joining us today. Welcome to the show, Dr. Pete.

So happy to be here, and thanks for having me. And I hate those introductions, all those stupid silly titles.

Hey man, hey, you work hard for them, you are the best. I appreciate you coming on today. So Doc, Let's start off, man. Tell us a little bit about yourself and about your background.

So yeah, as you mentioned, I'm a psychologist. I was trained in counseling psychology, and today I work primarily with high performers. And what that means is that could be like executives, you know, CEOs, presidents of companies, people that are just trying to like achieve really high optimal levels of success. And then athletes. That's kind of how I started there. I was an athlete myself, grew up in a family of athletes.. And so I found myself now with this kind of specialty of, you know, working within the field of sport and exercise psychology. And I'm also a professor, you know, so that's kind of a unique position where I'm also doing some research and training kind of future providers in this field.

So Doc, you say you play sports, but what kind of sports you play?

Well, you can't tell here because, you know, we're recording. I am 6'3". I'm tall. Usually people are always— they laugh when they meet, especially after COVID, they meet you after you're a box in the screen, they're like, oh, you're taller than I thought you were. But I grew up, you know, what I think we did well in America, where you played different sports every season. So you'd play soccer in the fall, basketball in the winter, and then baseball in the spring. I never played football. My parents didn't allow us to. Fun fact, I've actually never even been to a school with a football team, uh, ever. All my elementary, high school, and colleges have not had football teams.

Yeah, that's rare. It is rare.

And here, actually, the football players I work with kind of joke— I laugh about that. I'm like, look, I know nothing about football. I've never even played or been into school with it. But I swam. I was a swimmer. I was a Big East champion and, you know, kind of compete at the highest level, Olympic trials. And my brothers played baseball, um, also went to pretty high levels baseball. And so in high school, I decided to start swimming, and I just kind of gave up the other sports and just focused on swimming and earned, you know, scholarship and Like I said, compete at the highest level in the Olympic sport of swimming.

Oh man, that's cool, man. That's what's up. So Doc, as the director of behavioral health and wellness for Rutgers University Athletics, what does this role entail?

So it's a comprehensive program. I mean, CJ, you know, the world's different today and we talk about mental health in a way that we never did. And I'm sure, you know, no matter where you live in the world, you know, we're recognizing the importance of mental health. So the role, I created it in a way. There was one sports psychologist at the university, and I'm also a sports psychologist at Seton Hall University and have a private practice, and we sort of consult and help other organizations build systems to provide both mental health and mental skills training for athletes. But I started at Seton Hall when I was studying for my PhD. We started to build a program there. At Rutgers, when I was a professor, there was one sports psychologist for many years, 15, 20 years. There was one person. It was 4 or 5 different people, but there was only one provider. And right before COVID there was this gap because the person had to take leave. And I came in, like, the chief medical officer knew I was a professor and said, hey, can you fix this thing and build a system? Because obviously no system can function on one person. So That's the long answer to then say, like, this whole behavioral health and sports psychology unit I built, it's comprehensive. So it's mental health treatment, it's group therapy, it's group skills, recovering from an injury, for example. It's substance use, it's learning and other psychological evaluations. So there's lots of things that psychologists do, and our team does all of it. And so we have a whole team of people that kind of oversee all these different areas.

Mm, that's a pretty smart guy right there to be a swimmer, huh?

Well, you know, you spend a lot of time by yourself as a swimmer 'cause you're just, your head's underwater and you're just swimming in circles round and round and round.

Oh yeah, so there's a lot of thoughts going on, huh?

A lot of thoughts.

Oh man. And so, Doc, as we talking about the behavioral health, talk to us about the mental health aspect of it and its effect on athletes, especially in the world of sports today?

Yeah, there's a direct relationship between mental health and performance. So it's a correlation, like as one goes up, the other one usually goes up, you know, positive correlation. So if my mental health is getting better, my performance will get better. If my mental health goes down, my performance goes down. And so it's critical today. I, you know, I think most coaches recognize that. We're still trying to find our way. I mean, a lot of sports— I don't know, what are your favorite sports?

I'm a big basketball fan. I like football. I watch baseball during the playoffs, right? Can't sit down and watch a full baseball game during the regular season because there's 100 of them. So yeah, yeah, 162 of them, man, it's not like that. Yeah, yeah, too many, man. So yeah, doing, you know, playoffs days. So I like all sports, you know, but mainly basketball and football.

Yeah. And so if you think about football, it's like pretty aggressive, you know, and, and so where, where is there space in that aggression for emotional intelligence and mental health? And it's, you know, so we're sort of trying to carve out that space, you know, so that finding ways that we can build connection, destigmatize the role of mental health, you know, in individuals and, and their performance. And, you know, it's kind of across all sports, but I think every listener would understand football, like how aggressive it is. And then now come talk to me about your feelings. It doesn't always match and exist together. But we're doing good at that. I think we're trying to change that because we recognize that the science tells us the healthier somebody is holistically, the higher they're going to perform.

Yeah. Just by happenstance, I was looking at something this morning about Deion Sanders, Primetime. He was on the All Up in Smoke podcast and they asked him a question like, have he ever went through, you know, battled mental health issues? And it was shocking to hear that he said that he did. You know, when he was playing baseball with the Cincinnati Reds and you know, or whatnot, he said he tried to, he had thoughts of killing himself, man. He said, but when people, when he was out, people was looking at Prime, but they didn't know that he was going through this depression, man. So I guess my question is like, So with the technology and things that you guys have now and the things that they're trying to do in sports, like with the helmets and things of that nature, are you trying to detect it earlier, these type of symptoms, than they did back in the '80s and the '70s where we were just going buck wild with it?

Yeah, you buck wild and just, like, suck it up. That was the intervention. You know, and Coach Prime, like, shout out to him to own that story, 'cause it helps a lot of his players and the younger players who hear that, what a beautiful kind of platform he's created. And I love watching the superfan, 100-year-old, you know, they just sang to her this past week and it's just really beautiful. It's kind of, you know, this older white lady with Coach Prime. Like, it's a beautiful thing to kind of see that together. You know, if we can keep working towards that. But like, he's not alone, right? Like, there's lots of other celebrities like Run-DMC and other folks that have talked, you know, very openly about, you know, their challenges with mental health and suicide. So we are trying to, CJ, detect it earlier. You know, we are, our science has gotten better. So the helmets kind of relate to concussion and, you know, neuroanatomy, brain health, you know. And so, and there's a direct connection with all that. So we're trying to get better at it. It's not perfect, you know, and I don't know if it ever will be, and that's okay. But we're just trying to get better at it. And, you know, but we all go through something. So the truth is, if All Up in Smoke, if they asked him that and he said no, I would have been like, you're, you know, I would have tilted my head a little bit because We all have something. I mean, I've never met someone who hasn't gone through something. You know, sometimes I'll be doing a meeting, I'll be like, who in this room knows somebody in their life that has struggled with substance use? Nearly 100% of the room will raise their hand. You know, whether it's a neighbor, a family member, there's always something, you know, and to recognize that is, you know, one step, but then actually to like take the action it takes to decrease it and improve our well-being is a whole nother step. And that's where the beautiful part of where I get to work.

Just to ask you a question on this side of the fence, man, I know it was one point in time, probably a couple years ago, because by doing the show, I talk to people about mental health. I have others that come on, that came on that have dealt with this issue and things of that nature, and it's pretty amazing. But I was going through something myself, so I just want to ask a question. I didn't know that when you had some type of anxiety, you start feeling different. It was one point I was scared to drive on the highway. I was getting nervous on the highway. You know, just want to turn around and get off. Like, what do these type of things stem from?

I mean, CJ, I love that, you know, thanks for telling me that part. What it stems from is just being human. You know, I think sometimes back in the '70s or '80s, some early psychologists were looking for reasons and usually blaming people's parents. You know, I mean, a lot of the early research was saying that, you know, the parents kind of attachment and all that's— I don't, you know, I don't mean to joke fully, but like there's some truth to that, but there's also just the part of being human. So that's the beauty of what I get to do with about the brain. So the brain, CJ, if you were walking outside and there was like 4 tigers who hadn't eaten in 2 weeks, you want to be anxious because that's going to keep you alive. So anxiety is adaptive. Unfortunately, in life, because of phones and just the way we beat highways, our brain doesn't know what a highway is. Our brain doesn't know what it means to drive in a car at 70 miles an hour. If you think about it just from an evolutionary perspective, our brain was just walking. It was trying to find its next meal. So it's adaptive to feel these things. And so what we do from a cognitive behavioral therapy perspective is just build a relationship with it and just have to understand it. And then we have strategies and techniques to help people kind of deal with it. So Driving on highways, things like that.

Yeah, thanks for that insight. Hey, so Doc, let me ask you a question, man. How can we learn to let go and live our lives without burdens?

Well, why does it have to be without burden? Just accept the burden. I mean, burden is, you know, I always joke is that my mom would say that, you know, life stinks and then you die. You know, very, very optimistic mother that she was. But there's truth to that. I practice Zen and meditation, and what you learn through the meditation work is life is full of burdens. That's actually the first noble truth. You say that life is suffering. We all suffer. And so I don't know if there's ever a time that we eliminate burden. So let's work with it. Let's accept it.

Yeah, that's a good point because life, as we talked about before we got on here, life is all about trials and tribulations. It's just how you deal with them, how you go through them, and how you look on the other side. So, so Dr. Pete, tell us, man, what are some ways we can manage personal growth and development through every stage of life?

So the way you do that is to be uncomfortable. And I like that you actually asked it around like every stage of life because there's, you know, depending on listenership and there's all different ages of people and demographics that are likely listening. And so if you're like midlife, you might just be pretty static, you know, like you're kind of just doing what you do and it's pretty monotonous. When you're younger, you're just looking to push the envelope and kind of do some crazy things. So, you know, not— you don't have to do any crazy things, but just start to think about like what you want to do to be uncomfortable. Because if you're so comfortable kind of doing the same thing over and over again, you're not going to grow. And so we think about that from mindfulness perspective, is that you have to have pain to grow. Like growing pains, quite literally. And so just think about, you know, how comfortable are you and just kind of lean in and create opportunities to be uncomfortable.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, because life will bring you some uncomfortable situations. I think I was leaving work this morning, I just had a thought in my head, you know, like a lot of time, as you said, younger people, we think that we just, we're going to push the envelope because we think we have a long time or, you know, life never ends. And then you get a lot of young people now that may look at, me or yourself and be like, oh, they old, you know, they don't know what they're talking about. But something just crossed my mind this morning when I got off, like, man, wish that you can be older, because being— getting older comes maturity and growth in life. Because as you say, you deal with pain points and you deal with certain things in life, and as you get older, you start gaining more wisdom and understanding about things. But I would rather get older and learn how to deal with these things than the, you know, suffer at a young age and may not see it as a lot of people do now.

Absolutely. Yeah.

I love that. Yeah. So, so Doc, man, tell us, tell us about some of the journals and some of the media outlets that you have contributed to.

Yeah. So, I mean, I'm really fortunate to have worked with a bunch of different sort of New York-based television shows. And because it's really, CJ, like everything is behavioral, you know, like any kind of news story you're reading or You know, if you like sports, you're watching it. There's always something behavioral. You know, we're watching athletes, for example, as fans, but there's so much other stuff going on inside of their lives that we don't realize. Netflix has kind of given us a little insight into that with a couple of these series. Like, they did a series with the quarterbacks. Yeah, yeah. So you get to see, like, it's, you know, everyone just looks at these, you know, 4 hours on a Sunday versus, like, what's happening the other 6 days and before and after the game and you know, it's really a lot. And so yeah, I'm able to kind of help some of the local New York television news channels break down some behavioral stuff, you know, of course different, you know, magazines and newspapers. And this summer I did a piece with one of the authors of New York Times looking at ways that you can kind of get the best out of your summer, or like how to do a summer break, you know, just things that like help people. Is ultimately, you know, I thank you for having me on because like, you know, even just going on to other podcasts and different demographics to understand like how much, what we can do to improve our wellbeing. You know, like I think that that's sort of my calling is just trying to help people learn some tools and strategies just to make life better.

Well, I thank you for coming on, on my podcast for sure. And then, you know, these other outlets and platforms that you're going on sharing your message, because as I tell other people, I really appreciate you guys who You know, you are where you are in life and, you know, have done what you've done, but you have the fortitude to want to give back to others and want to help others, man. I think that's very special and unique for people that, you know, may be on a different level, but coming back and want to see others grow and others' well-being, you know, for others' well-being and to do good in life, man. And I appreciate you guys for doing that. So Doc, man, as you was talking about the New York Times and things of that nature and the things that you're, you know, you're doing in that aspect, What are some of your efforts to bring mental health awareness to the mainstream?

Lots of efforts. I mean, so social media, you know, I think thankfully a lot of accounts have taken off and, you know, blown up. When I first started doing like Instagram, you know, there weren't a lot of psychologists on there. You know, pretty quickly that whole social media thing kind of blew up. And so trying to get messages out that way. Also my own podcasts, you know, thinking about ways that you can just educate. So I have one podcast, When East Meets West, which my co-host and I, like, we really break down Eastern spiritual practices with Western behavioral science. So the idea of like what it means here in the West, like, you know, you and I in the US, to behavior, and then like how like the Zen world and people in the East would interpret the things that we do. And then I also have On Air with Dr. Pete, so hopefully you'll come on to that one day. Uh, just again trying to get, you know, different voices out there about, of course related to behavior, but ways that people can just I don't know, learn something. You know, not everyone can afford therapy, for example, you know, but you don't need— not everyone needs therapy. You know, you have to learn to like build a relationship with these burdens and, you know, you move on your life. It's a lot easier said than done, but maybe by just taking in as much information as possible, it is likely or could be possible.

Yeah, you know, as you say that, I'm thinking of another podcast that I'm thinking about doing. Actually, I was creating some stuff this morning for called Planting Seeds with CJ. And as you said, I think a lot of things, sometimes we don't need therapy, especially as men. We just need somebody that we can relate to.

Yeah.

You know, because we egotistical and, you know, other things of that nature, prideful. We don't want to tell everybody our business. But when I see that Dr. Pete may be going through something that I'm going through and he's sharing his experiences with me, it can maybe resonate something in me to open up more and say, you know, like, wow, man, I thought I was the only one going through this. So I thought I was the only one going through that. But when you see that it's a, you know, a bunch of us that's going through the same thing, and only men can really understand the things that men go through. We can talk to women and, you know, get their point of view and things of that nature. But it's just different when you can just relate to a man on certain things that you're going through in life, man. So that's something that I want to do coming out too. And I was going to be my next question to ask you about your podcast, you know, you also write, and about your humanitarian work, man. Tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, no doubt. So thanks for, like you said, like there's a difference in the men and how we approach this, but the humanitarian work is also kind of aligned with my values and it's not at the forefront as much right now, to be honest, because I can't lie. But when I was in grad school, I kind of developed this program just to try and, you know, with the vision of trying to provide cross-cultural experiences, which obviously there's programs that do that, but I think having psychologists kind of doing it can provide like a more kind of rich experience. I think sometimes some of these programs that are cross-cultural are very privileged-focused, you know, you need to have a lot of money to even be able to go on these voyages. And, um, so, and, you know, so it just self-selects, and that type of stuff really gets to me, you know, because that's not what life is, you know. Life is about It's more simple. It's— we're more connected. It's— there's a lot more similarity between us than differences, yet the world we live kind of focuses so much on our differences.

Mm, that is the truth. But again, like I said, you know, you share your information, your knowledge with us as far as mental health and things of that nature. But then again, too, on top of that, the humanitarian side, you know what I'm saying, of doing what you're doing, going to different countries and, you know, providing for the less fortunate or things of that nature, or, you know, just providing your time, man. That just lets me know and it lets my audience know the type of person, man, and the type of heart that you have and really appreciate you. So, Doc, man, you also an author. So can you tell us about some of your books and the inspiration behind them?

Well, I've written 2 books in my life and I wrote them both in the same year during COVID that first year of COVID I tried to make lemonade out of lemons and I had a little bit more time because in my world, I'm kind of all over the place. I drive a lot between the different sort of things that I do. So, they're all mindfulness-based. So, hopefully, if your listeners don't know what mindfulness is, mindfulness is something that we do on purpose in the present moment and without judgment. It could be something like artistic, could be meditation, but it's just a way of just trying to engage in the world in a more full way fulfilling way in the present moment. And the Mindfulness Workbook of this publisher I worked with, it's a generic— it's a general mindfulness workbook. So there's a lot of mindfulness literature for specific issues like eating disorders or substance use, but this workbook is very global. So anyone could use it. It could be a CEO of a Fortune 10 company, or it could be a stay-at-home You know, mom or dad, you know, it could be anybody. And so you just ways, the book just kind of helps people integrate it in their life because I really think that that is the way that we can actually like help decrease some of the burdens is just by like helping people understand ways that they can just navigate this thing called life.

Mm, yeah. Hey, so Doc, man, where can we get this book from? Where can we get the workbook from? Amazon, Barnes Noble, where can we find you at?

All those places. It's the Mindfulness Workbook for Beginners. It's on all those places. And I think even officialdrpete.com has like all the sort of socials and podcasts and websites and books and all that stuff.

Oh, okay. So Doc, man, I think I ran out of questions 'cause the one that I was gonna ask you last, you already answered that one for me when we talked about humanitarian work. So Doc, man, is there anything that you can leave us with, man, as far as any tips on mental health or any other wisdom or nuggets that you have for us?

Well, we're all just going through this thing, and I think just go through it, kind of see where life takes you. A colleague of mine wrote a book called Life is Sport. So for all the sports fans out there, you realize that, you know, in sports you fail. Most athletes learn how to fail. And so life, we fail. It's not all perfect. And so just understand that, you know, accept that and just get up and get to practice the next day. It's all you can do.

Hey, you heard it right here on the CJ Moneyway Show. We all fail in life, but when you fail, get up and practice and just think that tomorrow be a better day. Because remember, Kobe missed the most shots in NBA history. Jordan went too far behind him, but they're two of the greatest of all time. Hey, this your boy CJ Moneyway with my man Dr. Pete. Go grab his book, check out his workbook on his website and on Barnes Noble. That'll be in the show notes. We'll check you out later. Peace. Thank you for listening to the The Corwin CJ Moneyway Johnson Show.

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