Part 2: How YOU Hinder or Help your own Child's Performance ・with Mental Strength and Performance Coach Dr. Bobby Low

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Welcome to Finding Noble, a podcast where we climb into the world of young people's mental health and where we provide support for the adults who support them. I'm your host, Carly Red.

I do have something that came to mind from Coach King and he's a value based leader. Right. They have their value based system that he's obviously was one of the best to ever implement, but he talked a lot about self confidence and the best way to be a confident basketball player was to not actually focus on yourself, to focus on your team. And that actually makes a lot of sense to me with your present thinking. But I'd love your thoughts just on that concept of building self confidence in the moment, in the game, in whatever you're doing by focusing on others.

He's in that phrase. He's like kind of right, but also kind of not right. And don't get me wrong, I love Coach K, his philosophies. These are great. When you tell a player, when you encourage a player to focus on their team, it actually has very little to do with their focus on the team. And it gets their mind in this proactive mindset. So they're thinking about, okay, I got to make this pass over here or I got to set this screen over here. I know we're using a lot of basketball references, but that's how his brain works. Yeah, but like, but it gets them in that proactive mindset. And what Coach K is trying to help them avoid is getting stuck in that woe is me self mindset, which typically comes from if I've made a mistake or I'm not playing great. We start to get into that victim mentality where we're thinking, woe is me on not playing great. He's using a strategy to get them out of that mindset and thinking in a more proactive way. Now, players can. In fact, I oftentimes will tell players, like, just focus on yourself, but not the part that is the mistakes or the woe is me or the victim mindset there. I try to teach them, hey, just focus on yourself and executing your skills. If you know how to be a great point guard or a great host player. What are all those skills? That's what I want you to focus on to help execute your best. And here's what's interesting.

I'll.

I'll use the phrase selfish. Selfish and selfless. And I think somewhere in the middle there is a phrase called being assertive. So when you're playing basketball, you don't want to be too selfless because Then you're passing the ball too much and nobody's ever shooting. And you don't want to be too selfish because then you're playing like one person is controlling, you know, the ball hog or the black hole. Like one person is controlling the ball. And that can also be not a great strategy. But somewhere in the middle, what we call being assertive is the balance of both. So let's say, Eric, we're on the same team and we're running a play and we're working really hard to get the ball into the post and we do that. Now, what's the right basketball play in that moment? Well, we want the post player to go and make their move and score the basket. Like as a team, we collectively worked hard to be selfless to get that one play. But if that player plays selfless, we're going to make the wrong basketball play. We want them to be selfish in that moment. Right. And really what I'm describing is we want everybody to be assertive. And that means do your part to create the right advantage or to create the right basketball play. And that means the same thing. Let's say the ball rotates around the three point line to four players and there's one in the corner and they're wide open. What are they supposed to do in that moment? You shoot the ball. You have to shoot the ball. And whether you make it or miss the right basketball play is to shoot the ball in that moment. And the team collectively was assertive to shoot the ball in that moment and the team collectively was assertive, which is like a little bit selfish and a little bit selfless at the same time.

That makes sense. I have two thoughts on this. One, I'd love to talk about this in the sense of an individual sport or individual performance. It could be even competing at a piano competition or a tennis player or golf player. There is no way to put it on anybody else. It's just on you. I'd like to know what methods are best in that form of performance. And maybe we can touch on that in a second. But I would also love to talk about momentum. I think it is one of the most beautiful, unseen, tangible feelings that we experience in life is momentum. And when a team experiences momentum, it's the best feeling in the world. They're down and then they start to make a comeback and then that momentum continues on. They always talk about being down at halftime. We're still going into basketball. That could be football, but. Or soccer. But you never want to be down at halftime. Why? Because you don't have the momentum on your side. And so I'd love to talk about how momentum is created, the psychology behind momentum, if you could.

Yeah, well, let's break down momentum or getting on fire into its individual parts. Some of this comes from the research on flow. I don't know if you guys have read or studied anything on flow or flow in sport, but tons of great research in getting into that optimal state of mind with where you feel like you're just freely executing and playing great and whether you're running or playing tennis, like everything is just being executed perfectly. We call that flow. But there's a couple of pieces that we have to build up to that. Now momentum happens because a couple of things. One the, the players just exerted more energy. So we start to see that players move faster, they move that, that they're more intentional in their efforts, they're moving their feet, they're just exerting more energy. So that that energy is a mental skill. It shows up physically cuz you're moving faster. But you can choose to just elevate your energy and you can.

You almost say that that's hype, that they're more hyped than the other team cuz they're exerting more energy.

It can be described that way. Right now, not every player responds to being hyped, right? Some players want to be more calm and more relaxed, but both players can move faster when they're in those moments, right. What you're trying to do is get into an energy stage, a state of physical energy where you perform your best. Right. So I was a player that played better, more as just a calm, composed, controlled player. But I played with lots of other players who like really needed to get themselves amped. Right. The other thing to consider there is the sport changes too. Like you definitely don't want a golfer going up and chest bumping their caddy right before they make a six or eight foot putt. They probably want to be a little bit more dialed down, but you definitely want the linebacker going out and getting more energized right before they go and have to try to blitz the quarterback. So one piece just to keep in mind there, every player has to find their unique energy zone to then let that come out. But that's the first piece. Everybody can choose to just move faster and move quicker. That all starts with the words that we put in our brain. Now momentum also comes. A lot of people think momentum comes from the outcomes. Oh, I made two or three shots, therefore now I'm on fire. Really what's happening before they're making those shots is their confidence is going way up. They're believing they can make those shots. So their confidence is leading to a good execution of a skill. And then they're getting the outcome they want. And then now they're thinking, oh, I'm a great shooter, I've seen the ball go in the net a couple of times, or I'm a great quarterback because I've completed a couple of great passes now. And we think it's the outcome, but it's a little bit of a myth. It's actually the confidence that comes from executing those skills. So the first one is the energy, the second one is the confidence. You can choose to build your confidence just by using the words and the phrases, hey, I'm a great shooter, I'm the best shooter in the gym, or I'm a great wide receiver, I can catch any ball. So that's the second piece. Then the third piece is where is your attention. So this is focus. And when you get in the zone and when you get in those momentum phases, you're only focused on the specific moment, just the very next play. When we do our research with the Olympic athletes or any high level athletes, and we ask them to describe what were you thinking during that time where you were on fire? And some of them will say, well, I wasn't thinking at all. But most of them will say, I was just thinking about the specific task now. So if we want to break down what momentum is and then teach a player how to create, that's how we would do that. What's awesome is that when they're, when they have good energy and they're confident and that's dialed in and they're focused on how it gets exhibited is they make great decisions on the court of the field. And that's what we see. That's what we see. Oh, man. These. This team has momentum now. They have the energy. The momentum has swung in their favor. But the four pieces that are coming together is the energy's there, the confidence is there, their focus is dialed in, and they're just making great decisions. What I love about sport and what I love about performance is all of those things you can do regardless of whether you have momentum, quote, unquote, momentum or not. Like we teach players, think this way, and, and you're going to end up creating the momentum in your favor. It's not contingent on whether you made two or three baskets or whether you scored two or three touchdowns in a row. Or you've scored a couple of points playing tennis. A great example of this is you have guys like Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan. They could have games where they missed every, every single shot, but when they get to the last shot, what are they thinking? It's going in. It's going in. Give me the ball. Nobody else is going to shoot this shot except for me. Even if they've missed 10 in a row right before that. But that. All that has to do with their energy, their confidence, their focus and their decision making in that moment that's so interesting.

We talk about this a lot at home and I know, Eric, you'd be interested in this is we always say confident, not cocky out there. Because I think once you become cocky, you become more inward and you're uncertain about your performance rather than sure that you can execute, I guess, if that makes sense. Can you speak to that at all about the difference between confidence and arrogance?

Yeah. Well, there's three pieces and you just said all three words. There's confidence, right? Then there's being cocky and then there's being arrogant. Confidence comes from a strong self assurance in your own ability to execute a task that leads to an outcome. I am a good shooter. I'm a good Kobalter. I believe I can go and execute these tasks that will lead to me jumping high and hopefully winning. That is true confidence. And we want every player to develop that kind of true confidence. And I'll even add, that extends beyond sport, that is, it extends into academics. I am a great student because I know how to study and I know how to work hard to learn the information to then, you know, put it in my memory and then recall it on a test. I know how to do all those things and hopefully I get a good score on a test or, or music. I know how to put in the time and the energy to, to read the sheet music and learn where to place my fingers and my bow if I'm playing a cello or a violin and and then execute those tasks that extends to parenting and to business and to every domain that we can think about. We want people to have that kind of confidence. We want them to believe that they can execute a task that will lead to a certain outcome, that they have that ability. Okay, that's confidence. Being cocky. I actually don't really have a problem with being cocky because you're now just being really loud and vocal about your confidence. Like you're just letting everybody else know, hey, I'm pretty good at this now. It's not like my Choice. Like, I wouldn't teach my kids that. I think there's an important trait to teach that is also humility, but cockiness is just being loud and vocal about it. Being arrogant is where I get really nervous, because what arrogant sounds is, I'm really good and you stink. So now I'm putting a comparison between each other, right between us, and I'm putting myself above you, or a player is putting themselves above a competitor. So the arrogant part is the part where I get nervous because now you're more focused on. And the piece here is it takes your attention away from you and what you can control, and it puts it on the comparison to the other player. I can think I'm the best basketball player in the world, but if I'm arrogant and I think I'm better than all the other players in the world, what happens when I step out there and I'm matched up against LeBron James or Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant? My confidence falls through the floor. It totally goes away because in that moment now I'm. I'm very aware they are a better athlete than me. And so that actually becomes an interference. So we teach players, don't go there. We don't care about the other players. What we care about is you believing and knowing that if you go out and execute your skills to the very best of your abilities, that's going to score points or that's going to score touchdowns or that's going to. That's going to give you the best chance to win. So just be confident in that and stay there. And let's not worry about telling everybody on the planet how good you are or even thinking that you are better than other people. So kind of circle back on that humility concept. Like, my favorite characteristics of athletes is just humble confidence. One, they believe they're really good, but two, they're just hungry and humble to keep learning and to keep developing and to keep growing. And they're sort of never satisfied with that kind of growth.

You know, I was gonna say, I feel like when you talked about arrogance, it feels very fixed. And also it's conditional on everybody else and not on what is in our internal control. Yeah, I like that a lot. That was a really good definition of that. Eric, do you have any thoughts?

No, but I do. I do have one more question. Maybe backtracking a little bit. But you see this a lot where parents, they'll sometimes have a problem with the coach and they'll speak ill or bad about the coach that they have.

Are you talking about Me right now. Is this, is this what's happening?

I mean, maybe a little bit.

Are you calling me out?

I, I would just love to know because, you know, I'm around a lot of parents through sports and I've coached a lot of my kids as well, like you. You're doing. And the area we live in is a high performing athletic environment, so there's a lot of competitiveness. The programs ask a lot from the parents financially, time, the whole thing. And so it's very often that sometimes the parents don't feel like it's going their kid's way. They blame the coach. Can you maybe comment on what that does to the child? I guess.

Oh, that's a really interesting thought. Can, can we define out the question a little bit more? Let, let's say. Well, I'm going to present a scenario and you tell me if this is the right scenario. Let, let's say you have a kid who is skilled enough to play on the team, but maybe they're not getting any playing time.

That's a good one. Yeah. So then the parent, this coach, doesn't know what he's doing and they're telling their kid, your coach is the worst. This isn't your fault. Your coach is the worst. You know, Carly doesn't say that, but I'm just. Anyways, yeah, that's the, that's a good scenario.

So I. Let's just set the table a little bit. Couple things. Coaches aren't always perfect, right. They are biased most of the time. They're biased to the best players. The other thing is that parents are protective. We want what's best for our kids and we want what. We want them to excel and succeed. Right. When you have a scenario like this and if you're, let's say you're the parent in this scenario, if you're a parent in that situation and you're always blaming an external source to potentially the outcome you're not getting, what is that teaching the kid? Well, it's teaching the kid that they don't have to be accountable or responsible for their own self. What happens when that kid goes to college and they don't do particularly good on a test? Well, whose fault is that? Is that the professor's fault or is that my fault or. Or they go and get a job later on and they have a manager and, you know, their performance is a little bit low. Is that the kid's fault or is that the manager's fault? Right. So you actually end up teaching the kid a really unhealthy learning by. By help, by teaching them to always point to external factors as the reason that they didn't get what they wanted instead of. I mean, ideally, we want to teach the kid to be accountable and to be responsible, but even more importantly, we want to teach the kid to learn and to grow and develop. If I was in that situation, and I've told my boys, my. My boys this all the time, I'll tell them, like, if you're not happy with your playing time or if you're not happy with where you are in this scenario, what do you got to do? You got to go get stinking good, put in more time, put in more effort, put in more training, make it impossible for the coach to not make the decision to play you. Like, the reality is, if you go get stinking good and you can hit any shot from anywhere, they have to play you. Now, if they really don't play you, then we might have to. Then we might have to. There might really be something wrong with the coach or there might be a scenario. But. But in the end of the day, there is so much that is within our own control as a player. Parents need to help reinforce that by encouraging them to keep growing and keep developing and keep learning. So that's what I would share with a parent. Here's what you can do to help your kid. When you give them an out, when you give them an excuse and point to an external factor that absolves them from accountability, you're actually hurting the kid more.

So I have a. I have a good example of this in my own life. I think so. I played college basketball and played with mutual friends. Yeah. And I remember I worked very hard. Carly was with me, and I worked very hard. I practice, I practice, I practice. And it felt to me like I did very well in practice and routinely accomplishing what I was asked to accomplish and put the extra time in. But I didn't play very much. And I remember in my exit interview with my coach, he. He said, these are his exact words, you would have done great if I would have given you a chance. That's what he told me. And. But here's the thing.

How well, that enforcement.

Yeah, right. But here's the thing. I have no regrets or bad feelings about the experience because internally I know that I gave everything I could to the experience. And I don't think there's a situation, at least for me. And maybe other people don't feel this way. But where if you give your best and you really work hard and it doesn't work out. I don't think you really feel totally bad about the situation. I think there's an internal satisfaction that's, look, I did what I could and it just didn't work out, and that's okay. But then you leave the experience feeling like a better person. You are a better person. And so I really appreciate what you shared about focusing on the behaviors and the effort and those kind of things, because I feel like with kids, even if they don't play, they're going to have attributes and skills developed. They're going to have internal satisfaction of knowing I did the best I could. And the reality is, even if they don't play, they finished the experience rather than saying, I quit, I'm not getting what I want, so I quit anyway. That's just my view. I don't know if you want to comment on that.

Let me just add to that. I mean, what you're describing is an essential mental strength that we call motivation. Right now, motivation is like a massive construct. There's a lot of pieces to it. But one of the things we teach players or work hard to teach players, is to be intrinsically motivated. And what that means is that their satisfaction comes from the work and the effort that they put into whatever it is. And instead of the outcomes, which would be an extrinsic motivator, the trophies, the playing time, the wins and the losses, we teach players to. To really fall in love with the process and love the journey of developing skills and mastering skills and finding your satisfaction from. Hey, I left it all out there. One of my. I similar experience. One of my most crowning events that I'm most proud of in track and field, I actually didn't win. I didn't win, but I went out there, I jumped my very, very best, and I finished third place. But it happened to be a bronze medal at the NCA Championships in 2009 against the best jumpers in the country. And I went out and did my very best. And the only thing I was thinking about going into that was, hey, if I jump my very best and everybody else doesn't, I will win. But if I jump my very best and everybody else jumps their very best, I'll probably be right here, third. And. And that's how the dice rolled. And I was totally okay with that because I knew I went out and I did exactly what I could control to get the best possible outcome that I could hope for. And so similar to you, I walked away from that experience and going, I'm pumped. I am Totally proud that I did everything I could to, to create the best possible outcome. But I was proud about the, the process and the effort that I put into it. We gotta teach kids to be focused there. And unfortunately we live in an a society where we are too focused on the outcomes. What was the grade on the report card? We got an A. Well, what was your place in that race? Did you win the game and did you score all these points? Like all of those things are outcome external factors. Instead, we need to be praising the process. Well, how hard did you study on that test? I'm so proud that you studied hard for that test. I'm so proud that you put in the time to practice for that recital so that then you go out and perform at your best. Right. I'm so proud that you trained and day in and day out and made it to practice and that you finished that season. That shows true grit, resilience, and that's mental toughness. But none of that is tied to the outcomes that come from our performances.

I keep thinking about how gratitude, feeling gratitude for being able to participate in what we're participating in, regardless of the outcome, can often change the whole experiential outcome for us. What did we take from that experience? What did we glean from our effort? And being grateful for opportunity, being grateful to participate, whether on a team or in something that you love to do. I think often so much of our satisfaction exists, like you say, in our mind and what we're telling ourselves as we're doing the things that we're doing. So I think that probably really does carry down more than we realize to our own children.

I loved what you shared about gratitude. You know, unfortunately it. We don't really all the way learn or appreciate those things until we're like above 40 and beyond. Right? Kind of look back at the experiences and you're like, yeah, I'm actually kind of glad that it happened that way. In the moment. I might have been frustrated. But the things you learn, the things that help shape who you then become, are essential. You know, it's funny, you. You asked the question, like, how can parents help their kid develop these skills? Sometimes I'll say, let them fail. Let them fail. Let them lose. Let them fail. Let them make a mistake. Because you can't develop grit and resilience and true mental toughness without going through adversity. Like you have to go through adversity. You have to fail. It's essential to the learning process. But like, as parents, right, we're protective and we want Them to experience the glory of winning all the time. But you can't develop true resilience and true grit and true confidence if you win all the time, as great as that sounds, you have to fail and you have to have adversity. And as parents, like, we have to let them. We have to let them fail. And. But then again, not focus on the outcome of the failure or the outcome of the loss. Right. But then focus on, okay, what are we going to do better this time? We got to go, we got to learn, we got to train, we got to develop, we got to master skills, and we can get better. And that's the piece that we always look back at, and we're like, that's the part that I was proud of. That's the part that I was grateful for. Was. Was the grind, the process, Right.

Yeah. And puts you onto your next phase, wherever that may be. We keep telling that to our kids right now, at least. All the things that you're learning, the good and the bad, the ugly, everything in between, is the stuff that you'll take with you until your next phase. And hopefully it'll have prepared you for that phase.

Yeah. Full transparency. I had my kid played for a football team this year, and I. Me and the coach, like, I was not thrilled with his approach and his style to coaching the kids. So much so that I almost was like, I'm going to pull my kid off this team, and he's just not going to play for that coach. But then I had to step back and think, but what if he has a manager that's a jerk? Or what if he has a coworker? There's going to be other points in his life where it's going to be more beneficial for him to learn going through the experience than to not have that experience at all. So I. I bit my lip and let it happen.

I like it. I love everything we've talked about, and I really want to go on forever because I feel an insatiable desire to just know all of what I'm doing wrong and to change it. And that's why I'm excited for you to tell us more about what you guys do and what you offer with. I believe it's called motivate.

Yeah. So one of the projects I'm working on right now is really. So. It's twofold. One, I fell in love with sports psychology because of my own sport experience. I. I was a frustrated player. I got to byu. I was middle of the road. I was average. I was not performing the way I wanted to perform and I sought out Dr. Craig Manning. Luckily he was here at BYU and I started working with him. This was before he was Dr. Craig Manning. He was still a tennis coach over there. But he started to teach me all these mental skills and help me build these mental strengths. And I applied them and I went from being an average mediocre athlete to conference champion and NCAA All American. And it gave me a shot to chase one of my dreams, which was to compete in the Olympic Games in 2012. Now, unfortunately, I got a foot injury and that kind of ended my career in 2012 and I missed that chance. But like you said, Eric, I was super proud that I got to at least have the opportunity to chase it. That's where I fell in love with sports psychology. I often have thought back, man, how many mental mistakes or mental adversities could I have avoided if I had learned some of these things earlier, right? If I had learned maybe when I was in high school or maybe even a little bit earlier that, but certainly high school and then early days in college. Like I didn't love that it took to two years into college before I said, oh, there's this mental side of the game that I probably should learn about. And so the project. So for me, part of my kind of personal mission is to help give back to players and kids and parents and coaches and try to help give them the, the information and the training so that they can apply it and implement it in their high school teams or in their individual sports at an earlier age. We know that there's a couple of big problems. One, access to the right kind of world class, high level mental skills training is hard to come by. And two, I know we're being asked to donate and to fund all these programs, but these programs don't have huge budgets. I mean, they're not like a high level division one program where we can go and hire eight people and staff a mental strength program. These high schools, they have small budgets and so we want to try to provide something that is a little bit more affordable for them. So two, my big goal is to give back to help these kids at an earlier point in their development and try to do it in an accessible way, in an affordable way. And so my team, we went, we built a technology, it's called Motivate. You can download it on your phones, it's mobile app and coaches can download it, they can invite all their players in there. And it has some basic team management capabilities, team rosters, messaging, calendaring. But the primary focus of the tool is a fully integrated mental strength program development program. We can measure mental strength. So we have in there an assessment where the kids can go in there and they can take, take an assessment and identify their thinking patterns. How often do I think this negative thought or how often do I think this positive or correct thought? And it will measure their mental strengths across those eight categories that we talked about. Confidence, focus and all the rest of them. And then it'll produce a score. And that score is that the individual can look at that and they can go and know, oh, here's where I'm already strong. I actually have pretty good confidence. I think the right way with confidence. Oh, but man, my focus is way off. I get too distracted too often in these different areas. And so then they can go and drill down into the specific skills about focus or confidence or energy or motivation or their decision making. And then we have training that's tied specifically to that skill. So then there's a whole, call it a course, a learning module. There's specific trainings which are short, two, three minute videos where we teach the kid or the player or even the coaches, this is what that mental skill is. And then they can take it and apply it in their coaching, they can take it and apply it as a player in their development. But you're getting the same kind of world class sports psychology training that we do with the NBA teams that we work with, with the, the college and the Division 1 athletes that we work with here and all of the Olympians that we worked with over the years. So again, it's providing that same training packaged up in a technology that coaches and players and parents can get access to in a really affordable rate. So again, it's me because I fell in love with it and it changed the game for me. I just want to give back. So we're trying to do that in a pretty reasonable way. So it's called Motivate. It's a mobile app. You can get it on Apple Store, the Google Play Store. But yeah, that's the project that we're working on.

That is incredible. Honestly, fantastic. Is it for families to download? Is it for a team to download, coaches, players, or is it all across the board?

All across the board. A player can get in there and individually have their own individual user experience. If you're a coach of a team, you can get in there and build a team and invite 10 or 12 or 20 of your players, depending on whatever team you have. If a parent wants to get in there and put all their kids in there. I mean, you could do that and have your family team, but I love it. Yeah, a lot of opportunities there.

Okay, we'll make sure we put it in our show notes in the podcast here, the website where you can go learn more about it and where to download it.

Motivate.com and it's spelled weird, right? So it's M O, T, Y, V and then the number eight. So motivate.com I feel like I'd want.

To start taking those assessments. I think that we think of mental health as some obscure thing, that we either were born with good mental health or poor mental health. And to learn the different elements that build mental strength. I mean, that's very motivating. And I would love to even just take those assessments myself and see where I'm at.

So full transparency. Carly, my wife, just went back to work a couple of years ago. She's a speech therapist. She's very, very good at her job. One of the things she's often worried about is how the parents will respond to her treating and helping their kids. And again, she's great. She has never had one single negative or critique or bad review. But her own worry causes some anxiety, right? Like, she wants to do a good job, and she. A lot of times she'll present something to me, and she'll be frustrated about something, and I'll have to ask, okay, do you want me just to be a husband and to listen and report, or do you want me to be Dr. Lowe? I can be Dr. Lowe, right? She always tell me, nope, I just need you to listen this time. Or she'll say, nope, I need you to help me. And. And there was one particular evening she was experiencing some higher anxiety about some of her thinking patterns. And I did. I just took my phone, I pulled up the video, and I split it over to her, and she watched two or three videos about how to control and manage the anxiety from her thinking pattern. And. And it worked.

That's amazing. Yeah. I'm really excited to go look at it. I'm glad that you asked her. Do you want Dr. Lowe or your husband?

All the time. All the time.

Good practice. Right there.

Time. Most of the time, she doesn't want Dr. L.

Well, is there anything else you want to add from your experience as a parent, an athlete, a mental strength coach? Anything that you feel like we left out?

No, we covered a lot of things, hopefully. My big hope is that I was able to share some thoughts and some. Some ideas in a cohesive manner so that parents actually have Some tools they can take away from here. I think the kind of. My final parting thought would be just to share mental health as a continuum, right? All the way on one side is not healthy, and all the way on the other side is healthy. And all of it can be learned and developed, and you can grow and build your mental health. You can build your mental strength. I think there's a lot of people that feel like once they get diagnosed with a thing, maybe you have depression, that they can't ever get away from that, or they have anxiety, can't ever get away from that. Now, if it's really severe, there's tools and treatments and paths to help overcome that. But you can always go from way here on the mentally unhealthy side all the way to the mentally healthy side. And I just hope people understand that these are skills, just like physical skills. You can learn them, and you can develop them, and you can train them, and you can always improve them, and it'll help lead to a happier, more fulfilling, flourishing, satisfied life, like, where you feel like you're really in control. And so my one parting thought is we can teach our kids those things, but even individually, we can learn all of these different mental strengths and apply them in the different domains that we're trying to apply them in to achieve what we want to achieve.

That's so beautiful, this thought that even though we live in a modern age where it does feel like these mental issues might be more prevalent, that commensurate with that is all of this research and all this study on neuroplasticity and our brain being able to learn and grow and become healthier. I mean, that is incredibly hopeful in a bright light in all of the mental health world. So thank you for coming and sharing that with us. I truly feel uplifted knowing that we have a little bit more control over how we're experiencing what we're experiencing, especially with our own kids and what they're going through. Eric, do you want to add anything?

No. Thanks for coming on. Seriously.

Yeah, no, it looks wonderful.

Actually, I do have one thought. You kind of played down how good you were at basketball. You were pretty good. I know he snows. You were a sport, but look, you were pretty good. We played a lot together and you were good. So you can't downplay.

I just. I just try to keep up. I just try to keep up. This was. This was a treat. I'm glad you invited me. I mean, we've all known each other for years and years and years, and so it was both a reunion and a treat to talk about what I love to talk about so much.

It really was fantastic. One of my favorite episodes we've ever done. So thank you. Thank you so much.

Love it. Anytime.

You'Ve been listening to Finding Noble, I'm Carly Redd. Follow Finding Noble on all available podcast directories and find out more on our website, findingnoble.com that's finding noblen o b l e dot com and if you or anyone close to you are looking for further resources on young adult and adolescent mental health, Dr. Skinner and a host of other leading professionals working in the mental health world share courses and even answer your questions, all on parentguidance.org that is parent guidance.org brought to you by the Cook center for Human Connection.