EP37 Mindset Monday - How to Appreciate

This is the Empowered athlete podcast, episode 37. This is the empowered athlete podcast mindset Monday. 10 minutes with Kari Schneider to learn new mindset tactics and tricks to optimize your performance in sport, business and life. Let me take you back to the summer of 2008. It was my first summer not playing for the national team. I had it off and I got to train the entire summer with Kari on a specifically made program that was tailored to me, my injuries, my body and my goals for that next upcoming season. And I was 34 years old while the result went back over to Turkey and won a European cup in incredible physical condition. Thank you to that program setting me up for the perfect season. Well, now you have access to the exact same thing. Hit email ksempowerconditioning.com that's KS for Kari Schneider. And get started on one of Kari's incredible online training programs. The program is tailored to you. It has video of each exercise you're doing so you know what you're doing. Your reps are laid out, the sets are laid out. You can't go wrong. Reach out now to reach your best.

Happy Monday, everyone. Okay, I think we are on. I'm recording for our podcast as well. And today we are talking about appreciation. And I don't know about you, but when I travel, I tend to have a greater awareness of a lot of things. Other people, myself, the world around me. My own creativity starts to come out when I travel. And for Paul and I, we often have to travel for a work, but we don't. We haven't traveled. If I think of December, January, February, we basically, the two of us didn't travel for about three months and it gave us a lot of real downtime at home. So now that I traveled a little bit, just a short little trip in February and now traveling in March has really opened up this topic of appreciation. And the reason I chose this today is because it's mindful march for us. So we're meditating every single day, doing a gratitude journal every single day, and it's caused a lot of things to emerge. So when I talk about appreciation, if you think of a definition of appreciation, I didn't look up a definition. But when you think of appreciation, you often think of the value of someone else or something else and you acknowledging that value of someone else or something else. And that's typically what we would think of or what I think of as appreciation. But there's also that other definition of appreciation. When you think of buying a house, for instance, you want to make A good investment that will appreciate over time, so that value increases over time. So now when we look at appreciation, how often does it happen that we simply start to look at things with less value, look at people with less value. We're not appreciating them the way we once did when we first. When we first maybe met them. So if we look at the house example, I bought, I don't know, I probably bought six houses in my life, maybe more. And some of them I lived in a short time, some longer time. But when I bought the house, I would be curious, unsure, and really recognizing a lot of things about the house. And then I would drag the house inspector to the house and we would go through every nook and cranny and I would follow the house inspector around the house, trying to learn as much as I could about the house. And in that process, I would come to an awareness of what the house presented. And in that process, I would accept or reject what I wanted or didn't want about that house. And there were times, there was, I think, two times where after the house inspection, I didn't buy the house that I thought I really wanted because I knew it wasn't going to appreciate in value. There some major flaws that weren't going to cause it to appreciate in time. Maybe like a horizontal crack in the foundation. So that example of the house allows you to visualize that step by step, awareness, and then kind of a process of acceptance or rejection, and then the process of appreciating over time. So now when you look at how you view other things or other people or other events, how you come to the point of appreciation is often a very similar process. So initially there's an awareness of what's around you, really seeing it for what it is, and then an acceptance or a rejection to really decide whether it is something that you really appreciate, whether it's music time with someone that you care about or a walk in the park, that real acceptance or rejection of what it is, and then whether it kind of falls into that realm of something that you find value with. Now here's the next level. Maybe you're doing this with little things in your life. For Mindful March for us, we've really noticed that in having to do a gratitude journal every single day at first. And it needs to be gratitude for different things, not the exact same thing every day. What happens is that you start to have to look at things beyond the same things you always look at. So it increases the awareness. So that awareness increasing right off the hop is a really good exercise for the brain. But then secondly, when you start to look further, you start to realize that, oh, I really do appreciate something in that completely different topic that I have been ignoring for months and months. And when I cause the awareness to happen and start to look for something to be grateful for, something to appreciate, then I can see more and more in my life that I choose to accept and appreciate. Now, taking that a whole other level, the appreciation for ourselves, especially as driven or type A people, that's the tougher challenge. So, for instance, if the majority of the people I work with are either athletes or career driven people, and so that puts them in the category usually of type A personalities that drive that go, go, go, that constantly striving for something that's better. And in that scenario, there's often a lack of appreciation for what's currently existing. And what I've learned, especially in the process of coaching my clients, but also in the process of this mindful march, is that the step of awareness is so key. So when we take it to ourselves, if we can become aware of what we are doing. So if we made a list of how many things are we doing in a given day, how many things are we doing in a given month or season or year, if we really take a look and get an awareness of what we're demanding of ourselves as type A people, as very driven people, what are we demanding of ourselves? And then go that next step and go, okay, am I going to accept all that I'm continuing to do? And one way or another, even if it's something that I don't like, and can I accept it as not good or bad or right or wrong, but just something that exists and maybe it works and maybe it doesn't, and then we take that step further of finding value in whatever is happening, even if it's something that ends up being negative, can we be aware of it, acknowledge that it exists, accept, and then also appreciate that it happened, whether it's something that we're going to continue with or not. And that ends up being a key thing when it comes to ourselves in being able to appreciate ourselves, if we can truly be aware and truly accept. So those two steps are critical for genuine appreciation of not only everything that's around us, but also ourselves, so that awareness and acceptance. So now my challenge to you in this whole mindset Monday, my challenge is to really take a look at what you appreciate about yourself. So normally, in this gratitude journaling, in this mindful march and everything we've been doing I'm typically going, oh, I really appreciate, I acknowledge that person. I'm grateful for this, I'm grateful for that. But I don't think there's been a single day in the 24 days we've done so far that I've had gratitude for myself. So my challenge to you, because I know that with the type A driven type people that are likely in this group, that finding appreciation for yourself is probably one of the hardest things. So the challenge is, is write a minimum of 10, ideally 20 things that you appreciate about yourself. It could be the way you make breakfast every day, it could be the size of your feet. I don't care, but write down. You don't have to share this with anybody, but write down how you are appreciating yourself, what you appreciate about yourself, a skill you have, an attribute, whatever it is, I don't care, but write it down. A minimum of 10, maybe 20. And once you've reached your 10, pop a little note, a comment, something that says, hey, I did it, or hey, it was tough, tougher than I thought, but I did it. Or oh, that was easier than I thought, Whatever, I don't care. But I do know that for myself, and this is one of those things that is very hard to do, to take that look and have that gratitude towards yourself. So today it's all about appreciation. Step one, awareness. Step two, acceptance. Even if it's something that you may not like. Acceptance, and then stepping into appreciation, seeing the value in the thing, the person, the state, the environment, whatever it is, and then really reflecting it in back on yourself. What do you appreciate about yourself? Write down 10 things, take a look at them, acknowledge them, and then post. You don't have to post all the 10 things, but tell us that you did it and encourage others to too. So that's your mindset Monday, guys. I hope you have a fantastic day. I hope this leads you into a fantastic week and happy spring. I missed you guys last week, so I'm really glad to be back on.

Sam.