EP96 Mindset Monday - Why Wins Keep Losing

This is episode 96 of the Empowered Athlete podcast. Hey there. Happy Monday and thank you for joining us. Now, before we dive in with Kari, I have a question for you. Do you know someone who has been serving throughout the pandemic on the front lines? Because it's their job and it's what they love to do, to help others, to help the community, but perhaps they've been doing that for months under incredible stress and pressure because of this pandemic. They've not taken care of themselves in some way. Well, it's time to shift the focus and press the reset button. In the show notes is a link to our incredible program that's coming in September. I can't do it justice here, but check it out. Check out the video that Kari's made to learn about this incredible life changing program. For someone that you know or love or yourself, it is time to get it to the next level. 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.

Hello. Hello, Hello. It is Mindset Monday again and I am so excited for Mindset Monday because not only does it promise me to have an amazing week, but I love diving deep into the stuff that affects our mindset in order for us to have our peak performance. So I am your coach. I'm your vitality and peak performance coach, and I also have been an athlete for a very long time. So today's Mindset Monday, I'm going to give you a little story about what has affected my wins. And the topic of today's Mindset Monday is why your wins keep losing, why having those little wins or looking for those wins, why they keep being on the back burner, why they're losing. So I'm going to go back a little bit. I've been an athlete, a coach, a runner for a very long time. I love to lift, I love to compete, I love to do all these things. And I've also had two crushed discs in my back for a long time. I'm talking probably close to 20 years. And I've had MRIs and they're not operable. I've had different surgeons take a look. There's all kinds of things that have gone on, so much so that I've had to change a lot of things. Especially about four years ago, I had a major flare up and I've had various flare ups of my back at various times. But this particular flare up was one that took about a year to Subside. It took about a year of really building back to being able to run. And once I was able to run again, I was so hungry to compete, but I knew I wasn't quite ready. And yet my husband really wanted to go. Paul really wanted to go to this tougher mudder, and he knows how much I love to compete. And we wanted to do this together. We have so much fun doing these kind of things. Traveling to a race. We went to North Carolina. It was amazing, but my body wasn't quite ready for it. And although we did amazing in the race and nothing happened, there wasn't anything there. It was like my body just said, you know what, you've been not giving me enough rest for so long that we're just going to shut you down. And about a week later, after the tough mudder, I couldn't pick up my right foot. And not only that, if I to walk, I couldn't pick it up. And then if I tried to run, the whole lower leg would shut down. And from there, what would happen is if I got my foot dorsiflexed, meaning like pulling the foot toward you, the toes, my four toes would be like floppy fish. They wouldn't even hold the position, and you could push against them and they just kind of flop around. And to see this was devastating because with my athletic therapy background as an athletic therapist, as a strength coach and exercise physiologist, all that stuff, all that work I've done, I have a master's degree in lumbar spine kinematics. I know the deep research on spine injuries, and I just knew how bad this was. And I ended up having another MRI over a lot of time and waiting for my appointments and getting EMD to check nerve damage. And both, both sides, my left and right leg, there's nerve damage all the way down the legs to all the way to the foot because of this chronic pressure or chronic damage on my discs. Now, the reason I'm telling you this is because it was devastating for me physically, clearly, because I love to do all these physically physical things, but also mentally. And it had me ask this question, what does it take to be happy? And I thought back, and I was just. I thought back to my runs, especially just a year prior. All my competitive runs that I would always do, I'd do hard intervals, I would do, you know, really intense tempo runs, and I love to do hill runs, all these things, and it would keep me in such amazing shape for the races that I wanted to do. But here's the thing. When I'd come back from a run on my own and Paul would ask me, hey, how was your run? My response would usually be, it was okay, or that sucked, or it wasn't as fast as I wanted it to be. Or nine times out of 10, it would be a really flat so so. Or negative answer nine times out of ten. And I look at that at the time when my foot, I couldn't lift it up, I couldn't walk properly, I couldn't run at all. Couldn't run for. Couldn't run for about a year and a half at all. And now I can run. But I look back at that time and I was like, holy cow. I would have given anything just to be able to run. I didn't know if I'd ever be able to run again. And all I responded with at any of those times, what about the wind in my hair? What about the. I would have given anything to have those muddy shoes from running on a trail. I would have given anything to have had that, you know, beet red face because I pushed it so hard on a hot day and you just couldn't stop sweating. I would have given anything to have that feeling of the wind going through your hair when you're just blitzing it down a hill. And that moment I was just like, holy cow, if I can't do a lot of the things that I want to do, what does it take to be happy? But in that moment, I wished I was celebrating those wins because here are the things. This is why right here. So this is the nuggets, why the wins keep losing is what is what I was doing. This is why the wins were losing. What I was doing was waiting for the perfect practice run, waiting for the perfect results from the race, waiting for these things in order to be able to celebrate the win, quote, unquote, in order to be able to feel happy. The achievers. We as achievers, we tend to wait to feel amazing until we complete that amazing task. And our standards are so bloody high that is extremely hard to get to that place of being able to reach that thing. So then we're waiting all the time to feel happy, to feel amazing, to celebrate instead of celebrating the wins on the day to day basis. And here's the second thing about why wins lose, why little celebrating of the wins is always losing. It's because our brain is programmed to look for the problem, to look for the fear, to look for what's wrong. That is programmed primally in our brains and it will almost always be there unless we practice unless we program to look for the wins in life, to look for the small wins, the things that may not be magnificent, they may not be winning the race, it may not be the. But just the fact that it's sunny and it's warm, just the fact that you're able to get outside, just the fact that you live in a country that you can be safe when you go and explore. Explore, those things are the wins looking for the small wins. So those wins that you're looking for on the day to day, especially for achievers, you know they're likely to lose, they're likely to not be able to fit into your day. And that is why we need to practice it. We have a group called the Empowered Team. And as a coaching group and we've now decided because this group of achievers, just like the rest of us, we tend to see where we're failing, see what's not going well, see what we don't like, think about what we're afraid of. So we've practiced and we've got wins Wednesday, where we're actually accountable for posting in what our wins are in our private chat, posting in what our wins are every freaking Wednesday. And getting in the practice of looking for the wins every day so that the wins don't end up failing, so that we have greater likelihood for deep fulfillment, greater likelihood for happiness every day. Not just when we win the race, not just when we make the goal or make the team or get the raise or do the thing, but every day, every day, deep fulfillment. Every day looking for our best life. Every day feeling our happiness. That is how to get those wins. Actually winning instead of the wins being on the flip side. So that is your mindset. Monday today. I hope that you can look for the wins all day. Today, all day. And that can set you up for a week that you see the abundance around you, you see all the amazing things you have and do and experience with the, with the people with your team, with the people that you have around you and just the life that you have in front of you. Everything that you're capable of, everything that you have available to you, life is happening for you. Have an amazing week, enjoy your Monday, celebrate the wins, give yourself a high five, point out the things that are awesome and have a magnificent week.