A conversational excerpt from a YouTube video by Alex Auerbach focusing on practical ways to teach mindfulness and mental skills. Auerbach recommends using instrumental music as an accessible attention-training exercise (pick a tolerable novel track, follow one instrument for ~5 minutes, notice distraction and return). He also discusses reframing as a trainable mental skill—redirecting attention to more helpful perspectives, individualizing approaches, and putting setbacks into perspective (e.g., failures feel large in the moment but often lose significance over time).
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If we circle back to even just the mindfulness, are there specific techniques that you yourself or with clients that you find, you know, if you're introducing a young athlete or a client who's new to that, are there certain techniques, whether it's a breathing technique, whether it's, you know, mindful immersion, or some of these different strategies that we can use to get people onboarded onto this?
Yeah, I've experimented a ton, and I think what. What I found resonates most for people want to get started is music. And the way I've used music is, you know, I've asked someone to pick an instrumental track to a song that they can tolerate listening to for five minutes. So, you know, I don't necessarily want you picking your favorite song. And I think there's value to picking a novel song where you're sort of like, having to pay attention, but then pick out one instrument or one element of that track and see if you can just follow that track the whole time. And then you can start to see, you know, when you get distracted, come back to that part of the track, when you get distracted, come back. And people have varying experiences around that. You know, some folks really quickly immerse into that, following that track, and other folks, it's like I can't even get to the one. You know, I don't know what to pick. But it's. It's a. I think it's a pretty accessible way to introduce the concept that doesn't necessarily rely on some of the more popular social techniques. Right. Things like breathing or, you know, mindful eating, which, you know, all of those have tremendous value. But I think it can feel daunting to people to say, you know, hey, sit in a chair for two minutes and, you know, take three deep breaths.
Think about how you're breathing.
Yeah, that's it.
Think about how I'm breathing.
Yeah, exactly.
Adding a stressor. But I like that. I mean, that's a great idea around just listening to a track or music, and then you can. You can immerse yourself in that. You know, it's amazing to see just how much things have changed since I played basketball, because it's amazing to see at the end of practices now, you know, coaches, young players, even, you know, lying on the floor after a stretch, maybe putting their hand on the belly, doing a little bit of this breathing. But again, in an environment that feels pretty safe and it's a short time span, so that's pretty cool to see. And you mentioned reframing there, and, you know, Dr. Peter Jensen, our sports like at Canada Basketballs talked a lot about reframing. And you know, that's something that's also hugely powerful. I mean, again, if we come back to this narrative, and I'm sure people, you know, practitioners working with their clients or people who are successful in other domains, you're going to get to a point where you don't achieve it or there's a roadblock in the way. And it sounds so simple to reframe, but it can be really challenging for athletes, especially again, when we're used to success and we get to a very high level and this is the first time that we might be getting, you know, rejection or failure. Can you walk people through that, that sort of reframing process? And again, maybe some of the techniques.
That you might use. Sure. I mean, so I think the first thing that's really important to note that you've hit on too is to, to just remember that this is a skill. Right. So like anything, you know, you don't just show up to the championship game with no practice and hope, score 40 points. Right. Like you got to put in the work and mental skills and mental training is no different. And so, you know, when you get to those big moments, the more practice you have, you know, subtly reframing events in your everyday life, I think it can really make a big difference. And so for me, reframing is all about sort of redirecting attention to a more helpful way of thinking about a particular problem. I tend to gravitate less towards specific language use or positive or negative because I think what I've found in my experience is sometimes that's sort of like self critical, internal dialogue can actually be pretty motivating for people. You know, and there's some interesting work out there that suggests that like, you know, a little bit of, quote unquote, negative emotion is actually a sort of necessary component of striving for high performance. Right. Like failure.
That's like the old school basketball. What I grew up with was, you know, the tongue lashing to get everything, to get everything going, which does work. But it's sort of, there's a tipping point, I imagine.
Yeah, yeah. I don't want that for everyone. Right. And so I think my argument would be for a more nuanced approach. Right. And a little bit of individualization there. But I do think there are some people that it does work to sort of, you know, have the internal dialogue be, you know, a little bit more kind of critical sounding, if you will. But I think, I think a few things are relevant here. So the first is putting the experience into perspective. Right. I think that's a really helpful one. So if I even go sort of out of the sport domain and think about my work with college students, you know, failing an exam in the moment feels like a huge experience. I can honestly say 10 years later, not a single person I've ever met.
Has ever asked me about that exam I had.
Right. And I think that's a great, you know, that's a great way of just sort of helping people put a different spin on it.
