Handling Adversity

Foreign. Welcome to the Mike Hartman Show. Mike is a performance coach and former Stanley cup champion with the New York Rangers. Topics on this show are focused around stories, mindset and champions. Mike will also go into details about helping you with your pain points and struggles and finding motivational solutions on how to have the mindset of a champion. Now, here's your host, Mike Hartman.

Hello. This is Mike Hartman, founder of Hartman Academy and the book called the Healthy Mindset. It's a workbook that we use for athletes and the workplace athletes. I want to thank everybody that has purchased this book and purchased our 30 day program that we have and holding you accountable. Thank you. Thank you so much. Today I want to talk about just being really self. Aware. And what does that mean? Well, being self aware of yourself and the benefits of being self aware. One thing is you have to have a healthy mind to be self aware. There's been so many studies out there over the years within athletes and the workplace athletes, showing them how are you going to become self aware Now? I've said this in the previous episodes, you just don't become self aware. Okay, I'm going to be aware today. It starts with sleep. It starts with focusing. It starts with concentration, managing your stress. Now all of us are stressed and I've talked about good stress and not so good stress. Some of the good stresses. We stress our bodies when we exercise. And how important is exercise? You've heard it so many times. I don't have to sit here and talk about the importance of exercise as I'm sure you've heard so many times. You have to. And we found that the people that do exercise, especially within corporate America, they're so much more self aware, they feel so much better. They're not experiencing burnout as much. They don't want to take a nap at 1 o' clock in the afternoon. That doesn't mean, listen, I like taking a NAP, sometimes for 30 minutes. And if you can. Nowadays a lot of us can actually take naps because, you know, we work from home and unless you have a zoom call, but for the most part, being really aware of yourself, no matter if it's on the ice, as a hockey player or the court, you're playing, basketball, the field, no matter what you're doing, allowing yourself to control your actions and things around you. You know, I say in sports too, and some of us may understand this, you know, either you act or you react. And when you're self aware, you're acting, you're going to. Again, I'm not going to Give all these other analogies in other sports, but I know this one firsthand. In hockey, if you're acting, that puck is dumped in. You're going to go, you're acting on it. You're going to that position and that's acting on things. When you're reacting, you might be behind the play. Now sometimes, yes, we have to react. There's all these different analogies and of course you're going to react to certain things. There's a rebound, we want to act on it, but you're still reacting to it. But for the most part, I hope you're understanding what I'm saying. The ability to be focused and being in the moment is going to help you become more self aware of yourself. It's so important. And sometimes, you know, we have different ways for you to become self aware. You know, we do been doing this for about 17 years. We do a little self assessment. We help you assess yourself so you're aware of yourself. And that's just a baseline. That's just a tool. There's nothing more than that. The assessment is a tool that we even use to help you show you where you are now, where you want to be, to help you become more aware of where you are in that situation. Maybe you're not aware of certain things. Oh, boy, I need to work on this according to the assessment. But again, that's just a tool. And a baseline has nothing to do with what we're talking about. And some of this goes, when you're self aware, it helps with your mental toughness. It helps being more mentally tough. How many of us heard about being mentally tough? I listened to a lot of these Navy Seals and that's true mental toughness. I mean, it's unbelievable what we have. And I've used this analogy too before. A lot of people say as an athlete you have to go through adversity. Well, I never personally, it's not that I'm saying this is the correct way. When you talk about adversity, yeah, you want to be self aware. It's going to help you in so many ways. But adversity to me is something tragic that is going on right now, like in the Ukraine. To me, that's adversity. Now we have athletic adversity too. You learn from that. It's going to help you become more self aware. And I think like good example of a couple of the NHL teams in the playoffs, the they've learned like some of the younger teams, they've learned to be more aware or even self Aware they've watched from teams that have done well. Good example, the New York Rangers had a fantastic year. But I'm sure a lot of the players have learned from the Tampa Bay Lightning players. They've been to the Stanley Cup a handful of times. Some of their players, as many as going on four times in four years. Some of their players like Maroon and some other hard working players like that. But some of these players have won, you know, multiple Stanley Cups. And those players learned from the sports adversity how to become more self aware, how to become more mentally tough. And it's important that you focus in on your mental toughness. And being more prepared is going to help you become mental toughness. Being in the moment and if you make a mistake, bouncing back from that to me is going to mental toughness. So there's many definitions of mental toughness. I look at it like, like for athletes it's like, okay, how are we going to bounce back? How we, how you know, we made a mistake. Okay, okay, it's not going to affect me that much. I'm ready to bounce back. You know, I see a lot of these ball players in the big leagues. I'm watching them. One guy was over 35, you know, and he's a good major league baseball player. So mentally tough, even the best of the best get stuck. All of us get into our own heads one way or another. And it's the same way in business. I've worked with a lot of professionals and CEOs and small and large businesses and in bouncing back after being met, you know, mental toughness, Covid has set people back. How are you going to improve on that? And that's something that we could do. I've used examples of professional athletes being mentally tough and I definitely do not want to talk too deep about this one, but I played with a player and I don't even know how. I mean I don't even think I could have done this. But I played with a player that lost a family member and went out and played that day. Now we're all different. I'm not for me, I don't think I could have done it. But this person went out and did everything they had to do. That was their job at the time. As a professional hockey player. I used to say it's not really a job. I mean the job is to talk to some of my buddies that play pro hockey and they told me their job was to work on a farm or their parents worked on a farm year round up at 3:30 in the morning that. That's, that's working a job and hockey was, was what we did. Some of you say, well, that's your job. Well, I didn't look at it as a job, but for this player that you do have to perform every night at the highest level. And this player had the mental toughness just to rebound and take care of it. I could tell by the expression on this player's face that he was sad, he was upset, and he just had to fight through it. And some of us have to do that. A lot of us have gone through some serious adversity. So by any means am I here, say I'm this mentally tough person. I've. I've seen some situations where we've lost family members, friends, young adults without getting too deep into that. And it's, and it doesn't mean I have to be mentally tough and bounce back. But, but working on your mental toughness is something that we do. I could, we love to help you with that. Some people could find it by rebounding or using these different tools. Really, that's all they are. They're tools that you could use to coach yourself and for us to hold you accountable. That's really what it is. How do we use these tools? Imagery, to me is a tool. Visualization, that's a tool. The assessment, that's a tool. It's you that have to come within your heart that's going to help you push through this, to focus in on the task at hand, to improve that mental toughness, to being in the moment, to doing all these things. And I'm going to be sharing a lot of tools with you again. We're all human beings. Yeah. They talked over the years about robots replacing different jobs. That's a whole other discussion. But really, in all sincerity, being in the moment and using these tools to help you get to the, the next level, if I could help you in any way, please reach out. Thank you for listening. Thanks again for everyone that purchased the book on Amazon and the audio course that we have, the Healthy Mindset, A Workplace for Athletes and the workplace athletes. I can't thank you enough for supporting the show. If any of you did buy the book, reviews always help. And if there's anything I can do to help you, please reach out to me. But I just want to give you a big thank you and it's really greatly appreciated because without you, I don't have anything. So thank you and let me know how I could help you.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Mike Hartman show. If you're enjoying what you've heard so far, please feel free to rate, subscribe and leave a review on your preferred podcast listening platform. We really appreciate that effort. We'll catch you in the next episode of the Mike Hartman Show. Sam.