Life After Sport #2

Welcome to the Healthy Mindset App podcast where host Mike Hartman, a performance coach and former professional athlete, brings his passion to help athletes and workplace athletes achieve their dreams and goals while being mindful of everything else in life. Mike also uses this platform to share his targeted assessment applications. Healthy Mindset course meditation and goal setting technique for the athlete and workplace athlete. We're glad you're here. Now let's dive headfirst into this episode of the Healthy Mindset App Podcast podcast. Here's your host, Mike Hartman.

Welcome back to another episode. And I am still on the Life After Sports and we're just gonna give you 10 good bullet points on what to do with life after sports. And I mentioned earlier, if you missed it, please go back to the intro with the Life After Sports and just give you a brief overview. I've decided to do this program for all athletes. Whether you play high school or you played professional or you played Division 3 club big leagues, you know, you played professional Olympics. It doesn't matter because we love sports. A lot of us miss that camaraderie and that unity. And I mentioned earlier that it's tough once you finish your sport. Let's say you play club hockey and you know, it's your last year and you miss that team, you miss being around the players, and that's the fun part. People ask me, hey Mike, did you, do you miss the game? I said, well, of course I love the game, but I really miss the players just as much. And so I'm glad we do have an alumni today. And I, and I do hope everybody that could tap into their alumni or tap into some, some of the people they grew up playing sports with. But this is not just for professional athletes. So the, the one thing I want to talk about here is, you know, the first thing is we have like this identity shift after, like sometimes we don't really know who we are. We wake up and, you know, you played a sport for such a long time or let's say even a professional athlete says, oh, I'm a baseball player. Oh, no, no, I'm not a baseball player. So people may ask, or somebody may say, did you play a college sports? And then you want to reflect and share stories because it's so exciting that identity, who, you know, who you thought you used to be. And one thing I always say in my coaching, when I work with everybody within coaching, I always always say this, that, listen, I like, let's say the athlete's name is Steve. I like Steve the athlete. And I'm looking forward to knowing Steve the athlete, but I want to know Steve the person much more. And, and we are, we're, you know, we're. It's. It's all about people and it's all about helping. So this is why I'm doing this. And we also have a program for life after work, for people that retire as well, or people that are let go from their companies. But let's stay on this. So it's important. Like, right. Sports. And let's say you, you're a club. You play club basketball or club hockey, or you're played Division 3 sports right away, it's important to have that structure, find that structure. And that's why we want to offer these tools to you. And we're offering, you know, our whole system, plus the 30 courses for you and the. In the healthy mindset, Coach AI to support you. Because sometimes when we don't have that structure, it's like, wow, like, what do we do? A lot of us, you know, if you're playing a sport, the coach has everything laid out for you. If you're playing a club sport or you're a D3 athlete and professional, you're a professional athlete and everything is done for you. And in the big leagues, they carry your bags. And then when you're done, it's, wait a sec, you know what's going on? Or you get your hotel key. You don't have to check into the hotel because the team gets you the key. And now, wait a second. We wake up quick. I remember somebody said to me, you know, is it tough after life after sports? I said, well, we never, you know, in the beginning years, we would, we would fly direct. You know, we would be on with other passengers on the flight sometimes. But later in my career, we had our own plane. So the New York Rangers, we would just pull up, walk up the stairs and get right on the plane. We don't even have to show id. It was amazing. But obviously, you know, that comes to an end and for other people too. You, you, you were a college standout athlete, and next thing you know, it's like that structure isn't there anymore. You're looking to, to find that, you know, structure when you're done and it's important to replace the locker room. And I have a. One of the chapters in our book is, is life after sports the healthy mindset for athletes and workplace athletes. And I find the number one thing is, is find a hobby or activities to replace the locker room. For me now, it's pickleball or I even played some pickup hockey with friends once in a while. Not just to play hockey. I enjoyed just being with the players and, and being around, you know, people every day. So it's very important that you replace the locker room. Losing teammates is tough. Like teammates that you built these amazing relationships with and they're such a support system. But now it's a new chapter and we have to move on. Finding that purpose again. It's like somebody once said to me, I said this many years ago. I said, boy, I've never found that one thing I love as much as being a professional athlete. And that's how I felt many years ago. Now you have to find that purpose. In fact, I was working with a young athlete without saying his name. He ended up going to play college hockey at a D3 school. And he told me, all I have is hockey. And I said, well, remember, it goes quick. Those four years of school are going to go quick. For some it's five. And then after that, maybe you'll play pro, maybe you won't. But you still have to prepare. You have to practice those life skills. So to me that's extremely important. You know how to connect those skills and strengths and your values to a new mission that excites you. And then the other thing too is we have that mental, mental highs and lows in sports and that happens even in everyday life. You know, normalizing the emotional roller coaster athletes face when the competitive schedule ends is like, okay, what do we do? And it's like a up and down emotional roller coaster. And it's tough. It's tough for a lot of us. I mentioned earlier, I've talked to athletes that have played 20 years ago and it feels like it was just yesterday that they're not playing their competitive sport anymore. So I'm offering this program and to me, physical wellness beyond competition is important. How you stay active without the pressure and the performance in your life. And I call it the healthy mindset. Look, you want to have that healthy mindset, you want to take care of yourself. I've seen people after sports and they, they don't look as healthy as they once did. I'm not promoting any weight loss or any type of training program, but you still have to take care of yourself. You have to manage yourself. You have to really take care of those skills. And the other thing too is we overlook things, but transferable skills athlet overlook because I, you know, I, I was working with an athlete and he was, he went to Yale and I said, and he wasn't playing a lot. But I said, boy, going to Yale, I said I couldn't get into Yale. I said, you have your whole life ahead of you. I mean, you could take these skills, what you learned as an athlete, and apply it to whatever your career is going to be. So I, to me, that will give you the edge in life and your work. Building new habits and sticking to those habits are important. And we go through that. We don't have to talk about it too much now. Why old habits? You know, as you're an athlete, you have these old habits and now you have to create new habits. And it's not easy. It's. It takes consistency and accountability to do that, and we help you with that as well. And the power of community is so important. I've never, never realized it until I got a little bit older that the power of, you know, the people that you're around, the, you know, why you should never do this transition alone and how you could find people who to do it with. And I, I love, I love that part of it. I love being around people. There's so many different groups. There's probably a meetup, groups in your local area. Go and meet up and you could find a group and, you know, for, for you, you know, for me, it was, it was tough initially because you'll, for some, you'll never have that bond like you did with your, with your teammates. But, but what we could do is we could work on these life skills that we're going to help you with. And a healthy mindset going forward is what I say. That's why I call it the healthy mindset. How to use it, how to use structure, reflection and support like our assessments, our AI coaching and everything we could do to help you grow daily. If anybody cannot afford this thing. And I do believe in values and we're here to help and we offer scholarships. We want this to work for people. I'm not. One thing I didn't want to do is start a group and charge thousands of dollars to join this group. While a lot of us sometimes just need a little structure and some tools to move forward. So looking forward to helping you. If I can go to healthymindsetapp.com you could fill out the form on the homepage and say, hey, I'd like to take a look at this. I'd like to apply for this. I'd like to apply for a scholarship or the athlete discount. And there's never any questions asked. I don't question it. I go by trust and values and I'm going to share that up the next episode. I'm going to share why I feel this way. So have a great day and looking forward to helping you in any way I can.

We're so glad you joined us for this episode of the Healthy Mindset App Podcast with your host, Mike Hartman. If you're enjoying the show, please feel free to rate, subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. That helps others find the show, and we greatly appreciate it. To dive deeper and learn more about the Healthy Mindset program, or to get in touch with Mike, please Visit our website, healthymindsetapp.com thanks again for listening and we hope you'll join us again in the next episode of the Healthy Mindset App Podcast. Until then, be well.