Life After Sports #3

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.

In this episode about life after sports, I'm going to share a story that really means a lot to me. I'm going to start with my dog, Sam. And I had a dog, Sam for over 15 years, almost 16 years. And he was everything to me. He's my best friend. He cuddled with me. He knew when I was upset. He knew when I needed love. Yeah, as weird as it was, it was just amazing. I could almost talk to Sam and he knew what I was talking about. He always wanted to protect me everywhere I went. And he was just an amazing. An amazing. I didn't even call him. He is a dog, but he was an amazing, you know, dog to. To have in my life. And then he passed away. And I said to myself, I will never get another dog. I'm. I'm done. I do not want a dog. I am. I don't like. I can't do it. And at the end of my dog's life, the end of his life, we knew he didn't have much, and we tried everything. And we even put him in the, the, the water. Water treadmill they had. We, We've tried it. We tried everything, and it didn't work. But he loved puffins. You know, the cereal, those little puffin cereals, a little peanut butter cereal. So I would give him puffins and the only thing he would really eat. And so as time went on, my better half, you know, her name is Cheryl. Cheryl said, let's look for a dog. Now, this was after several months, and I said, absolutely not. And then what happened was I'm looking at the screen of this computer because Cheryl says, come on, we have a. A zoom call. I said, yeah, you put me on the spot. A zoom call. Yeah. I want you to see these golden doodles. I said, okay, but I'm not doing anything. So I'm looking at the. I'm looking at the. I'm looking at the laptop, and I see these beautiful golden doodles. And I see this little puppy running around like 100 miles an hour. And, you know, Cheryl told me that, you know, these dogs live in. They're out of Raleigh in this farm area. And I. And I just looked at this little dog, and he was jumping up and down, and I said, okay, I want that one. And I pointed to it, and she's kicking me under the table. Wait a sec. We haven't even discussed this yet. We. We don't even know what it costs. And I said, I don't care. I want that one. Well, what happens is we end up going to Raleigh, and we adopt our dog there, and we went to the breeder, and you can guess our dog's name is Puffins. He's a golden doodle. And that was four years ago. And that was probably one of my best decisions. He's everything and anything to me. In fact, I'm doing this podcast from my car. We had the fancy equipment, but sometimes I like to just to do this by my phone. And he's actually right behind me. So if he does bark, that's Puffins. So that. And that's just to show you. But here's the moral of the story. The moral of the story is that we talk about life after sports. And you may say, okay, Mike, okay, great story. But how does this help me? Well, the way it turned out was when I was talking to the people on the zoom. They were both former college athletes. One was a soccer player, and the other one was a. Was a baseball player. And I really liked the couple, and I trusted them, so I automatically trusted these people. And Cheryl would say to me, like, how did you trust them so quick? You just know sometimes when you're around certain athletes, you just have that trust in that bond that you can't explain. And we went there, we got puffins, and, you know, the. The rest is history. It's been. It's been great. But the whole purpose was I saw these two people, and they were just so caring and loving, and they, you know, they had these different golden doodles. And I said, okay, this is. This is it. And, you know, this led me down this path, and it wasn't because of the. The Golden Doodle farm or the farm. And they had their. You know, they had golden doodles on it. This is not why I'm doing this. But I love the life after sports and helping people. And I always tell everybody, no matter what you have done, whether you're a pro athlete and you had a cup of coffee in the minors or you played in the big leagues and you had a pot of coffee or A cup of coffee there and you played in the minors and you maybe played one game or you're a high school player or you played club sports or D3, it doesn't matter. You're still an athlete. And I love working with athletes. I also love working with the workplace athlete. I can't leave that out. But this is special to me. So I offer this program to help the athlete and some of us need it. And what it is, is I mentioned it earlier, so please listen to the intro of the first podcast so I don't have to repeat this, but the whole purpose is helping you get better. So no matter what it is that you are your life, it's for the betterment of you, it's for you to get ahead is why we offer these courses. And I truly believe for those athletes that are out there, because to me, you're always an athlete in my mind. And whether you, you just finished your sports or we call it life after the sport, but again, you're still an athlete. I call everybody an athlete. No matter what it is that you do, it's important to polish up on your skills and never, you know, keep learning. Listening to different podcasts, research, reading books. I mentioned earlier in one of my podcasts, you know, several months ago that there was a player, former NHL players, name is Ryan Walter. And I met Ryan 20 years ago and he's a performance coach. He speaks all over Canada. Great speaker, great person. I think was, besides Steve Yzerman in hockey, one of the youngest captains ever in the NHL that was with Washington one stand Cups in Montreal. He's just somebody you look up to and such a great guy that when I met Ryan, I wanted to learn a little bit from him. He gave me all of his books and he's written several books and he just actually just read a. He just, you know, written another book recently and such an amazing person. But I love reading. I can't get enough of his books because I always want to learn. And the one thing I did, I committed to when I was done with sports, I committed to reading one book a month. Now, you know, we, we could even use the audio books and that's what we offer for everybody. We have the 30 audio short courses. But, you know, even, even those books and audiobooks to help you, it's always good to polish up on those skills. And somebody said this to me, and I even mentioned this before in the podcast. Someone said, mike, you know, it's never good to look back. Well, why not? Sure it is. I love looking Back. I love looking back and remembering my teammates, love remembering some of the sports that I played. I remember when I was five years old as a young athlete and I was learning how to skate, and the coaches that were helping us out there, I remember that I. I still talk to my baseball coach, my coach that I had in Oak Park, Michigan. We just talked like a couple days ago, and that was many years ago. We. We still get on the phone and talk about different things and reminisce, and I think that's great. So, yes, you could look back, but it's always important to forward. One of the things that I learned in coaching is, you know, when I'm working with somebody, it's like sometimes we have, you know, you either are going, you know, if you're going full speed ahead, you're going north, you're on track, you need coaching, you need some mentoring, and you just need to stay on track. Now you're going north. Now if you're really struggling and you're going south, you're going the opposite way. Like, everything is. Is not good in your life. And that's when you might need therapy again. We are not therapists. We do performance coaching. And the tools that I'm offering to everybody, the scholarship and what I've mentioned in the previous podcast, is all for you. For some, it could be at no cost at all. We're just gonna. We're gonna give these to you to help you. But we. That's south. You're going south. And if you're east and west, you're sideways. And a lot of us get sideways. When we're done with sports, we're like, okay, we're struggling. We miss things. Now it's okay to miss things. I watch games sometimes and I see, boy, I remember those days. How great was this? You know, I loved it. I loved it so much that I couldn't get enough of it. They had to carry me away as an athlete almost to retire. And I just love it. But I still have to do other things outside of it and pick up other hobbies and be involved with community and do certain things. And the number one thing you should do is really, I believe, is continuously educate yourself. I talked to somebody that just got a big banking job, former athlete who, like I said, everybody's an athlete, but they played a professional sports and now they're in banking. I said, that's amazing. But never give up educating yourself. Never give up learning, never give up taking in new things, Never give up spending time with people that have a wealth of knowledge that you could learn from. So this is just a tip to help you again. This is I'm doing this life, you know, life after sports, doing five of these little series to really to give back. And we're offering this to all athletes. And if you go to our website, healthymindsetapp.com you can fill out that little form. I will provide information for you. And we have all of these tools and there's never a time where there's no questions asked. So if someone says, mike, I am struggling in my life, I don't have a dime, I can't do this, we will make it work for you. And that's the purpose of this. We also purposely made it where you're not signing up for $2,000. We're talking barely a hundred plus dollars for that. Just covers the assessment and some of the tools. Unless you can't do it. We're here to help you. Anyway. This life after sports is something that means a lot to me because I lived it and I struggled early on with having this identity crisis. And now my whole purpose is to give back to you.

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 where our wherever you listen to your podcast 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.