Mindful Gold Paint Theory

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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.

In this episode, I'm going to talk about the gold paint theory. And what is the gold paint theory? Well, back in the day, in the professional hockey days, when I played hockey, we did something called imagery. So we imagined in a quiet place that we're scoring a goal or we're hearing the cheers of the crowd or could be any of those things that you're imagining. And you do it in a quiet place. You work on some breathing exercises along with that. And we call that imagery visualization. Sometimes I don't always love visualizations because I practice mindfulness and that means being in the present. Going back to the early days, Muhammad Ali, what he did is he would see himself winning the fight, but he didn't think about all rounds, if he was going to go one round, three rounds, or however many rounds in the fight, because that would expend all of his energy. So I'm going to share something with you that this doctor from the University of Tennessee taught me probably about 17 years ago. His name is Dr. David Medford. He helped me get certified with the Axiological Profiles and really helped me being really aware of situations, being mindful, being in the present. So the one thing that he taught me is he says, if you ever feel stressed, having a bad day, something's going on in your mind, you're not happy, you're struggling, you have butterflies before a game. He said, work on this practice. Go into a quiet place and imagine that you have gold paint on your skin, a thick coat of gold paint from head to toe. And he says, typically your skin can't breathe. So what you do is you go into this area where no one's around. It could be even in your car before you go into your game or your practice or your place of work. And imagine you have gold paint head to toe. What I would like you to do is close your eyes and slowly imagining that gold paint coming off your body nice and slow while working on some breathing techniques that we also offer here in one of our last chapters. If you go back and look, you can see our episode on breathing. But I want you to close your eyes. Think you could practice it right now? Imagine you have gold Paint from head to toe. I know some of you, if you're driving, it's not a good time to practice it. But if you're in a quiet place or you can do this, and when you get home, you could. This is recorded, so you could listen to this. And what I want you to do is think about this. Think about eliminating all of those negative thoughts. So you're closing your eyes. Let's practice it here. We'll do it for one minute. I highly recommend if you could do one to three minutes. Now, you got to remember, some of us can't get. I talked to somebody, I was working with a company, and he says, I can only get from my head down to about my chest. So we had to scale it back a little bit. So you go as far as you can without trying to have all these wandering thoughts. And we're going to start here in about three seconds. I want you to close your eyes, take some deep breaths. Inhale and let it out. Inhale and let it out. Let's do one more. Inhale, let it out. Now your eyes should be closed. And I want you to think about slowly, all that paint slowly coming off your, your head, all the way down your body as far as we can. And it's going to be silent. So if anyone tunes into this podcast and they hear it silent, well, so be it. We're going to do it for one minute. Are you ready? And here we go. Okay, that was one minute. It may have seemed a lot longer. I remember doing this with a lot of our younger athletes, and after 15 seconds they said, the gold paint has came, has completely come off my body. And I said, well, that's a little bit too quick. The whole purpose here is that we slow down. We're being mindful, we're being in the moment, we're bringing our full body to being fully present. And you could practice this. And it's like anything else, the more you practice this, the better you're going to become. And I know it sounds. Some people are saying, I'm not sure about this, but some of the best athletes in the world have practiced mindfulness. Teams have used it to win championships. And I'll share my little story. So we go back to about 1980, 1986. My goal was I got drafted by the Buffalo Sabres and I really wanted to make the team that year as a seventh round draft pick. And I achieved my goal well, and I got sent down back to junior, played on the rural junior team, which is called Played for My country, was a Great experience. And the next year I really wanted to get myself ready, but I read in the paper that a couple left wingers were picked up as free agents to the Buffalo Sabres. So what do you start doing? Your mind starts to wander, you start to get nervous. And what I did is I over trained my body and I hurt myself. And that's one thing we practice in. Mindfulness is not over training, taking care of yourself, doing the right things, everything we've talked about, like you're eating well, sleeping well, taking care of yourself, training for recovery. And I overdid it. I really did. And I ended up pulling my stomach muscle in the summer, flew into Buffalo, from Detroit to Buffalo, where I was living in the summer, saw the team doctor and they sent me to a clinic in Chicago to work with. Some of the top athletes in the world were there and it was all confidential, so I can't say who it is even to this date, this many years ago, but this doctor really helped me. It helped me with working on my balanced. They did massages over there. But one of my favorite things that they did for us was mindfulness stuff. And I thought it was kind of weird, different back then. I mean, we're talking many years ago, we're talking 1987 now, because this was the following year. And I went through this practice where this sports psychologist had me back then. We had the cassette tapes. And for some of you young people, you may not know what that is, I'm sure you do, but we had the cassette tape and they made me a cassette tape. And I also practiced this while I was in Chicago. And it was just amazing. It was just amazing what we did. So they had us. They had me thinking like I was in the middle of the lake in a quiet lake and being mindful of everything that was around me. The trees, the sun, the water, which was nice and calm. And I just had to sit in that boat, close my eyes and relax my entire body for 45 minutes. Well, I did, and it was amazing. And it just really gave me a peace of mind. It was good for clarity and it really helped me. So I've been practicing mindfulness. Really. Actually, I've been practicing mindfulness since 1987. As a young athlete, I didn't even realize that I was practicing it and didn't even know it. Even later in my career when we were doing imagery and in many different visualization activities and techniques. And just going back to conclude with the funny part of the story was I was so bored being by myself in Chicago that I brought one of my best friends, Marty. I put him on a plane from Detroit. I said, marty, fly down and spend some time here with me. Well, that day he flies in, we spend time, you know, the next day he's with us. But I'm at this clinic all day long. Then we're going by the time we go out for dinner at night. And back then we wanted to go out a little bit. We'd go out and have a good time. I had to get back and go to sleep because my day started the next morning at 5:00am well, the day I did this mindfulness activities, I did the massage, I did the balancing everything that you would never, no heavy training, everything was being fully in the present. Doing this mindfulness activities, working with the sports psychologist. That day Marty was going down to Wrigley Field that he really always wanted to go. And he went to the Cubs game. Well, guess what happened? I was supposed to pick him up around six, seven o' clock at night. It was a day game because they didn't have the lights back then. And what did I do? I passed out on the bed. And before you know it, it's 10 o' clock and the hotel, somebody from the hotel security was banging on my door to make sure I was okay. Banging on the door. So I get up, I go, oh my gosh. And I had like 16 messages from Marty, where are you? I'm stuck at Wrigley Field. So what do I do? I had to rush down there. I go down there and pick up Marty. And there's a whole side to the other story. He decides, hey, let's go to eat. And I said, marty, it's already kind of late. I have to get back and prepare my for tomorrow when he begs me to go eat. And again, we're kind of getting off topic. But if I'm going to tell the story, I might as well be real funny. Part of the story is I decide to go with him. He convinces me to go to Rush Street. We're having a few, you know, we're having a late dinner and my car gets towed. Finally at three in the morning, I get it. And I had to be at the clinic by five. And everything I gained from the day before, I figured I lost it. So. So some of you young athletes or people that are, you know, if you're on a work trip, pick your spots. Because for me, every. I unwound everything that I did. And I'm not blaming Marty. I go back to this day. You know, he may have a different version of the story. He's been my best friend since I was around six years old, but thought I had to throw that in. A little bit of mindfulness here today. I'm also coming out with two books that I've been writing along with my daughter and another gentleman by the name of Derek about being mindful and like to offer it to everybody. Just reach out to me at Hartman Academy or email me MikeArtman Academy and we'll get you the book. Anyways, I hope you got a lot out of this practice and looking forward to hearing from you.

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