Mindset

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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.

Welcome to the Mike Hartman Show. I'm Mike Hartman, the founder of Hartman Academy and the book Healthy Mindset. It's a workbook for athletes and the workplace athletes that's found on Amazon. And today we're going to talk about mindset. So you've heard this so many times. People are talking about mindset. They're throwing that word around. We've used it in sports for so many years. We use it in business as well for the athlete and workplace athlete. That's what this shows based around. Pretty much. If you look at what the Mike Hartman show, it's about stories, mindset and champions. But how do you take these stories? I try to create some stories within what we're doing, share a little bit about, okay, why you need that mindset and how do you become a champion. And if I look at some of these things with mindset, I looked at two different types of mindset. The first thing is what I call is a fixed mindset. The second thing is I focus on a growth mindset. So if you are an athlete and you have a fixed mindset, I'm not saying you are, but you could be stubborn. I have this set thing in my mind. I'm not changing it no matter what it is. And I think I have a fixed mindset with a lot of things. I have a schedule every day which is fixed and I don't like to deviate from it. I work out every morning early. That's what I like to do. I do either my yoga, I don't do any weights. But sometimes I'd have some of my buddies say, hey, why don't you start doing some weight training? No, I don't want to. I have that fixed mindset of this is what I'm going to do now. Am I contradicting myself? Yeah, a little bit here. But I know what's good for me. I don't want to do any other weight training or anything like that. I enjoy my yoga. I enjoy stretching. I enjoy pilates. I enjoy my body weight training program that we do. That's right in our book. So we have the whole body weight training program. That's the book, the healthy Mindset. For athletes and workplace athletes. And that's what I focus on. That's my fixed mindset. Now, if you have a growth mindset, I'd be open to different things. Yeah, sure, I would love to. Maybe I'll go try this workout. I'll go try CrossFit. I'll go try this different thing. But I don't. This has been working for me. It's been working for a long time. But I have to maybe get out of this little comfort zone and say, maybe there are other options. Again, I feel better when I don't lift weights personally, but you may want to. So when we talk about these different mindsets, how can we get to a point where we're feeling good? Now, I tell young athletes that sometimes you have this fixed mindset of there's one way to do it. I've had one coach always say, you can't shoot off of the. I'm not going to get into the whole detail. Some of us won't understand. I can't shoot off the left foot. I'm supposed to shoot off my right foot. Well, there might be times in a game where you're going to have to shoot off the opposite foot. Some of them might. Or in basketball, you're so used to maybe doing a layup on one side that you're not as good on the other side. But you have to practice that. You have to have that growth mindset that you could develop your talents and abilities through what you're doing. And that comes from good coaching. Now, I'm going to use an example here because I share stories and years ago, I was very upset about this and I've never really talked about it, but we have to be real on this show. And I remember I was watching my son play lacrosse and I was going to their game at his school. And listen, the coaches are great. Again, I think these were volunteer coaches. This was not the high school team. This was the. Wasn't even the JV team. I mean, now my son's 24, so he must have been on the eighth grade team. So the lower school team, which was a sad thing for me. I was watching the coaches and they didn't put these kids on to develop. We want to develop them for the high school team, but they kept playing the better kids. So one time they were playing a school, I think it was Country Day, and that was one of the better private schools here in Charlotte. And the team was winning like nine to nothing. And there was like six minutes left in the game. So me, the Way I like to teach, you know, I have that growth mindset where I want to put everybody out there. I'm not fixed in my ways. I don't need to. If I was coaching, if it was hockey or baseball or any sport, good coaches know how to develop young athletes. So in this case, I was watching this coach and he kept playing his better players and my son was getting out there, but it wasn't about my son. It wasn't anything about my son. I felt for the other kids that were just sitting there. So I walked over to one of the parents that I knew and I said, so tell me, why aren't some of these kids playing? Well, we have to beat country day by 10. We've never beat them 10 nothing. Now, to me, the coach may have had a fixed mindset. He's set in his way. You know what? This is my mindset. I'm going with my best players and I don't care. That's not the way we develop athletes. We develop athletes by putting them in situations, putting them in a. Giving them a chance to succeed. Now, the growth mindset to that would have been, you know what, it's six nothing. I'm going to play everybody now. I want to get everybody in, even for a minute. Get them in, get them out, make them feel part of it. Because what you're doing is you're actually hurting the player in the long run. I'm going off on a little bit of a tangent, longer than I wanted to, but that topic really bothers me. If our young players don't learn to develop, what's going to happen with them is they're going to have that fixed mindset where they don't feel good about themselves. Instead of that growth mindset where I could develop, I'm going to get better. I'm going to have fun with the game. So there's many different ways to look at this fixed mindset or a growth mindset. For me, I think it's so important that you do this. I think it's important that you take the time and understand and write things down for yourself. Okay, I'm set in this way. And what am I going to do? Try to tackle all of your fixed mindset at one time of how it could set you back. That's something that I did. We have that in our book. Something similar. Right in our book. But I'm going to give you some of these actionable steps. In case you don't have a book. It's not about selling you a book, but so we do some of these mindsets. Okay, how am I going to get forward now? Okay, now tell me now, how can I prioritize my growth mindset? I'm not very good at this part of the game. How am I going to get better? What am I going to do to work on it? So I've always believed to have a mindset, even as a coach. I remember I was working with one of the US programs with the top 14 year olds in the country. USA Hockey invited me to do this back years ago. So I did it for about four or five years. I was a head coach and I love working with the players. But my philosophy going in was, everyone's going to play equally. It's a summer. These are some of the top players. And secondly, the way we do team building is I'm going to have a growth mindset. And that growth mindset is I'm not going to label any of our players or make them robotic. I'm going to let them play. Now we have a system. You have to play within a system. Can't just go out there and play like it's a pickup hockey. But we, we had this mindset. And what I did was I went around to each player and I wanted them to get out of their comfort zone and I asked each player this question. Now people are going to get a little confused, how does that have on a growth mindset? And I'll explain after. So I went around to each player and I said, I'm taking you. Instead of doing our usual team building activities on the field, I'm going to take everybody for dinner. We went to Applebee's. It was, you know, we had a budget there, but we, I took the whole team, 20 players to Applebee's. And I said to them, I want them to stand up and I want them to tell me something about themselves. Now it can't be about hockey. Anything but hockey. And it was so funny. A lot of the kids stand up and says, I'm so and so. I'm from Detroit. I'm a hockey player for no, I don't care who you played for. I'm from New Jersey. I played no. And it was funny. But it was such a great little. I call it a little experiment. And I wanted these players to have a growth mindset. Then I would ask them, okay, now let's talk about hockey. What's something that you're going to do differently that you don't do at home with your team? What can you do? And they were stuck. And what I wanted them to be is open minded, not fixed in a way where they're robotic. So some parents may understand what I just said, some may not understand it. I hope I was clear within that I wanted them to have an open mind to things. You know what? I'm going to work on my skills a little bit more. You know what I'm doing. I'm pretty quiet in the dressing room with my team in Detroit. I'm going to be a little bit open now and be a little bit more vocal. I hope everybody's enjoying these episodes. We're going to keep adding these episodes along with stories until next time. Keep your head up, keep your head in the game and looking forward to the next time.

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