Q & A Before the Championship

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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. Hartman.

Welcome back to another episode. And I'm doing this from my car this morning very early and I'll get to the question in a minute. But before we go, if you have any questions or you want to ask us a question that we could put on the show, go to healthymindsetapp.com healthymindsetapp.com and you can leave a message there. We love to answer your questions. We also have the book that's right on our website, the Healthy Mindset for the Athlete and the Workplace athlete. And today I'm going to answer a question to the best I can. I'm going to share a story around it. That's why we have stories, mindsets and champions being said. Question is, what does it mean when they tell you never get too high, never get too low? Well, that's a good question. There's so many cliches and in sports, how many times have you heard a coach say on TV or a player while we're going to take it one day at a time, you may have heard that before. So getting around the cliche, to me it means being very balanced. And I use the example of the New York Rangers in 1994. I tell people I was a small piece to a big puzzle. And that's not being negative. I played 35 games on a great team, learned a lot from great players and champions. And the one thing I learned is I never heard during the entire season that I was there that were fighting to win the Stanley cup game. So the season started in September and it started with though Mike Keenan, our coach, showing a video of what it means to win in New York. So he sat us down and you could apply this to your business or you could apply this to your team. No matter how old you are. I believe you could use this if you're 13 years old and up, you could think about this if you're a coach and you want to take this. But the one thing that we did was he showed us what it meant to win in New York. He showed us the a little bit of the World Series when the Miracle Mets won the World Series, showed us the big parade, the tick or take parade and what it Means to win in New York. Never talked about playing the whole year. And who do you, you know, are we going to play Edmonton or Vancouver in the finals? It never went to that. We didn't worry about. Oh, boy. The Devils are a strong team. Of course we, you know, we studied film and we watched different things, but we did take it one day at a time. And even if we had a, you have a great game and we won the President's Trophy that year, we were first overall. That means we came back the next day twice as hard. We didn't take time off to say, oh boy, we won. We're gonna, you know, we have this thing. Or we were on a huge winning streak at one time. I mean, it was practically an all star team, that team. And we had a huge winning streak. I can't remember how many games it was. I have to go back and look, I don't want to throw out a number that I can't exactly remember. We were playing best hockey of the year, but not once did somebody say, oh, boy, we're on route now to a Stanley Cup. So I could tell you to stay neutral, to stay balanced, to stay in the middle. Never get too high, never get too low. I could mention players like Kevin Lowe. That one I believe. I'm going to guess seven Stanley Cups after, you know, six at that point. And Kevin was a very balanced player. He was one of our older players that won with the Edmonton Railers. And I just watched and I don't like the word. I studied them. They were my teammates, but I just watched how they carried themselves and it was amazing. He was always the same. If he had a great game, he was the same. If he had a not so great game, he was the same. He was very neutral. So I want you to think about that word, neutral and balanced. Same with Clark Gillies. Clark Gillies was my roommate in Buffalo. He won four Stanley Cups. I never knew when he was happy. I never knew when he was sad. He was very consistent. So you could throw the word consistency in here, being very consistent within what you're doing. Be very consistent with your schedule, with your plan, with your habits. This is how you become neutral. You have a great game, you score three goals, you hit a home run, you get a touchdown, you make a big play and what happens, you know, you have to be neutral. You bring yourself back. I'm not saying not celebrate your wins, but that's what it means to be a champion. So I have never heard anybody say that. In fact, I don't watch A lot of college sports. But I was watching basketball here in North Carolina, which is huge. And one of the coaches say, you know what? We're not even thinking about the Final Four at this time now. Final Fours, it was over. But they were going into the Final Four and they were saying, you know what? We just have to play each minute at a time, and we know what we have to do. We have prepared for this and we want to come out on top at the end. And that's what they were saying. But we're going to take it day by day like they did from the first day of their training camp. And that resonated with me because it's the same with our, you know, the same thing that we did within our sport. So in our assessments that we have, we have these assessments, and some of you would understand this, who have heard a debriefing from me or even one of our coaches that we like neutral in the middle. So when you take an assessment, it measures these different areas. It measures the worldview, which is the extrinsic thing. I don't want to get into all this crazy stuff. That's the outside world and where you are. And it measures the intrinsic, and it measures if you're focused or over focused or under focused or neutral. To make the longest story short, we want you neutral. We want you in the middle. We want you balanced. We want you to be able to weather the storm. And I'm going to share this again. I said this before. I said that we have. I have. I can't speak for anybody. I've been around a lot of athletes, a lot of different players, different sports friends. I have a friend in Major League Baseball and I have a really, you know, good friend in other sports. And we get negative at times, but you can't show that negativity. I'm going to say it again. We. It's okay to be negative. And somebody said, you can't be negative. You always have to be positive. And then you're going to, you know, you might hear somebody say, you know, I got a, you know, I got a thing that I, that I read all the time that, you know, it teaches me how to be positive. I don't believe that because I've been around many athletes and we get negative. But it's how you portray yourself and how you act about that negativity. And in one thing that I highly recommend if I'm going to say anything is self talk. So I remember when I, when I was playing and especially with the Rangers, I didn't play as much as I would like to. I was more of a support player. That means you come in and out of lineup. You might play one game and you might play five in a row and sit three, or you might play two and play, you know, set another one or however they lay out that role for you. But you have to show that you're positive. You have to say, okay, I'm going to talk good about myself. So I remember if I was pulling into Madison Square Garden, I'm going to sit in a car and I say, no matter what happens, if I play one shift tonight or if I play 20, I'm going to be the best one shift player. I'm going to be the best 20 shift players. And I had that in my mind. But I could have easily said, you know what, I'm going to go in there tonight and they might pull my jersey. I'm probably going to go for warmups. I'm not sure I'm going to play. And that could have happened. And we're negative. But something you have to. And I thought like that at times. But what we have to do is bring ourselves back to what? To being balanced in the middle, to being neutral. And this all starts even with your plan. I talked about this in the previous podcast. Having that plan in place and that's going to help you, part of the plan could be okay. No matter what happens, I'm going to say, I'm going to have good self, talk about myself. I'm going to have good self. So you might be negative about it. You can't just smile and say, yeah, okay, I'm going to. You know, if you play on a baseball team, you play high school baseball. And I am going to accept not playing. I'm not saying that. Absolutely not. But it's how your body language is and how you carry yourself and what you say to yourself. I hope this has helped you. And this is some of the tips that I'm bringing to you from people that I've been around. I could only share my experiences. And if we could help you in any way, go to the healthy mindsetapp.com Leave your question and I would love to answer it.

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