Ready To Play Feedback

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.

This is the debriefing process for the advanced Ready to Play Index assessment. So if you have taken the assessment, it's very important that you have it out in front of you as I'm going to go over the report. So on the first part of the report, it explains to you what the report is all about. We're all unique in our own way, we're all different in our own way. And we use this Ready to Play is a good baseline to really help us with the why, how and what why it is that you do things as an athlete, how you go about doing them and what can you do when you are fully engaged in your sport. So this is going to help you. You should be on page two. So if you look at the sports worldview, we look at that as in our axiological terms. So you took a validated axiological Prof. Profile. It's the axiom of value is what you do, how do you value getting ready to play? How do you value yourself as an athlete? So we look at the sports worldview is how you look at yourself from the external world, from the outside world. Then the self view. This measures how you look at from the intrinsic or the internal view as an athlete, a lot of what you do around your confidence levels and understanding your self worth. And I'm going to go more into that in a minute. And then we have the combined attributes of this assessment. Now every assessment is different of course, so I'm just going to give you a good indication of what to look for and how to utilize this assessment. So if you go on page three we look at what we call the six cognitive dimensions, 12 emotional intelligence factors of the worldview. So when we look at the worldview again, that's the external view. We're talking about people, systems and tasks. How do you understand people around you? The self view is understanding your self worth as an athlete or even in your everyday life. Your emotional attitude toward the personal good in what you do. Do you take shortcuts in your life and if you do, how do you feel about that? Your self direction? Do you understand where you're going as an athlete? How are we going to get there? And your role, you understanding your role and I'll get more into your role. Your role could be if depending on what athlete you are, you could be a support player. That means you don't play as much. And that's just the term. One of the terms that we use, we call them in Black Aces. There's many different words or different verbiage that we could use around that. But it's really understanding your role. A good example would be you're a special teams player, whether it's in football or hockey or any sport. You're a designated hitter in baseball. How are you going to handle that role? And body language is so important within understanding your role because if you sit there and you're sulking on the bench, you're going to bring that negative energy to your team. So now that was page three. We're gonna head over to page four of this. And the first thing that I always look at right away is the reliability scores. So I have a sample report in my hand and the reliability scores. Let's say it's 0.88 and we look at that meaning this person took the assessment correctly. Now if it was 0.6 or 0.5, I would worry. So the lower means it's under focused or not paid attention to or we start, we really have to address it. And that's the worldview. So if you look at your sports perception and reasoning and that's understanding the value of people in the systems combined. Now again, if you're, if it says 8.1, 8.3, 7.0, we're doing good. If it's in the sixes, we need it to be addressed at the very end. I'm going to share with you what to do and how we do that. These are things you need to work on. We also believe if you're really strong in a certain area, you want to get stronger at it to be the best. Like if it's number two and relationships is in the yellow, I would worry a lot because it's either I don't care about my teammates, whatever, I care about myself, where am I going to play next year? What scouts can come see me. Now if you're in the blue as neutral, it's always balanced and in the green that means you're focused. But sometimes we could be over focused. So if it's way off to the left and it's really high. You may put a lot of energy towards something like that. And within these assessments, they're validated assessments. The person you could look up was Robert S. Hartman, who was up for a Nobel Prize within. These assessments later passed down to Dr. David Medford from the University of Tennessee. And I trained under Dr. Dave and Dr. David Medford actually trained under Robert S. Hartman. So these are validated and it's a tool to help you. I want you to get that straight. So we look at number three, practicing playing hard and winning. If it's way to the left in the yellow, you're not paying attention to it. If you're in the blue, it's neutral. We always say in sports you never get too high, you never get too low, you want to be neutral. And if it's to the right and it's not too far off the charts if you're in the sevens or if you're 7, 9 and above, it could be a lot of over focus to it. But for the most part it's important to you and you value that and that's what we want to see, we value it. But like I said, if we're in the yellow, okay, we're going to find ways to address that. Your respect for authority or the game plan on number four on page four. Same thing. If you're in the yellow, it could be not paying attention to it, not caring or you just don't care. You're just going to do your own thing. Call that, what do we call that? Right, we call that a fixed mindset. Well, I'm not going to pay attention. We want more of a growth mindset and you're going to learn all this as well. If you're in the blue, again it's balance. And if we're in the green, I start to, to really say, boy, this person values what they're doing or sometimes we could overvalue. I hope I'm not confusing you now again we go down to your self view and that's the intrinsic side. And let's say the reliability score is 0.4. The first thing I would ask you, did you take this correctly? Did you spend time to really go through this or did you just go through this fast? If we're 6.3o and above then I would want to believe you took it correctly. We've seen some people take these in a matter of minutes and I know they really didn't take their time and it really shows in the scores. So we call this our scorecard. So if we look at this again, your perception as an athlete, you see yourself as an athlete, your self perception, are you, you know, athlete of value of looking at people task systems, are you strong with that or do you do your own thing? Again, on number five here on page four, if you're way to the left, we really want to address it. We need to work on this. If you're in the middle, it's balance and I always like balance. And if you're off to the right, if you're in the green, it could be very important to you. But if you're way off, almost off the charts, if you're like 9.5 or if you're high off the charts, then that's over. It's called over focus. And you're putting a lot of your energy into that and we'll talk about energy and you will learn this within this self coaching program. Your self esteem and personal value. Same thing. If you look at the three different bars there in the yellow, the blue and the green, depending on where you are under focused, are we balanced or are we focused or maybe a little over focused, your sports position and awareness on number seven, are you engaged? That means being fully present. Whether it doesn't matter if your coach is talking to you in the dressing room and explaining a drill or one of your teammates could be on the bench talking to you about a play. Are you in the moment? And we teach that within our core state that you will definitely, hopefully listen to because it's a big part of this program which teaches you mindfulness. What means being in the moment. Okay, we're going to look at number eight. You're planning focus on your future in sports or do you see yourself in sports? If you don't see yourself in sports that you're in the yellow, I don't see myself playing, which is okay. But if you're somebody that wants to do well within your your sport, you might want to play high school sports or college or maybe even professional. Maybe you're a pro already and you're looking at this and you're using this on how we could improve as a professional athlete. Doesn't matter what level you are, but you look at those three bars again and you use that as a guide to help you. And again we're going to give you tools to help you. The next thing I want to talk about is your soft skills on the next page. So on page five we're going to talk about your soft skills. So we go into like, are you coachable and you look at the graphs. It doesn't really show the graph, but you look at the graph score of 8.4, and if you're an 8.4, it means you're coachable. If you're in the fours or fives or sixes, maybe you're not coachable. And how do we become more coachable? Do we need to listen more? What do we have to do? Competitive fire, number 10. This is on page five. Again, let's say it's a high score. So that means you have that competitive fire in that drive. If you have a low score, that's something that needs to be addressed and we address it. That's what tools are for. That's what sports is all about. All of us make mistakes in our athletic careers. The best players in the world, Derek Jeter, when he was a top shortstop in baseball, made mistakes. Everybody made mistakes. LeBron James made many mistakes. Playing the best players on the planet, it's a game of mistakes. Sometimes that's how you capitalize on mistakes. And that goes into number 11, concentration. Do you concentrate or is your head wandering when you're playing? Are you fully in the moment? Are you concentrating on what you need to do? If you're a hockey player and you're taking a face off, are you really ready? Are you ready when that puck drops? If you're a baseball player, are you getting ready to make something happen? When you're in the batter's box, it doesn't matter what sport it is, it could be pickleball being game ready. Remember, as a very young kid, I remember my coach used to say, game ready, your knees are bent, your head is up, your back is straight. Whether, if it's in baseball or whatever you're doing, you're concentrating, consistency is so important at number 12. So we look at the scores again. If we're in the fours, we really need to address that. Four fives and sixes, sevens were balanced. Eight means boy, I'm focused, nine means I'm consistent. It means so much to me. And you may be putting a lot of pressure on yourself. So sometimes you could be a nine. And I know it might sound a little confusing, but that means you could be so over focused on it that you're trying to be consistent. And again, sports is about consistency. That's one thing obviously that you look for, but you don't want to put a lot of pressure on yourself doing it. Decision making, ability, driving for results and focus. If you look at those, you look at those same things, those scores are really important. And especially again, I'm going to go through these again, it sounds redundant, but I really want you to understand your assessment. So going through this, if you're in the fours or fives or sixes, we're going to address it and we're going to use these tools to help you. And even if you're in an eight, you want to get better, you work on those skills. Sometimes they say you work on something you're really good at. And I'll share some stories, you'll hear some stories within some of these reports that we're doing. I'm going to go into some stories as well for you at a different time. Following directions. Do you follow directions? Do you listen to the coach? The coach could have the whiteboard out. We used to have something called drill busters. So it's always somebody maybe going the wrong way. And if you're one of those players, you really have to focus and think about it. Maybe write down the drill. Maybe if you're in the four O's or fives or 4.6 or 5.8 and okay, I gotta follow. If I'm like six, zero. Okay, but we're getting close. How can I get to really focusing on following directions? Game Intelligent goal achievement and growth mindset are extremely important. So when you have that growth mindset, you're open to learn. And if you're in the lower numbers or if it's really low, if you're in the four O's or fives or sixes, we have to, okay, how are we going to work on becoming. Having more of a growth mindset, maintaining control and composure, Mental toughness and optimism. Same thing. You look at your scores, four, five sixes, sevens. We're getting pretty good. We keep going higher. That's great. I always believe also people say, well, this person's not mentally tough. Mental toughness can be learned. So I want you to remember here doesn't mean if you're a 4.0, we can learn it. We could teach ourselves a little bit how to be mentally tough and use tools that I'm going to provide for you as part of this program that you could use to help you. Optimism isn't is important. You could feel good, have a great game. The next day you're not doing well and all of a sudden you're talking to yourself like, I'm not that good anymore. If you're in the fours, you could be very negative. But we're going to work towards being more positive. Five, six is too. I start to get concerned and you could be like, if you're balanced in the middle, like a 7, 7.2, 3, 4, 5, right around there, that means it could be either way sometimes. So sometimes you could be extremely balanced. But also you can get negative as well. Again, this is just a tool and it's not a crystal ball. So if you say, well, that's not me, and it says this again, this is a tool we use to help you get ready to play. Personal accountability, confidence, self discipline, self motivation. You look at your scores and if we need to work on those, we will. And everything is confidential. So I'm going to tell you at the very end how to get in touch with me so I could lead you to improve in these areas. Please listen to the course as it's extremely important that you listen to the complete audio of all the courses and you listen to all of these, all audios and you utilize me especially as like an accountability coach to help you, to help you through these. A couple other things like being a team player and withstanding pressure, that's all part of leadership. You're going to learn about what it is to be a true leader. Sometimes you may be, you know, very low at a 5.0 doesn't mean you're a terrible team player. It means maybe certain areas you need to think more of your team. There's an old expression from years ago and they used to say if the name on the front of the jersey is more important than the name on the back. And I never believed that because you're important as well, but you still put your teammates first. It's those players that are willing to do the extra mile for their teammate. And I could tell you many stories. I've talked to professional scouts and college scouts and baseball, a lot of baseball, actually a lot of different professional baseball people I've worked with, as well as many hockey, different sports players that went to the Super Bowl a few times and asked them how they did it and they, they were a team player by making their top stars playing harder, by being tougher than them in practice, not running them over. And that's still a team player. So there's a lot of ways that you can become a team player. And again, we're going to help you with the tools to do that. Withstanding pressure is another thing that we could talk about as well. You know, within some of your soft skills. Now, if you look at your scores, highest to lowest, I don't have to go through every single one. Your highest score could be being a team player or Being self confident, whatever it is, that's great. You still work on it to be the best. You might have a very low score of relationship with coaches and teammates. Okay, so you're going to work on that. I teach people. Are you interested or are you interesting? If you're interested, you're interested in your teammates, you're interested in your coach. Now you're not there to be the coach's friends and he's not there to be your friend. But you have to be interested and you can't make it all about you. That's one thing that bothered me when I sometimes see. I'm never going to say players names. I was watching a football game and a football player made a great play and he kept pointing at himself to me. It totally turned me off. I didn't even really know who the football player is at the time but. Or was I. But the point is it's, it's, it's. We're going to utilize this to help you. So if you look at your scores and if you're in the nines, boy that's strong in the eights. But if you're really low and there's something that could be holding you back, we're going to work on that. We're going to provide you with the tools to succeed. That's my job here. So now if you, we talked about this early on, you could read through your assessment again to get a better understanding of it. We talked about like go to page seven and the worldview at this time you should know that's the external view. Remember we talked about sports perception and reasoning and you look at your score. If you're in the green, okay, it's pretty strong. That's a high score indicates you make good decisions based upon your coaches and systems. You value your teammates. If it's a low score, we need to work on it, that's all. If you're balanced in the middle and it's a moderate score, that's great. I'm going to go through some of these with you now again if you go to page eight, relationship with coaches and I've seen a lot of these where it's over focused. They put so much attention on trying to be liked. Even you don't need to do that. You have to be yourself. So some of the. I'm giving you some tips now that I believe that could help you. A high score indicates that you value people. You like to be involved with people, even officials, which is a strong score. Furthermore, you have a tendency to over focus on the negative aspects of people. So if they do a little something or bend the rules, you're one to really look at them, which I'm not saying that's good or bad, but that's how you value things. This is a sign of a good leader, but you have to be open. And again, we're going to provide you with tools to understand this more. Practicing playing and winning hard, given 100% to me is, is so, so important. Doesn't matter if you are the. There's a team of 20 and there's the top player and you're number 20. It doesn't matter. You can only go up and get better. High score indicates that you value in getting things done. If you're going to be negative, you're going to be way to the left. Now you don't care. It's under focus. It's not important. But you should want to be able to play hard. And I use this example a lot. Sometimes we only have like 50%. We might have a cold, might be tired, a lot of homework. Whatever it is, you still have to give 100% of that 50% you have, if that makes sense. Some people say, wait a sec, I have to think about that. You still give 100% of everything you have, and that's going to help you fight through it. And you do it smart, too. It's not just like, okay, I'm going to go through a wall every time. There's times, of course, in different sports that you can't do that. But you're doing everything you can. You're using these tools to help you get ready to play so you can be on your game the next page here is respect for authority. To me, that's so important. That's all about values. So if you're off way to the left, we need to work on that. If you're in the middle, you're balanced. But if you're way even to the right, it means a lot to you. I always say it's the hardest thing to do, is officiate a game. They can't get everything right. It's not perfect. That doesn't mean you should scream and yell at them. And your coaches should definitely not do that as well. But we can't control that. We can only control what we do. And it's important that you show respect for your officials and even your coaches. You might not agree with your coach, you may not like your coach, but when you're there, you have to do whatever you can do to what the coach is telling you, or if the official makes a bad call, you're gonna say, okay, just move on. And that's what we learned. We learned this through even some of the meditation that we do. So a lot of what we do in practice, using these different tools that I'm going to provide for you, believe it or not, you apply it to even these situations. I remember when I was young, a good example, I had a coach scream and yell at me and I was upset. And if I would have known what I know today, I would have said, boy, what I got to do is take some deep breaths, close my eyes, do about two minutes or three minutes of some imagery, and get back to what I need to do. We call that like a reset. You take a bad penalty the first minute of a hockey game or you swing at a ball that's way out of the strike zone and you strike out. Okay, time to reset. Time to get ready to play again. It's not the end of the world. Now we're going to go into the self view and you should know that's the internal view, the intrinsic view. We talk about your self perception as an athlete. Do you see yourself as an athlete? Well, if it's way in the yellow, you feel you haven't arrived yet, doesn't mean you don't think you're an athlete, but you haven't arrived. And if you're in the eights or the nines, you feel you're arrived. Now sometimes if you're way off the chart, if you're way in the high nines, you might be a little bit on the cocky, confident side, which isn't always good as well. So I know it's a bit deceiving hearing this, reading these reports, and again, we're here to help you and provide you with the right tools. But if you have a high score, you have a very clear understanding what it means to value your role on the team or whatever it may be. We're going to go into the next page and we're going to talk about self esteem and personal value. Again, use that, that chart. Yellow, blue, green. And if it's a high score, you enjoy valuing what you do. Self esteem, it's important. And high score indicates you have a clearly understanding of your own personal value and have a high level of self esteem. So that's, that's important. If we have a low self esteem, which we may at times in sports, how are we going to address that? And that's what the course is there to help you with I'm here to help you which I'll explain how I'm going to do that at the end and then you apply these things to your game. Sports, position and awareness. Again on the intrinsic side, the internal side. If you look at the, look at the graph again, yellow, blue, green. It's the same thing I've been sharing with you this whole time. And we're going to look at your. Do you see yourself with your future in sports? And that's on page 13. Again yellow, blue, green. High score indicates you have a really good understanding of where you want to go. A low score says you feel you haven't arrived even or you don't feel good. You don't see yourself I can't. I don't see myself making that the high school team. I don't see myself playing college. I don't see myself as a pro. I don't see myself making the travel team. I don't see myself as a weekend warrior competing in this race. And you're going to learn how to counter these with good self talk. So going into the combined views which measures the worldview and the self view, it's the same thing again I'm going to even go through these quick so you could see it. Coachability. This is on the intrinsic and extrinsic side. You look at that competitive fire. Where are you with both of them blended together. That's what it means. So you look at both the intrinsic and the extrinsic together. Sometimes we're good on the external side. So that means boy, on the external side I look like I'm happy and everything else but on the intrinsic side I'm hurting, I'm frustrated, I'm not confident and there's a lot of players that do that. They look really strong on the one side but they're really not. I don't like the word faking it but they're hiding it. So then we go into the concentration level on both the worldview and self view consistence for reliability and performance. Performance decision making. It's all the same. It's all the same how you rate these the intrinsic and the extrinsic and I'm going to be here to answer your questions for you. Are you driven for results? And we look at the overall score. This is on page 16. Your focus, following directions and where do you see it? Where is it rated? So you might have been really good on the intrinsic side but not so much on the extrinsic side or the worldview and not so much on the self view. But these are just the combined views to help you. And again, that's what we're here for and we use tools to do it and self coaching. And I'll tell you at the very end why self coaching to me is so important. And you're going to utilize these tools and utilize me, of course. Game intelligence, goal achievement, reaching our goals. You're going to learn about the different goals, especially in the course. But you look in the internal side, the external side, the worldview, the self view again, going through these again, your growth mindset, maintaining control and composure. The growth mindset again is very important. We want to learn. I learn from people all the time. It doesn't just doesn't mean sometimes we look at somebody, oh, just because they didn't play professional, that means they can't coach me. They didn't make it. I've had coaches that didn't even know how to skate well. I played for the most winningest coach as a professional athlete, Scotty Bowman. He wasn't the biggest player, but he had one of the best minds. He wasn't, I'm sure when he played, I don't even know what kind of a hockey player he was, but boy did he, he really understand the game. And I'll share a quick story. He. And this is something I want to share with you. He used to say, there's four games being played. I would say, what four games? That's kind of confusing. Yes. There's the games that the fans see and they're watching something and they're not really as educated as you think they should be. They might be yelling, come on, shoot, shoot. And at that time, maybe it's not the right play. And then there's a game that the player sees right, and the player thinks he should be playing. How come I'm not playing every shift? I'm more than a support player. I should be doing this, I should be doing that. I'm a better quarterback. You look at all these different situations and I'm sure you could do your research and find a lot of stories about a lot of professional athletes that didn't play as much or didn't make their high school team, they didn't make their college team, they ended up doing well, but they still in their mind thought they were better. Which that's confident. But sometimes you have to be realistic. And then there's a game that the coaches see and they're watching the game from the playing level. And, and what Scotty Bowman meant, he goes, I see Everything above. So he would watch like all different games, four games. So he would see the players point of view, he would see the coach's point of view, he would see the fans and he had the point of view where he analyzed everything. And I thought that was very ingenious statement. Mental toughness. I said it could be learned earlier on the worldview and self view on page 19. Optimism, how important that is as well on the worldview and self view. Again you can go through all of these. This is what we're here for. Personal accountability. You have to hold yourself accountable. That's why self coaching is so important to me. You're self coaching yourself. You can't have a coach holding your hand or a performance coach or anybody holding your hand all the time. You have to be personal accountable and we look at these scores and you may be able to keep yourself personally accountable. If you can't, then you take a little responsibility. And then we also use some tools to help you. Self confidence. And how do we get confidence? Sure you play and you make a big home run first at bat or you get a walk off home run maybe the night before you score a big goal in soccer or make some a great basket or make a great playing pickleball. Whatever it is, you're confident. But how do you come back? That's where we're learning consistency. You're going to learn that within what we're doing. Please listen to the entire course as it's going to help you as well as the ongoing support you're going to get from these audios. Let's go now to page 21. Self discipline, self motivation. Again, that's why I believe in self coaching. You have to take care of yourself. If you can't manage yourself at times, how are you going to do anything else? So you have to work on that. Now I do believe in performance coaching. I believe in sports psychology. I believe in a lot of things. I believe in personal development. But you have to hold yourself accountable. And if you want to get better, this is for the betterment of you. You have to do these littlest things and details for you to get ahead as an athlete. That's one thing I could share with you. It's not the most talented player, it's not the fastest, the biggest, the strongest. We talk about being consistent in using a lot of these tools which I have going to provide for you as well as I call this an application, the assessments and application. That's why we call it Healthy Mindset app because this is an application And a process that we use going through here on page 22, the team player. If you're strong in both areas, the worldview and self view, that's great. But that doesn't mean you could yell at your teammate one night because words will never be taken back. So if I'm going to give you any tips at all, be careful what you say because people will remember for a long time. So being a team player doesn't mean being fake. You're sitting on the bench, you're not playing. Come on guys, let's go, let's go. You're doing it. Be authentic and be real. Sometimes the best leaders that I've seen are the ones that didn't say too much, but spoke when it was important. I didn't want to get into too many stories here, but I played with Mark Messier, one of the greatest people I've ever met in my life to this day the most disciplined, well spoken, caring individual. I could tell you 10 hours of things he did for players that got called up. But he was the ultimate team player. He did everything but he was extremely quiet and we knew if he said something, it really meant something. So without getting too deep, he was always a hero of mine. He was an idol of mine when I was a kid. So to play with him was a dream come true. And to win a championship with him and watched how we did it, but everything was a team player. And I could probably name another 20 players who I played with that stick out of my mind that have done the same thing. But again, this is to teach you so be authentic, be real. Withstanding pressure. And how do you do it? Sometimes it's tough. I'll be the first to admit I put a lot of pressure on myself at times. As an athlete it's possible that you, you've done the same things. So if you're way off to the. Even if it's a real high score, that doesn't mean you don't put pressure on yourself. To me, on this one, I like to be balanced again, there's no such thing as a perfect scorecard. We want you balanced in the middle. So just going at the back, I, you don't really have to pay too much attention on page 23 there's, there's a chart there and we don't need to go too deep into that. Talks a little bit about the, the worldview, what we talked about. And we talked about different things and within the self view and this is just a graph and I could explain it to you Again, this, I'm not too concerned about this. Now what you're going to do is you're going to use the website Healthy Mindset, setapp.com and you can reach out to us at any time for any questions. There's a little icon in the corner of the page or in the area of the website where you can contact us and ask questions. And we're here to support you through your journey and we're looking forward to working with you. Now if any of you, I'm going to stay on here and do just one more quick thing about self coaching just for a second. I really believe that you need to take care of yourself and make changes. That doesn't mean. Again, I don't. I've said this early, it doesn't mean we don't have a performance coach. I'm. I still coach. I. Sweet. We help people. That's what we do. But most of the time you're going to be on your own. So you have to take these tools to utilize them to the best of your abilities that you can because a coach can stand by you all the time and hold your hand. Looking forward to learning more about you. And I wish you all the best. With this self coaching episode. I want to talk about how to use the assessment within your self coaching journey. Again, the purpose of why we're doing self coaching is because a coach can't be with you 24 7. So you're going to have to learn how to do this on your own. Of course, through our community we will be doing a lot of accountability coaching and helping you and guiding you. But at the same time it's important that, that you understand this. So let's start with the assessment called the advanced Ready to play index Assessment Assessment. We're not going to go into the total wellness. That's going to be a separate one that we're going to do at a different time. And what you could do is you could look at your scores from highest to lowest and that's just an area and I'm not worried about your score. We did talk about the debriefing of an assessment but this is more of your self coaching journey and how to use this. So let's start with relationships with coaches and teammates. And I would ask you what can you do to have a better relationship with your coaches and teammates? And you might be thinking, well, how do I have a good relationship with my coach? The coach may not talk to me, the coach may not like what I do. The coach might get on me but what you could do is control what you can control. One thing I could tell you about relationships is life is built on relationships. I've said that many times. You will hear a lot of these things be repeated. So whether if it's with your coaches, the thing to do is to be a good teammate, be a good team player, be respectful. You may not like everything that the coach does, but it's important that you as the athlete do whatever you can to have a good relationship. And I could tell you there's been many times where my coaches didn't like me. I remember without saying the team, I got traded from one team to another. And I remember the coach really liked me in this one organization. Then I got to another and the first thing he told me was don't buy a house. Now we're talking at the professional level. Don't buy a house because I don't expect that you're going to be here a long time. I'm looking for somebody maybe bigger that does what you do. Now I could have salt, I could have, you know, been negative. But what I did was say, okay, I know I'm here. I'm gonna bring a good attitude in to everything that I could do. Now your teammates, this is also for your self coaching journey of course is now our teammates, we're all unique now. So let's say you play on a basketball team where there's 12 or 13 players or pickleball where there's a, you're a weekend warrior and there's only two of you. No matter what it is, you're on a hockey team and there's 25 players. We're all unique and different. We all learn differently, all of us communicate differently. So within your self coaching journey, how can you be a good teammate? Doesn't mean you have to be best friends with everybody or like everybody. I can count on my one hand in all the years I played hockey, of the people I didn't really like, I didn't hate anybody. Hates a terrible word. But you have to like your teammate and part of that is communication. And how are you going to communicate with your teammate while you're playing? These are skills that you can learn in self coaching. Taking these skills on to the best of your abilities will help you in the long run. So use the community for Q and a. You might send me a private message, hey coach Mike, this teammate is not talking to me. They're not utilizing me on the ice. Well, I'll come back with a response. Not necessarily in here and I'LL give you some tips on trying to help you. But in the meantime, you, you have to figure it out. You do. It's you, you're the athlete. You have to figure it out. And again, the coach cannot be by your side 24 7. Utilize the community for Q and A. Go in there, ask us any questions because we're going to be fielding a lot of Q and A and we're looking forward to really helping you. So this is the again the advanced ready to play index assessment. This next segment within your self coaching journey is really understanding your self esteem and personal value and what you bring. Now, self esteem, it's like mental toughness. It could be learned. Sometimes we don't feel great about ourselves. What are we going to do? Are we going to salt be angry? Let's say you're sitting on the bench and you're not playing. What are you going to do to make sure that you add value to your team? Are you going to cross your arms and be negative or are you going to bring good energy in? And that all helps with self esteem. You can only control what you do as an athlete. This is really for your self coaching journey. As mentioned all throughout the community, you can ask questions. We're here to help you. And I mentioned this previously in the relationships with your coaches and teammates that it's really all about you. What value can you bring to your team no matter what sport it is? If it's an individual sport, obviously it's not much of a team. If you're just playing golf, you're a weekend warrior. But if you're an athlete that's around a team, whether it's, you know, you're running a race, you're doing a 10k and you have people you're doing it with, that's still a team, your hockey team, your baseball team, your soccer team, no matter what it is, what value can you bring? What personal value can you bring? And that's what you have to ask yourself. That's where the self coaching comes in. You have to say to yourself, okay, the value that I'm going to bring is I'm going to outwork everybody today. I'm going to bring this in and that's going to help your self esteem. It really will. Now you can now let's say you go to the rink and you're going to say, I'm not playing much, I don't care. Your value is going to go down within your teammates. So personal value is what you could bring to your team. So I want you to think about that. So ask yourself what is this personal value that you have as a person player that you could bring? And this is how you're going to use the self coaching to help you. Now again, self coaching just doesn't mean we're leaving you out by yourself. It means that you're going to have to take responsibility and accountability for what you do because we can't be around you all the time. That's why I love self coaching. Sometimes you're going to have to make most of the time you're going to make decisions on your own and it's going to depend on how you value things. Now again, we're using the assessment as the guide. These are your scores, highest to lowest. So you can always go back to your advanced ready to play index assessment and use this as a tool to help you as well as using the community for Q and A or listen to the group coaching or whatever it may be within the community to help you. So we could help you become your personal best with being mindful of everything else that you're doing as an athlete, looking forward to helping and leading you. There's never a bad question. We're here to help you. This segment we're going to talk about being a better team player. We could always be a better team player in so many ways. You can't just think of yourself. I mean there's so many cliches, there's no I in team, right? But I could tell you something, you do have to take care of yourself. That's part of your self coaching journey. Being a team player is really managing yourself. So in a way it is about you and what you say to your team. You could say things to your team that words that will never be taken back. Example is you're, you're playing in a basketball game and in one of your teammates doesn't give you a pass. And then you could look at that teammate and roll your eyes or shake your head or whatever it may be, get mad, you know, show some bad body language. That's not being a good team player. Being a good team player is someone that really understands all the little things on what it takes to win as a team, to be a good teammate, to be someone that's going to be accountable to your teammates. So being a team player is also you taking accountability for yourself, doing your training programs, taking care of your sleep, being a good person. And I don't mean being like fake on a bench. Okay, guys, come on. If you're not playing a lot and you're trying to get, get yourself more playing time. I'm not talking about that. Being a good team player is really the self coaching journey is about you. Right. But it's, you have to really take care of yourself. Being a good team player is, is getting good sleep. So you're helping your team. You'll be more prepared as a player. That's a good team player. Player. A good team player is even when things aren't going your way and nobody's looking, you're positive with your teammates. You're, you're there for your teammates. The team is having somebody comes in and takes your position. And I'm not telling you not to compete against that, that, that player and do everything you can to win your, your, let's say your spot back if that's the case. But you still have to do it within the rules. And that's called being a good team player. Player. Doing everything you can as a team. I saw Tom Brady in an interview many years ago and he mentioned that he just wants to give the team the best chance to win. Yes, he might throw the ball to the same person and maybe once in a while somebody would say to him, hey, am I ever going to get the ball? Well, Tom is only at that time he said he was only trying to put his team in a position that everybody will do well and win even if you're not getting the ball. But if we win, it helps everybody for the most part. But that's part of team sports. You're not always going to get everything the way you want it handled to you. Being a good team player is also when things aren't going your way, your body language is good, you're on the bench, your head is up, you're not sulking. You're also congratulating your teammate even if they're competing against you for that spot that made a great play. Hey, great play. Let's keep it going. And that's how you'll go further. There's players, they call them support players. There was a catcher for the, for the Yankees that barely played, but when he got in, he did great. So you still have to give 100% of everything you have. Even if you're given that 40% chance that makes sense. You still have to give 100% of that 40%. Let's say you only play 10% of a game. You still have to give 100 percent of that 10%. Be a good team player, be there for your, for your teammates. Because in the long run it will Help you, it will help you in your everyday life, it will help you in life after sports. That's leadership skills. So being a team player is something that's very important. We're still utilizing the community for Q and A and this is all helping you in your self coaching journey. If you have any questions, please reach out to us. The next thing that we're going to talk about within your self coaching journey from your assessment is with standing pressure and pressure to me is really is how much pressure you put on yourself, especially as an athlete. We could add a lot of pressure to ourself. I remember I was playing pickleball with somebody and I was playing with this player and before the match even started this player was telling me how great this player is and they played college tennis and I'm nervous and I said we're playing pickleball, it's a game, we're having fun. It's the same thing as if you're playing a sport no matter what level it is. I have a friend that went to the super bowl six times, four with Buffalo and two with Denver and he had the philosophy that doesn't matter who you are, doesn't matter who, who he's playing against. Am going to outwork you. I am going to do everything I can and in my mind I'm going to say you put your shoes on the same way I do. You put your left one on, you put your right one on, you tie it up and you play football. And it's the same thing. Whatever sport you have, you have to remember it's just a game. If you go out there and you say, oh boy, I'm nervous, boy, there's a lot of pressure on me, what am I going to do? You're going to hurt yourself. Now we use the tools within the community like the meditation. These are tools that will help you with pressure imagery, visualization. That's great. But the self coaching part, this is you so withstanding that pressure. What are you going to do to withstand pressure? We're here to help you even in the, through the community of course, with accountability. And you can ask any questions instead of just we're getting here. Just a quick overview of withstanding pressure. But, but there's ways to withstand pressure. Taking deep breaths before you approach a situation, breathing techniques, being ready, self talk. There's so many ways that will help you withstand pressure. But I know one thing. If you say to yourself, oh, I'm frustrated, I'm oh, I'm nervous. Oh look who we're playing we're playing the best team in the state. Oh, we're playing this high school team and they haven't lost. Doesn't matter. Challengers, this is where the challenge comes in. This is it. And this is preparation is so important. Derek Jeter said this for some of you youngsters, of course I'm going back to some of the older ballplayers. But Derek Jeter said his biggest fear was not being prepared. And if you're not prepared, forget it. So you have to prepare yourself. You can't just show up and say, okay, I'm going to play. Oh no, boy, now I'm nervous. I didn't prepare myself. Preparing yourself means withstanding pressure. Even in health, even going back to having a good meal, you have to be fully prepared. Having a good post game meal, withstanding pressure, all that is included. It's not just the end result of withstanding pressure, it's how are you going to handle it. An athlete, this self coaching journey that you're on is you're not in it alone. We're here to help you. But you do have to understand some of these attributes that will take you further within your sport. And withstanding pressure, you have to think about that for a minute and utilize the tools that work best for you in the community. The next part of your self coaching journey, I'm going to talk about mental toughness and we've talked about that a lot. But what is mental toughness? Mental toughness can be learned. It's how you handle things like adversity or things that are not going to go your your way or how do you handle things that are going to go your way. But the next game are you going to come prepared? This is all based off of your assessment. So it's important that you have your assessment out in front of you. The advanced ready to play index assessment. And this is going to go into the mental toughness. Also we have a mind map that will help you in your self coaching journey. There's a tool that you could use, it's right here in this section. You could download the mind map and we could help you through that as well. But remember, self coaching is all about you and how do you handle things that aren't going your way. That's what we look for in sports. Sometimes, sometimes things are really going your way, but then I want to see how you're going to react when things are not going your way. You might have the yips, you might be going through some personal things, some things at school you have a lot of stress or you're frustrated or maybe you're not playing that much. How are you going to handle it? There could be some adversity in your life, some personal adversity, things in your life life adversity that could affect your mental toughness in your game. But mental toughness could really be learned. The mind map will really help you. It's a great tool. This is all again self coaching for you. This whole section is going to be about how to self coach yourself. Mental toughness could be as simple as you're working on your breathing techniques. That's going to help you. You're nervous or things aren't going your way and I've seen it so many times taking a reset. So mental toughness is one thing but how are you going to handle it? You have to take control of it. You handle your own mental toughness. But you could teach yourself certain things or use tools that are here in the community that will help you. Especially utilizing myself as your accountability coach. So mental toughness can be learned. How are you going to bounce back? Are you. Things aren't going your way. How are you going to react? We get into things about acting. You can go back and listen to a lot of the audios below. We talk about acting or reacting. We like when you act on things. That means you're intense and you're going for it. Sometimes when we're reacting we might be behind the play and that's mental toughness. Believe it or not. Because you're not so sure about yourself. I'm not sure but just act on it. Sometimes we have to go for it and all of us play different sports so I know it's just not that easy. This self coaching journey that you're on is really for yourself and this is all educational to help you and guide you. Any questions? Use the community private message Me looking forward to helping you do your mental toughness and download the mind map and we could also walk you through that mind map that I think could really be beneficial to you. Within your self coaching journey. Self motivation is so important. You can't always rely on the coach or your captain or you might even be the captain to give a rah rah speech to motivate the team because that's not always going to work. It might get you excited but there has to be a reason within yourself to do it. There has to be. They say that why? Why do you play sports? Do you want to get something out of it? Some of us say I want to get a college scholarship Some say I want to play pro, some say I just want to play high school. I'm a weekend warrior that just wants to get better. I want to win the competition. So that self motivation comes within that. Why? Why do you want this? There has to be something there. And it even goes back to the old goals analogy I used to use. So if you play a sport, you play soccer, you're playing hockey and you take the goals away, there's nothing to shoot for. Right. It's boring. So, meaning if you're playing a sport and you're playing a pickup game and they take the goals away, there's nothing there. It's the same. You take the nets out, you're playing pickleball, you're a weekend warrior, you take the nets away, it's boring. You need to have something to show shoot for. Self motivation can come within. Somebody may have said to you, you're not good enough, you're not going to make it. That can motivate you to do better. Your coach might say, you know, I don't see you fitting into the plans. You're going to have to really prove yourself. That's okay. What is it? What are you going to do as an athlete to say, okay, I'm going to maximize my potential, I'm going to outwork everybody, but there has to be something there. We use this part. This is from the assessment part. We looked at the scores, highest to lowest and you could look at the self motivation. I'm not worried where your number is. But now we're on that self coaching journey on how to utilize this and what can you do within your self motivation to make yourself better. Sometimes it's as easy as saying, okay, today I'm tired, I don't feel great, but this is what I'm going to do to be motivated. I'm going to divide the game up into minutes. Okay? I'm going to play hard as I can for this five minutes. I know I'm not feeling great, but I'm motivated to do it. Then all of a sudden, boy, I feel pretty good. Okay, now I'm going to do it again for another five minutes. And there's so many ways to do it. And that's why we're here to help you on your self coaching journey. Any questions? Utilize the community. Private message myself and I'll give you tips on ways to motivate you. I remember once as an athlete that I played three games and three nights in junior hockey. At the end of the season, I was already up at the Buffalo Sabres playing in the NHL during that year, then played for the world junior team. I was exhausted and then I come back and I actually played three games and three nights in junior hockey. Now you can't do that in practice. Pro they don't allow three games and three nights. Sometimes in the minors they did, but not at the NHL level. Well, what happened was I got called up right after the game and I had a fly to Boston the next morning early to play the Boston Bruins for an afternoon game. So now I'm playing four games in a row. So I was doing some self motivation. Okay, I'm here, I'm excited. I'm just proud to put on a Buffalo Sabre jersey. I would talk to myself and I would do whatever I can to motivate myself to make sure that I was going to show up and play the best of my abilities that day. So what can you do that's going to help you? And if you can't think of things, that's what we're here for. We're here to hold you accountable and help you and that's what the community is here for. There's never a bad question so feel free to reach out. I hope this helps you utilize a lot of these things here that we have in the community. There's a lot of good tools for you and you need to do whatever you can to motivate yourself. This segment in your self coaching journey is all about coachability. Are you coachable? Do you have it within you to be coachable? Now we talked about at this point you should have listened to to the elearning course, the healthy mindset for athletes and workplace athletes. And this is coming right from your assessment. Your score is highest to lowest for the advanced ready to play index. And to me let's just go into coachability. Are you coachable? So sometimes we have players that are not too coachable. And it's as easy as saying do you have a fixed mindset or do you have a growth mindset? Well if you're not coachable, you have a fixed mindset. I'm going to do it this way. Or you're always challenging the coach instead of listening. Now you may not agree with your coach, your coach, you might say my coach doesn't like me. Okay, well you still have to be coachable. You have to learn. We even as athletes can learn from everybody from the. You can be the top scorer on the team, but you can learn from a defensive player. If that's the sport I'm always willing to learn Even here at my age, I'm. If I'm playing even pickleball with somebody and I'm playing with somebody, that's a five zero, that's a pro. And I realize I'm not a five o but I'm going to learn. I want to learn everything I can. So you have to put your ego aside in sports and learn and listen. Listen to what your coach is saying or even if somebody gives you constructive criticism. Now I'm not all for somebody saying oh boy, that's a terrible wake up here, you're not doing well. Now that's a different conversation. So if somebody or your coach or your captain or somebody on the team is telling you you're not doing it right and they have that tone, that's more of a negative tone. Well, they need work. But what you can control is you. And you can listen and be coachable. Learn from others. This self coaching journey is about you and maximizing your potential. Even if it's having fun. You could be a weekend warrior, professional athlete, high school player, doesn't matter. But being coachable is key to success. Learning and listening. Do your research, do due diligence, use the computer. That's even being coachable, the ability to learn. If you think you're too good and you can't learn anything, it's going to catch up to you later. I don't care what level you play at, so use the community. I'm here to help you stay accountable through this self coaching journey. Any questions? Again you could private message me in the community. Looking forward to helping and leading you and any questions. There's never such thing as a bad question. Please reach out. This next part of your self coaching journey is maintaining control and composure. And what that means is being in control of yourself no matter what it is, what sport you're playing. Again, this is based off of your assessment. If you look at the scores highest to lowest on the advanced ready to play index assessment, you scroll to the page, it's a page six and you'll look at maintaining control and composure. And again, what this means is being in control of you. You can only control yourself. I've seen players break sticks as a hockey player, throw the ball down as a baseball player, even kick a basketball once or slam somebody down on a soccer field. You have to be in control and composed no matter what the situation is. It could be the beginning of a game and you're a pitcher in baseball and I don't like to get into sports and I'm not what I Call myself an expert in baseball is not one of them. But you could walk the first two batters. Are you going to slam your glove? You know, what can you do to be, to have more control and composure? Now as far as the baseball skills goes, I can't help you there, but I know one thing you could do is some deep breathing that will get you more composed, resetting, talking to yourself. And there's so many ways that you could do that. Now I could tell you a situation that I was watching. Just a couple years ago, there was a player that was called up to the New York Yankees. Now how can you put yourself in this position? This is why I, I teach by stories. This is your self coaching journey. So this player was called up to the Yankees, did very well at spring training. He happens to be from Toms, New Jersey, which is not far from New York. So now what a dream come true. You're pitching in Yankee Stadium in front of thousands of people. You're living your dream. Well, he did great in the preseason. Then he went out there without even saying his name. Some people may know who this is. So he's, you know, he's struggling. The first batter and one of the veterans goes out and jogs to the mound and puts his arm around him and smiles and, and it was great. This is, you know, it was incredible. This was like it. You saw this kid smile and basically what he said, without getting into the whole story, story, this is not what it's about. After the game, the report, he ended up getting out of the inning. He did great. He pitched in front of his family and friends, lived his dream, played in Yankee Stadium. And they asked him after the, after the game, like, what was said to you? He said, well, I was just told to look around and look where I am. I'm in Yankee Stadium. Where else would I rather be? Would I like, would I rather be in the minors? No. Would you rather be at home? No. You're in Yankee Stadium. Enjoy this. You may never get this moment again. Take some deep breaths, have some fun like you were pitching in the backyard and let's get out of this. And he patted him on the back and it was great. That was leadership coming from that player. But all that player had to do was maintaining some control and composure. And that's what, no matter what sport it is that you're in, if you're playing tennis and you need to reset, take a deep breath. You're playing pickleball and you're not doing well right away, you're losing nine nothing and the game's 211 and you're a weekend warrior and you're saying to yourself, oh, it's done, but keep playing. Okay, let's go for the next point. This is a way as an athlete you can maintain your control and composure. And don't think for one minute when you are playing that the other team can't read your body language. If you aren't composed or you're not engaged. Control. Use this section of the community. We're here to help you. We're here to do whatever we can to make you better. We have all these tools in the community. This is again based off of your advanced ready to play index assessment. It's on page six. Maintaining control and composure and how you know can you maintain control and composure in your self coaching journey. Within your self coaching journey, it's very important that you make good decisions as an athlete. Decisions on the field, ice, court, course and off as well. Making good decisions in your abilities as an athlete to think through and process things. Like if you think about here in a hockey game, sometimes they say the worst play is when you have the puck and you're in the offensive zone and you're in the corner and you throw it blindly to the front of the net. Now that's not making a good decision. Why? Because the other team can counter back. They can counter back and now you're behind the play. First of all, you didn't look to see if anybody was there. Sometimes it looks like it could be a good play, but it might be the worst play in hockey if a defenseman is there and watching you. So now the team counters back three on one, three on two, or whatever it may be. Now your, your team is. What is your team here? Your team is actually reacting instead of acting on the play, meaning, oh my gosh, we have to react and get back. Instead of acting on a good play and a good decision you could have made, you could have kept your head up and you could have skated up the wall, maybe cycled it back, maybe threw it back to the defenseman for a good player, whatever it is, that's a hockey analogy. I'm sure within your sport you could think of good decisions that you can make as an athlete. One thing I don't want to do is talk about other sports and start making analogies of a sport that I'm not familiar in. Now we do the mindset work that works for all sports, but sometimes decisions within sports, you know, they're all different. That's why we gave the hockey one because I'm a former hockey player and I'm still involved with the game to a point. But for you, you have to think about these certain decisions that you're going to make as an athlete. Decisions. Even if you're on the sidelines and you're a football player and you're not playing and you've sat there for two years, you can't control what the coach could do. What you can control though is, is to how hard you're going to work in practice. That's a good decision as well. Not just plays within a game. A good decision is okay. Now I have to prove to myself and the team that I really want this and I'm going to be the first one on the field every day and get myself ready. I'm going to do extra in the weight room but not over train or overuse. We're not going to get into that. But making good decisions as an athlete, even off, off the field, you're going to have, you're going to be around players that do things that don't fit within the rules. Are you going to be a follower? This is all about you. This is these tools that you could use within your self coaching journey. Use the community for Q and A. Again, this is based off of your advanced ready to play index assessment. And it's important that you take care of yourself because we can't hold your hand all the time. There isn't a coach in the world that's going to be with you 24 7. You have to make good decisions. You have to make good decisions in the classroom, at home, doing your homework before you play. That's a good decision. That's decision making ability. So these are things that you make good decisions on. You want to give yourself every chance to succeed as an athlete even if you're playing for fun, whether it's any other sport. Making good decisions will help you so much within your game and within your self confidence Coaching journey and you're not alone. Use the message area, private message me for the accountability coaching that you also receive through the program. And we are definitely here to help you in any way within your self coaching journey. Optimism is very important. Now. One thing I'm going to say is sometimes I give people the benefit of the doubt. It's not easy to be optimistic all the time. Time somebody might say oh you were negative. I could tell you a lot of times I was negative as an athlete. But how are you going to bounce back and turn that negative into Something positive and have that optimistic outlook. As an athlete, it's super important that you do. Sometimes we have to be patient. That's being optimistic. Let's say you're not going to get in and play as much as you want, or you're not going to play the position that you want to play. But you still have to bring optimism in. That's going to help you with your overall mindset. If you're negative, you're going to have a negative mindset. If you're a pessimist, it's going to just set you back in so many ways. So you have to do everything you can to be optimistic. Using tools within the community could help. Visualization helps. How does that help? Well, visualize yourself playing. You might not be playing in that moment, but visualization. Visualization helps. Helps with thinking of scoring that big goal. We have the tools. We're just throwing some of these tools out. Imagery, believing it. Breathing exercises. Okay, I'm not going to overreact. Well, how does that have anything to do with being optimistic? Well, you might have received news that they decided that they're not going to play you today, no matter what that is. Or you're a weekend warrior and you wake up, you feel great. All of a sudden, boy, I feel. Feel a little pain in my back and I'm going to be negative. Turn that negative into something positive. Hey, for that weekend warrior, you could say, okay, I know if I'm going to participate in this sport, I'm really going to set myself back. But I know if I take this weekend off, get the appropriate care, you see a doctor, whatever you have to do or whatever the injury is, you take care of it, you're going to be back sooner. That's optimistic. The pessimistic view would say, I'm done. I'm so sick of this, I'm going to quit. I don't want to do this. But bringing that optimistic attitude in will help. Also around your teammates, being optimistic helps. That's contagious when you're optimistic, no matter what it is. I played with so many players that made fun of them at a different level, but they would make fun of themselves if they made a mistake and say, ah, that was a dumb pass. And they would laugh. And that was their way of being positive. Believe it or not, just the way they, the way they said it, the way they carry themselves is an athlete. Bring that optimism into your team. How are you going to do it? We're here to help. We have. This is part of your self Coaching journey Again, this is from the advanced Ready to play index assessment. It's on page six here it's under the area where it scores highest, the lowest and I don't care about your score score as much is utilizing these tools to help you again and listen to all of these audios. Make sure you've listened to the course the healthy mindset for athletes and workplace athletes. That's the first thing you do. And again this is all about education and educating you. So just to maximize your potential, that's all it is is tools to help you. This next one based off of your assessment is the sports perception and reasoning. Do you respect and value teammates? Do you play with effort? Good sportsmanship? Do you follow the game plan? That's all around your sports perception and reasoning. And you can go back and look at your assessment. It says it right here. It measures the ability to make balanced decision and involving relationships with coaches and teammates. So when we look at this, you have to take that extra step to go out of your way to develop those relationships with your coaches and teammates. Be a good listener. There's one thing we could say the next part is especially within your sport, practicing playing hard and winning. That's important. You practice just as hard as you play. That makes the the game so much easier. Repetition, repetition is your best friend. That's going to help you within the game of sports. Playing hard all the time, competing and that's going to help you at the end. And that really develops a winning mentality. I don't know how many games you're going to win, but this comes with good development. The next thing is respect for authority and following the game plan. So what does that mean? You respect, respect the officials. Without the officials, you don't have a sport for you parents out there. Yelling at the referees or the umpires or the officials isn't going to get you anywhere. Let the kids play. It's about them. And as an athlete you follow that game plan. You may not like the game plan, might not be the way you play, but you have to adapt to it. So looking back at your assessment, we use this part, sports perception and reasoning to understand really these three elements. Relationships with coaches and teammates, practicing playing hard and winning and respect for authority and following the game plan. Any questions? Message me in the community. We're here to help you. We're here to hold you accountable. Today I'm going to talk about the self perception as an athlete and it's very important that you see yourself as an athlete. Now I consider an Athlete. Somebody who's also a workplace athlete. You are an athlete because as an athlete we look at it that you have to get your sleep. Same in the workplace. You have to eat well. Same in the workplace. You have to have a plan. Same in the workplace. You have to develop good habits within your life. Same in the workplace. Exercise and training. Same in the workplace. To be successful. So you are an athlete. And for those athletes that play competitive or even your weekend warriors, you have to think like an athlete. You have to believe in yourself. If you don't believe in yourself, nobody else will. So it's very important, important that you have that perception as an athlete. You see yourself as an athlete. As an athlete you're going to have ups and downs. You're going to have good games, you're going to have bad games. You're going to have days at the office that wasn't very good or days out on the job. If you do physical labor, it might not be that easy for you. There's ups and downs. But you have to see yourself as an athlete. As an athlete, we always come back strong, stronger. We said one thing. In professional sports there's no such thing as having two bad games in a row. It's not acceptable. So you have to go out and work harder, do the littlest things and the simplest things a little bit better. Are you journaling? Are you, you have to go back to see what you were doing. Mentioned journaling. Are you writing your, your things out daily? Are you putting that plan together the night before? That's all. Self perception is an athlete. Use this section of the community for Q and a. We're here to help you again see yourself as an athlete. Because if you don't see yourself as an athlete, nobody else will. Today I'm going to talk about self coaching or coaching oneself. It can offer so many benefits for personal and professional development. And here are some of the advantages that we believe on how self coaching could help you. Personally, I've been in the coaching business over 17 years now. And what I really found was it's great. I did a lot of one on one sessions, group sessions, speaking, speaking to Fortune 500 companies, to working with professional athletes, Olympic athletes, world class athletes, athletes at every different level, elite athletes, high school athletes, weekend warriors or athletes that just wanted to have fun. But what I found was it was those who took that extra responsibility to learn and educate themselves. The benefits were just amazing for them. So I developed this self coaching program for one reason is let's talk about self awareness. So Self coaching encourages you to self reflect. I can't be with you all the time. I'm not saying that coaching is not needed or therapy. It's definitely needed. But it's so important that you learn how to coach yourself. You become more self aware of your choices. Like you take the responsibilities. Another thing is the empowerment of how self coaching empowers you to take charge things like self talk. So you could be on a bench or you could be ready to go for a shift in hockey or ready to take your first at bat. No matter what it is, you're ready to run a race. Self talk is so important and it empowers you to really be just that athlete that is going to get yourself what we call that ready to play. We talk about the flexibility and convenience. It's great. I mean I used to have an app and we used an app to talk to players and they would usually message me after the, after the game. But, but now with self coaching and you learn a lot of these tools on your own, it will take you in a whole other direction. And no matter where you are, you could self coach yourself. It's the flexibility of not having to get on the phone and that gets expensive too. You start getting on the phone with, with your coach or your therapist which but you might need. Like I said, it's. And I think it's still great that you do it, but I really want you to take the responsibility to learn how to do this on your own and you'll have the accessibility that allows you to develop yourself so much more. I remember when I was a young athlete, I didn't have a coach by my hand every second. I had to do things on my own, I had to train on my own. But it's great. Like I said, you have a trip trainer, you have different people. But it's also good to learn how to do things on your own and learn and take the time to develop these tools and these skills that will help take you to the next level. I talked about it being cost effective and I don't want to turn anybody off. Self coaching can be very cost effective. It's a great alternative. If you can't afford to hire a coach, some of us can't afford it. Coaching services are extremely valuable, but they could also be extremely expensive too. You start getting into $200 an hour, $300 an hour or even $20 an hour can be expensive for some. So that's why I'm trying to give you these tools to help you. And we want to Help you through educating and we want you to continuously learn and grow by self coaching. To me it's an educational process. That's why we provided the, the tool of our course. We want you to. You can continuously listen to it. You could put it on pause, you could put me on pause right now if you want and you go back and listen. And so you'll continuously learn and you'll continuously understand the importance of meditation. I first did meditation and imagery back in 1986 for some of those younger athletes out there. Maybe some of the weekend warriors might understand this, but we used to have the cassette tapes and I remember I had a sports psychologist help me do some imagery. I plugged the cassette tape in and I was listening to the sports psychologist talk about having me relax my mind thinking about me being in the middle of the lake on a boat on a nice early morning. The water's quiet and that was great. But now we're going to provide that for, for you is so you can have some walking meditation, some even sleeping meditation. And I'm going to. My goal is to keep providing you these tools at no cost. They're going to be all through your listening experience here and help you improve in all areas. Working on your habits, working on your goals and your plans. All through self coaching. One thing it does that I found is it takes a lot of work. That's why they call it a mindfulness practice because you're practicing all the time. But I've had a lot of clients when they were talking to me, okay, we talked once a week, so that's four times a month. What about all those other days? And again, I'm going to sound redundant. It is really important to have a coach. It's great to have a therapist. It's good to have those on your side. But this is something that, this is an extra tool for you that you could use that will help you. It will really help boost your knowledge so you understand why you're doing it. You could achieve milestones, your own personal milestones. It gives you the ability to work towards your goals. It helps you with confidence, enables you to tackle problems even on your own without the support of somebody right next to your side. So I do want you to think about this. Remember, while self coaching can be very beneficial, it's still essential to remain open to seeking external report and feedback when needed. It's very important. I had to be very clear on that. Sometimes working with a professional coach or seeking guidance from mentors or peers can complement and enhance your self coaching. Journey, and that's what I'm hoping to do here, is to really help you and provide you as many tools as possible for your listening needs and continuously try to help you reach your dreams and goals while being mindful of everything else in your life. This next one I'm going to talk about within your advanced ready to play index assessment is self confidence. And we say confidence is everything within sport. As an athlete you have to believe in yourself. A lot of these sound redundant and that we're saying the same thing, but it's true. Self confidence comes within. Be proud of what you have done. Don't compare yourself to others. I was just working with a group of baseball players and they were telling me that they think they could do better. They're not happy that they're playing in a very low, I don't want to mention who it is, but a very low division. I said be proud of where you're playing. Be confident within yourself. Yes, we always want to strive to the top, but one of the worst things you could do is compare yourself to others. Now what you could do is compete against others or learn from others or watch what others, you know, what they do within their spirit sport. I agree with that 100%. But the self confidence comes within you. Being confident is an athlete that you're going to go out there and make it happen. Now we just don't become self confident now within our community. As you know, we have a lot of tools between imagery, visualization, meditation, journaling, all these help with confidence. Let's say you're having a bad game and okay, the next day comes and maybe we journal some things, maybe journal some of the things that you could do better and then that will help your self confidence. We just don't become confident. Yes, you get up the bat and you're first at bat. You hit a base hit boy, you're going to have some confidence. But that doesn't always happen that way. You're going to score a goal, make a basket, whatever it may be. Playing pickleball, you're going to make. You're up, let's say six nothing in a match. You're a weekend warrior. And they come back and lose and say, oh, but there goes my confidence. No, you come back harder. And one thing we learn as an athlete when our confidence is we're struggling within our confidence a little bit. I always said that's when we go a little bit harder, a little bit smarter. Focus more on the details and you become more self confident. Any help with this? Please Use the community. Private message me, I really, I'm excited because a lot of you are using the community and reaching out to us. Use the assessment as a guide. I'm not worried about your scores within the assessment. Again, that's a baseline. But we want to use some of these scores for ourself so we have something to shoot for. Again, use the community. I'm here to help you, hold you accountable and this is just more towards your self coaching journey. Again, the self coaching is all about you because we can't be with you all the time. Next I'm going to talk about game intelligence and how important game intelligence is if you're an elite athlete, a professional athlete, a weekend warrior, doesn't matter what it is, it's really using your mind and thinking through things and everybody again has their own spot sport. I don't want to talk about a sport that I'm not educated in. But this time I'm going to focus on the weekend warrior. Good example is pickleball. Now I'm not an expert, I don't claim to be and I play for fun. But what I'm learning is just being around being a professional athlete. For many years, a lot of what we did in hockey is especially at the highest level is always making the best possible choice. Now hockey was a game of mistakes. You take the puck and you get it on the boards or on the wall and you throw it right up the middle. That's not really good game intelligence, is it? Because you, you're giving the team, the other team an opportunity to score. Unless your centerman is wide open, you don't throw it back to the point or the defenseman. For some of you who don't know what the point is, you throw it to the defenseman and if someone, the defenseman being covered, that's not game intelligence. Now I'm going to talk about pickleball for you weekend warriors out there. So when pickleball see a lot of these tennis players and they're good because they automatically have the skills to compete. But I played with a lot of really high level tennis players that were Division 1 tennis players and what I'm learning is, and I know they're going to pick it up after this is just an example is they're smart, of course, but they're really trying to slam that ball like they do in tennis. And strategically that's not always the best. And what happens is it goes in the net and instead of making a good strategic game intelligent play, like maybe leaving it short for Us older people for playing a very, you know, young college athlete slamming the ball. Sure, you might get a bias, maybe you'll do it seven out of 10 times. But if you keep it short, I could tell you right now, and we have to even maybe run up for it, it's going to be a lot harder. So I call that game intelligence. Now that's just an example. You could use game intelligence within any sport you play. It's baseball. Is it smart to have. If you're a pitcher and you're 14 years old and you've pitched a game, you know, the day before, then the next day you're out throwing for an hour. No, it's not smart intelligence or game intelligence. Even though it's not an actual game, but it's not smart as an athlete. So athletes have to be very smart. I use the word recovery. So that also ties into game intelligence. Like if you're tired, a good example. Let's use hockey because that's been my sport. We would never be on the ice for a minute. Shift one minute, that's long. Our shifts were 30 to 45 seconds, 45 tops. Sometimes you can start getting tired. So think about that recovery. So when we come off after a minute, you're exactly exhausted, you're not ready to go. That is called not game intelligence. Let's say you're playing your sport, you're a football player and your coach has you do something that is out of the ordinary. I don't want to even make up a play. The coach is having you do something and you believe in your mind something would be better. But you have to follow the coach's plan. But that comes to the, the coach having more experience, experience in you and using that game intelligence. So game intelligence is very important. It was on your assessment, the advanced ready to play index assessment. And basically it's there to, to help. You know, we're here for you to be in the community like you're in the community and you can ask us questions. We're here to guide you and help you and help you with game intelligence. Am I going to be able to think for you? No, but we're going to give you different tactics and different things to do. Like maybe you're, you're like if you're tired or exhausted, I could tell you one is maybe take a little bit of recovery, try to take some really deep breathing things to do if you, if you have the time within a game, make better choices within your sport and maybe learn watch the Internet, watch players that, that you look up to that are great, great in that area or great in that game. So there's many ways to practice your game intelligence. Looking forward to helping you. Any questions again please use the community. You could private message me, I'm here to help. You can ask a question to the open community. But overall, again game intelligence to me is very important. You always hear that nowadays you have that hockey IQ or they have good hockey iq. So they, it's, it's super important. Tom Brady had great game intelligence as a football player. There's a lot of good players at all levels that have that game intelligence and I think you could use that within your game and it will really help you. We're going to talk about growth mindset now. It's very important at this point you had taken the assessment so it's important to go back. You could look at your scores which I'm not too worried about. As mentioned earlier, this is all to help you in your self coaching journey. Now one thing about growth mindset is we also have this in our elearning course and the audio elearning course that you should listen to in the community. That's the. After you take the assessment, that's the second thing you should do is really listen to it. It's only an hour long, 10 minutes at a time and one of the topics is growth mindset. So the importance of a growth mindset to me is that athlete that has the ability to really listen and want to learn and want to do different things and want to go outside the box a little bit having that growth mindset. Now we're not going to get too much into the fixed mindset but just the opposite is the fixed mindset. That's the athlete does those nature. Nope, I'm doing it this way. That's the only way I'm doing it and this is how I'm going to do it. So as an athlete it's important to really have a growth mindset and there's ways to work on that. You might have done it a certain way. Now you get to a team and the coach wants you to do it a different way. And let's say you're learning that new way. The Internet's a valuable source. You can always look up on the Internet certain things. Maybe your coach wants you to. If you're a hockey player and you get the puck before you shoot it, he does not want you to puck handle or stick handle. A couple times you might get that puck and get it off your stick right away. But you're used to handling it. So what you do is you could go on, go to YouTube and look at players that shoot the puck. That way you're a baseball player, you're in the box, your coach wants you to do it a certain way. You're used to doing it one way. Which do you do? Well, go and learn. Practice it, but be open to it. It might be uncomfortable to do some of these things, but having that growth mindset is going to help you. Working with many athletes, we talk about journaling. First thing they ask me is why. Well, I don't mind answering questions. Of course you want to learn why. So having a growth mindset doesn't mean you can't ask questions. But why do you journal? It's going to help you keep you organized. You write it down. It just, you go to where you were and maybe to, okay, now this is where I want to be. I want to, I want to get to a certain point. Journaling for me, I journal every day. My journaling could be different than your journal. I journal my, my exercise program that I, it's already laid out for the month. I know what I'm going to do now. I know, okay, this is what I have to follow. But the journal could be different for you. But you have to be open to that. Someone said, I don't like meditation. Well, practice it a little bit. Give it a chance. Have that growth mindset. Use the community for questions and answers. Use this for your self coaching journey. I'm looking forward to helping and leading you and there's never a bad question. So reach out in the community. Ask a question. Ask the entire community. We have a lot of great like minded people in there. They could help you. I could help you as well as, you know, just we, we have our dietician. You might learn something. Maybe your coach wants you to, to have us eat a certain way. Maybe you're used to having your meal at one time and the team wants you to have it at a different time. But no matter what it is, be open to that growth mindset. You're a weekend warrior and you're used to a certain way and people are telling you and hopefully in a nice way, maybe it's better you do this. I'll be open to it. Somebody told me recently what I was doing wrong in something that I was doing in an outside pickleball thing and okay, thank you for sharing with me. I want to learn about it. I didn't have the attitude is nope, I'm only going to do it this way, okay, maybe that person knows a lot more than me. Most likely at that point they did. So it's important that you have the growth mindset and it will carry you further within your game, within your self coaching journey. We're going to talk about personal accountability which is in your ready to play index assessment and total wellness. It's. Or you might even have the advanced ready to play index assessment and total wellness. You're on page six. And it's all about personal accountability, taking accountability for yourself. And it's as easy as this. Don't point fingers. It's easy to do. Even if somebody made a mistake, don't point fingers. There's a way to, there's a way to do constructive criticism, but you also have to be accountable for yourself. I was watching an episode with the New York Yankees they had with Derek Jeter. I think it was called Leader. I can't remember the exact name of that show but it was, it was great. And it just showed Derek Jeter going up. I don't know who was pitching that night, but the pitcher kept shaking his head. He was frustrated, put his arms up in the air, just got traded to the Yankees. He runs out as a shortstop to the mound and, and said we don't do that here. We don't do this with the New York Yankees. We don't. That's not the culture here, so stop it now. I remember other occasions too with great leaders in sports that called out others because of their behavior and don't be one of those people. Be accountable for yourself. If you make a mistake, you take the personal accountability. Be accountable for yourself is with your well being and your self care as an athlete. That's super important. Your sleep, your nutrition, your training. Be accountable. It's easy to make mistakes. Well I, I missed, I was a little bit late today going from the workout because I didn't get good sleep. Well, that's your, that's your situation. That's your problem. You have to be accountable. You have to hold yourself accountable. And as you get older, especially within sports, if you, I mean older, once you, you keep going up the ranks, it's, it gets harder and harder. So, and so developing the good habit of being accountable to yourself is important for you. Weekend warriors. Be accountable. If you have a tennis match and you're, you're meeting some friends and the tennis match starts at 10am and you show up at 10am that's late because now you have to warm up a little bit while everybody was waiting for you. Now there Might be a good excuse why. Or you may have told the person that, the people that you were playing with, hey, I'm going to be a little late today, that's one thing. But this is all personal accountability for an athlete. Hold yourself accountable for many things. If it's journaling, if it's your food intake, whatever it is, you have to hold yourself accountable. Any questions, please use the community and we're here to help you in any way. Just ask, ask the question. You can private message me right in the community and there's other people in there as well. But this is just to help you with your self coaching journey. Looking forward to leading and helping you to the best we can and holding you accountable. Concentration is so important as an athlete. Using your advanced ready to play index assessment, you will see that on page six. Again, I'm not worried about your scores, I just want you to look at this and use this as a reference within your self coaching journey. As an athlete it's so important to concentrate and a lot of that comes from mindfulness. Be fully in the moment, fully in the moment. No matter what it is, no matter what sport you're playing that's going to help you concentrate more. Sometimes as an athlete we go off track, we might be thinking of other things and you have to quickly reset, come back to what it is, where we're supposed to be. And that happens a lot. We're not robots, of course it's hard. We're going to lose our concentration no matter what sport it is. Think about this. Anytime you have a setback, just come back to the moment, do whatever you can, some breathing exercises, look at the tools that we have in the community that might help you with concentration. I used imagery when I was playing to help me concentrate. Now you can't use imagery right in the middle of something that you're doing as an athlete. But so matter what sport it is, concentration is so important. You ever hear the expression all the boy you're on your game today, bringing your A game? Well yes, I was completely concentrating on X, Y and Z. Well of course you were in that moment and that's really what it is. And so when you get out of the moment, bring yourself back, take some deep breaths, take a step back, think about things that have gone well for you before when you were in that situation. Any help with this? Reach out to me here in the community. You can private message me or ask anybody else because we have a lot of like minded people. This will help you in your self coaching journey because Again, we can't be on the mound for you, we can't be shooting the basketball for you, we can't be on the ice, we don't put our skates on for you. You have to control yourself. So to me, concentration is all about how are you going to be in that moment. Goal achievement is so important as an athlete. As you have known, we've talked a lot about goals. So if you're looking at your advanced ready to play index assessment on page six, you can look at the goal achievement and we want to use goal achievement within your self coaching journey. How do we do that? Well, the first, first thing that I really want you to do is to go back and please listen to the healthy mindset for athletes and workplace athletes elearning course. It's right in the community. You could listen at 10 minutes at a time, at 10 minutes at a time. And one of the topics is how to have smart goals and developing these goals. You've heard this so many times. All we talked about is goals, goals, goals. But to have that goal, goal achievement is to make sure how we structure our goals. So it's one thing to write them down or have a whiteboard or put it in your journal. Great. But actionable things follow. That is so important. That's why we use something called measurable goals. For an example, something that's measurable, something that you could do and that's achieving that goal for that day, even it was measurable, like it's something that is not measurable is okay, we want to win the championship this year. Well, of course you want to win it. That could be a vision goal, but it's not a measurable goal. Measurable goal could be. Okay, I'm going to go out on the field and I'm going to be fully in the moment and focused. Well, there you achieve that goal. That's measurable. I'm going to outwork everybody I can on the ice that's measurable. I'm going to be so prepared as a weekend warrior when I'm playing pickle ball and I'm doing that first serve and I'm going to be really in the moment and I'm going to achieve that goal that's measurable. Let us help you with the goals. Use the community. Any questions? Please use the community. Private message me at any time. That's what the community's for. I mean we're growing every day with community. Every single day we're growing with more and more people. And what I love is people are asking Questions they want to learn. That's what it's for. Use this goal achievement so you could achieve your goals. So you can go where you want to be as an athlete. Achieve your personal best. And once you achieve that one goal, okay, we're going to then fight to achieve that, that next goal. And that's what it's all about. You've heard me say this so many times, I had to throw this in. Let's say you're playing hockey or you're playing soccer and you take the goals away. Now this is a little bit different. Don't get confused. You're taking the goals away. It's boring. There's nothing to shoot for. I hope I didn't confuse you there. But these type of goals are like you need something to shoot for. You have to have that why behind it? Why do you want to achieve that goal? And that's what goal achievement is really all about. Sports position awareness, engagement. What does that mean? And we're going to get into that in a second. So it's very important that you have taken the advanced ready to play index assessment at this time and it's on page six. And we use this towards your self coaching journey. So as an athlete, no matter what sport it is, it's so important that you're very aware when you're out on the ice, field, court course, even the golf course, you have to be aware of where you are. You see the pros really lining up their putts and they're very engaged and they're very focused. That's why we call it sports position awareness engagement. You have to be engaged to what it is. Let's talk about hockey. You're a hockey player. You have to really understand your position even before you take a face off. If you're a centerman, you're not just going to go in there and take it. You're going to look to see where your teammates are. Is everybody lined up correctly so everybody does their assignment? You're like the quarterback at that point, taking a face off no matter what it is. That's just an example within your sport. I'm sure you could think of things that are very important when it comes to sports. Position awareness, engagement. This is for your self coaching journey. So your very aware of your position. Whether you're the weekend warrior, whether you're running a race and you're doing a triathlon. You have to look where you are. I'm sure you're going to look at the position of where you are right within that race. And you need to be aware of what's going on around you no matter what it is within sports. To me this is extremely important. I'm not worried about your skill score if your score is low. So this is something that really needs to be addressed. But we use this with your self coaching journey to help you so you become more aware of what you're doing. And this is where mindfulness comes in as well. Because mindfulness is like really being in that moment, right without, without judgment, but just really being fully present within and being aware and being engaged. To me, that's mindful. Any questions? Please use the community. I'm here to help you with your self coaching journey. We're gonna hold you accountable, we're gonna look at everything that you send us and we're gonna respond as quick as we can. We usually get back to everybody pretty quick and we're excited for everybody that is in the community and they're taking advantage of this. Any questions, reach out to us and we're looking forward to keep helping you. And good luck with your journey and remember, be very aware. Be engaged as an athlete. It will help you with your game. Self discipline is so important for an athlete. Every athlete needs self discipline. You need to properly fuel your body. That requires self discipline. You have to train properly and not over train. Follow what the trainer has for you to do to help you with your game. Sleep. You have to get up in the morning early. You have to go to bed early. That's all Self discipline. Doing extra. If you're an elite athlete, you know this already. You need to do extra to get ahead because somebody out there is self disciplined enough that's going to take their game to the next level. So being an athlete and being self disciplined will only help you. It's important that you have taken your advanced ready to play index assessment and total wellness. And again I'm not worried about the scores within that but we use that as a guide with your self coaching journey and we're going to help you with self discipline. You might tell us that boy, I'm having a hard time sleeping. We might help you find a way or we will help you find a way to help you with your sleep. We have people that are subject matter professionals in that area that could help you with sleep and using different techniques like one could be, and I'm not the expert in that area but I know this. Believe it or not, you could do a very slow stretch before you go to bed without getting your heart rate up. So basically it's not even really a stretch. It's a movement. And I can get you information on that from our subject matter professional that talks about that the slate might help you. Or we talk about meditation, the same thing. There's no secret to this. These are tools that will help you become more self disciplined. Maybe you're looking at that phone at nighttime and that's why you can't sleep. Sleep. You have to be disciplined. You have to put the phone down. That light's going to keep you up. It's going to just stimulate your brain. It could be stimulated already. You might be thinking of all kinds of things, but as an athlete, you do need to be self disciplined. Self discipline within your game. You're playing somebody in a sport. I've talked about pickleball so much. That's one of the fastest growing sports sports. And we have a lot of weekend warriors. So for those out there, they're saying, why do you talk about pickleball so much? Because we have a lot of pickleball players that do take our assessment and take our program. So as a player, you have to be self disciplined. You have to watch what your teammate is doing. You have to be consistent. You have to do little things to make yourself better. You have to be self disciplined to a point where you're just not going to slam that ball. To slam it. You might have to do a drop shot. But that's all self discipline. Same within. You're a hockey player and you have to be self disciplined. If you're out there, the last minute of the game and you're winning two to one example, then you take a bad penalty or a selfish penalty like you retaliate. That's not really good. Self discipline. The same within football or basketball, soccer, any sport. Self discipline comes within. And we can help you here within the community with tools that may help you with certain things. Utilize the community, reach out, ask questions. We're here to help. But again, how can you become more self disciplined? You might write that in your journal. You might be journaling a lot. That helps with self discipline. I don't feel like journaling today. If you want to get ahead as an athlete, that's so important to journal, listen to our course, our course, finish the course, be disciplined. Those are the littlest things that's going to help you as an athlete. I'm going to talk about focus today. As an athlete, it's so important that you focus in on the moment and focus. That just doesn't start with, okay, I'm going to go out and Focus. You have to utilize tools that may help you, like our meditation within the community, that could help you focus better. Doing some imagery will help you focus better. It's not just focusing. Sometimes you hear people say you have to focus, well, how do I focus? But you can do certain things like, okay, I'm going to focus here for the next three minutes and I'm going to be super focused and fully present, mindful and be in the moment. That's focused, focusing. So it's important as an athlete that you have the focus. But how do you get the focus? We don't just focus. Tools can really help you focusing better in on different situations. No matter what sport it is you play. Even if you're finishing a race and you just have done a triathlon. And I envy the triathletes. I've never done one. I've talked to many of them, worked with a doctor that treats just triathletes. And that's a tough sport. Sometimes we have to dig a little bit extra. But we find out why at the end why we're going to focus. Why? I want to reach the finish line. That's your why. If you're a baseball player getting out of the inning, okay, I need to get out of the inning. I'm going to focus on this. I'm just going to put my mind to it and focus. I'm a hockey player player, I'm on the ice and I need to focus on winning the draw. So the next time I'm going to go out, I'm going to really put my mind to it. I'm going to be in the moment, I'm going to be aware of what's going on or whatever sport it is that you play. Focusing is really being in on the moment and finding that why you're focusing. I used to find as an athlete, when I didn't have anything to shoot for, it was boring, it was hard to focus. But even in practice, you, you still need to find that. Why. The point is, find that certain thing that's going to help you focus. It could be anything. It could be a little self talk, it could be a family member. I'm doing this for myself, but I'm thinking of a family member or whatever that situation is that's going to motivate you to focus. Use the community for ongoing support. I'm looking forward to helping and leading you. There's never a bad question. And again, when you're focusing in on something, be mindful, think of mindfulness, be fully in the moment. When you're in the moment, you'll be able to focus on it. If you catch yourself saying some negative things about yourself, change that. Start talking positive about yourself. Focus beyond the moment. Use the community. Consistent and reliable performance. It's on page six of your advanced Ready to Play index assessment. And we talk about how important it is as an athlete to be consistent and even reliable as an athlete is someone who is consistently performs at a high level and, and that athlete can be counted on to deliver their best effort at any day, at any time because they're very reliable as that type of a player. These qualities are highly valued in the world of sports especially it could lead to success and longevity of a career. They always look at athletes and they say, well, is this player consistent? Do they have the ability to play well a lot or do they just go out there and play good one game and then not consistent for the next two? And a lot of it comes through discipline. We talked about some of this before. The discipline of being an athlete. Consistency and reliable. Athletes are disciplined in their training, their diet, their overall lifestyle. You've heard me say that so much. And then also the work ethic. Are you consistent within your work ethic? Do you have a strong work ethic? Are you willing to put the extra hours in and the extra practice in training to improve your skills to be at your best? That's all consistency. You heard me talk about this so much. It's also consistency involves mental toughness and yes, I said mental toughness can be learned. But as an athlete, mental resilience and you being focused on the game and what needs to be done or the ability to perform under pressure when things are on the line, that shows what kind of competitor you are. How do you handle adversity and setbacks and how well do you prepare as an athlete? That has a lot to do with consistency. I played with some of the best athletes in the world world and they were always prepared. And Derek Jeter said it best. He actually said in an interview his biggest fear was not being prepared. And in my eyes, he was one of the most consistent performers I've ever seen in my life as an athlete. You hear me talking about Derek Jeter a lot in his day. They also look at are you dependability? Are you dependable? Can a coach rely on you? And these are skills that you could work on. So I'm not worried about the assessment. Even if you have a low score within the assessment, that's okay. I'm not worried about that at this point. I just Want you to be able to focus on some of these key points that I gave you in your self coaching journey. Any help that you need, please reach out in the community. Private message me right there and I'm here to help you. And again a lot of it relies on you. I cannot swing the bat for you. I can't help you prepare. I can give you the tools to prepare but I'm not able to do that on a daily basis. So this is where the self coaching comes in. Looking forward to helping you in any way and any questions through the community, please message us as well as listen to the course. The course, the elearning course is a good starting point as the assessment is a good baseline. That's a good place to start. Competitive fire if you look at page six on your advanced ready to play index assessment and total wellness, look down towards the bottom, you'll see competitive fire. I'm not too worried about the number, but to me that the athlete that has that competitive fire is that individual who will possess an intense burning desire to win and succeed in the respective sport. It's that drive that they have sometimes you can't teach that. They're highly motivated, they're passionate, they thrive on competition, they love it. They want to be out the last minute of the game. They just want to be there so bad you have to carry them off the field sometimes. And if you look back at some of the competitive athletes over the years, even going way back, somebody like Michael Jordan had that competitive fire into him. Like I would watch him in an interview and he would say after they won the championship, okay, we have to win another one next year, okay, at least celebrate that one, which was amazing. Serena Williams is another one. The iconic tennis player known for her competition competitiveness and her drive and desire and her competitive fire to be the best. Even when facing adversity, you could see she thrived in that moment. Players like Tom Brady who never wanted to quit, he kept having that competitive fire. They had to tell him he couldn't play anymore. Pretty much playing as long as he did and how he prepared, he just had that competitive fire. Kobe Bryant, I talk about Kobe a lot and amazing competitive fire. Being up at 4am in the morning and he never got comfortable. It's always like something always drove him to be the best and that's that why that we talk about why. Like you don't just get competitive fighter. There has to be a why behind it. Remember Mia Hammer, the soccer player? The competitiveness on the field, you could see it just how they portray themselves, how they exemplify themselves as a player. So there's so many great players that you could do research on and ask yourself like what makes them have that competitive fire? Why are they different than others? Well, they are. They're dedicated to their sport, to their life. They make sacrifices, they do anything they can to achieve their goals. They never give up. That never give up attitude that we talk about, it's amazing. And then once they win, they're thinking about okay, now we have to win again and how are they going to do it? So if you're lacking in that competitive fire, we could help you. That's where you can message me. This is why we do self coaching. All of us needs a coach. So if you need my help, definitely reach out the community. But we could help you to give you some tips on how to have that competitive fire. One thing I mentioned earlier is that why, okay, why do you want this so bad and you can't force yourself. This sometimes has to come naturally, but we could still practice it. Some people may say you don't have the competitive fire, but I'm going to ask you what excites you? What gets you excited to play? Use the community. We're here to help you. Any questions? Reach out. Looking forward to working with you within your self coaching journey. I'm going to talk about the importance of athletes following directions. It's so important that an athlete follows the game plan, follows directions because if they don't, they could set their team back, even themselves. So athletes that follow directions are huge assets to, to their team. They help implement the system and the strategies and everything that the coaches and leaders are trying to put together. Their ability to execute effectively, contribute to the team's success as an athlete and that what does that lead to? A better team, better development, possibly a championship and other notable achievements along the way within that athlete respective sport. I love athletes that follow direction. I could tell a story about one athlete that we had that everything that athlete did we said go to the line, they went to the line during the drill. They were always first in line to demonstrate the drills for that leadership. They really follow directions and sometimes we have drill busters and we know those athletes and can't help it. Maybe they're going the wrong way or they make a bad pass or. But that's, that's a little bit different. Doesn't mean they're not following directions as long as they're trying. So as an athlete in your self coaching journey, it's so important to follow Directions. I could help you as well within the community with any Q and A that you may have. You might say to me, hey Mike, I really don't understand certain players. Well that's okay. It doesn't mean you're not following directions. Maybe you learn differently. Some people learn by hearing things or visually looking at things. When I think that comes down to even you telling your coach, hey, maybe I don't understand this. Can you help me? Or even maybe writing the play down if it happens to be a play. Any questions, reach out. We're always happy to answer them in the community. Again, this is from your advanced Ready to play index and Total Wellness Assessment. So please look at that. It's on page six at the bottom and I'm not looking at the scores if they're low or high. I'm more helping you with the self coaching part which is the really how to follow directions. In this part of your self coaching journey. I'm going to talk about drive for results and that's on page six of your advanced ready to play index and Total Wellness assessment. It's at the bottom and drive for results. And what does that mean? As an athlete you know you're driven for results. Whilst I look at those are individuals who possess this unrelenting desire to achieve success in their sport. Their hungry, they're driven, they have very high standards for themselves. They're willing to put in the extra work and dedication and the effort that is really needed to attain their goals. They will do about anything they can within their power to make things happen without excuses. It's an athlete that is really known to just to be relentless and there are a bunch of those athletes that I could think about. In our book we talk a lot about Michael Phelps as one of the most decorated Olympians of all time. The amount of medals that he won, but not just because of the medals but his pursuit for excellence. I mean everything that he wanted to do, he wanted to do it and be on the top. He was, I use this. He was always happy but never satisfied. Okay, how many more medals can we win? But in your self confidence coaching journey, what are you going to do to drive for results and what can be done? I want you to think about that and if you can't come up with anything, it's okay. We could help you. You might say, you know, I don't have any drive. Somebody said that to me the other day, I just don't have a lot of drive. I was playing actually pickleball with this person and I thought okay. It doesn't make you a bad person. And what's going to excite you if you have to be passionate for what you do? If you don't have passion, eventually it's not going to work out for you. I don't like to use that word, quit, but sometimes I've worked with different athletes and they tell me I just don't have the passion. I don't care. I find out a few years later that they're not playing that sport competitively anymore. Doesn't mean you can't play for fun. So this is really important drive for results. It starts with your goals. Please go back and listen to the elearning audio course which is in the community that will help you a lot. You could look at some of these people like a Michael Phelps and what they did to be successful. Any questions? Reach out. Looking forward to helping you within your self coaching journey. I'm going to talk about practicing, playing hard and winning as every athlete understands that they should understand it because it's part of what they do. Everybody practices, right? You have to practice on your game. Maybe a lot of repetitions, playing hard, but you also want to play smart. That's working hard, doing everything you can do to get better and winning. And that's the end result. Okay? Winning comes from this and within your assessment. On page six you will see this here. This is the area where your scores are highest to lowest and I'm not worried about the score. We use this as part of your self coaching journey. So if you think about like athletes who practice hard and play to win, it looks like they have that. They're known for their tireless work ethic and their unwavering commitment to, to achieving their goal or winning a championship or victory or whatever it may be. It looks like they're always doing everything they can to do it. And the same athletes you will hear over and over again it's like, oh boy, what do these players do? Well, they put in the extra effort during their practice, during training, they constantly push themselves to their limits. Even sometimes they do it too hard. They give it all within their competing and I use this a lot. Sometimes you feel like you have only 40%. You might not feel good but you still have to give 100% of that 40%. And there's some notable athletes that you will recognize possibly that practice, play hard and they have that win mentality. Back in my day, I'm going to talk about Larry Bird. I used to watch him. He wasn't easy to play against. That's for sure. Especially as an athlete. He was always on his game, looked like he always wanted to win, played to win every day. Tiger woods is another one and he's talked about within our book as well, as well as the Elearning course which you should have listened to by now because. Because I keep bringing that up. But these are a lot of points that are in there. Tiger woods is one of the greatest golfers of all time. We know. And his dedication to practice and his competitive spirit on the course was just on the golf course was out of this world. It's like he was relentless in his pursuit to win. Like he won one tournament and then okay, I got to win another tournament, another championship. And and these athletes have that, what we call is that they practice, they keep practicing, they keep wanting to get better, they play hard. And the other thing too, I've said this a lot. Do you play to win or do you play not to lose? Well, a lot of these athletes say they play to win. They don't even think about the loss. And there's nothing else that's acceptable. I'm not telling you to do that. You might be a weekend war again. All of us have a different journey and a different path. But we do work with thousands and thousands of athletes. And I think it's important that you have to do what really works best for you. Any questions, please message me. Private message me in the community, ask the community. We're all there to help each other and you're around like minded people. Any questions please reach out throughout your self coaching journey. I want to end with this for those who have been following the program and going through with the program. And if you look on page six it says respect for authority, the game plan, it's the last one on the assessment. So if you have taken the advanced Ready to play index assessment and total wellness, you'll know what I'm about talking, talking about. And to me this really means that athletes should have respect for their coaches and authority figures for several reasons. You know, one of them is the benefits of your individual development. And the second one is just overall respect and respect for your team, your teammates, your organization. And here are some key points that I want to talk about when having respect for authority and inheritance, having that game plan. And you have to remember too, this is, this is coming from me. And everybody's journey is different. Some of us are weekend warriors. We can always learn from everybody. So respect to me is everything. No matter how good you are, whether you're the best player on the planet or you're somebody that just plays sports once a week, it doesn't matter. And respecting people at. You know, for me, I always love to learn. So one of the first things I always do do is I look at expertise and experience. So if I'm playing pickleball, a good example is I'm going to listen to this coach who, let's say they're a higher level than me. I'm going to take all the constructive criticism I can and learn from that individual and respect them for doing it. Also. Leadership is so important. There's coaches who serve as leaders and role models for their team. You have to respect that. Even officials we haven't talked about, you have to respect officials. If it's a referee or if it's an umpire, it's so important to do. Team togetherness is so important. You know, a team respects coaches and authority figures that are going to be upfront with them and honest and not going to say that all coaches are. But for the most part, we hope they are. You really want to hear what it is? I remember I was playing for a coach and the coach strictly told me, he says, listen, you're going to be an insurance policy for this organization this year. You're going to play in and out of games. And I have to accept that. But I might not like that. But you still have to respect the authority, the coach. Learning and improvement athletes can learn valuable skills, technique and strategies from your coaches. So maybe you might want to be a coach one day. Take notes from your coaches. They have a lot more experience than you. That's why they're coach for the most part. And I've said this on and on like mental toughness is. Respecting authority helps athletes develop mental toughness. It teaches them discipline and resilience and the ability to handle adversity constructively and all the other things that come around life and sports. So really, mental toughness is respecting authority. Sure, because sometimes we have to deal with things like I just mentioned earlier, and handling conflict. Sometimes we don't agree with things. But that doesn't mean you might not agree with your coach, but you have to respect your coach. You have to respect officials and respect everybody. But this is really the respect for authority, safety too. In many sports, especially those with the physical component, following instructions is important. Let's say if you don't really respect your coach and you're not listening to and you're playing football and it's not a contact drill at this point, you're not listening when you knock the player over, you could really hurt somebody, believe it or not. Not sure if you thought of that, and there's just so many different factors, but it's important to note to Respect is a two way street. Coaches and authority figures, even officials, also have responsibility to treat you with respect. But we're not talking about that here. It's important that the coaches teach you with fairness and dignity. Mutual respect between coaches and athletes create an environment conducive to success, personal growth, and the enjoyment of the game. But we're here, like I mentioned earlier, to talk about what you can control. I hope this has helped you and your coaching self coaching journey continuously. Listen to our audios and everything we have and reach out through the community as we're here to help you. Any questions, please even private message me in the community and looking forward to helping 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 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.