Self-Coach Fear

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 application, 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. Here's your host, Mike Hartman.

Welcome back to another episode. And today I'm going to talk about fear. And I get a lot of questions for many athletes around the topic of fear. And it comes in many different forms and fashions. Like, I know the fear of failure is tough, right? We're maybe afraid we're going to fail or we're fearful as an athlete, maybe, maybe you're a football player, a hockey player, you're afraid of getting hurt or you had the injury. No matter what sport it is. It could be pickleball, it could be baseball, soccer, football, tennis. And you're afraid of coming back a little bit too early. You might be timid, you might be injured. The fear of applying for a new job, if you've been with the same company for many years, you have that fear. And the first thing that I always say, if it comes to a point where this is really hurting you mentally, please talk to a mental health professional right away. That's the most important thing. I tell people what we do is we do coaching, we do performance coaching. We want to maximize your performance. But sometimes when it comes to your mental health or other things, please talk to somebody. But what I like to do is for overcoming fear, if it involves an athlete or a workplace athlete, I like to put strategies in place. And we do have all of these different tools in our community. We just added another 18 personal development courses for you as well. So these are tools that will help you as well as our live coaching sessions. And if you do have any questions, we do a video for you and love to have you join our community. The healthymindsetapp.com so before I go, and further, again, anything that's really holding you back within your mental health, please talk to a professional. But we, we used to, you know, look back at sports and we were fearful. I, I'd be the first to tell you as a professional athlete, I was afraid of things. I was afraid of, you know, we used to play the Philadelphia Flyers and they had about six tough guys in their lineup. So I wasn't like scared on. But it's in your mind. You're saying, okay, it's, you're going into Philadelphia, you know, it's going to be a tough game, it's not going to be easy. And that was the reality. So I had to do certain things to help me. And I'm going to share some of the things that I did as a player and also even life after sports. And I do before I even do a keynote speaking engagement. It's not that I'm fearful, but you want to, you know, the whole purpose is relaying a really good message to add value to, to people you're working with. Or if I'm working with a new company and they're bringing me in and they want certain things done within their company and with coaching and mentoring and doing things along that nature. It's not the fear of failure. We do have fear saying, you know what, you want to perform, you want to be on your game. And it's all confidence. It all comes down to confidence as well. So some of the strategies that I learned is the first thing is visualization. I visualize success, that I'm going to have success no matter what. Even going back many years as a professional athlete, I visualized myself making the Buffalo Sabers. I saw myself doing it. So for you it's the same thing. Visualize yourself making it happen. And only you can control certain things. And visualization is such a great way to do things. There's many different ways and it's all, you know, just to counteract fearful thoughts. And that's just one tool that you could use. Another is super important and we've done this forever is goal setting. It's very important to break down goals into very manageable steps, goals that are measurable. You know, we use a smart goal method because it's simple and it works. And we have that right in our book, right on our program, right on our website. We use smart goals and we help lead people through smart goals. So having really good goals, focusing on what you can control, like I mentioned earlier, is super important. Now you could talk yourself into more fear. Like now you could really be fearful of things. But positive self talk is so important because it replaces negative thoughts. And I'm not saying be outrageous with these outrageous statements, but think about things that may help you, like affirmations and encouraging yourself. Positive self talk. I used to go to the baseball games and there used to be the bird. Remember Mark Fittrich many years ago from the Detroit Tigers used to talk to the ball that Self talk to me. That was great. I mean, even way back then, people were laughing and people were, you know, commenting on him. But that was the way maybe he dealt with fear that way. So focus on preparation. I always said if you're not prepared, you're going to be having setbacks if it's with even within an interview within your sport. Derek Jeter said this, and you've heard me say this many times. His biggest fear was when he wasn't prepared or he felt he wasn't prepared. Now it's one thing to do is be over prepared. We don't want to do too much where you're so over prepared. It's like over training. When you over train as an athlete, you just can set yourself back and hurt yourself. It's the same thing. Be prepared. Know what you have to do. Break things down into these measurable goals like we talked about, smart goals, and that will help you. Another thing I did is breathing techniques. And you could do it before you go into a meeting at the office. It could be something that you're doing within your company. It could be even in the dressing room. You could do some deep breathing techniques. We have that right in our academy. So if anybody wants any of these, please reach out to us through our academy and we'll make sure we get this to you. But there's, you know, different breathing techniques that are going to help you. You know that breathing is everything. Practice deep breathing exercises to stay calm and focus, especially under pressure. And the one thing that was really important to me, which you could use within sports or even business, is seek support, even talk to your coach. If you feel comfortable talking to your coach, talk to your teammates, talk to a therapist. I mentioned earlier that might be the case sometimes just to get some really good guidance and get support. And it's important to have people in your life. It's important to have those good relationships. And the other thing I always try to do, and it's not easy, is try to face your fear gradually. Do it. Don't just jump right in. But sometimes we have to face our fear and make it happen. And I used to say to myself, like self talk. I would say, okay, what's the worst thing that could happen here? I don't make the team or I don't get this opportunity, or I don't get the speaking engagement, no matter what it is. So you have to be able to face your fears like head on. That's one thing I could say. And another thing that I, that it really helped me. It may help you again. I try to provide tools that have worked and that these have worked for me, especially in the sports world, that I've learned from my setbacks. I made a lot of mistakes as a young athlete, very uneducated in my early days when I was young. And it took me time to learn from those mistakes, especially as a young hockey player not getting drafted the first time around. And I really learned how to change my body language, how to change the way I trained. I had to change the way I thought, the way I slept, the way I ate, and I did these things just to help me. So where a lot of the time, even I remember when I was young, I was always thinking of the outcome instead of focusing on different things that needed to be done right away. So consistency and applying these techniques will really help you as an athlete or a workplace athlete. It really goes a long way. If we could help you in any way, please reach out. You can go to healthymindsetapp.com and we would love to have you. We have over 300 different tools to help you live coaching and anybody that we do have a scholarship program. So if you want to send me an email@mike academy no.com because we do. That's the this is the program, the Healthy Mindset App program. But part of our website is the Healthy Mindset App and I'm sorry, also the Hartman Academy. So love to help you. Any questions, please reach out and face your fear head on and ask yourself, you could use the one technique, if anything and say, well, hey, what's the worst thing that could happen? And that may help you. So I hope everyone has a great rest of your week and until next time.

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.