“YOU” & Your Mindset

Foreign.

Welcome to the Mike Hartman Show. Mike is a performance coach and former Stanley cup champion with the New York Rangers. Topics on this show are focused around stories, mindset and champions. Mike will also go into details about helping you with your pain points and struggles and finding motivational solutions on how to have the mindset of a champion. Now, here's your host, Mike Hartman. Hartman.

Welcome back to another episode. And in this series, we're still on the you series, but I'm going to make this about you and your mindset. And everybody uses that word a lot today. We used it in sports and business for so many years. And I'm just going to give you 10 different tips on mindset and a way to look at it. Because before you could develop this mindset of a champion or this mindset to be the best you could be, there might be a few tools along the way that might be able to help you. So the first thing I'm going to share with you is it's very important that you find a mentor or somebody you look up to. So you watch how they carry themselves. And I would bet most likely whoever you look up to, that mentor, that person, that former athlete, that current professional athlete, that professional that that's developed, you know, maybe a big company or somebody that works within a business that does very well, it's very important that you watch the mentor to see how they portray themselves. I did that growing up as an athlete. I would watch certain athletes and how they carried themselves and what they did. Like an example was there was a player that every time that he stepped onto the ice, he gave 100%, even if it was in warm ups, he would jump through the gate and be ready to play or be one with the game. And that's the same thing I'm asking of you is to find that mentor, find that person and that's going to help you achieve success. That's the first thing. The second thing I want to talk about is stretching. Because for me, these are some of these tools I use to help me with clarity, to help me within my mindset. And most people look at stretching as the benefits of, you know, maybe being more agile or they're using it within, they're thinking while I'm stretching after I work out. But I use it almost like a meditation. For me, it expands my awareness of things around me. It puts me in a really good comfort zone. As I'm stretching, I'm not exerting my body, elongating my muscles. So it's important that if you could Take about five to ten minutes a day in stretch. That's going to help you overall, even with your concentration or focus or things to think about while you're stretching. It's hard too, while you're exercising at times to really focus in on thinking about things. But I take the time to stretch. And they're saying now. And you'll hear our dietitian, who's also is really up to date on sleep because it's so important, you know how important sleep is that you could stretch before you go to bed. But it's a very mild passive stretch. So that's number two of the things. And the other thing is visualize. I want you to think about visualization. It's just a way for you to calm your mind down. We used it as imagery in sports. So we used to visualize ourselves making a great play. Now I'm going to talk about sports again. But Muhammad Ali and I was too young to understand this back in the day, but he would visualize himself winning the fight. He saw himself win the fight before he did, but he didn't think about it all night because he knew if he did, it was going to exhaust him and make him tired. But before he went to bed, one of the last thoughts that he always had was, okay, he saw himself winning the fight. And the best way to do that is to be in a calm state, be relaxed. And also there's some breathing techniques as well that you could use just to properly do it. I've used this before. I call it the gold paint theory. You could try this. So imagine that you have gold paint from your head to your toe. And in a lot of cases, they say your skin can't breathe. They say you could die. I'm not sure about that. Don't quote me on that. This is what some of the experts would say. And if you have your skin painted with gold paint, it's an uncomfortable feeling. But what you do is you close your eyes and you slowly imagine all that gold paint coming off your body really slow. Now, I tried this with a former athlete recently, and they loved it. I mean, this is something that he was a former professional athlete. He did it. But I also tried it with a very young athlete. And what happened with the young athlete, it took him one minute or 30 seconds, and that's not long enough. You have to sit, do some deep breathing, close your eyes, be in a relaxed state. Your phone will not be around you. There can't be any distractions. I also use this within business. I've Used it with some dentists. I mean, dentist. Dentistry is tough. It's. It's one of the hardest professions. There's a lot of stress. You're spending your day. I mean, who really wants to go see the dentist? So you wake up every day knowing that people really don't want to see you. Right? So I've had some of our dentists work on this type of visualization, or you can call it imagery, that gold paint theory. And they could before they're going into the office. It just really relaxes their mind. So those are the first three that I'd like you to focus on. And the next one I want you to do is simplify. Simplify some of the things in your life. Now, we have a little painting that is in our office here in Charlotte, North Carolina. It's in my office, and it says, keep things simple. And I always believe that for me personally, to have a really good mindset or to be prepared with things, I like to keep it very simple and even minimalize. Like, the less apps I have on my phone, the easier it is for me to do things. If my desk is a mess, what do they say a cluttered desk is? A cluttered mind. It complicates things. Set yourself up with these small little steps to simplify things. Elimination. I didn't realize this, but when I started eliminating things from my life that were insignificant, you start to feel better. Like, get rid of some of the clutter. Simplify your life, Simplify what you do. Now, I work with a lot of business people as well, and I've been just as guilty as this. But they try to do too much, taking on too much at a time. You know, we've helped a couple people, even, you know, within their business, and they're trying to always add to their business. Be great at what you do, take things off your plate and simplify. So those are the first four of I call having a healthy mindset that you could work on. And the next thing I want you to also work on again is downtime. Downtime is so important. Walking away from things, not always thinking about it. I remember when my growing up as a kid in Detroit, my mother used to say, my father's a workaholic. Because he would work to 11, 12 at night. He was an accountant by trade, but then he started his own wallpaper business. And as he was building it, he was up at like 6 in the morning, come home, have dinner, watch us play baseball. He'd go to our sporting events, come back, and he'd Work all night or he'd work in the car. He was definitely a hard worker. But there has to be a time that you have to create some downtime for yourself. The ability to walk away, spend time with your loved ones or, or even time to yourself. Take that time to get off the computer. My son recently told me he goes, dad, you watch too much news, but that's a whole different story. But get away from some of these things that may clutter up your mind a little bit. So take some of this time just to walk away. So I have shared with you the first five and if you have any questions, you can go to hartman.academy.no.com. on our homepage there's an area, there's a little blue icon and feel free to ask questions about any of these and I can give you more tips or one of our coaches will reach out. If it's, if it's something about nutrition, I'll speak to our dietitian and could relay the message to you. But we're here to help you. The next thing again is, it's, it's almost again, it's just being very organized. And I would tell people the story of a big league athlete. And they don't just get prepared for the game, you know, two hours before they are organized the, the night before or if they're having a series of games. If you have three games in that week, like we did a lot in the pros, you're organized starting that first day before those three games so you know exactly what you're gonna wear. It's almost a habit now in my life, I put things out the night before that I'm, that I'm gonna wear. And I go back to those old days of being organized. But again, a cluttered desk is a cluttered mind. Keep yourself as organized possible because what happens is when you're not organized, you start building up some anxiety. You get very frustrated, maybe you can get a little angry. And in order to be in that, what I call that healthy mindset, you need to do these little things that are going to help you. So again, that's the first six. Number seven is, you know, always have a routine. So it's important that you have some sort of routine. And I'm not a sleep expert, but you're going to hear from one of our experts about going to bed consistently at the same time every night. Having a routine will put you in that mindset. Like as an athlete, we would always eat our pregame meal around 12 o', clock, 12:30 and the pros knowing we're going to take a nap. If we had a 7 o' clock game or 8 o' clock game, you're going to sleep from 2 to 3:30 and have that nap. So it's important that you create a routine for yourself. Like for me, I like exercising first thing in the morning, try to put a little something in my stomach. I don't always do that, but I get my workout in right away, knowing I'm going to be done with it. And if you leave, if you need a little help with that, creating that mindset to get yourself up to do it, some people say, well, I'm not a morning person, it's hard for me to exercise right away. But if you have the time to do that, I highly recommend it. So just really getting into that, that routine, it could be the routine of doing whatever it is. That's when I. What I say is have you be in that proper mindset that's going to have you just be one with the game. And within that mindset, the next thing I'm going to talk about is journaling and how important journaling is. You know, they would say, I worked with this Dr. David Medford from the University of Tennessee. He was my mentor. So going back to mentors and he was a great man. He's no longer with us. He passed away a handful of years ago. But he would say, you know, Mike, we have the same thoughts in our head over 40,000 times a day. So it's important that you journal things that are important or journal things that are bothering you. So people are just, you don't just journal goals and goals and, you know, maybe unrealistic goals. Sometimes I looked at people's journals and they're like, you know, they write three or four pages a day. It could be a little bit unrealistic. But here, let me give you one tip of journaling. If you journal the negativity before you go to bed, things that are bothering you, things that are on your mind, it will help you maybe even within your sleep. It may help you even be more relaxed, put you in that proper mindset to focus, because you're not going to be worried about certain things. So that's just something to think about. Journaling has always been something I believed in. I've done it for many years. I did it when I didn't even realize I was doing it back in the day. You know, back in the 80s, I would take notes and write them down and set some measurable goals for myself. So These are some of these mindset tips that are important. And then we're going to go into. Number nine is always moving. They say that doesn't necessarily. Not even talk about exercise. If you're at your desk all day, get up and move, spend a little time to. To get up and walk around. He gets stiff. You sit there for a while. And I think it's important that you continuously move little arm movements. If you can even go for a walk in between. I remember when I worked with one of the major banks and I did the coaching for them, one of the things that we had was we called it a ritual at that time. And one of the rituals was taking a walk at lunch, you know, always keeping your body moving. And then that's going to help you. It's going to help you in many ways. It's going to relax you, you're going to feel better, you're going to establish this routine that we just talked about early on of movement. And you're going to, you know, it's also good for overall, your, overall your mental health. So the last thing I want to talk about is body language. And I'm going to. I saved this one for last, number 10 because I remember and I didn't realize I was doing it and we have to be real on this show that when I was in, let's say, I'd have a coffee in Starbucks and I had my computer there with me, I was in that. I was in my own little world at one time and not really worried what was on the outside. And somebody told me once that, you know, I, they thought I was on unapproachable. And I love people. I'm a people's person. My whole passion is teaching, helping, leading. And then when they said that to me, they said, you just looked intense. Your body language said it all. And then. And that really could affect your people, the people's mindset of you. So you, in order to have that proper mindset, your body language is so key into how you are. Like you ever have something really good happen to you and you just feel great, you're bringing that good energy. Energy into the room with you. Well, that's what I'm talking about here. So important that you, you know, have that good body movement and also, you know, that body language and it looks good. But I remember I was having a conversation with somebody and this is maybe a takeaway for you. And that person was crossing their arms like they looked uncomfortable. And right away I already had. I was forming an opinion of this person. So maybe one tip you could take away from this is if you're talking to somebody, keep those arms nice and loose. Keep them down to the side. Don't feel like you're closed off by crossing those arms. And these are just these 10 tips that I use that could help you within your mindset to help you in your everyday life. If you have any questions or if we could help you in any way, please go to Hartman Academy. We would love to help you. We're going to continue going with this you series and I hope you enjoy it. Feel free to reach out, leave a review, tell us how you feel and thank you for being a listener.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Mike Hartman Show. If you're enjoying what you've heard so far, please feel free to rate, subscribe and leave a review on your preferred podcast listening platform. We really appreciate that effort. Catch you in the next episode of the Mike Hartman Show.