May 25, 2022 • 38 mins
Focus on what you can control. It’s a phrase you’ve heard more than once if you’ve been listening to this podcast, and it typically refers to reorienting your perspective or ideas of success from the external to the internal: from elements outside of your control, to elements within your control. But on this episode of Losing Control, host Justin Su’a talks with renowned mental performance coach Dr. Colleen Hacker about how to manage, repair, and sustain a critical component of elite performance that is outside of control: confidence. And for a perspective on how to achieve consistent high performance sustainably, bestselling author Brad Stulberg discusses the perils of heroic individualism and the possibilities of other models of success. The yips are one of the most extraordinary and unusual phenomena in sports, and far more common among elite athletes are battles with confidence–or lack thereof–and achieving success sustainably in environments that demand consistent high performance under pressure.
- Dr. Colleen Hacker, a professor of kinesiology at Pacific Lutheran University, and co-author of “Catch Them Being Good: Everything You Need to Know to Successfully Coach Girls” and "Achieving Excellence: Mastering Mindset for Peak Performance in Sport and Life"
- Brad Stulberg, author of “The Practice of Groundedness,” and co-author of “Peak Performance”
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Losing Control, a podcast from Sports Illustrated
Studios and I Heart Radio. Honestly, when athletes are confident,
they don't need me. They're not asking how do I
keep this thing going? They're just riding the wave right.
Confidence begets more confidence. Confidence begets more excellent performance. But
(00:21):
when you start noticing that your feelings, focus, or thoughts
are indicative of lacking confidence, or if you experience poor performance,
then you know that you've got to engage in road repair.
That's the time to intervene. When you're playing at your best,
(00:42):
firing on all cylinders and performing at the highest level,
how are you feeling what does it take for you
to consistently achieve that level of performance? Today? I'm losing control.
It's confidence, sustainable high performance, and of course, as always,
the yips. I'm justin Suah and this is Losing Control,
(01:04):
a podcast about one of the strangest phenomenon sports, the yips,
or when an athlete or elite performer suddenly finds themselves
unable to do the thing that they do better than
almost everyone else on the planet. If you're listening for
the first time, welcome, But if you want the full experience.
Head back to episode one. Losing Control is a podcast
(01:25):
told through conversations with athletes, coaches, neuroscientists, and more, and
it's in order. Each episode features a first hand perspective
that contributes a piece to the puzzle that is the YIPS.
Along the way, you'll learn about some of the challenges
that high performers face and the mental work that enables
them to do what they do. Not only that, you'll
(01:46):
hear how you can incorporate these tools, strategies, and mindsets
into your own life because it's not just about losing control,
it's about getting it back. So let's get started. My
name's Dr Coline Hacker. I'm professor in Kinesiology at Pacific
Lutheran University and I've had the privilege of working with
(02:07):
Olympic and professional athletes and teams for the last thirty
thirty five years. Dr Hacker has been to six Olympic
Games as a mental skills coach and has worked with
elite athletes in the NFL, MLS, MLB. And you probably
remember the iconic photo of Brandy Chastain celebrating after she
scored that decisive goal against China in the Women's World
(02:30):
Cup final, Well, Dr Hacker was the mental skills coach
of that legendary team. In a career that's featured so
many highlights, what are the moments that stay with her?
I will give you fair warning to say my highlights
are likely not what people expect after six Olympic Games
on the coaching staff, more than a dozen World championships
(02:53):
or or World Cup championships. Frankly, moments dominate. It's the
moments of athletes laying out their uniform before entering the
field for a gold medal match, if athletes taking control
of their pregame strategy and pregame preparation with their head
(03:15):
bowed in the locker room, it's going for a walk
and talk for a post event analysis with athletes. It's
moments justin and then closely tied to that, it would
be the people and the relationships. And I'm really aware
and grateful that relationships that I formed and that we
(03:39):
formed professionally initially, many many many of those athletes now
as people are part of my life. So people have endured,
relationships have endured, and the moments will live for a lifetime.
Based on your experience, what do you distinguishes the excellence
(04:02):
from the very good. What have you seen the best
of the best do and how does it elevate their game?
What I notice is that elite athletes leave nothing to chance.
They are deliberate, they are consistent, they are systematic, and
they're all in. You know, I've talked for decades now
(04:23):
about the four pillars in sport plus one and I
love that it's become part of the normal language now
in sport. But thirty five years ago this was a
new concept. And so the four pillars are the technical,
the tactical, the physiological, the psychological. Those are the four pillars.
(04:45):
Plus one is team. So whether you're a top ten
tennis player in the world, or the gold medal hundred
meter sprint champion, or a World Cup or gold medal
winner and saw ger, you are part of a team.
There's no one that gets to the top in their
(05:05):
profession without being part of a team. So there's four
pillars plus one, and elite athletes are scientific, systematic, and
consistent about addressing all four pillars, and they invest heavily
in the plus one. You've said that at the highest level,
(05:26):
more often than not, it's the psychological skills which are
the margin of victory. Can you talk about that. I
do think that psychological skills are the critical difference of
psychological skills. I think the top two are mental toughness
and intrinsic motivation. So I would invest generally in psychological
(05:49):
skills training and specifically mental toughness training and examining the
factors that heighten and increase intrinsic motivation. So those two
are for me, the lynchpin of excellence. I love that.
I love that, and kind of correlating to that, talk
to us about the confidence of an elite athlete, of
(06:11):
an olympian. How do they how do they build that? Well?
I'm smiling because it would take you justin to ask
that question, because most people who don't work with the
best and the best in the world at their craft,
they actually think that they're supremely confident. They're confident all
(06:32):
the time. How could you not be confident? You're a
super Bowl champion. How could you not be confident your
number one ranked in the world. How can you not
be confident you just won the World Series? I love
the Robert Hughes quote, and Robert Hughes reminds us that
perfect confidence is reserved for the least talented. It's their
(06:53):
consolation prize. And I always chuckle every time I hear
the word confidence. I think of that Robert Hughes quote.
Show me a supremely confident athlete, and more often than not,
I'm gonna say they are not as talented as maybe
they think they are, or maybe working as hard as
(07:13):
maybe they should. Confidence is ephemeral. I say to the
athletes that I work with. The confidence road is always
under construction. Confidence isn't something you have. It's something you do.
It's something you invest in. It's something that you regain,
(07:34):
and it's something that you maximize. But if you think
that you're confident in two and you're just gonna ride
that confidence wave into the future, I think you're gonna
be disappointed. It is a road that's always under construction.
I mean, I could use all kinds of silly analogies
like confidence, like doing the dishes. Okay, you did it today. Well,
(07:56):
news flash, you're gonna be doing the dishes tomorrow and
the next day and the next day. So it's not
something that you do when it's done. Confidence isn't a noun,
it's a verb, and you have to do it and
work on it and invest in it. Now, what do
you say to those who may have lost confidence? Their
results aren't aligning with their efforts and they're doing their best,
(08:18):
but they're just not winning, not succeeding, not making the
progress they want. What do elite athletes do when their
confidence waivers? Number One, confidence follows focus. If I had
to share a pithy, short encompassing observation, it would be
that confidence follows focus. So nine times out of ten,
(08:41):
when athletes are confident, they are focusing on their strengths.
They are focusing on their successes. They are focusing on
their capabilities. They are focusing on characteristics and capabilities that
they have that they view are greater than or superior
to their current opponent. When athletes aren't confident are losing
(09:05):
confidence have low confidence, nine times out of ten, they're
focusing on errors, losses, deficiencies, problems that they have. They're
highlighting their opponents capabilities and under recognizing their competency. So
(09:28):
number one, confidence follows focus. So if you want to
change your confidence, you have to begin with what you're
focusing on. Secondly, confidence works bi directionally, and I want
that to be accessible to everybody, meaning that we can
feel confident, and every athlete, whether you're five years old
(09:50):
or you're ninety eight years old, most athletes believe and
have experienced the fact that they play differently and usually
better when they're confident. Confidence works by directionally. When I'm
feeling confident, now, refer to my first point, I'm focused
on my strengths, my capabilities, my successes. So I'm feeling confident,
(10:13):
I'm generally going to perform better, and then that becomes
that closed loop. I'm focusing on success. I feel confident,
I play better. I'm focusing on capabilities. I feel better,
I feel confident, I play better, and around and around
and around we go. It also works in reverse. I'm
focusing on having confidence first if you play well, so
(10:37):
rather than starting with the feeling, now, we're starting with performance.
If you perform well, you feel more confident and you
focus on your strength. So hopefully that makes sense. So
you can start with thoughts, feelings performance, or you can
start with performance thoughts feelings, right, it goes both directs.
(11:00):
The more confident you are, the better you play, and
the better you play, the more confident you are. Feel good,
play good, play good, feel good and that's what she
means when she says bi directionally. But Dr Hacker is
about to make a key points. Good performance generally leads
to different focus and different feelings. Poor performance can be,
(11:24):
but it doesn't have to be the start of a
downward spiral. So long story short, justin that's where I
had intervened. Don't wait to see how bad it's gonna get.
Spoiler alert, I can already tell you how bad it's
going to get, So you want to intervene as soon
as you possibly can by redirecting the focus to strengths, capabilities,
(11:47):
and successes. Focus on what you bring to the table
over and above and differently than your opponent. Focus on
your strengths, Focus on your key separators. Look, I don't
care if you're number one in the world or number
ten in the world. I don't care if you're a
gold medalist or bronze medalist or you just get cool
(12:08):
Olympic gear to wear, because you're not a medalist at all.
You have strengths and capabilities that other people don't. But
there's nobody that has it all, no one. There's no
one that has every aspect of their sport technically tactically,
physiologically and psychologically figured out. There's always strengths and separators
(12:33):
that you have. That's where the magic lies. In other words,
focus on what you can control, your strengths, your capabilities,
and your intrinsic motivators. Here's how I like to think
about this. Confidence is ultimately a belief in yourself, a
belief in your preparation, and a belief that you're perceived
(12:55):
skill level matches your perceived challenge. But ultimately, confident is
not something that you have full control over. What you
can control are the things that create confidence. We'll be
back with more of Dr Colleen Hacker after this. I'm
(13:16):
justin Sewa and this is losing control. I'm back with
Dr Colleen Hacker, a mental performance coach who has been
working with elite athletes for decades, from the big leagues
in the United States to the World Cup and Olympics.
We've discussed the importance of psychological skills and how to
maintain confidence at the highest level. But Dr Hacker also
(13:40):
has a different perspective on what this podcast is about.
The YIPS and it's not what you've heard before. There's
tremendous amount of interest lately every time there's an elite
athlete that we see in our television screens, certainly Simone
Biles talking about the twisties. As soon as an elite
(14:02):
athlete comes forward, we're all talking about the yips or
the twisties or what I. I prefer the term lost
move syndrome for a variety of reasons. It actually comes
from elite trampolinus. The first thing I want to say
is it's real. It's real. I mean, we see it,
we see it, but it's rare, and I think that's important.
(14:24):
I have dealt with it only once with an athlete
in my entire career, and that was in Major League Baseball.
So I've been at this for thirty five years a
wide variety of sports, from the NFL to tennis to
a variety of Olympic champions, MLS and wus L. I mean,
I could go on and on and on, and I've
(14:46):
only experienced the yips once with one of my clients.
So it's real, but it's rare. And that's the major
thing that I want to say. If I'm an elite athlete,
of all of the investments in mental skills excellence that
I could invest in putting an insurance plan in for
(15:06):
the yips is not something that would be in my
top ten. Will address it when we need to, but
I would neither expect it nor heavily invest in it.
So it's real, but rare. It's generally short lived. It's
not always short lived, but it's generally short lived, and
it's not mono causal. It is an interaction that is
(15:29):
psycho physiologically engaging. So we talk about the yips as
though they were a thing. They are a multiplicity of
variables and events. The yips, lost move syndrome, the twisties
without even trying or stretching. There is a psychobiological element,
(15:50):
there's a stress and pressure element. There's a switch from
a automatic too controlled processing, there's an attentional processing opponent.
There's a somatic control component that has to do with
muscle tension, and then there's a motor learning component. So
this is a multifaceted, multi causal and thankfully rare sport event.
(16:17):
I completely agree with a lot of what Dr Hacker
is saying here. Let's start with causality. There's no one
reason why athletes get the yips, and if you've been
listening to this podcast, you've heard different and occasionally divergent perspectives.
Well as you might have guessed that was intentional. The
yips aren't one experience, but a multiplicity of experiences. And
(16:43):
beyond that, when people talk about the yips, they don't
necessarily mean the same thing. Sometimes they might be talking
about a neurological movement disorder a dystonia. In other times
they might be talking about performance anxiety. The yips are
also experienced in different degrees. Ten out of ten severe
(17:03):
debilitating life altering yips are very rare, but in baseball,
for example, five out of ten yips and below are
much more common. And I see it on a regular basis.
But just because I see it doesn't mean that you
know about it, because a lot of professional athletes don't
want to go public. So if the yips are rare
(17:24):
or relatively uncommon, depending on the sport. Of all the
issues Dr Hacker has seen in her career, what are
some of the most common and how does she address them?
Confidence is probably the most pervasive because it is it
is ongoing, and so we've talked briefly about how to
address it. Secondly, i'd say focus focusing on the right
(17:48):
things at the right time. And that's how we address it.
You know, we identify what are the critical elements, lock
in and lock onto those critical elements, and we want
to you know the phrase feed your focus, starve your distractions,
So helping athletes focus on the right things at the
right time. Third, I would say pressure, pressure moments, pressure situations,
(18:15):
pressure competitions. And fourth I would say, have a well
planned and well executed mistake recovery routine. You're going to
make mistakes, errors are going to occur. You have a
plan for absolutely every aspect of your game. And I'm
(18:36):
always struck by how many athletes don't have a mistake
recovery routine. So there's not any athlete, honestly that I
work with that we don't address developing a unique individualized
mistake recovery routine with them. I call them bounce back plans,
and we use this tool all the time. Here the basics.
(19:00):
Step one is to identify as many of the negative
potential outcomes that you may encounter in the activity at hand.
For example, in baseball, that's striking out, making an error,
or if you're a picture walking a batter. The next
thing you want to do is create a routine or
identify how you want to respond when adversity strikes. It
(19:25):
might be slowing down your breath, it might be words
of affirmation. It might be mental cues, physical cues to
help focus on the present. The purpose of doing this
is to help you choose your response to adversity rather
than emotionally reacting to the adversity that you're going to face.
(19:46):
And guess what. A bounce back plan or mistake recovery
routine is a key building block of confidence. We'll be
back with Brad Stolberg after this. We're back. You're listening
to Losing Control and I'm justin Suah. In the second
(20:07):
half of today's episode, I'm talking with Brad Stolberg, co
author of The Passion Paradox, Peak Performance, and most recently
The Practice of Grounded Nous, which is also a book
that he is the sole author of. Brad studies and
writes about health, human performance, and sustainable success. And to
begin our conversation, I asked him how to safely and
(20:31):
sustainably push your competitive edge. The way that I like
to think about elite level performance is there's a razor's
edge and you want to get as close to that
edge as possible without crossing over it. And the more
that you can do that, the higher that edge goes,
the higher the bar, the increased capacity you have. But
(20:54):
when you cross over that edge, it sets you back.
That's when you start to get exhaustion, both physical emotional overtraining. Right.
The system can only take on so much at once,
So I think knowing when to stop is about over time,
figuring out in that moment, where is my edge in
(21:15):
getting right to that point without crossing beyond it, or
at least not crossing beyond it too frequently, because once
you cross that edge, it's very, very hard to come back.
How does somebody distinguish whether or not they need to
stop and arrest and recover or lean into it and
keep pushing along. I think that it depends, is the
(21:36):
short answer. The first half of a longer answer is
most challenges I believe should be somewhere around to seven
out of ten. So a zero out of ten or
a one out of ten is boarding going through the motions.
A ten out of ten is physiological panic and anxiety.
(21:59):
A seven of ten you're uncomfortable. It's at the very edge,
if not beyond your capacity. I like to think of
it as just manageable challenges, so that speaking to somebody
that is dealing with perhaps performance related issues, I think
if it's someone that is in the midst of experiencing
(22:19):
clinical anxiety, the calculus looks a little bit different. They're
the best advice is to find a well trained therapist
that can help you decide when it makes sense to
face fears versus when it makes sense to pull back.
I want to talk about the words superhuman and perfect.
What's the cost of these high expectations that athletes, musicians, leaders, parents,
(22:44):
students put on themselves. This is such a rich topic.
It's one of my favorites to talk about. It's something
I think deeply about. So my most recent book, The
Practice of Grounded Nous. You could say that the whole
argument of that book is around the danger of what
I call heroic individualism. I define this is a constant
(23:08):
game of one upmanship against both self and others, where
measurable achievement is the predominant arbiter of success. And then
the second part of this is that the glost is
always ten yards down the field. You never arrive. You
may think you're going to arrive, but you don't. You
(23:29):
can tell yourself the story when I just win that
Olympic medal, then I'll be content, when I just get
promoted to the C suite. Then I'll be happy when
I just have that best selling book. Then I'll be
able to go to sleep feeling like I'm enough. But
the human brain didn't evolve that way, and the behavioral
(23:49):
sciences this is called the irraval fallacy, and it's just
that we have this fallacy that will arrive. And I
think that when the bar is perfection or being a
super hero or heroic individualism, it takes the arrival fallacy
and it takes it to the next level because now
the place that you're trying to arrive at is by
definition not human, it's superhuman. So what do we see
(24:12):
as a result of this. We see increasing anxiety, we
see increasing depression, we see increasing performance enhancing drug use
in sport, and we see increasing fraud and business which
is no different than peds. Right. It is having this
expectation that is so high, completely tying your identity to
being a superhuman in not being able to realize that. Again,
(24:35):
I sound like a broken record, but by definition humans
aren't superhumans. They're just humans. So then we resort to
these things that are really unhealthy behaviors to try to
achieve that level of success even though it's impossible. If
I'm a listener and I'm thinking to myself, Brad just
hit the nail on the head. He literally just described
(24:58):
me to a t. What do they do about it?
How do they manage this? I think that the what
to do about it is simple but not easy. So
some of it is just to acknowledge and accept that
we live in a culture that just absolutely props up
(25:18):
this game of heroic individualism and that turning it off
is going to require swimming upstream a little bit and
going against the green a little bit. And for me personally,
in in my work with coaching clients, there's this big
shift that happens when you define success less about some
(25:42):
external achievement and more about knowing what your core values are,
knowing the things that you care deeply about that you
stand for, and showing up and practicing those day in
and day out. In the sporting world, this is often
called a focus on the process over outcomes. So instead
of success being best selling book, success is the core
(26:06):
value of creativity and trying to express that every day,
So it shifts the locus of control to something that's internal,
and it turns down the dial just a little bit
on that visceral felt need to get something out in
front of you. Always simple, but not easy. A lot
of people need a lot of help from community, from coaches,
(26:29):
from therapists, from books to hold their hands as they
go on this path, because again, we live in an
environment that is just filled with opportunity to get caught
up in this game of heroic individualism. We have ongoing
dashboards at work, we have Twitter followers and TikTok followers
(26:49):
and Instagram followers. It's almost as if our whole personalities
are on this marketplace that are always being judged and
layered on top of it. Became men. Brain evolved for
social approval and connection, so we're wired to crave this
kind of judgment. So going in the opposite direction it
takes a whole lot of effort. Is it possible to
(27:11):
go in the opposite direction and still get to the top.
It seems like for every high performer out there, there's
a story of what it was really like behind the
scenes for whatever reason, and there are plenty a lot
of people think that you either need to be hyper
competitive and fierce or you can just have fun, and
(27:35):
we're sold that right. That is the whole premise of
The Last Dance. Such a phenomenal documentary on Michael Jordan's
He Was Fierce. Those are the stories that get told
because they are provocative, they're alluring. People like to watch them,
people like to write about them, to talk about them.
There are other models of success. No one made a
(27:58):
documentary series on Tim dunk In. He is much more reserved,
He's much less fierce. He had a lot more fun
when he was playing. Tim Duncan, who played his entire
career with the San Antonio Spurs, is a retired professional
basketball player and one of the greatest power forwards to
ever step on the court. Janice Ante da Kumpo is
(28:19):
a great example. I have not watched an athlete in
the NBA in a long time that just has so
much fun and is so lighthearted with his approach to
the game. But when he's on the court, he is fierce.
So I think that this notion that you have to
have a chip on your shoulder and you have to
be angry to win very Jordan's ask, some would say
(28:41):
very Kobe esque as well. That's one road to Rome,
but there are other roads to Rome, and just because
those stories are told doesn't mean that these other paths
can't be effective. And listen, It clearly worked for MJ
and it works for Kobe and their phenomenal basketball players.
I guess what I am trying to say is that
(29:03):
their outliers by definition, and a lot of people that
follow those roads just end up miserable and burned out.
In your experience working with athletes, executives, coaches, parents, do
you have any stories of someone who was really they're
focused on the results, but after talking to you, or
(29:24):
after learning or maybe hitting a point to where they
needed to make, they were forced to make changes and
they did make healthy, sustainable changes. Do you have an
experience we can share with us. This isn't about going
into a monastery and becoming a monk that doesn't care
about external validation. If internal intrinsic drive is in external
(29:48):
stuff is, you're probably doing pretty well. So there is
a big spectrum. And the way that I like to
think about it is if you can be intrinsically processed
of in on most things, most of the time, you're
doing pretty well. So what is an example of somebody
(30:08):
that shifted gears. I've worked with a venture capitalist for
quite some time now, and this individual was absolutely hell
bent when we first started working together on being named
to the micas list of top vcs of having X
amount of investment in his fund in returning why amount
(30:30):
of profit on that investment was entirely driven by these
outward things, and the cost of that just completely weighed
him down. He was feeling burnt out, he was feeling depressed,
he was experiencing physical sensations that he didn't like. And
(30:51):
it took a long time, of course, to start unwinding
why and where that comes from and then slowly shift
the mindset one where it's more what are your core values,
how do you practice them day in and day out,
and how can we try to make this the majority
of what drives you. We've talked about performance, about heroic individualism,
(31:15):
and about other models of success, but before we finish,
I want to ask you about another experience feeling stuck,
feeling like you're at a dead end and there's no
way out. What do you have to say to people
who may not be sure how to get themselves out
of a difficult situation. Well, I think there's a couple
(31:37):
of things that I would say to a person in
a situation that just feels stuck and like there's no
way out. The first is to challenge the assumption that
there's no way out. What would it actually look like
to get out of that situation? And sometimes there truly
is no way out, But oftentimes that's a story that
(31:58):
we tell ourselves. Could you switch teams, could you leave
that organization, could you downsize the house? I mean often
the people that say this, at least in my experience,
are white collar workers that make at least six figures.
And how much of that story that there's no ability
(32:18):
to change is again just that it's a narrative in
one's head. I think the people that I have the
most sympathy for are those that are working minimum wage
or at near minimum wage jobs, working fast food, working
at Walmart's, working at Amazon, where they often don't have
another option and they truly do need to do that
(32:40):
work to pay the mortgage. And my heart goes out
to those people, and I don't have an easy solution
for that. I wish that I did, probably has to
happen at the policy level, But for listeners of this
show that aren't in those situations, I think it's questioning
that assumption. And then it's also asking yourself how much
(33:00):
and being really honest with yourself how much of this
is situational versus how much of this is personal? And
nothing is ever all personal or all situational, always some
bit of both, And how can you control this stuff
that you can control? So, yeah, maybe you're in a
work environment that stinks, how do you contribute to that?
(33:24):
And again, this is assuming that you can't leave it?
But often I tell people to leave toxic environments. You know,
I think that there's a whole lot about like change
your attitude and then you'll be great, or you're part
of the problem too. That can come up, But sometimes
there's just toxic environments, and toxic environments suck. So I'm
kind of ranting a bit, but I'll get really practical.
(33:46):
Here's something that I ask people often in those situations.
Are you sticking around because you genuinely feel like the
situation can change for the better, or are you only
sticking around to prolong the inevitable? Because the inevitable is
the hard thing and that question has given athletes I've
(34:09):
worked with the courage to retire. It's given entrepreneurs I've
worked with the courage to change funding or sell their companies.
So that's a really good question, and it's a tricky
one because often times we do kick the can down
the road on these big decisions. And if it feels
like you are just prolonging the inevitable, that is a
(34:31):
great cue that it's probably time to leave. We're going
to conclude with something a little difference. There are at
least two kinds of games in life. There's a professor
of philosophy and religion named James Cars, and he wrote
this book that is called Infinite Games. In Cars makes
(34:51):
the case that in life there are infinite games and
finite games. In infinite games, the whole point is just
to keep playing. In finite games games, those are games
where there are winners and losers. If you think about life,
life is an infinite game. The whole point is just
to keep going. The only ending for all of us
is when we die. Along the way. We're involved in
(35:12):
all of these finite games, and the more that we
can pay attention and learn and grow from those finite games,
sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing. The more wisdom we gain for
the infinite game. This is a quote. A finite game
is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game
for the purpose of continuing the play. On the next
(35:38):
episode of Losing Control, we're talking more about the infinite
game with the quarterback who got the yips and recovered
and the gymnasts who, after she experienced a life altering injury,
forged a new path for herself. It's the yips, the twisties,
and life after sports. Next time on Losing Control. A
(36:02):
sincere thank you to our guests. Dr Colleen Hacker a
professor of kinesiology at Pacific Lutheran University who has worked
with professional athletes for more than thirty years. She is
the co author of two books, Catch Them Being Good,
Everything you Need to Know to successfully Coach Girls and
Achieving Excellence, Mastering Mindset for Peak Performance in Sports and Life.
(36:28):
And Brad Stolberg, author of the Practice of Groundedness and
co author of Peak Performance and The Passion Paradox. Thank
you so much for listening, and don't forget to rate
and subscribe. I'm justin Suah, your host, and you can
find me on Instagram and Twitter at Justin SUA. That's
j U s t I N s u A. You
(36:51):
could also check me out on the Increase Your Impact podcast.
Losing Control is a podcast from Sports Illustrated Studios and
I Heart Radio. Original music by Jerem Suah. Michael McDowell
is our producer, editing and mixing by Will Stanton. This
episode was fact checked by Zoey Mulloch at s I Studios.
(37:12):
Max Miller is supervising producer, and Brandon Getchus and Matt
Lipson are executive producers at I Heeart Radio. Sean ty
Tone as our executive producer. Special thanks to John O'Brien.
For more podcasts from I Heeart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This podcast does not provide medical advice, and nothing you
(37:34):
here on this podcast is intended or implied to be
a substitute for professional medical consultation, diagnosis, or treatment. Only
seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health
provider with any questions you may have regarding your health.
Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it
because of something you have heard on this podcast, Bong
(38:00):
Bong
You're listening to Losing Control, a podcast from Sports Illustrated
Studios and I Heart Radio. Honestly, when athletes are confident,
they don't need me. They're not asking how do I
keep this thing going? They're just riding the wave right.
Confidence begets more confidence. Confidence begets more excellent performance. But
(00:21):
when you start noticing that your feelings, focus, or thoughts
are indicative of lacking confidence, or if you experience poor performance,
then you know that you've got to engage in road repair.
That's the time to intervene. When you're playing at your best,
(00:42):
firing on all cylinders and performing at the highest level,
how are you feeling what does it take for you
to consistently achieve that level of performance? Today? I'm losing control.
It's confidence, sustainable high performance, and of course, as always,
the yips. I'm justin Suah and this is Losing Control,
(01:04):
a podcast about one of the strangest phenomenon sports, the yips,
or when an athlete or elite performer suddenly finds themselves
unable to do the thing that they do better than
almost everyone else on the planet. If you're listening for
the first time, welcome, But if you want the full experience.
Head back to episode one. Losing Control is a podcast
(01:25):
told through conversations with athletes, coaches, neuroscientists, and more, and
it's in order. Each episode features a first hand perspective
that contributes a piece to the puzzle that is the YIPS.
Along the way, you'll learn about some of the challenges
that high performers face and the mental work that enables
them to do what they do. Not only that, you'll
(01:46):
hear how you can incorporate these tools, strategies, and mindsets
into your own life because it's not just about losing control,
it's about getting it back. So let's get started. My
name's Dr Coline Hacker. I'm professor in Kinesiology at Pacific
Lutheran University and I've had the privilege of working with
(02:07):
Olympic and professional athletes and teams for the last thirty
thirty five years. Dr Hacker has been to six Olympic
Games as a mental skills coach and has worked with
elite athletes in the NFL, MLS, MLB. And you probably
remember the iconic photo of Brandy Chastain celebrating after she
scored that decisive goal against China in the Women's World
(02:30):
Cup final, Well, Dr Hacker was the mental skills coach
of that legendary team. In a career that's featured so
many highlights, what are the moments that stay with her?
I will give you fair warning to say my highlights
are likely not what people expect after six Olympic Games
on the coaching staff, more than a dozen World championships
(02:53):
or or World Cup championships. Frankly, moments dominate. It's the
moments of athletes laying out their uniform before entering the
field for a gold medal match, if athletes taking control
of their pregame strategy and pregame preparation with their head
(03:15):
bowed in the locker room, it's going for a walk
and talk for a post event analysis with athletes. It's
moments justin and then closely tied to that, it would
be the people and the relationships. And I'm really aware
and grateful that relationships that I formed and that we
(03:39):
formed professionally initially, many many many of those athletes now
as people are part of my life. So people have endured,
relationships have endured, and the moments will live for a lifetime.
Based on your experience, what do you distinguishes the excellence
(04:02):
from the very good. What have you seen the best
of the best do and how does it elevate their game?
What I notice is that elite athletes leave nothing to chance.
They are deliberate, they are consistent, they are systematic, and
they're all in. You know, I've talked for decades now
(04:23):
about the four pillars in sport plus one and I
love that it's become part of the normal language now
in sport. But thirty five years ago this was a
new concept. And so the four pillars are the technical,
the tactical, the physiological, the psychological. Those are the four pillars.
(04:45):
Plus one is team. So whether you're a top ten
tennis player in the world, or the gold medal hundred
meter sprint champion, or a World Cup or gold medal
winner and saw ger, you are part of a team.
There's no one that gets to the top in their
(05:05):
profession without being part of a team. So there's four
pillars plus one, and elite athletes are scientific, systematic, and
consistent about addressing all four pillars, and they invest heavily
in the plus one. You've said that at the highest level,
(05:26):
more often than not, it's the psychological skills which are
the margin of victory. Can you talk about that. I
do think that psychological skills are the critical difference of
psychological skills. I think the top two are mental toughness
and intrinsic motivation. So I would invest generally in psychological
(05:49):
skills training and specifically mental toughness training and examining the
factors that heighten and increase intrinsic motivation. So those two
are for me, the lynchpin of excellence. I love that.
I love that, and kind of correlating to that, talk
to us about the confidence of an elite athlete, of
(06:11):
an olympian. How do they how do they build that? Well?
I'm smiling because it would take you justin to ask
that question, because most people who don't work with the
best and the best in the world at their craft,
they actually think that they're supremely confident. They're confident all
(06:32):
the time. How could you not be confident? You're a
super Bowl champion. How could you not be confident your
number one ranked in the world. How can you not
be confident you just won the World Series? I love
the Robert Hughes quote, and Robert Hughes reminds us that
perfect confidence is reserved for the least talented. It's their
(06:53):
consolation prize. And I always chuckle every time I hear
the word confidence. I think of that Robert Hughes quote.
Show me a supremely confident athlete, and more often than not,
I'm gonna say they are not as talented as maybe
they think they are, or maybe working as hard as
(07:13):
maybe they should. Confidence is ephemeral. I say to the
athletes that I work with. The confidence road is always
under construction. Confidence isn't something you have. It's something you do.
It's something you invest in. It's something that you regain,
(07:34):
and it's something that you maximize. But if you think
that you're confident in two and you're just gonna ride
that confidence wave into the future, I think you're gonna
be disappointed. It is a road that's always under construction.
I mean, I could use all kinds of silly analogies
like confidence, like doing the dishes. Okay, you did it today. Well,
(07:56):
news flash, you're gonna be doing the dishes tomorrow and
the next day and the next day. So it's not
something that you do when it's done. Confidence isn't a noun,
it's a verb, and you have to do it and
work on it and invest in it. Now, what do
you say to those who may have lost confidence? Their
results aren't aligning with their efforts and they're doing their best,
(08:18):
but they're just not winning, not succeeding, not making the
progress they want. What do elite athletes do when their
confidence waivers? Number One, confidence follows focus. If I had
to share a pithy, short encompassing observation, it would be
that confidence follows focus. So nine times out of ten,
(08:41):
when athletes are confident, they are focusing on their strengths.
They are focusing on their successes. They are focusing on
their capabilities. They are focusing on characteristics and capabilities that
they have that they view are greater than or superior
to their current opponent. When athletes aren't confident are losing
(09:05):
confidence have low confidence, nine times out of ten, they're
focusing on errors, losses, deficiencies, problems that they have. They're
highlighting their opponents capabilities and under recognizing their competency. So
(09:28):
number one, confidence follows focus. So if you want to
change your confidence, you have to begin with what you're
focusing on. Secondly, confidence works bi directionally, and I want
that to be accessible to everybody, meaning that we can
feel confident, and every athlete, whether you're five years old
(09:50):
or you're ninety eight years old, most athletes believe and
have experienced the fact that they play differently and usually
better when they're confident. Confidence works by directionally. When I'm
feeling confident, now, refer to my first point, I'm focused
on my strengths, my capabilities, my successes. So I'm feeling confident,
(10:13):
I'm generally going to perform better, and then that becomes
that closed loop. I'm focusing on success. I feel confident,
I play better. I'm focusing on capabilities. I feel better,
I feel confident, I play better, and around and around
and around we go. It also works in reverse. I'm
focusing on having confidence first if you play well, so
(10:37):
rather than starting with the feeling, now, we're starting with performance.
If you perform well, you feel more confident and you
focus on your strength. So hopefully that makes sense. So
you can start with thoughts, feelings performance, or you can
start with performance thoughts feelings, right, it goes both directs.
(11:00):
The more confident you are, the better you play, and
the better you play, the more confident you are. Feel good,
play good, play good, feel good and that's what she
means when she says bi directionally. But Dr Hacker is
about to make a key points. Good performance generally leads
to different focus and different feelings. Poor performance can be,
(11:24):
but it doesn't have to be the start of a
downward spiral. So long story short, justin that's where I
had intervened. Don't wait to see how bad it's gonna get.
Spoiler alert, I can already tell you how bad it's
going to get, So you want to intervene as soon
as you possibly can by redirecting the focus to strengths, capabilities,
(11:47):
and successes. Focus on what you bring to the table
over and above and differently than your opponent. Focus on
your strengths, Focus on your key separators. Look, I don't
care if you're number one in the world or number
ten in the world. I don't care if you're a
gold medalist or bronze medalist or you just get cool
(12:08):
Olympic gear to wear, because you're not a medalist at all.
You have strengths and capabilities that other people don't. But
there's nobody that has it all, no one. There's no
one that has every aspect of their sport technically tactically,
physiologically and psychologically figured out. There's always strengths and separators
(12:33):
that you have. That's where the magic lies. In other words,
focus on what you can control, your strengths, your capabilities,
and your intrinsic motivators. Here's how I like to think
about this. Confidence is ultimately a belief in yourself, a
belief in your preparation, and a belief that you're perceived
(12:55):
skill level matches your perceived challenge. But ultimately, confident is
not something that you have full control over. What you
can control are the things that create confidence. We'll be
back with more of Dr Colleen Hacker after this. I'm
(13:16):
justin Sewa and this is losing control. I'm back with
Dr Colleen Hacker, a mental performance coach who has been
working with elite athletes for decades, from the big leagues
in the United States to the World Cup and Olympics.
We've discussed the importance of psychological skills and how to
maintain confidence at the highest level. But Dr Hacker also
(13:40):
has a different perspective on what this podcast is about.
The YIPS and it's not what you've heard before. There's
tremendous amount of interest lately every time there's an elite
athlete that we see in our television screens, certainly Simone
Biles talking about the twisties. As soon as an elite
(14:02):
athlete comes forward, we're all talking about the yips or
the twisties or what I. I prefer the term lost
move syndrome for a variety of reasons. It actually comes
from elite trampolinus. The first thing I want to say
is it's real. It's real. I mean, we see it,
we see it, but it's rare, and I think that's important.
(14:24):
I have dealt with it only once with an athlete
in my entire career, and that was in Major League Baseball.
So I've been at this for thirty five years a
wide variety of sports, from the NFL to tennis to
a variety of Olympic champions, MLS and wus L. I mean,
I could go on and on and on, and I've
(14:46):
only experienced the yips once with one of my clients.
So it's real, but it's rare. And that's the major
thing that I want to say. If I'm an elite athlete,
of all of the investments in mental skills excellence that
I could invest in putting an insurance plan in for
(15:06):
the yips is not something that would be in my
top ten. Will address it when we need to, but
I would neither expect it nor heavily invest in it.
So it's real, but rare. It's generally short lived. It's
not always short lived, but it's generally short lived, and
it's not mono causal. It is an interaction that is
(15:29):
psycho physiologically engaging. So we talk about the yips as
though they were a thing. They are a multiplicity of
variables and events. The yips, lost move syndrome, the twisties
without even trying or stretching. There is a psychobiological element,
(15:50):
there's a stress and pressure element. There's a switch from
a automatic too controlled processing, there's an attentional processing opponent.
There's a somatic control component that has to do with
muscle tension, and then there's a motor learning component. So
this is a multifaceted, multi causal and thankfully rare sport event.
(16:17):
I completely agree with a lot of what Dr Hacker
is saying here. Let's start with causality. There's no one
reason why athletes get the yips, and if you've been
listening to this podcast, you've heard different and occasionally divergent perspectives.
Well as you might have guessed that was intentional. The
yips aren't one experience, but a multiplicity of experiences. And
(16:43):
beyond that, when people talk about the yips, they don't
necessarily mean the same thing. Sometimes they might be talking
about a neurological movement disorder a dystonia. In other times
they might be talking about performance anxiety. The yips are
also experienced in different degrees. Ten out of ten severe
(17:03):
debilitating life altering yips are very rare, but in baseball,
for example, five out of ten yips and below are
much more common. And I see it on a regular basis.
But just because I see it doesn't mean that you
know about it, because a lot of professional athletes don't
want to go public. So if the yips are rare
(17:24):
or relatively uncommon, depending on the sport. Of all the
issues Dr Hacker has seen in her career, what are
some of the most common and how does she address them?
Confidence is probably the most pervasive because it is it
is ongoing, and so we've talked briefly about how to
address it. Secondly, i'd say focus focusing on the right
(17:48):
things at the right time. And that's how we address it.
You know, we identify what are the critical elements, lock
in and lock onto those critical elements, and we want
to you know the phrase feed your focus, starve your distractions,
So helping athletes focus on the right things at the
right time. Third, I would say pressure, pressure moments, pressure situations,
(18:15):
pressure competitions. And fourth I would say, have a well
planned and well executed mistake recovery routine. You're going to
make mistakes, errors are going to occur. You have a
plan for absolutely every aspect of your game. And I'm
(18:36):
always struck by how many athletes don't have a mistake
recovery routine. So there's not any athlete, honestly that I
work with that we don't address developing a unique individualized
mistake recovery routine with them. I call them bounce back plans,
and we use this tool all the time. Here the basics.
(19:00):
Step one is to identify as many of the negative
potential outcomes that you may encounter in the activity at hand.
For example, in baseball, that's striking out, making an error,
or if you're a picture walking a batter. The next
thing you want to do is create a routine or
identify how you want to respond when adversity strikes. It
(19:25):
might be slowing down your breath, it might be words
of affirmation. It might be mental cues, physical cues to
help focus on the present. The purpose of doing this
is to help you choose your response to adversity rather
than emotionally reacting to the adversity that you're going to face.
(19:46):
And guess what. A bounce back plan or mistake recovery
routine is a key building block of confidence. We'll be
back with Brad Stolberg after this. We're back. You're listening
to Losing Control and I'm justin Suah. In the second
(20:07):
half of today's episode, I'm talking with Brad Stolberg, co
author of The Passion Paradox, Peak Performance, and most recently
The Practice of Grounded Nous, which is also a book
that he is the sole author of. Brad studies and
writes about health, human performance, and sustainable success. And to
begin our conversation, I asked him how to safely and
(20:31):
sustainably push your competitive edge. The way that I like
to think about elite level performance is there's a razor's
edge and you want to get as close to that
edge as possible without crossing over it. And the more
that you can do that, the higher that edge goes,
the higher the bar, the increased capacity you have. But
(20:54):
when you cross over that edge, it sets you back.
That's when you start to get exhaustion, both physical emotional overtraining. Right.
The system can only take on so much at once,
So I think knowing when to stop is about over time,
figuring out in that moment, where is my edge in
(21:15):
getting right to that point without crossing beyond it, or
at least not crossing beyond it too frequently, because once
you cross that edge, it's very, very hard to come back.
How does somebody distinguish whether or not they need to
stop and arrest and recover or lean into it and
keep pushing along. I think that it depends, is the
(21:36):
short answer. The first half of a longer answer is
most challenges I believe should be somewhere around to seven
out of ten. So a zero out of ten or
a one out of ten is boarding going through the motions.
A ten out of ten is physiological panic and anxiety.
(21:59):
A seven of ten you're uncomfortable. It's at the very edge,
if not beyond your capacity. I like to think of
it as just manageable challenges, so that speaking to somebody
that is dealing with perhaps performance related issues, I think
if it's someone that is in the midst of experiencing
(22:19):
clinical anxiety, the calculus looks a little bit different. They're
the best advice is to find a well trained therapist
that can help you decide when it makes sense to
face fears versus when it makes sense to pull back.
I want to talk about the words superhuman and perfect.
What's the cost of these high expectations that athletes, musicians, leaders, parents,
(22:44):
students put on themselves. This is such a rich topic.
It's one of my favorites to talk about. It's something
I think deeply about. So my most recent book, The
Practice of Grounded Nous. You could say that the whole
argument of that book is around the danger of what
I call heroic individualism. I define this is a constant
(23:08):
game of one upmanship against both self and others, where
measurable achievement is the predominant arbiter of success. And then
the second part of this is that the glost is
always ten yards down the field. You never arrive. You
may think you're going to arrive, but you don't. You
(23:29):
can tell yourself the story when I just win that
Olympic medal, then I'll be content, when I just get
promoted to the C suite. Then I'll be happy when
I just have that best selling book. Then I'll be
able to go to sleep feeling like I'm enough. But
the human brain didn't evolve that way, and the behavioral
(23:49):
sciences this is called the irraval fallacy, and it's just
that we have this fallacy that will arrive. And I
think that when the bar is perfection or being a
super hero or heroic individualism, it takes the arrival fallacy
and it takes it to the next level because now
the place that you're trying to arrive at is by
definition not human, it's superhuman. So what do we see
(24:12):
as a result of this. We see increasing anxiety, we
see increasing depression, we see increasing performance enhancing drug use
in sport, and we see increasing fraud and business which
is no different than peds. Right. It is having this
expectation that is so high, completely tying your identity to
being a superhuman in not being able to realize that. Again,
(24:35):
I sound like a broken record, but by definition humans
aren't superhumans. They're just humans. So then we resort to
these things that are really unhealthy behaviors to try to
achieve that level of success even though it's impossible. If
I'm a listener and I'm thinking to myself, Brad just
hit the nail on the head. He literally just described
(24:58):
me to a t. What do they do about it?
How do they manage this? I think that the what
to do about it is simple but not easy. So
some of it is just to acknowledge and accept that
we live in a culture that just absolutely props up
(25:18):
this game of heroic individualism and that turning it off
is going to require swimming upstream a little bit and
going against the green a little bit. And for me personally,
in in my work with coaching clients, there's this big
shift that happens when you define success less about some
(25:42):
external achievement and more about knowing what your core values are,
knowing the things that you care deeply about that you
stand for, and showing up and practicing those day in
and day out. In the sporting world, this is often
called a focus on the process over outcomes. So instead
of success being best selling book, success is the core
(26:06):
value of creativity and trying to express that every day,
So it shifts the locus of control to something that's internal,
and it turns down the dial just a little bit
on that visceral felt need to get something out in
front of you. Always simple, but not easy. A lot
of people need a lot of help from community, from coaches,
(26:29):
from therapists, from books to hold their hands as they
go on this path, because again, we live in an
environment that is just filled with opportunity to get caught
up in this game of heroic individualism. We have ongoing
dashboards at work, we have Twitter followers and TikTok followers
(26:49):
and Instagram followers. It's almost as if our whole personalities
are on this marketplace that are always being judged and
layered on top of it. Became men. Brain evolved for
social approval and connection, so we're wired to crave this
kind of judgment. So going in the opposite direction it
takes a whole lot of effort. Is it possible to
(27:11):
go in the opposite direction and still get to the top.
It seems like for every high performer out there, there's
a story of what it was really like behind the
scenes for whatever reason, and there are plenty a lot
of people think that you either need to be hyper
competitive and fierce or you can just have fun, and
(27:35):
we're sold that right. That is the whole premise of
The Last Dance. Such a phenomenal documentary on Michael Jordan's
He Was Fierce. Those are the stories that get told
because they are provocative, they're alluring. People like to watch them,
people like to write about them, to talk about them.
There are other models of success. No one made a
(27:58):
documentary series on Tim dunk In. He is much more reserved,
He's much less fierce. He had a lot more fun
when he was playing. Tim Duncan, who played his entire
career with the San Antonio Spurs, is a retired professional
basketball player and one of the greatest power forwards to
ever step on the court. Janice Ante da Kumpo is
(28:19):
a great example. I have not watched an athlete in
the NBA in a long time that just has so
much fun and is so lighthearted with his approach to
the game. But when he's on the court, he is fierce.
So I think that this notion that you have to
have a chip on your shoulder and you have to
be angry to win very Jordan's ask, some would say
(28:41):
very Kobe esque as well. That's one road to Rome,
but there are other roads to Rome, and just because
those stories are told doesn't mean that these other paths
can't be effective. And listen, It clearly worked for MJ
and it works for Kobe and their phenomenal basketball players.
I guess what I am trying to say is that
(29:03):
their outliers by definition, and a lot of people that
follow those roads just end up miserable and burned out.
In your experience working with athletes, executives, coaches, parents, do
you have any stories of someone who was really they're
focused on the results, but after talking to you, or
(29:24):
after learning or maybe hitting a point to where they
needed to make, they were forced to make changes and
they did make healthy, sustainable changes. Do you have an
experience we can share with us. This isn't about going
into a monastery and becoming a monk that doesn't care
about external validation. If internal intrinsic drive is in external
(29:48):
stuff is, you're probably doing pretty well. So there is
a big spectrum. And the way that I like to
think about it is if you can be intrinsically processed
of in on most things, most of the time, you're
doing pretty well. So what is an example of somebody
(30:08):
that shifted gears. I've worked with a venture capitalist for
quite some time now, and this individual was absolutely hell
bent when we first started working together on being named
to the micas list of top vcs of having X
amount of investment in his fund in returning why amount
(30:30):
of profit on that investment was entirely driven by these
outward things, and the cost of that just completely weighed
him down. He was feeling burnt out, he was feeling depressed,
he was experiencing physical sensations that he didn't like. And
(30:51):
it took a long time, of course, to start unwinding
why and where that comes from and then slowly shift
the mindset one where it's more what are your core values,
how do you practice them day in and day out,
and how can we try to make this the majority
of what drives you. We've talked about performance, about heroic individualism,
(31:15):
and about other models of success, but before we finish,
I want to ask you about another experience feeling stuck,
feeling like you're at a dead end and there's no
way out. What do you have to say to people
who may not be sure how to get themselves out
of a difficult situation. Well, I think there's a couple
(31:37):
of things that I would say to a person in
a situation that just feels stuck and like there's no
way out. The first is to challenge the assumption that
there's no way out. What would it actually look like
to get out of that situation? And sometimes there truly
is no way out, But oftentimes that's a story that
(31:58):
we tell ourselves. Could you switch teams, could you leave
that organization, could you downsize the house? I mean often
the people that say this, at least in my experience,
are white collar workers that make at least six figures.
And how much of that story that there's no ability
(32:18):
to change is again just that it's a narrative in
one's head. I think the people that I have the
most sympathy for are those that are working minimum wage
or at near minimum wage jobs, working fast food, working
at Walmart's, working at Amazon, where they often don't have
another option and they truly do need to do that
(32:40):
work to pay the mortgage. And my heart goes out
to those people, and I don't have an easy solution
for that. I wish that I did, probably has to
happen at the policy level, But for listeners of this
show that aren't in those situations, I think it's questioning
that assumption. And then it's also asking yourself how much
(33:00):
and being really honest with yourself how much of this
is situational versus how much of this is personal? And
nothing is ever all personal or all situational, always some
bit of both, And how can you control this stuff
that you can control? So, yeah, maybe you're in a
work environment that stinks, how do you contribute to that?
(33:24):
And again, this is assuming that you can't leave it?
But often I tell people to leave toxic environments. You know,
I think that there's a whole lot about like change
your attitude and then you'll be great, or you're part
of the problem too. That can come up, But sometimes
there's just toxic environments, and toxic environments suck. So I'm
kind of ranting a bit, but I'll get really practical.
(33:46):
Here's something that I ask people often in those situations.
Are you sticking around because you genuinely feel like the
situation can change for the better, or are you only
sticking around to prolong the inevitable? Because the inevitable is
the hard thing and that question has given athletes I've
(34:09):
worked with the courage to retire. It's given entrepreneurs I've
worked with the courage to change funding or sell their companies.
So that's a really good question, and it's a tricky
one because often times we do kick the can down
the road on these big decisions. And if it feels
like you are just prolonging the inevitable, that is a
(34:31):
great cue that it's probably time to leave. We're going
to conclude with something a little difference. There are at
least two kinds of games in life. There's a professor
of philosophy and religion named James Cars, and he wrote
this book that is called Infinite Games. In Cars makes
(34:51):
the case that in life there are infinite games and
finite games. In infinite games, the whole point is just
to keep playing. In finite games games, those are games
where there are winners and losers. If you think about life,
life is an infinite game. The whole point is just
to keep going. The only ending for all of us
is when we die. Along the way. We're involved in
(35:12):
all of these finite games, and the more that we
can pay attention and learn and grow from those finite games,
sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing. The more wisdom we gain for
the infinite game. This is a quote. A finite game
is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game
for the purpose of continuing the play. On the next
(35:38):
episode of Losing Control, we're talking more about the infinite
game with the quarterback who got the yips and recovered
and the gymnasts who, after she experienced a life altering injury,
forged a new path for herself. It's the yips, the twisties,
and life after sports. Next time on Losing Control. A
(36:02):
sincere thank you to our guests. Dr Colleen Hacker a
professor of kinesiology at Pacific Lutheran University who has worked
with professional athletes for more than thirty years. She is
the co author of two books, Catch Them Being Good,
Everything you Need to Know to successfully Coach Girls and
Achieving Excellence, Mastering Mindset for Peak Performance in Sports and Life.
(36:28):
And Brad Stolberg, author of the Practice of Groundedness and
co author of Peak Performance and The Passion Paradox. Thank
you so much for listening, and don't forget to rate
and subscribe. I'm justin Suah, your host, and you can
find me on Instagram and Twitter at Justin SUA. That's
j U s t I N s u A. You
(36:51):
could also check me out on the Increase Your Impact podcast.
Losing Control is a podcast from Sports Illustrated Studios and
I Heart Radio. Original music by Jerem Suah. Michael McDowell
is our producer, editing and mixing by Will Stanton. This
episode was fact checked by Zoey Mulloch at s I Studios.
(37:12):
Max Miller is supervising producer, and Brandon Getchus and Matt
Lipson are executive producers at I Heeart Radio. Sean ty
Tone as our executive producer. Special thanks to John O'Brien.
For more podcasts from I Heeart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This podcast does not provide medical advice, and nothing you
(37:34):
here on this podcast is intended or implied to be
a substitute for professional medical consultation, diagnosis, or treatment. Only
seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health
provider with any questions you may have regarding your health.
Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it
because of something you have heard on this podcast, Bong
(38:00):
Bong
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