Transcript

I haven't met an athlete or a coach yet

that doesn't nod their head up and down that

the mental part of the game is important.

I'm Michael Gervais, high performance psychologist,

been working with the Seattle Seahawks

for the past eight years.

It's a really exciting time right now

because the NFL, the NBA, these massive organizations

that have captured our imagination in athletics,

are now mandating across each league

that every team has a psychologist on staff.

It's a very exciting time because it is really a nod

to the importance of psychology both from the mental health

and as well as from a sport performance standpoint.

When I was a young athlete

I didn't understand how to get free.

I didn't understand how to be able to perform

when there was judges, when there was people evaluating,

and so it started, honestly, I had to earn my scars

as a young athlete where I couldn't figure out

how to do the thing that I was trained to do.

And so, it set me down this path.

An undergraduate degree in psychology,

a masters degree in sports science

and then back to a PhD in psychology,

licensed as a psychologist,

with a subspecialty in sport performance,

and really a deep understanding of what takes place

in consequential environments.

When there's stress in the environment

and when mistakes cost limb or lives

and the consequences are incredible.

How do people flourish and excel

under those types of conditions?

And that really is the study and the science

of high performance psychology.

How do we perform in environments where mistakes are costly?

Coach Carroll and I first met over dinner.

World class understanding of how to structure an ecosystem

of culture for people to be able to thrive

in no uncertain terms, that's what he's done here.

Coach Carroll has been working out his system

and ecosystems for the last 45 years.

Of course we're gonna train physically, train technically,

in a world class way, but the culture is really about

creating relationships so that you can train your mind

to live in the present moment more often,

even when there's stress.

So that you can be there for somebody else

and help them do the same!

And when you get that thing right,

real transformation and scale takes place

and evidence by the outcomes that the Seahawks

have been able to you know,

experience over the last handful of years.

So the first phase with working with someone

is a discovery phase, and it really is about

asking a lot of questions.

Really trying to understand how they understand themselves,

how they understand people and what they believe

together is possible.

What is your personal philosophy?

What are the guiding principles that sit underneath

your thoughts, your words, and your actions?

Some people might say what's your why

but this is really sitting underneath that,

what are the principles that are gonna guide

how you engage in life?

And then it's as simple as start writing

to get like to the signal

and the signal is 25 words or less,

about what it is that I stand for,

what are the guiding principles that line up my

thoughts, words and actions across any environment?

It's a couple sentences that really articulate

what it is that matter most

and Coach Carroll's philosophy, he's done a lot of work

on this and his is very simple, he's condensed it

down to two words, always compete.

And this philosophy, always compete, to be a great dad

to be a great coach, a great friend, a great husband.

And that is a way that he organizes his life

that line up his thoughts, his words, and his actions.

Those that have fundamentally organized their life

towards that signal, to be connected to that signal

more often they get lots of noise,

and that noise, it pulls us away.

So once a philosophy is in place,

those principles are clear,

and the clarity is there, the next step is to train

to have conviction of those principles.

Having the command of your mind to be about it

in stressful environments, so where there's pressure

involved or there's real consequence,

that's where mental skills show up.

Can you have the conviction to be about it?

Training your mind to be calm, that's a real mental skill.

Training your mind to be confident, in any environment.

That I not that different than training your body

to be strong and flexible, the same way we trin our bodies,

the same way we train our mind.

It's repetitions, particular ways of thinking,

that allow us to be about it.

If we go way up stream, there's only three things

as humans that we can train.

Train our craft, train our body and train our mind.

There are two basic pillars of mindfulness.

The first pillar is awareness.

And we're talking about being aware of four things.

Awareness of your thoughts,

awareness of your emotions,

awareness of your physiological sensations,

the way your body feels,

and the fourth is awareness of the unfolding environment.

That's the first pillar.

And if we stopped right there,

and just trained mindfulness for that,

we would be a better performer but we'd be falling

far short because the second pillar is about wisdom.

And so, wisdom is the understanding,

the ability to make something simple that's very complicated

it's getting to the truth of what it means to be human.

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♪ One two ♪

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♪ Uh turn it up ♪

We wanna train folks to be optimistic,

to be fully committed to the belief system,

the lenses of which you see your future through,

this is gonna work out!

Optimism is the fundamental belief that it's gonna work out

so let's stay in it,

and that's the only chance

we have of exploring our potential,

exploring that outcome that we wanna have,

it's by staying in it, even when it's hard.

There's an amazing piece of research around optimism

and the training of optimism

and it comes out of the University of Pennsylvania,

and the finding is that those that write down three things

that are amazing in their life

and they write those down at the end of the day,

that there is an increase in optimism.

So let's say after practice or after training

or wherever it is that you're working to try to figure out

how to get better, it's two questions

and the first question is, what went well?

The second question is,

what do I wanna work on?

And those two questions end up really changing the shape

of how you think about growth.

So if you think about how to practice mindfulness

those two basic types.

The first type is single-point focus mindfulness training.

So single-point focus is the commitment to focus

on just one thing, and when your mind wanders

from that one thing which it will,

it's the practice of refocusing back to the one thing.

Flickering candle, a sound, a mantra,

you can focus on your breath which is where we start.

Focusing on the breath and there's four parts

to every breath, there's the inhale, there's a pause

at the top, there's an exhale and then another pause

at the bottom and so it's a complete commitment

to focusing on just one of those four elements

and when your mind wanders, refocusing it,

just simply saying hello and goodbye to the distraction

and then coming right back to the one thing.

Second type of mindfulness training is called contemplative.

And a contemplative mindfulness practice is involved

with observing and watching without judgment,

without critique, just watching the thought stream

almost observer of ones thoughts and emotions

and just watching the linking between thoughts

and how they interplay with our emotions.

The actual practice of mindfulness

is unique to all of us.

What that means is there's no right way to do it,

whether it's laying down, standing up, sitting down,

there's lots of ways to practice mindfulness.

One of the ways to start though is by sitting

and the reason sitting is important is because

we have a spine and we have a posture that we're gonna

hold ourselves in place with and at the moment we close

our eyes for most humans that are living in a fast paced

high stress chronic environment of on,

is that the moment that we close our eyes,

it sends this signal to our brain, relax, which is cool!

So, it's a trigger to napping and sleeping,

when you hold your posture in a carriage in a dignified way,

that as soon as you close your eyes and start doing

the work and you recognize that you're starting to take

a nap and slump over, that your brain goes wait a minute,

what are we doing, and it snaps us back into place

to get back to the task at hand.

Research has found that there's this mode,

there's this network in our brain and it's called

the default mode network.

The default mode network are lots of different parts

of the brain that are communicating together

at the same time and it's a default mode.

Which means that it's happening most of the time.

And unfortunately this default mode network,

it's what's happening most of the time

is checking to see if we're okay.

It's this self-reference thing.

Am I okay?

Is this okay?

And the reason I say it's unfortunate is because

it's designed for survival.

It's designed to make sure that you're okay

and that can be a constrictor or a culprit

to finding the freedom and the space to just be here.

So what happens through mindfulness training

is that it suppresses the default mode network

and that is thought to be one of the entryways

into a flow state, it's one of the entryways

to consistently perform,

towards the upper limits of potential.

The science of mindfulness is incredibly encouraging

right now, what we're finding is that those that practice

mindfulness actually change their structure,

their brain structure, their neurochemistry,

so mindfulness from a research perspective

has been found to increase the frequency of flow state

for people flow state is the most optimal state

a human can be in.

The second piece we know from mindfulness

is that there are real changes in stress responses

and that gets involved with things like blood pressure,

gets involved with circulation health,

it gets involved in a neurochemical exchange,

a very complicated nuance that support health,

let along performance.

It's involved in better parenting,

it's involved in folks that want to regulate sleep better,

and have a decrease in the fluctuation of mood

and a decrease in overall fatigue.

There's a whole host of physiological chemical,

neurochemical behavioral, as well as psychological benefits

for practicing mindfulness.

So, when we measure the effects of thoughts that are

connected in a powerful way to the present moment,

we can see stress responses,

we can see how people's heart rate,

blood pressure, skin conductance,

how much they're sweating,

we can see the artifact of thought,

but there's not one link that says

if you can squat this much,

you're gonna do X number percent better.

If you drink this or eat this

that you're gonna do X percent better.

But we would agree that stronger,

more dynamically mobile athletes are going to do better.

We also agree that if you eat properly and are well hydrated

you'll do better, same with psychology.

That if you think well,

think in ways that are strong and nimble

and powerful that you'll be able to be that when

the environment calls for it.

Mindfulness can get lumped into this discipline

of okay is this a hippy dippy,

is this some sort of like spiritual practice?

It could be those, there's nothing wrong with them.

But there's a stigma that comes with it,

it's changing now, it's changing because of science,

it's changing because of whose talking about the practice

and investigating their inner life.

There's a very exciting thing that's taking place

is that athletes are aware of it,

they understand the value of it.

The response of mindfulness varies,

some people it's overwhelming and it feels like

it's too weird and some people like they're very clear

about it they're like this is gonna be an accelerant,

a competitor advantage, this is something that is

an untapped place for me to explore

and I can't wait to do it more!

And they acknowledge that it's challenging,

to help people flourish,

to help people do their best work

and certainly in a collective way to help people push

against the limits of what's possible.