Hi
Speaker 1: guys and welcome back to the Mindset Coach Academy podcast. I am so glad that you're here and I'm really excited about this episode. I have talked about this to a lot of my girlfriends that are parents and my students that are parents. I really just want to talk today to you, the listener, whether you're a parent, whether you're around kids or whether you're just curious about mindset and really how we apply it to all aspects of our life, certainly not just performance. I talk a lot about, especially in the newsletter, about how much I use mindset training in my journey as an entrepreneur, certainly in my own life and in particular being a wife and a mom. Today, I really wanted to just dive a little bit deeper into three main mindset tools that I use with my daughters regularly.
Before I get into the specific tools, I just want to talk a little bit about why I came up with this episode and how I want you to think about it and how I'm thinking about it. I think parenting, I am not a parenting expert by any means. I am a mindset and mental performance expert. That is what I spend my life's work doing and I happen to be a parent as well. I have four daughters. The oldest is almost eight. She's still seven and she's in first grade. And then I have a five-year-old.
I have a three and a half-year-old and I have almost, let's see what date is it, almost 11-month-old. All girls. And yeah, we're just going to go into it today.
And I'm going to tell you sort of what I try with them and certainly some ways that I failed and really how I use the work that I do in my work, in my home with my daughters. Before I do that, I would love if you subscribe to the podcast. I know we talk about it.
I'm sure you've heard on tons of other podcasts. It really does help. It really helps us grow our audience. So after this episode or even right now, if you got a second and you can just go there and you can just click that subscribe button, we'd love a five-star review. We'd love an actual review.
That would be all so awesome. I really, really appreciate it. OK, so before I go into the three tools, let me tell you, all my children are a little bit different and I'm sure your children, if your own children are a little bit different, too. And I will caveat that by saying that if you are a parent, you know that you parent every child just a little bit differently.
So I'm going to give you sort of the rough ways that I've used these tools, but of course, you're going to learn how to use them in the way that works for you and your family. I would say that my children are fairly neurotypical. And I say fairly because I do believe that everything's on a spectrum. We have a lot of ADD in our family. So we may be having some things like that going on. We have a little sensory sensitivity we're picking up on, but nothing egregious. So if you have that, whether these work or not, I really can't tell you, but I can tell you that they work for fairly neurotypical children, at least in my house. And all this stuff is trial and error, as you probably have experienced with all parenting advice. You just try a bunch of stuff. You know, I always say like the throwing spaghetti approach is not like the best thing to do with coaching and mindset training.
It can be done in a so much more efficient way. But we're talking about in that case, we're talking about most adults. And I think for kids, it often ends up being the throwing spaghetti approach.
At least it is in my house. I try things. Sometimes it's an epic fail. Other times it works. Sometimes it works a little bit. And I'm like, huh, okay, maybe if I just try it a little bit different. It is an art and a science.
I guess that's the best way to put it. And so these things have worked pretty consistently in my house, not every time, but pretty consistently. So I wanted to share that with you.
And I will also say that as a parent, I think that, you know, if I can get it right 50% of the time, I feel like I'm doing pretty good. So try to keep that lens when you hear all this stuff as well. Okay. So that brings me to the foundation of what I want to talk about first before I get into the actual like tools.
Okay. And I don't think this is that so different than what I teach our mindset coaches or even our sports coaches. And that is be the student first, work on your own mindset. And again, this is what I'm talking about from a parenting standpoint is I am trying to teach these mindset training tools to my kids.
And what I will say is that I have to practice what I preach, right? And that is really, really important. Sometimes I yell at my kids and I get dysregulated.
And that's, I think important for them to see as well. But what I cannot do is do things which I do do, which is get dysregulated, get activated, yell at them to calm down, right? Like I have to be the one that calms down first before I can expect them to who are all under seven years old, right?
Of course, if I'm getting dysregulated at 42 years old, they're going to be dysregulated. And that's in the moment example. But in general, I am much more able to do these things in the moment when I am practicing these things off the field, so to speak, right? Like I cannot practice or I cannot remember to do my deep breathing in the moment of dysregulation and chaos if I'm not doing something outside of that moment to work on my brain. And that may not be working on my brain.
That might be, which is always working on your brain, but not exactly. Is this like exercise or meditation or even just getting time away from my kids or reading a book on my own, having some quiet time, whatever it is that helps you in the moment be a better parent or be a better coach, that is important. We have to practice what we preach.
I always joke it's like the coach coming into the huddle at the end of the game and screaming at her team to calm down, right? We are the example always. And we know this from our own anecdotal experience, but we also know this from a scientific standpoint.
There's something called mirror neurons, say that 10 times fast, mirror neurons that they're these little bodies in front of you, these little humans, literally their neurons fire when they watch you take a deep breath, even if they're not doing it. So when we practice these things, when we are the example, when we show them how to do it, they are picking up on that in a really deep way. So just another sort of vote for making sure that we're taking the time to do this stuff ourselves. We are the example.
We go first always. At the end, I'm also going to tell you some sports related stuff. My daughters are just now getting into sports. And a lot of people ask me about mindset training and mental performance for younger children. And so I'm going to say that to the end.
And I would say what I'm going to talk about today is probably more on the parenting side than the mental training coach, but I think it's still really relevant. And so, and again, she's about, well, she's almost eight. So she's seven right now playing soccer. And so I'm going to tell you at the end what I tell her before and after soccer games and practice.
Okay. So the first thing, so literally when I'm thinking about mindset training as a parent, I kind of think of like three different buckets. And the first one is any kind of storytelling or metaphor work.
And you may be doing this anyway, but this is like the pre, the pre sleep storytelling, right? We don't just tell kids to be to be good or to share. We read them a book about it. And storytelling and metaphor work, we do this in our performance visualization specialist training when it comes to making deep subconscious changes on, for athletes, right? That is, we spent a whole month on that in our certification where we talk about the power of metaphor and I'm trained in hypnosis. So that's where a lot of my metaphor training comes from.
And this is scientifically proven. Our brain understands metaphors. It doesn't argue with metaphors. It doesn't, it allows metaphors to come in. And that is the language of the subconscious. So if you're trying to make changes on a real deep subconscious level, metaphors are your friends. And metaphors is kind of a big word, but I want you to just think of storytelling.
That's what it is. Storytelling is a really powerful tool. And again, a lot of you are probably hearing this and saying, well, I already do that. Great. Just do it more.
Just bring it in any way that you possibly can. And I'll give you a quick little example. And I forget what we are working on. I think we were working on getting ready for a new school or maybe it was like going to the dentist.
Anyway, it was something like that, right? And it's like, you can go to your kid and you can say something like, you don't need to be scared. I understand you're scared.
I don't, you don't need to be scared. This is what it's going to be like. You're going to make new friends.
It's going to be so fun, all this kind of stuff, right? Which is helpful. Great to validate the feelings.
Great to talk about it. But what would potentially be more helpful is to have them do that with stuffed animals, right? And that is essentially storytelling.
That is imaginative play. And that is going to get into their brain on a deeper level because they're not going to argue with it. Nobody argues with stories. Nobody argues with imagination. And so, and again, that's metaphors, right?
The stuffed animals are sitting for themselves. And so things like that, just any kind of like play-based storytelling, really a helpful mental training tool. And again, probably many of you are doing it already, but just another sort of vote to make sure to get that in. Okay.
So I'll talk to you in a second about how I use that. But I would say that's one of the big ones, metaphors and storytelling. The second bucket, I would say, any kind of like breathing work, and like the ability to calm the fight-or-flight response. And yeah, I think breath work is just really, really important for kids to get that physical and mental connection as well. Getting, taking a deep breath, even doing like jumping jacks or any kind of like bodily, even just like going outside. To me, that's all like teaching them how to calm themselves and regulate themselves. And I think breathing is a really easy way to do that.
And I'll talk about what I do for that in a second. And the third bucket, I would say, I'll probably think of more buckets after this. And maybe you're thinking of them too, in which case you should come over and share them on Instagram at Lindsey Positive Perform. The third bucket is the validation of feelings. I see you, I believe you. That must feel difficult. That must feel scary. I understand. I feel that way too. Like to me, any validation of their feelings. And I learn a lot of this from Dr. Becky Kennedy.
If you're not following her on Instagram, highly recommend. And that also helps my kids learn to regulate. I can literally see them physically calm down when I validate their feelings, even if they're irrational, which feels very counterintuitive.
And it almost feels like encouraging the irrational behavior sometimes in the moment. Like, I understand the blue plate is, that must feel hard. Instead of like, it's the fucking blue plate instead of the yellow plate.
Like get over it. Which is, you know, I'm not saying whether you should or should not say that. But I understand the instinct to minimize. But in my experience, the validation of feelings is really, really important. And bringing this full circle to what we teach as mindset coaches is the validation of whatever your athletes are feeling and experiencing in the moment. And I think a lot of our struggles with, let's say, pregame nerves or shame or, you know, anything really around competition, there's a lot of like, I shouldn't be feeling this. You know, the pros don't get nervous before games. Or, you know, they don't get nervous before a game winning shot, or they don't feel shame around it. Like, you know, all these things that are like, well, no, feelings are feelings.
And so if you're bringing this back to athletes, I think the importance of like, talking about it, creating that psychological safety, making sure it's okay for people to feel whatever they're feeling and normalizing those experiences. So I see you, I believe you, that must feel hard. That must feel scary. Really powerful words that I have noticed really help my children calm themselves. Like they hear it from me, they then visibly calm down. Like it's kind of amazing, actually. Okay.
So those are the three buckets. Storytelling, slash metaphors, any kind of breathing or calming their firefly physically. And then the validation of the feelings. Okay. So let's talk about one thing that I do that is in the metaphor storytelling. But this is all about regulating their feelings. So my kids will come up to me and they'll be like, tell us the boat story.
Okay. And they'll be like, tugging at my shirt. And they're like, I want to hear the boat story.
And here's the boat story. Okay. So I get them settled down on my, on my lap or next to me or whatever. And I say, okay, imagine yourself sitting on the bank of a wide river, seeing what you would see, hearing what you would hear. By the way, this is very similar to what we do on our visualization. If you're a certified coach, you will recognize how my voice and the cadence of all this is what we learn in the certification. Okay. But even if you don't have the certification, the story is really great for kids.
Okay. So I have them sit there and imagine watching the boats go by. And I ask them if they see them and I ask them what color they are.
And I give them that time to sort of settle into that fantasy land. And then I start telling them, I say, some boats go fast. Some boats go slow. Some boats are big. Some bits, some boats are small, but all of them move down the river. And new boats then come. Big boats, small boats. We don't have to judge the boats. We don't have to even think about the boats.
We just have to observe them. They aren't good boats. They aren't bad boats. They're just boats. They come and they go. And this is the river of feelings. And it's always moving.
We have big feelings. And then I might ask them a feeling and say, it's a happy feeling and that passes too. And then it's a scary feeling. And that passes too. And they may say like frustration.
You know, they have like five things that they go back to, right? Frustration. My six-year-old will say frustration. Oh, sorry, my seven-year-old will say frustration.
Or my five-year-old will talk about the happy boat. And they just have that moment. It's not even a long moment. They don't have to close their eyes if they don't want to. And a lot of times we hear this at the end of the day, but it could be really anytime.
It's just like anytime you take that, beat. And I might bring in the examples of like my daughter going to school, like I said, for the first time, or she's feeling nervous about a camp where she doesn't know anybody, and that that boat comes and goes as well. And this really, this metaphor really allows me and allows them to have this physical representation of feelings and the anticipation, one that labeling of them is really important, the non judgmental labeling of what they are, and also the the acknowledgement that they're going to come and go.
Right? Because like, for example, my daughter going to school, sometimes she's scared to go to school, especially after like a long weekend or a break. And I'm like, okay, you can feel scared, but also remember by the time I pick you up at the end of the day, all the fun that you're going to have and how you're going to feel at the end of the day. So that these feelings, you know, when we're in the middle of feelings, and by the way, I mean, this example is like, okay, this is for kids.
Yeah, I'm using quotation marks. And it's also something that's really important for all of us to remember and recognize because it's hard in the moment, right? We are not our thoughts. We are not our feelings. It feels like it in the moment that this feeling that we have right now will never pass.
We will always feel this way. It's hard to remember that feelings are in movement, right? It is really hard to remember that. And this example gives us a very solid way to recognize a very simple fact, which is thoughts are temporary, feelings are temporary. And just that awareness in that moment helps. It helps to know that this is just interval training, that this sprint is not a marathon. It's one sprint. Yes, there will be another one after this, but this is the one that we're in. And it too will pass.
Okay, so this exercise, very powerful, really helps on so many different levels. And, and it also again brings us back to the idea that like, there's no good or thought, good or bad feelings, all the boats matter. That is life.
We are going to have all the feelings, they're all coming down the river. And that's okay. That is just a part of it.
So feel the big feelings, feel the big thoughts, think the big thoughts, the little ones, the good, the bad, all of it. And we can also take a moment and get onto the riverbank and watch them pass because they always do. Always, they always passes. Okay, so that is number one. Okay, I do that story with my girls.
It really, really helps. Okay, another trick that I do with my daughter. And I think this is, this is a little bit higher level. And so this one is for my seven year olds. And this is talking to her about the reticular activating system. Now, if you know what the reticular activating system is, it may sound like a little bit of an advanced tool or technique to teach a seven year old.
But let me tell you why this works. Okay, so if you're not a mindset coach, or you don't know what a reticular activating system is, it's basically our filtering system of our brain. So this is the reticular activating system is the reason that when you learn a new word, you then go see it in all different places throughout your day.
When you're looking for a new car, you decide what kind of car you want to get or you're interested in, you see it then everywhere. It is your filtering mechanism in your brain so that you don't get all the input and all the stimuli at every single moment. Okay, so I don't talk to my daughter about the reticular activating system.
What I tell her is like, I say your brain is so powerful that when you tell it to look for something, and you say, Hey, brain, go look for this thing, it will find it. Okay, so this came up recently because I noticed a certain tree in my mother-in-law's garden. And I was a tree that I never, she has a beautiful garden, I mean like state-of-the-art beautiful English garden. And I've never noticed it before, but someone started talking about it and they even said the name of it, it was Red Bush or something. Anyway, I was like, huh, that's a beautiful tree. And I got back to Seattle, I started seeing it everywhere. And so I told my daughter this, and then she started seeing it.
And so I started telling her, this is how powerful your brain is. When you tell it to look for something, it will find it. This is true for a tree, this is true for a bug. It's also true if you want to find bad people or people that are mean, you will find them.
If you want to find people that are kind and nice and fun, you will find them. You will find opportunities, your brain will find opportunities for you to start a business or to learn or to make friends. When you decide to look for something, your brain will find it.
And it's been so fun because she's actually come to me and she's told me that she has told her brain to go find something and it found it. And so this is just a little thing that I'm wanting my daughters to understand from a young age the power of their brain and the power of being aware of their thoughts and the sort of the direction that they're giving their brain and just how powerful it is. So again, a particular activating system, whether you use those terms or not, kind of depends on the age. But I think this is also a really good example of how we can use big concepts and we just shift them a little bit to match our age group. And so if you're coaching younger athletes, and this is a really good example of like, they can understand more than we give them credit for if we use the right language, right? We don't need to use big words.
We can use words that resonate for them and just talk to them. And it depends on the maturity level. But again, my daughter's seven and she's understanding these concepts. And sometimes I'm not quite sure if she's understanding them and then she'll come back to me and she'll be like, I told my brain to look for this thing.
I'm like, yes. All right. So that is the second tool.
Okay. So the first one was the river of feelings. The second one was talking about the particular activating system. The third one is, I've taught this many times, but I have to go back to it because this is the breathing, right? And this is the hot, we call it the hot cocoa breath.
And I think I did learn this from Dr. Becky Kennedy, but essentially when, when we're like off in our, in our house, and everybody's all over the place, and there's chaos, and there's lots of just, you know, those days, if you're a parent, you know, those days, like really everybody just needs to like get out of the house, but maybe it's raining or, or we need like a little bit of a reset, right? The hot cocoa breath is your best friend. And essentially what it is, is everybody pretends that they have a cup of hot cocoa in front of them.
And what I'm doing right now, if you're listening to the podcast is I am holding my hand up, like I have a cup in my hand. And I have my daughters choose what's, what flavor they have of the hot cocoa. So they might say peppermint, they might just say chocolate.
They may say it has sprinkles on it, you know, whatever they want, right? And then we smell it deeply through our nose. And we smell that peppermint, we smell that chocolate, and we talk about it, we take a deep breath in through our nose, we smell it. And then we breathe out, and we blow on it to cool it off. And this does a number of things.
I mean, one, going back to the breath, which was one of my, her areas I talked about in the beginning, going back to the breath is always a good idea. But this is also the storytelling. And this is also the distraction of whatever is going on, that they can then choose their flavor, and they can think about whether there's whipped cream on it, and they can imagine how good it's going to smell. And they're using their body with their hands. So it's like so many things in one.
And it's like this little reset for our family that helps so much. And again, with a mirror neuron, sometimes they're pissed and they don't want to do it. I do it anyway.
Sometimes one of them does it and the others don't. That's okay. It still helps, okay? So those are my three that I want to talk about today, the river of feelings, the reticular activating system and the hot cocoa breath. Now, what I didn't talk about specifically in these tools is the validating of the feelings. To me, that is simply using those words. I believe you. I understand.
I would feel that way too. Those are very simple sentences. There's not so much of a tool or a trick, in my opinion, for those. It's more, I think the river feelings helps with that because it's like normalizing their feelings. But literally just saying, I believe you, I understand, I would feel that way too is hugely powerful. Okay. Now, I promised at the end to talk about my daughter and her soccer, okay?
So a lot of this is the repetition of saying it over and over again. So what I want, what I am trying to do with my kids and sports is I want them to be progress focused, not results focused. It's very much related to Dr. Carol Dweck's work with the growth mentality and like raising them for effort instead of results.
You know, like, if you know the research having to do with, I think it was math tests and when someone did well, and they got praised for doing well, they were actually scared to, and I think they actually did worse on the next test because they were then attached to that result of being smart, right? Like, oh, you're smart. You did really well on your test. You must be really smart. Instead of, you did well on that test, you must have really studied. That would be more on the progress side of like, you're not innately good at soccer.
You're not innately good at math. It's all about your effort and the progress and how much you are investing of yourself into this effort. So that is sort of the, I would say like the foundation of where I'm coming from when I communicate to my, right now it's just my oldest daughter playing. And so before every practice, after every game, the messages that I give her and the questions that I have are, I ask her what our family motto is when it comes to everything, really not just sports, and it's playing hard and having fun. Now, sometimes I have to explain what playing hard means.
Like she's seven, right? So sometimes it's more on the fun side and less on the like, okay, playing hard is also being uncomfortable, right? And so there's some teaching with that, but still the message that she is getting is playing hard and having fun. Now, here's the thing.
She scored two goals last fall, like right in a row, and she like jumped into my arms and was so excited that she scored these goals. And this is the test. In those moments, can I still go back to what is the emphasis? Now, I can be excited that she scored the goals, but I have to bring it back to what I am really proud of. And I literally asked her in that moment, why is mommy proud of you?
She goes, because I played hard and I had fun. Am I, and I say, am I proud of you for the goals? She goes, nope, you're proud of me because I played hard and had fun, because the goals are going to come and then they're not going to come, right?
And I don't want her effort or her self worth to be connected to whether those goals happen or not. We do the things that can lead to the goals, which is playing hard and having fun, but we always emphasize the playing hard and having fun. And so what I want to do with that, my goal with that is a lot of that safety that we work on with athletes, they can fail. They will fail. We have to create an environment where we are focused on the things they can control, which is in this case, playing hard and having fun.
Now to make that a little bit more, right? I think what Bruce Brown talks about, and I know John O'Sullivan does as well, like after the game saying, I love watching you play. This is very similar to this. Or as you should say, it's not similar.
It's in the same sort of framework, right? Of like focusing on just the joy of it. But I also really want her to get that pride in herself. So I will all often ask her, are you proud of yourself for how hard you play?
Are you proud of yourself for having fun? Those are the things that are really important for me and for her. And one of the things that I really emphasize in what we talk about as a family even. So from a sports perspective and from a mental coach perspective and a parenting perspective, we emphasize, did you play hard? Did you have fun? Are you proud of yourself for how hard you played? Are you proud of yourself for how much fun you had? Those are the things that are really, really important in our family.
Okay. So again, I think it's one of those things with parenting where I think if you're doing it right and you're pushing yourself and you're trying your best that you're constantly like, am I, is this working? Am I doing this right?
So if you feel that way, don't worry, I feel that way too. But these are three things that have really helped. And again, I'm bringing in my expertise as a mindset coach and a mental performance coach into my parenting. And these are three things that have helped that I've noticed have worked pretty consistently.
Nothing works 100% of the time, but pretty consistently. And so again, it's the river of feelings. It's the, I got my three-year-old here for a second. It's the river of feelings. It's the reticular activating system.
And it's the hot cocoa breath. Okay. So those are the three things that I wanted to share today. I hope they were helpful. If you have any tips on mindset stuff that you use with your kids, come on over to Positive Performance.
No, come on over to Instagram, @LindseyPositivePerform and let me know because I'm always adding to my toolbox. I am always iterating and trying and getting it wrong and failing and then getting it right occasionally. So hopefully these were helpful for you as well. If you liked this podcast, please, please, please, as I said in the beginning, please come subscribe, leave us a five-star review, give us a review. It would be so, so helpful as we build our podcast. All right, guys, we'll see you again very, very soon.
Bye for now. Hey guys, if you are an aspiring mindset coach or maybe you already have a little baby business as a mental performance coach, I want to invite you to download my free new ebook, which is How to Become a Mental Performance Coach. You guys, I packed in so much useful information into this book because I know so many of you are wanting to move forward or wanting to move forward more and you have some really big questions on how you can make money, where you get your first client, what would you even teach? It's all in this book. Go to positiveperformancetraining.com forward slash guide to get your free copy.
