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.
