What Have You Been Training For?

Great athletes train in their sport. They train daily. They train for years.

Why do they train?

To be their best.

Sitting in the sauna at the gym, waiting in line at the grocery, eating lunch in the faculty room at school - during the weeks of the NFL playoffs, so many of us expressed our armchair quarterback perspectives on how the teams were doing, where they screwed up, and the calls that coaches should’ve made to perform better. 

Viewing, analyzing, and reacting. 

I’m sure that most pro athletes do the same thing - view, analyze, and react - but they do it at a different level. They do it as players on the court. They do it to level-up. They do it to elevate their performance.

The rest of us? We’re observing from the stands. 

We do this in our lives too. We judge. We analyze. We react. As observers in the stands.

We judge others. We judge ourselves. 

School and culture made us pretty good at this - at critically analyzing. At comparing. At judging.

Those of us growing to be our best, though? We’re doing more than engaging in critical discourse in the stands. We’re in training, on the court.

A powerful creator (and client) said to me this weekend: “I appreciate how you help me be more intentional in my language.”

When we’re on the court, the conversation is different. It’s accurate. It’s intentional. It’s present-focused.

And so are we.

Being our best takes daily training. It's on the court practice in developing a profound relationship to reality.

The truth of it, however, is that each of us is already in daily training across the board in life - it’s just mostly unintentional training. 

For example, just like quarterbacks are in training to become better quarterbacks, armchair quarterbacks are in training to be better armchair quarterbacks. 

So what have you been training for?

If you’re curious what kind of life you’ve been in training for, just look around at your life. The great areas and the challenging areas. The authentic communication and the phony communication. The honest interactions and the people-pleasing interactions. 

In what ways could you level-up in your life simply by bringing intentionality into your already-existing daily training?

For a couple weeks, I was dreading my morning training. Winter vacation ended and I had to get up much earlier to put in my training hour. So I resisted it, and I resisted it, and I resisted it. It was like trying to run in a pool.

Then one morning, my alarm went off at 5:45am, and I saw alllll the crappy, in-the-stands thinking between me and getting up to do my training to be my best. 

I choose the training. 

Where are you letting judgmental, in-the-stands thinking keep you from getting on the court to train to be your best?

And don’t forget these two crucial points:

• everyone in our life is impacted by how we've trained (or not) to show up

• great performers have great coaches

Thanks so much for reading. ❤️

P.S. There are three ways you can support yourself by working with me: one-on-one coaching, the Mind Mastery Experience happening on April 7, and hiring me to work with your team, group, or organization. Reach out when you’re ready. 💌

Our Access to Everything

"You know how people say that we store emotions in our body? Doing the exercise you taught me, I literally felt the emotional pain leave my body."

One of the participants in December’s Mind Mastery Experience had tears in eyes when he told me that last week. (And I had tears in my eyes too.)

The mind isn’t everything - it’s our access to everything. 

Another participant sent me an email today to share about his access to on-going happiness in the face of challenging circumstances. He said much has been continuing to click for him since our conversations in December.

Mind mastery isn’t about always feeling good or having no problems - it’s about cultivating an empowered relationship to our circumstances, emotions, thoughts, other people, and our "problems."

Mind mastery allows us to show up healthy, aligned, clear, peaceful, and empowered.

Today I fell face-first into a pit of the “I’m not enough” story that nearly all of us have some version of. Me? My particular flavor of it is “I’m not enough - I’m too small and weak.”

Mind mastery doesn’t prevent this old programming from showing up. What mind mastery does is elevate our awareness of the story, what's really going on behind it, and how to step into our true self that exists beyond our stories and beyond our judgments.

Mind mastery is about showing up exactly as the person we’ve always been wanting to be.

This is why the tagline for the Mind Mastery Experience is "Find yourself. Free yourself. Create yourself." 

The little-s self that we think we are - that’s just a story that some younger version of ourselves made up to try to make sense of the world…when we felt we weren’t enough, when we felt we weren’t safe, and when we felt we weren’t loved.

What might life be like if we no longer had to search for an answer to “Am I enough?” or “Am I safe?” or “Am I lovable?” 

Instead of trying to GET peace, safety, and love, perhaps we could come FROM peace, safety, and love.

It’s a game changer. 

It’s Mind Mastery...

Thank you for reading. ❤️

P.S. There are three ways you can support yourself by working with me: one-one-one coaching, the adult and young adult Mind Mastery Experiences happening in February and April, and hiring me to work with your team, group, or organization. Reach out when you’re ready.

A Surprising Way We Limit Others

Where we limit ourselves, we also limit humanity.

This is one of those truths that hits us so powerfully when we see it for ourselves.

So see it, dear reader.

Where are you limiting yourself?

In relationships?

In your health and well-being?

In your work?

In your art?

In your quality and enjoyment of life?

Last week I had a call with an educator - a brilliant, compassionate, generous, powerful, and loving man. His commitment to his students, his colleagues, and all people is so clear: Understanding, Safety, and Love. 

When he got in our conversation that limiting himself is also limiting others, it broke him into a new space of freedom to honor his values.

When we're clear on our 'why' for humanity, it gives us a road map to how we can grow in loving and caring for ourselves - with self-understanding, self-care, and self-love. 

Any time you don't give yourself room to be, I promise you there are places you're not giving others room to be.

And any time you don't give others room to be, there are places you're not giving yourself room to be.

"I can be my own harshest critic." Then you're simply a harsh critic - of others too.

Maybe you don’t speak your criticisms out loud. Maybe you're a critic for “good reasons." Maybe you simply consider yourself a realist. 

We've picked up habits and stories and ways of being throughout our lives that get in the way of what we're really committed to, what we really value, and what we really want for ourselves and others.

These habits and stories and ways of being limit ourselves, and where we limit ourselves, we limit humanity.

What you want for humanity, start by giving to yourself and the people closest to you first. Then you’ll see how much more capable you become of giving it to the world.

Self-love can look like a selfish thing to work on. I mean, shouldn’t we spend our time growing in love of others?!

Put the oxygen mask on yourself first, my friend. Breathe more easily, see more clearly, love more deeply.

While it’s true that where we limit ourselves, we also limit humanity, it's also true that:

Where we free ourselves, we also free humanity.

Thank you for reading. ❤️

P.S. There are three ways you can support yourself by working with me: one-one-one coaching, the adult and young adult Mind Mastery Experiences happening in February and April, and hiring me to work with your team, group, or organization. Reach out when you’re ready.