Episode #41 - Mental Excellence with Kyle Paquette

 In this episode we talk with Kyle Paquette. Kyle is the mental performance coach responsible for leading the Canadian men's national team to three consecutive Olympic appearances. He's a PhD in sports psychology and is the current director of the National Wheelchair Curling Team. We discuss how your brain is wired to lie to you most of the time and how we can combat it. We dive into why perfectionism is ruining your progress and how to use gratitude as a superpower. We also talk about the role of luck in high performance, and what it means to actually be clutch.

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Transcript

0:00

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Pit to Pro Podcast. In today's episode, we're joined by Kyle Paquette. Kyle is the mental performance coach responsible for leading the Canadian men's national team to three consecutive Olympic appearances. He's a PhD in sports psychology and is the current director of the National Wheelchair Curling Team. Expect to learn how your brain lies to you most of the time, and what to do about it, why perfectionism is ruining your progress. How to use gratitude as a superpower, the role of luck in high performance, and what it means to actually be clutch.

Mathias 0:29

Before we get started, I'd like to introduce our sponsor for today's episode.

Jesse 0:34

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Mathias 0:40

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Jesse 0:58

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1:13

But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Kyle Paquette. Hello and welcome to the Pit the Pro podcast. Jesse, Matthias, and Aaron Elson. This podcast is meant to guide young athletes on their journey to high performance. Join us as we share our first hand experiences in an effort to help you reach your own valuable goals.

Mathias 1:36

Alrighty. Welcome back everyone to the Pit to Pro podcast. Today's episode number 41. We've got a very special guest with us today. Kyle ett is the high performance director of the wheelchair curling team, correct? Is that right? Yep. And Jesse and I know him through the, uh, national team. He was our mental performance coach for a very long time. Played a big role in getting our team to multiple Olympics in a row. Kyle, welcome to the show.

Kyle 2:04

Thanks so much. Yeah, I'm, uh, super happy to be on this. This is, uh, it's funny, I, I heard about this about, uh, two months ago and I shared it with some friends and family. My kids are super pumped about this podcast, and they're even more excited that I'm gonna be a, a guest. So thanks for having me.

Jesse 2:20

Cool. That's awesome. Um, Kyle, I wanna start this thing off by just asking like, why do you do what you do?

Kyle 2:30

It's a big question. Um, uh, honestly, it it, it, it probably started off with a bunch of curiosity as a kid. Like, um, I think as a kid, I, I played a lot of sports. I competed at a, at a reasonable level with most sports. I was the kind of guy who picked things up pretty quickly, and I was among sort of the better athletes most of the time. And I, I just started bumping into some walls pretty quickly. When I got to higher levels of performance, like whether it was golf or basketball. I just started realizing that there was something that was preventing me from being at my best in certain situations. Um, you know, and I think to parallel that, like to sort of, to parallel my sort of development as a young athlete, um, I think I just grew up in a, in a space where, you know, there was probably at times a little bit more volatility in my, in my personal world than than others. And, and I, I was really sort of intrigued about why people act, think, and feel the way they do. Like, just constantly wondering, like, I wonder what's going through that person's mind. Like why would they, why would they act that way? Or why would they say that thing? Like, what, what's driving them to, to do this? So I, I, I think when you kind of pair those two things together, I, I was really interested in psychology without realizing what psychology was like. I never had any psychology classes, uh, growing up or in high school. I didn't really know what psychology was all about. Um, but I certainly had an interest in, in being human and, and, and everything that goes into it. Uh, what I eventually learned was psychology.

Mathias 4:13

That's, I'm so interested in that stuff as well, especially like in the sports side of things, how your performance day to day can. Changed so much, whereas nothing like, your skills didn't change, your physicality didn't change, nothing changed, but just like what's happening between your ears, the impact that it has on the court is wild. So we appreciate people like you who help us that stuff in.

Kyle 4:40

Well, thank you. You know, it's interesting, like another reason I got into this is because of a, a sort of a, a fortuitous sort of meeting and encounter. Like, um, I didn't know what mental performance was. I didn't know what sports psychology was When I was getting ready to try to figure out what was next for me after high school, um, you know, I didn't have the, the best marks in high school and I didn't really know what was next. I kind of thought maybe I, maybe I could be a lawyer. Like I was good at talking and I was good at convincing people to, to kind of listen to me, right? Like, uh, maybe a, a leader of sorts. Um, and at the time I was the, uh, pro shop manager at my local little nine hole track and Espanola and uh, that, uh, that one day was the senior Ladies invitational, which, you know, for a variety of reasons was a challenging day sometimes. So picture, you know, 75 or 80 senior ladies all gathered together and I'm running the tournament and I'm only 18 years old. And on top of it, there was a, a rain delay. So now all 80 of these senior ladies are in the clubhouse and I'm trying to hide in the pro shop and, um. One lady sort of saunters into the pro shop. She would've been about 75 or so. And, and this really caring individual, like you just tell, this person immediately connected with me and just started asking really meaningful questions about kind of who I was and, and why I was at the golf course and while I was spending time in that sport. Um, you know, long story short, after chatting with her for about an hour, I wanted to keep chatting with her and I found out that she was the director of sports psychology at Laurentian University. And, um, she's the one who introduced me to it. She started working with me as my own mental performance consultant for golf at the time. I was trying to compete at a higher level and, uh, and I, I think she pulled some strings and got me into the program and then I immediately sort of fell in love with it all.

Jesse 6:38

Hmm, that's cool. That's cool.'cause that's like almost its own mini team, you and her and like, we talk a lot about team dynamics on this podcast and it's cool that that started off, she made you feel valued and she made you feel heard. I think that's so important in, in any team sport. Um, yeah. So I guess let's move into that team dynamic thing. What would be kind of the lowest hanging fruit, uh, in terms of. Creating team chemistry, especially now it's the end of summer, guys are going to new teams, maybe people are going into university, guys are going to different countries. What's the lowest hanging fruit to really gel with that team as soon as possible.

Kyle 7:24

Yeah, there's a lot there for sure. The lowest hanging fruit, I would say. Um, probably like, I, I think it's really important to get really good at asking relevant questions, like being curious, like, I'm sure you've heard that a lot, but this idea of curiosity and, and not in a transactional way. Not like I'm asking questions'cause I want you to think I'm interested, but more so in approaching the relationship with genuine interest and, and the interest comes from a place of I just truly want to build a deep connection and deep connections require some form of deep, meaningful sort of conversation. So I think it, it's, it is missing oftentimes in teams that I, uh, join or that I'm brought into to work with. I think this curiosity piece is, is not really there. I don't think we're really taught to be super curious necessarily as kids. Sometimes it's discouraged, right? You ask why to your parents five or six times, and eventually they're gonna probably say like, that's enough. Like, go figure it out. You know, I, I'm even sometimes guilty of doing that, but I do think having a deep sense of curiosity because then you start to ask questions like you said, that make people feel. Really valued and, and seen and heard. And that's a level of, of connection that I, I don't think we, we find oftentimes, like, you know, there's probably one or two of those friends that we feel like we could pick up a phone and message or call about that truly get us, because we actually get to that level of conversation. So I think asking really sort of relevant and sort of curious questions, I, I think is a, a starting point. Um, I think another ingredient to building good relationships and, and, and to strengthening team dynamics is, um, feeling safe enough to be honest. Hmm. Like, you know, we talk a lot about, like, uh, I've heard it on some previous episodes, like Radical Candor was brought to the team. That's a book that I read that really, I would say opened my eyes about the importance of strengthening relationships through open communication. Uh, another book was Fierce Conversations and they had similar themes. But, you know, the essence of it is if we're both trying to achieve the same thing, and if we both care about that pursuit and that journey, we need to make sure that we're prioritizing that pursuit. We, we can still prioritize the relationship, but if we're, if we're actually being put together for the sake of working together to achieve the goal, the goal comes first. Interesting. Now the relationship is a really, really close second. Yeah. And, and I wanna be clear, like I'm not suggesting that outcomes are more important than relationships. Of course not like that. That's, but when the relationship is, again, is in pursuit of something, we need to make sure that we're being open and honest about that.'cause far too often things get swept under the rug, and eventually there's so much under the rug that you just start tripping over it all the time. This was one of the big findings that came outta some research that I led for the sports system around a culture of excellence. Like what does excellence mean in the Canadian sports system? My, my sort of intuition is that it was gonna be all about like success and outcomes and, and sure that's one really important dimension, but there was this other really interesting dimension that came out, which was people and, and the relationships that you create along the way. So a culture of excellence is when you're optimizing both your pursuit of performance while also optimizing the quality of the personal relationships and the journey and fulfillment while you're on that journey together. Um, so I, I think it's really important to make sure that we're constantly prioritizing both that comes, that happens, uh, through really effective communication.

Jesse 11:14

Yeah, that's cool because you can definitely see it when, when they're going in opposite directions, right. Goals are going this way, but relationships are going this way, and it's just so hard to enjoy your time in the gym. It's so hard to achieve your goals. Or the other way, it's so hard to build a relationship because you're only focused on the goals. So it's cool that it's kind of this two lane highway of good stuff. I think. So I think,

Kyle 11:38

I think we've probably all been in gyms where coaches have a superpower where it's like they are either the real sort of strong performance leaders or they're the real strong people leaders, right? Like, again, I, I know you guys have been in the gym where you have these coaches who are just amazing at getting every drip of performance out of the group of guys that are, that are on the court. Um, and, and that could be because of, of how deep their knowledge is related to the sport tactic strategy. And then you have other coaches who are so good at building such deep and strong connections with the athletes, which eventually gets the most out of them. And training and in development, you know, I think the, the sweet spot is how can we help support people who can index high on both? Um, because that's more of the rare coaches out there. Like, you don't, you don't see those people all the time.

Jesse 12:39

Right. And, and what about, uh, let's say someone comes to you and they're struggling with motivation or confidence, or they're in a slump. All these issues that, that you would help athletes deal with, do you focus on the person. Or do you try and loop in the team and the community to better those issues?

Kyle 13:04

There's a, it's a really, it's a really interesting question. Like, you know, I would say that that question probably explains the arc of my career over the last 20 years. Like when I started, I was so focused on the individual athlete. I would spend all my time having individual meetings and trying to help sort of upskill and equip athletes with mental skills or strengthen their communication ability. Um, you know, increase perspective and insights related to high performance. And then somewhere maybe six to eight years into my career, I realized, you know, I can do as good of work as I'm doing with these athletes individually, but these athletes are performing in a, in a little environment. And that environment is, is ultimately what's having more impact on who they're becoming and, and how they're responding to certain situations. So then I started to realize, well, if I'm gonna have more impact, I should be spending more time focused on the team. And the actual group itself. So things like, instead of individual goal setting and individual sessions, it was like, let's start talking about the group. Like what's the group? What's the group's goals, and what's the group's vision and what's the group's sort of expectations. Um, and then a few years into that, I realized, well, the group is, is actually contained within even a, a bigger sort of, you know, a bigger sort of environment, which is largely led by the coaches. So I started spending more time working with coaches so that if I can impact one coach, that one coach in turn can create an environment that's gonna be maybe more productive or helpful for the group of athletes. And then I realized, well, the coaches are actually impacted by high performance directors and their, and the, and the sport leaders. So then I started working sort of at higher, higher levels, and that's what got me into doing some of the research with culture. I realized like, if we're really gonna have impact on helping athletes out, that impact needs to be supported by the leadership of the actual program. If it's, you know, we can have the best athletes in the gym, for example, with the best coaches who have the greatest of intentions, but if they're not being supported by the program leaders, it's gonna be really difficult for that, that group to succeed and succeed in a sustainable way.

Mathias 15:31

What did you learn about culture in that study? What's the definition of culture and what are the levers you can pull to create a culture that you, the culture you want?

Kyle 15:42

Yeah, so, uh, a culture of excellence, as I mentioned before, it has two dimensions. It has, you know, the people dimension and the performance dimension. That was probably my biggest, like one of the biggest learnings right off the bat is that whether you're a high performance athlete, coach, director, able-bodied, parasport, um, our definition of what excellence is is not just performance related, which I thought for me was really important. And, and that resonated with people really quick because then when you start to look at it from like a sort of a bit of a matrix where you have performance on one axis and, and people on the other axis, you can start to plot yourself or your team in that, in that matrix really quickly. Like, oh, where am I? Like, do we index high on this? And do we index high on, on people great We're somewhere in this quadrant. Uh, another key learning for me, and, and this was something that came following the research when I was brought into a lot of sports, to provide some support for revitalizing culture or building culture, if it was a new program. And that was, um, leadership matters. Everything. Like leadership matters, everything of the. Dozen sports that I was brought into to help support or revitalize or fix culture. Um, I think in every situation, issues related to culture were, were due to leadership issues. Um, which for me was such an incredible sort of insight because it, it really, I would say, showcase the importance of, of people who are in those roles. Like, even though you're not on the court playing, or maybe you're not on the court coaching, the impact that you have, the trickle down effect of the decisions you make and the energy that you bring and the consistency of your messaging or communication that is gonna find its way down to the athletes. And that's gonna find its way down to the, the ultimate sort of outcomes and performance. You know, if we look at the national team right now, for example, uh, the men's national team, you know, a, a guy like Dan Lewis. If he's being really well supported by the leadership group and he feels super safe and super motivated and super inspired and, and he's constantly receiving great feedback and he's improving as a coach, of course that's gonna make its way down to the athletes. All of a sudden now, the athletes are gonna see this person who probably is freed up, this person who's constantly improving in his coaching abilities, this person who's constantly feeling safe to be innovative and to, to make sort of changes on behalf of the, of the athletes. Otherwise, what we often see in some sports is we see coaches who are scared, they're scared to do things differently, they're scared to say the wrong thing, they're scared to, to push for progress, and then all of a sudden you have a group of athletes who are scared to make mistakes in practice. They're also scared because they don't want to be the reason the team loses. Because if the team loses, then maybe the team loses popularity or funding or whatever it might be that's gonna have long-term impact on the sport. Um, so, so that would be a second big learning is, is leadership. And then there's all these little elements about. Within the, the person dimension and within the performance dimension, we've learned that there's, um, sort of different pillars. Like, so, like what does it mean? What does it mean to really support people in their journey? Well, we have to make them feel safe. We need to make them feel empowered. We need to support their mental health. We need to support their physical health. Well, what does it mean to support performance? Well, we need to make sure we actually have the best athletes in the gym. We're not gonna win without the best athletes. We need to make sure that we have pathways to continue to support the development of new athletes. We need to make sure we have the best coaching in the world, the best sports science support in the world, the best leadership in the world. These are all ingredients that go into great cultures. And as soon as you start to remove one or two of those ingredients, we can start to see the foundation of the culture erode. And that could obviously have a trickle effect.

Mathias 19:53

Very, very interesting. Especially the leadership stuff. I remember the first time I got kind of just thrust into a, a leadership position, just hit me in the face, like the weight that you have to carry and like you're saying, the impact that you have so much greater than yourself. Taking care of your own stuff is difficult. But then when everyone's problems become your problems, adds onto the weight. When, when, yeah. Again, your attitude that you bring, bring your decisions that you make, the, the way they impact everyone else, like the weight is, is heavy in a leadership position.

Kyle 20:26

It's, it's super heavy. And I like thankfully, like that I actually am. Tremendously grateful that I have had some really exceptional people around me. And I've had a great mentor, like the individual who brought me into Curling Canada, Jerry Peckham, he was the high performance director there for 32 years. And it's almost like, you know, we chatted almost daily. We still chat almost daily. We still have a message. He's been retired for three years, but he still works closely with the wheelchair program. And still, personally, I make use of him as a mentor on a regular basis. But, um, he was really, really quick to teach me the importance of surrounding myself with good people. Like that's was so key. So when I moved into this leadership position, for example, with, with wheelchair curling, um, one of the first things that I knew I needed to do was to hire somebody or bring somebody on that I, I trusted, of course, who is, who is world class in what they did, but also who could help counterbalance some of my limitations as a leader. Like I, I, you know, I have some, everybody has superpowers, and those superpowers can be also the source of our greatest weaknesses. Like my superpower is that. I am somebody who's extremely action oriented. Like, if we wanna get something done, let's do it. Like, I'll send an email right now because I want to get things going because I don't wanna waste time. I'm somebody who's, you know, lots of enthusiasm and lots of confidence. So I can take on a lot of projects and I feel like I can get everything done. Um, I speak fast sometimes and I say things, unfortunately sometimes that I, I wish I, I may maybe didn't say, right. So, uh, thankfully in in the wheelchair program, I've been able to partner up with a, a, an amazing coach, uh, Mick Lismore. And this guy is sensible and strategic and methodical. He nuances everything that I say. He's somebody I can bounce ideas off of when I'm pressing the gas, he sometimes taps on the brake and it becomes this way of, of protecting myself against myself. And I do think that great leaders, great coaches, and great athletes, um, are only as great as the group of people they have around them to support them, whether that be mentors, teammates, partners in life. I, I think that support team around any high performer, um, usually if you look at the quality of the support team around the individual, you'll probably get a good idea of the quality of the performer.

Mathias 23:01

Amen to that. Yeah. That's awesome. Um, I love that visual. We're talking a bit, I don't know how this relates to team dynamics. It probably does. I think it can damage, um, the relationship between people, but even on an individual level, I want to talk about the ego. I don't fully understand. Like I've never heard a really good definition, so I don't know if you have one. And then, uh, what role does that play in in high performance?

Kyle 23:33

It's interesting, like, uh, third book from the top there. Ego Is The Enemy is one of my favorite books. It's probably the one that I've recommended the most over the years. Um, and it's towards the top because I'm dusting it off and going through it again, um, with a couple teams that I'm working with right now. So the, the ego basically is this sort of little inner voice, like picture the 6-year-old, selfish, entitled version of yourself. Um, we all have it, right? Whether you're, you know, whether I'm 42 or you're 22, or we all have that little inner voice that is there that's trying to protect us, that's trying to be valued, that's trying to, um, be made to feel like they're significant, like they're worthy. Like, you know, regardless of what your upbringing was like. We have these basic needs. As humans, we, we wanna feel significant. That is something that is just built into all of us. We want to feel like we're connected to the group of people that we care the most about. Um, we wanna feel like we're adding value, we're worthy. And as we grow up and we mature for some of us, that that need gets fulfilled or gets met because of some of the value that we're bringing. Um, but it's always there. And for others it, it, it, it remains really strong and that voice is really loud. So I, I, I think what happens naturally is the more that athletes succeed, oftentimes that success is, is, is bringing a microphone to that ego. So we, we see this often where you have these athletes who are told by everyone around them, again, they have that support team and that support team has the best of intentions. And they're told by that support team over and over that they're the best and they're being praised and they're, they're, um, gaining popularity and, and status and recognition. And that ego is just soaking it all in, loving it. And that voice is getting louder, it's getting stronger, it's becoming more talkative. And all of a sudden now that athlete starts to listen to that voice a little bit too much. We see this regularly in, in high performance, anything sport, definitely. Uh, is part of that. Um, so, you know, what can someone do, I guess, to just be aware of this or to, I guess, manage the ego First, first and foremost is to understand what the ego is and to understand that everybody has that. And to not, and, and to, I would say build a, a strong relationship, a healthy relationship with your ego. Your ego's not something bad that you wanna push aside, or every time you hear a talk, you wanna, you know, you, you wanna get mad at it. That's not it at all. It's to understand that it's trying to help you survive. It's trying to help you get what it thinks you deserve, what it, what, what it thinks you want, and, and you just have to sort of teach it. You have to teach it that this is not a time that you need to come to my protection. This is not a time that you need to speak up, you know, but, but it happens, right? Like, I, I just was part of a, the big launch of a, a program or an initiative, and the press release came out and my name wasn't on the press release. And, and sure enough, what happens? I, I hear that little voice. I can't believe it. They didn't put your name. You've been wronged. Like what an injustice. Like you're the one who spent so much time, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If this was 20 years ago, I wouldn't have even realized that the ego was separate from me. I, I, I would've heard that voice. I would've latched onto that voice. It would've be, it would've became me that it would've been me saying that. And then I would've probably started to feel the emotions of frustration even stronger. And then that frustration probably would've led me to send an email and, and, and ask a question or make a statement. And now I appreciate, well, that ego is separate from me. That ego is there. I I can listen to it. And, and now I've learned to develop a relationship where I can actually laugh at it a little bit. It's, it's, it's more of a lighthearted relationship where I know it's trying to do something that I don't need it to do anymore.

Jesse 27:53

Is,

Mathias 27:54

is ego, is ego kind of the counterbalance to insecurity almost? Or does your insecurity ign, uh, like ignite your ego?

Kyle 28:04

Yeah, I think there's, I think there's definitely a strong relationship there for sure. I think oftentimes people who, I think oftentimes people who leave their ego, um, or who don't sort of put their ego in check, who just kind of let their ego grow and, and, and kind of leave it to their own its own devices. I, I, I think eventually that's going to start to create. Um, sort of this ripple effect of, of, of, of issues that they're gonna have to deal with. It's probably gonna start to erode at self-esteem. It's probably going to start to create greater senses of entitlement. It's probably going to create, uh, greater sense of, of, of sort of criticalness towards others. Um, it's going to lead to more judgment. Um, I, I think so for sure. I think it's an interesting question, you know, and it makes me think a little bit about some of the research that we did trying to profile high performance athletes. And, uh, I was sharing this, uh, with Jesse the other day and the, the guys from the gym. But, um, we studied, I think at this point it's 240 volleyball players. We put them through some testing and some assessments, and actually you guys both were part of it. And, um, of the like 25 different factors that we assessed, there were only two that were statistically significant across the whole sample, which almost, you know, the vast majority of athletes indexed high on that could be predictable. And those two were, uh, entitlement and, and feeling a sense of being special. So we have all of these high performance athletes that over the years, largely due to some of the impact of ego, they have learned that they. Are entitled to greater experiences, to more opportunities because they feel like they are special and, and often because of the environment that they've been in for the previous 10 years have perpetuated that belief, have reinforced those thoughts. Hmm.

Mathias 30:15

That's, that's, uh, one reason why I'm grateful that I'm not playing anymore.'cause I got early, early-ish perspective of how I was thinking, um, on those sorts of things we're so privileged, um, being in that position. And it's so you don't, you don't feel it, you don't think that you're thinking like that, but there's just, there's a natural entitlement I guess, that happens when you're being flown around the world and all your meals are free and people are doing things for you all the time. And that was, yeah, when I realized that, I think, I don't know what changed exactly, but honestly just way more gratitude for the people that were helping me out. You know, like all the things that were, were given to me. It's, it was, it was interesting kind of, um, just having that veil kind of lifted after I stopped playing.

Kyle 31:09

I, and like, man, when you, when I hear you say that, like, it actually, it, it almost actually gets me a bit emotional, like actually because. I am so happy that you have been able to, to see that. Like I'm, I'm so happy that you feel like that veil has been removed. That is something that I wish for, for every athlete that I work with, I, I wish, I wish that we can begin to see just how grateful and privileged we all are. Um, and by, by increasing our awareness and recognition of just how privileged and how much opportunity we have, it's going to change our relationship with what we're doing and why we're doing it. Like, you know, one of the reasons why, um, I feel so grateful for my job right now with Curling Canada and the National Wheelchair Curling Program. Um, it's, I remember the first time I, I worked, uh, I did a session with this group. It was back in 2014, and at that time, I'd been to, uh, one Olympic Games. I was working with some of Canada's top athletes preparing for the next Olympic games. And in my mind, my ego was pushing me towards, well, you want to be the best mental performance consultant in Canada. You want to go to, you know, Olympics and you wanna support gold medal winners, and you want your picture in the newspaper and, and you want to be the reason why these athletes succeed. It's because of you, you, you. Right. This is the ego talking. And, and probably for the first few years of my career, I, I wasn't aware to the degree to which I was, I was being impacted by the ego and I was being driven by the ego. And then I remember, I, I do a, I conduct a session for the wheelchair curlers following their gold medal in, in Sochi because their mental performance consultant at the time was leaving the team and they were looking for somebody new. And, um, at the end of the session, one of the athletes, um, came up to me and said like, Hey, I really appreciated the session, your style of, of, you know, presentation was really engaging. Um, I was asked to do a couple talks, and I'd love to get your thoughts on how I can maybe tighten up my keynote speaking. Would you mind reading this, this speech that I put together and gimme some feedback? So I, I don't know who it is at the time. Right. Um, now I realize that the athlete's name is Mark Sison. He's one of the leaders of the team. He's three time Paralympian, 10 time world, uh, champion part or world championship participant in Medalist. And so I read his story, uh, about how he had a helicopter accident in a, in a maintenance check, and his helicopter goes down and, uh, probably should have died. Helicopter crashes into a million pieces, literally a million pieces. And, um, he remembers. Um, the paramedics who came to the rescue kind of walked past him, looked down, thought, thought he was dead at the time. So I read this story and he's on the ice training and I'm, I'm watching them train, but I'm, I'm just totally engrossed in, in this story and I'm reading it and I'm, I'm fully crying. Like I, so he's finishing the training session. He comes up to me, sees my faces red. I'm trying to act cool, right? I'm, I'm cleaning up the tears. eh he's like, like, what'd you think? And I said, like, what, what do I think? I think that's one of the most remarkable stories I've ever read in my life. That's what I think. And, and sure enough, then I started to get to know all of these athletes and all of these athletes have a similar story, and they all brought one ingredient to every training camp and every competition. And it was so apparent compared to the other athletes I would work with. And that ingredient was gratitude every time I met them. From that moment forward, the gratitude was so clear and the gratitude trickled down into kindness and, and politeness and, and respect and genuine care and connection. And I just saw this is a group of people who are pursuing high performance at the highest level, and they're full of gratitude and kindness is just like, wow. Like if, if I could. Create a pill and give it to high performance athletes, that would be the pill because so many of the other issues dissipate when you lean into gratitude.

Mathias 35:50

Absolutely. That gave me goosebumps. Yeah, that's cool. That's, that's my, uh, ended up figuring out that gratitude is the antidote to, to pressure as well later in my career too. So I've talked about that lots on the podcast, but I agree the gratitude pill would be, would be life changing.

Jesse 36:09

Um, so the, I you, maybe you kind of answered this just now, but I was gonna ask about like,'cause we have a lot of young listeners, and I was gonna ask about what's the biggest gap between the young athletes that are coming up through developmental programs and then they get to the national team in a meant performance capacity? Is it gratitude or is there something else that, that is kind of holding them back from their full potential?

Kyle 36:38

Yeah, that's really interesting. Um, I, I think gratitude would be part of, of my, of my response. But I, I do think, I, I do think my mind goes somewhere a little bit different. I, I think so often, um, what we see is we, we see that the athletes who make it to, let's say. In, in order to be 19 or 20 years old and to sort of be in the pathway to potentially achieving or being part of a national program or a national team in any sport to get to that point of your life. What we see is sort of a predictable, um, collection of, of, of habits that are developed in athletes. And, and the one that probably is the most problematic, I would say helpful at first, but it becomes most problematic, is this pursuit of perfection. Like that. That's where my mind goes, Jesse, when you ask that question. So much of the work I've done and, and the reason why gratitude ultimately becomes so important is because it can be a bit of an antidote to this pursuit of perfection where we start, you know, maybe more specifically less than or to a much greater degree than gratitude. It is more like self-compassion. Like we, we, we learned early on that if I work really, really hard, and if I, um, if I find all of the problems with my game, with my performance, and if I fix them as fast as possible and I rinse and repeat hard work, head down, grind, find errors, fix them, find errors, fix them, find errors, fix them. It develops this perspective of I'm pursuing this, this bar of perfection. Anything less than perfection, I need to figure out a way to, to get better. So the measuring stick is no longer good or great. The measuring stick is perfection, which is, which is never achievable. That's why. So oftentimes high performers, as they progress in their journey and they go up levels by levels, by levels, so too does their measuring the standard goes up and therefore the bar is unrelenting. Hmm. Which creates this really empty and unfulfilling journey. It's almost like athletes are pursuing this, this goal line that is always two steps ahead of them, no matter how many steps they take, which really challenges satisfaction, it challenges fulfillment, it challenges all of the sort of intrinsic drive that is going to keep you wanting to come back to the gym and to give it your all day after day. So, so often what, what I will support athletes with is getting them to understand that way of thinking. Might have, and I say might because I don't know it. It might have served you up until this point, but at a certain point that is no longer gonna get you to the next level that's actually gonna undermine your efforts. You no longer can use perfect as a measuring stick. We need to start digging into things that are more personally meaningful to you and or that are more situationally relevant to what you're trying to achieve in the moment you find yourself in things that you're going to achieve. You know, let's call it two thirds of the time. Like there's a lot of really cool literature on like optimal challenge point, which I think is not nearly discussed enough in the sports system. But this idea of like optimal challenge point to help set goals, meaningful goals, where you start to achieve some of those goals and some of them you fall short of, but you achieve enough of them, that's gonna keep you motivated to, to keep sort of driving forward. Um, and, and that can be really hard to rewire or to relearn, like to relearn our relationship with success or to reestablish our relationship with, with, um, the standards that we're pursuing. That can be really tricky for some athletes who have only known it to be a one way for their entire time in sport.

Jesse 41:03

Right? Yeah. Yeah. I even, I think about that myself too. Like that's, and it causes a lot of stress'cause you're you always feel like you're behind.

Kyle 41:15

So think about that. Like, just think about your experience, Jesse. Yeah. Like your experience is everyone's experience in sport. Yeah. We set these goals for ourself that we think are helping us, so I'm going to pursue something exceptionally high. Okay. Great. That thing down deep, we know is not really achievable. Hmm. So immediately our brain sends signals of stress and fear and anxiety. And now we're, now we're in a position where we need to deal with this stress and we need to deal with this fear and this anxiety because we set the goals that were were too lofty for ourselves. Unknowingly we unknowingly are the ones that drew the line in the sand that was unnecessarily too far. Why don't we just start learning to draw the line slightly closer and now instead of it being a source of stress and anxiety, it could actually create a source of excitement and drive and ignition.

Jesse 42:16

Yeah. Well, yeah. And motivation.'cause that's the thing. As soon as it's too far, you're like, I, I'm not gonna do it. I'm not gonna be vo motivated.

Kyle 42:23

Well, I think that's so cool. Such a cool visual was key. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, to be really good at something, it, it takes what, 10 or 15 years realistically to get really, really good at something. So motivation becomes like, becomes the key ingredient. How do we find a way to ensure that? A person has enough motivation, sustainable motivation for 15 years so that they can stay involved in something long enough to get good enough at it so they can achieve their goals. That's, that's really tricky. Yeah. There needs to be joy in there somewhere. There needs to be excitement in there somewhere. It can't just be hard work and head down and willing your way through it, that, that only lasts so long. That's unsustainable.

Mathias 43:13

Mm-hmm. It's also a factor for me was the perception of what I thought other people would think of me when I achieved my goals. For example, like the reason I got into trouble with my head was because I just refused to stop training because I was this close to being an Olympian, which I thought was gonna be it, you know, like, uh, that was, that was the pinnacle. Now I have that to my name, everyone's gonna know. And then, uh, like for example, Brody Hofer is like one of my best friends. We were in competition with each other for like, years before that. Now he got to go to the Olympics and I don't care. Like I, I'm super happy for him, I'm proud of him, but it just like does not change at all the way that I see him or think about him or care for him or any of that stuff, which I think is probably back to the ego thing. But it's like, why did, why was that my goal? Why did I think that that was gonna be. Everything in that moment.

Kyle 44:16

Oh yeah. That's so, so that's such, that's such an interesting area. You know, we don't, we probably don't talk enough about, especially the young athletes, we probably don't talk enough about the fact that our brains have evolved to care a lot about, uh, the opinions and perceptions of others. Like I think some people understand that, or when they hear that it, it resonates, it makes sense, but we don't actually dig into it enough. Like we really do need to help young athletes better understand that in order, like every, everything that your brain does for you, it is designed only to help you survive your, your brain. Like, like your body has evolved over 50 million years and it's evolved with one objective, and that is to continue to survive. So our brains are, are the same. Our, our brains over the years have evolved and they've pruned out certain. Built in responses and they've kept others, and now we have this brain that is perfectly engineered to help keep us safe and to help allow, to allow us to, to, to move through life in a state of survival. What's important to note though, is that that might sound fine, but what that means is our brains in no way have evolved to to care about our wellness and to care about our pursuit of high performance. Our brains are working against our pursuit of high performance, and, and one of the ways in which our brains are doing that is our brains are constantly trying to keep us comfortable. Our brains don't want us to overly exert ourselves. That's not good for survival. Our brains are also trying to constantly stick to things that are certain, because uncertainty is dangerous. If I don't know the outcome of a, of a game or of, of what's gonna happen at practice, that's gonna create anxiety, and that anxiety's trying to get me to not go into that space. It's trying, it's trying to keep me safe, it's trying to protect me. But back to your point about, you know, the opinions or caring about other people's perspectives. Another way in which our brain is designed is it's built in this really strong system to be hyper-focused on the opinions of others because over, over time. We depended on our tribes, our groups, our, our, our, you know, our, our societies for survival. If, if we did something to disrupt the group that we are in, and if we were forced outta that group, it's almost certain that we would dial alone. So instead, we're constantly looking to make sure that we're fitting in, we need to fit in, because when we're in a group, we're a lot safer than when we're alone. So this notion of wanting to fit in and wanting to be viewed as being favorable in the eyes of others, this is, this is genetically coded into who we are. And the, the more that we can become aware of that, the more that we start to realize that that is a script that usually is read by the ego, right? It's just a script that gets handed over to the ego and the ego's like, yeah, you deserve this. You deserve fame and fortune. You want to be famous. You want everybody to think you're amazing, therefore, you probably should engage in these types of activities or behaviors. We think that winning a medal is going to solve our problems.'cause everybody's gonna think we're amazing and we're gonna have all these people following us, and everybody's gonna want our autograph, or everybody's gonna think we're super cool. And then we realize, well, that that's not the case. That's actually not fulfilling to me, that's not something that actually creates a deep sense of meaning and value. One of the worst things I can do. I say this now because I, I've unfortunately been on the other side of it so many times, is I, the worst thing I could do is help somebody achieve, um, a goal that to which they thought was gonna bring them something. It didn't like helping somebody to achieve an Olympic medal for the wrong reasons, because they thought this medal was all of a sudden gonna bring them fulfillment and satisfaction and wellness, when in fact, what I wish I would've done earlier in my career is get more clarity on, on why it's something I do now more get clarity on what they think this is gonna bring to them. Like, why is this your ultimate goal? Like, why is being on the national team and being an Olympian so important to you? And let's, let's really take our time to unpack that and really explore what's in the corners and in the depths of that reflection. Because if, if the response to the why is, well, I don't know, because that's what great volleyball players do and, and because I wanna be cool and popular, like the last generation of guys who went and achieved that, well then we probably have different work to do. We probably wanna start somewhere other than just trying to optimize your ability to achieve that goal. We probably wanna start by getting more clarity on like, what does living a life with meaning and value actually mean for you? What's actually most important for you? What values do you most want to. Um, to bring to each sort of day that, that, that you want to sort of help define who you are for the people that matter around you.

Mathias 50:01

So cool. You ran me through an exercise the first time. I think I met you when I was at, I was at grade 12 in, uh, going to the NEP and, uh, I forget exactly what it was for, but I remember there was three components and it was like long-term goals, um, simple joys, and I forget the last one, but it was like a framework basically for, uh, I what was it for? But I love that exercise. Yeah, I think, I think I remember that. Yeah. It was,

Kyle 50:32

uh, like long-term goals then it was, uh, might have been midterm goals. Mm-hmm. Short term. It was, it was this notion, I believe, if I remember correctly, um, looking at goals a little bit through the lens of like a, a chain reaction of dominoes, where oftentimes we have this big outcome goal. And this is something that I, I took from the great book that I, that really had a positive impact on me. The one thing where we often look at these big outcome goals as being these daunting goals that, you know, one day I wanna win a gold medal for Team Canada. Awesome. But what most people fail to do is appreciate that in order to achieve that goal, there's a whole bunch of intermediary goals that need to be knocked over and. Oftentimes by identifying the most simple of goals, the smallest of sort of initial dominoes, just by virtue of consistently knocking over that simple domino, it's going to create this really sort of cascading ripple effect where so many more dominoes are gonna be knocked over without you necessarily having to worry about physically knocking each one over on its own.

Mathias 51:42

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. That's, that's cool. Yeah. And also, kind of along with that, one thing I mentioned before in here was like the, and maybe this was even a Dan thing, but like the, uh, decision tree, the daily decision tree, right? Where you can start your day with poor decisions, but you always, always, always have the next decision that can be made that maybe will bring you back into somewhat of a positive direction. Then at the end of the day, all the, it all balances out and you can either had a, a slightly positive, a very positive day or, or maybe a negative day, but there's always the next decision that can move you towards that next micro goal.

Kyle 52:23

Yeah. So important. We, there's this built in, this built in shortcut into our brain called all or nothing thinking. Um, you know, if anybody's interested in learning more about these shortcuts, I, I think there's somewhere around 280 of these shortcuts that have been discovered, cognitive biases. There's been some really great work that's been done in this space. Um. One of those shortcuts, one of the most sort of common ones. Is this all or nothing thinking where, you know, it's, it's often the reason why so many times, you know, diets will fail where somebody has one dessert and all of a sudden they feel like their diets failed and they give up everything. Or they, they make maybe one poor decision early in their day and they think, well, today is shot. I'm just gonna start over tomorrow. Um, and of course that's not, that's not true right there. We, we know that, um, the next decision is the most important decision. The next action is the most important action. You know, one of the quotes that I heard recently that I really liked is something to the effect of, you know, if you want, uh, if you want to, uh, have a mature tree, let's think of a big mature maple tree, right? 30-year-old maple tree. Well, the best time to, to plant that was 30 years ago. The second best time is today. And it's this idea of, you know, we can't always look back and, and change what's happened. That doesn't matter. What matters is our, is the next decision we're going to make, pointing us in the direction of our goal. Oftentimes for me, like, you know, it's, it is not about the destination. It really is about the direction and every decision we make. Every interaction we have is going to point us in a direction. Is it gonna point us towards our goals, or is it gonna point us away from our goals? And, you know, even if once in a while we misstep and we get turned around and we lose, you know, track of where the path is, if we're constantly reorienting ourselves in a direction of our goals, eventually we're gonna get there. Right? Like, it's, it's only a matter of time that we're gonna get there. And, and so this notion of like the 80 20 rule is something that I quite like, like, you know, the, I think one of the misconceptions that I probably had when I was like, 20 getting into this type of work, you know, if you would've asked me then I would've probably said, well, high performers are just so different from everyone else. Like, the best in the world are just so different. And, um, they're, they're not really that different. In fact, they, they're way more alike. I think one of the ways in which they're, they're quite different is that they're typically just better at doing the boring stuff, um, more consistently. They, they find ways of creating more joy in the mundane, they find ways of, of digging into their repeated actions that most people would just get bored and, and kind of walk away from. They, they just do that more consistently because. They find ways of either making it more interesting, they find ways of bringing more energy to it. They maybe find ways to create sort of more intrigue and curiosity so they can dig into it a little bit more. Um, you know, like I, I think, I think about in the front yard we have a basketball net, and you think about like, after shooting 20 free throws, the average person is just gonna get bored. Like, I, I see it sometimes with my, my kids and their, and their buddies, right? But who's the person who can stay there and shoot 40 free throws, even though the first 20 were fun in the next 20 aren't so fun? Or who's, who's the kind of person who after the first 20 finds a way to create a little fun engaging game to make the next 20 or 30 super entertaining? And that's what high performers do really well. They just find a way to, to do the basics, um, consistently well. Hmm.

Mathias 56:27

What are some of the common strategies for making those mundane things more interesting?

Kyle 56:35

Yeah. I think competition is, is is one that, that often connects to a lot of athletes, just given the nature of, of being an athlete. Like, uh, a little story, um, maybe that speaks to this a little bit. So I remember, um, I've known Dan Lewis for VO since 2016, and. Him and I have spent a lot of time doing work together. We have a great personal relationship. And I remember he asked me to come over to his place one time to help him out, and he had some gravel to move at his old house. So picture this big pile of gravel, right? And, um, we have to move this probably 300 feet and we gotta carry most of it like a, you know, that 300 foot journey is probably a hundred feet uphill. So from the front yard to the backyard. And, uh, first thing he does, he throws me a pair of G gloves, and he is okay. He's like, here's, here's the competition. He says, okay, you got your bucket. I got my bucket. Whoever gets the most buckets done wins. And it's just this, all of a sudden now, it, it is no longer a job. Now it's, oh, okay. Like, this is a, this is a little competition of physical strength and endurance. Like, who's, who's gonna win? So sure enough, we have a shovel. We start going to town, and 45 minutes later, maybe 40 minutes later, a job that should have taken us two and a half hours took us a fraction of the time. And he beats me and he's laughing and cheering and, and, you know, and I'm kind of listening to it and, and, and he's, he's giving me the gears. But it changes everything. When you can find a way to create some excitement around whether it's competition or whether another strategy for those who maybe aren't really into this kind of like competitive mindset. You can create a bit of a game around it too, like gamifying things. There's a lot of really cool science on how to gamify things, um, whether it's gamifying practices for athletes or you can gamify things for yourself. Um, another one is, is really finding reasons for why this activity could potentially be meaningful and valuable for you. That's something we don't do enough of as people. Mm-hmm. Like we generally will just quickly say, well, this is boring. And, and then we've just labeled it, which by the way is another one of those shortcuts that our brain uses. We just label things really quickly and then it, as soon as something's labeled, we don't really think twice about it. We just kind of been it into that, that specific label. So if, if I were to say something like, well, uh, mowing the lawn is boring. Well, if every time I think about mowing the lawn, if, if that label comes to mind as being boring, boring, boring, that's gonna create this, this relationship where I really don't want to engage in that activity. But if I actually asked myself, well, how could I potentially create a more meaningful connection to this activity that's not super exciting? Well, maybe I could say I really value health and wellness and this is an opportunity for me to get outside. I really value nature, so I get to be in nature. Um, I'm gonna get some steps in. I also really value, um, being organized and keeping things at a certain sort of standard. So all of a sudden now you start checking the boxes. You start to realize, well, actually the actual act of mowing the lawn is not something that I necessarily enjoy, but it checks these six boxes of things that are really meaningful and valuable to me. Oh, okay. Well, that is going to create a little bit more, sort of, a little bit more of an injection of motivation for you. Hmm. And, you know, is it like a mental trick or hack? Not so much. It's just, it's taking time to unpack some of these activities that we've just quickly labeled and to realize that maybe we've labeled these things a little bit prematurely, maybe, you know, we can do ourselves, uh, service by, by taking time to better understand how they could fit into our, all of the other goals that we have for ourselves in our lives.

Mathias 1:00:32

That's interesting. That makes me think of like, uh, branding in business. Like branding is the association that you make with the product, not the product itself. Right. So in golf you think of tailor made, and you think of all the guys that are using their driver like Rory and Dustin Johnson and whatever. The list goes on and on and on. It's not the, it's not the product, but it's the a association. So if you associate mowing the lawn with all those other things that you're saying, you're like rebranding the boring activity. Um, in a different way.

Kyle 1:01:08

I love that. I, I really like that a lot. Like, I, I might use that actually moving forward, honestly, because I do think that's what happens. Like we just quickly brand things a certain way without realizing we're doing it. Like, these shortcuts are shortcuts. The reason they're called shortcuts is because our brain can't possibly process all of the information around us in a given moment. Like, even right now I'm in a quiet office, there's not much going on, but I, there, there's some sounds outside. I hear my neighbor mowing, like his yard. My, my dog is outside the door probably doing, I don't know what my, I'm feeling my stomach. That's, that's probably getting a little bit hungry. My mind's going to maybe my next meeting. Um, you know, there's, there still is lots of information coming in. I'm trying to gauge your facial expressions. I'm trying to listen to your questions. Auditory sounds. There's, uh, sensations coming in. There's, there's things I'm seeing out the window. Birds flying by. Our brains can't process all that. So what it does is they find ways of creating these shortcuts to compartmentalize or to provide quick sort of decisive sort of decisions around how to make sense of what's going on. So to, to your point, branding, our brains aren't gonna take the time to fully examine an activity like walking the dog. Hmm. So it's gonna quickly label it as being good or bad, boring or exciting. In life, most things are boring, especially in comparison to some of the activities that exist now, especially for young athletes. Like everything is gonna be boring in comparison to whatever the best video game is right now. So if we allow our brains to brand or to label all of these other activities like stretching right, or warming up, all of a sudden now we're going to become victims to these. These really sort of thoughtless labels that our brain has quickly given to all of these really important activities that we know down deep are important. But at face value, our brain has kind of brushed them off as being boring, not useful, irrelevant, not entertaining, forget about it. Hmm.

Mathias 1:03:21

Really interesting. I also, the, the story with Dan and the Rocks, I've found that when there's a challenge in front of me and I respond with a equal and opposite force of some kind, whether that be the competition or the gamification or the association, then it becomes really like fun and exciting and like it, it builds the competition, or the challenge builds me up. Whereas if there's a challenge in front of me and I don't respond with anything, then it'll crush you. Yeah. And it's rarely neutral. But the response with something equal and opposite, I think is like, makes the experience elite and it's actually fun.

Kyle 1:04:08

Yeah, I love that. I think there's a lot of ways that we can rethink, um, activities in order to find motivation in a moment. Like part of another, uh, way of doing this could be to think big picture long, long term. Like our brains aren't wired to think big picture, immediate instant gratification. Something tastes good, I'm gonna eat it. Something feels right, I'm gonna do it. Uh, something sounds good, I'm gonna listen to it. This is why it's so difficult for people, for example, to, um, dig into financial planning and save money. This is why it's so difficult for people to make good decisions around health and wellness. This is why it's so difficult for people, um, to, uh, think into the future about potentially retirement. Like we are going to prioritize what's in front of us or what's in the short term, almost always. So one of the things that great performers do or that they practice doing is they practice looking at things from a real big picture, long-term perspective to see if their decisions still match what they're trying to achieve. So for example. Um, an easy one. My buddy and I, we go to the gym most mornings together and, you know, he identifies as a bit of a foodie, great guy, and he identifies as a foodie and, and, uh, he talks at times about struggling with his, his weight management. Um, and he's a sweets guy. And, and, and there's a new donut place that's opening up around the corner, and he's gonna drive by that almost every day going to work. So every time he drives by that, his brain is going to be telling him, like, that's gonna be really good. You're gonna, you're gonna get a huge dopamine hit when you eat this. It's gonna taste amazing. What his brain is not telling him is, if you consistently make that decision over time, that's probably gonna take 10 years off your life. Now that sounds extreme. Mm-hmm. But that extreme thinking is actually going to conjure up this emotion of fear or sadness or anger. That emotion is designed to be a source of energy to help you take action towards your goals. Another example could be, let's say, um, you know, for example, my youngest son last night wanted to play basketball, and it's awesome that my kids are getting involved in sports. My oldest loves volleyball, loves the podcast. My youngest is getting into basketball and soccer. And last night he says, dad, do you wanna play basketball? And I love basketball. It's fun going outside to play, but I was really busy. I had to get a presentation ready for this morning. So I come upstairs. I'm getting ready to work on the presentation. And then I think to myself, I wonder how many more times he is gonna ask me before he moves outta the house to play basketball. Like, is it gonna be 20 more times? Is it gonna be 30 more times? Is it maybe six more times? Because he is getting to the age where he is gonna start playing with his buddies more? And all of a sudden that created actually a sense of like, sadness. And then I immediately used that sadness to be like, whoa, if I only have six times to play pick up basketball with my son, I'm, I'm not gonna miss out on this opportunity. And I went down and it was only like a six or seven minute game, but it was super fun and, and it changed the dynamics of that moment. And I, I do think this big picture approach is, is really, we don't think about this enough, right? Somebody calls like, how many times as a, as a sibling called, or, you know, a, a parent called and you're like, oh, I'm really busy. But what if somebody said, well, your parents are getting older and you may only have another 30 or 40 phone calls left with them. Like, you know, my dad right now is 67. I might only have poof, the opportunity to ch if I chat with them, let's call it once a week. Like, those calls are, are, are getting shorter and shorter. You know, the opportunities to connect and engage in, in things that matter most to me, we need to make sure that we're looking at the whole, so that we don't get caught up in the, the, the short term stuff that we think is important. But at the end of the day, it's just clouding and, and bringing noise to, to what we're trying to achieve.

Mathias 1:08:53

Yeah. Thinking in terms of, uh, times instead of time. Yeah, that's powerful. Even when I was, I was getting more and more concussed over like a year and a half period. I knew that my career was kind of on the rocks. I knew that if I were to get hit in the head one more time, that was probably it for me. So I was loving playing volleyball. I was like, I, I, I probably only have a few more times to play here. And it was so immediate and so real that made it easy for me to do that. But had I been thinking like that for most of my career, again, incredibly hard to do when you get into the daily grind of doing those same things every single day. But, um, it was a cool experience to have time. Interestingly. Yeah.

Kyle 1:09:40

This has come full circle back to gratitude.

Mathias 1:09:43

Yeah.

Kyle 1:09:44

Like how, how easy is it for us to tap into a, a, a, a true sense of gratitude when we start to actually find perspective? On some of those activities, like the best performances that I've ever been part of in any sport, whether it be volleyball, um, my time with curling, my time with gymnastics or archery. The best performances have easily come on the, on the sort of tails of, of gratitude. You know, in, in curling it was an athlete who thought his career was over because of injury and instead was able to compete and, and won, uh, his first ever national championship, in a sense, gone on and won five more, uh, in volleyball. It was a group that thought they would never have an opportunity to, to qualify for the games, and all of a sudden had a last chance qualifier and went there and performed, and then arrived in Rio. With this sense of gratitude for being in this moment, like I, I would, I'd be really curious if you can actually like truly assess gratitude. I, I'd be curious to see what the, um, level of gratitude was if you actually take the total, the aggregate gratitude of the 2016 team versus the 2021 team versus the 2024 team. Now I'm not talking about the individuals and this person is more grateful than the, I'm just talking in general. My guess is in 2016, gratitude was at its highest, 2021. Maybe it, it just started fading away a little bit. All of a sudden now there's almost like an expectation that, oh, well we qualify twice in a row. Of course we're gonna qualify again. When in fact the last three qualifiers were so paper thin, the margins of qualifying or not. That's something that we don't talk enough about that. The difference between Canada having qualified for the last three games and having not qualified for 36 years. The difference is probably three points, actually. Three points. Like it's incredible. So to think of it that way, we really, we really do easily tap into a sense of gratitude when those three points go the right way our way.

Mathias 1:12:13

Absolutely. Gratitude and luck.

Kyle 1:12:15

Yeah.

Mathias 1:12:15

I think I read once, like it was basically an argument against the statement that hindsight is 2020 because, um, because the margin's so razor thin. Like if we don't qualify for those three years, and then now we're analyzing this whole process that we went through as if it was this massive failure, whereas. It's, it could, like the last three points are probably luck and then the, we do the exact same process. Luck is on our side. We qualify three times in a row. And now we're like, okay, this, we found it. This is what we do. Even if nothing had changed in what our actual input was, the result could be different. And it really skews how we think about, uh, the experience. So that was the argument that hindsight is not actually 2020.'cause you, there's so many factors that you're not in control of.

Kyle 1:13:05

My single biggest learning from my first Olympic experience in Sochi, I remember we were, um, I went there, I was, oh, I don't even, I was 30 I think. Yeah, 31. And, um, I, it was amazing first Olympic experience, like I'm having, literally having lunch beside Yaramy Yager and Team Musi in the athletes' dining hall. Like my mind is blown this, this guy from Espanola, Ontario, right? And, and the, the two teams that I was there supporting, they both win gold. Like it was just this out of, out of body experience. Like, um, playing pick up, uh, ball hockey with former NHL players outside of Canada, Olympic House. Like everything was just unbelievable. And, um, I'm on the tarmac getting ready to leave and I wanted to really capture some of my learnings. I wanted to reflect.'cause at that point I was, or, and still am a big advocate of journaling. So, uh, I get my journal out and I start writing, and I, nothing's coming up. I, I don't know what to write. And, uh, the number one thing that came up, my number one learning is going into that I didn't believe in luck. I thought it was overrated. It wasn't part of high performance. I thought the best were the best, and that's just what it was. And, um, my opinion shifted 180 degrees, uh, after having been there for two weeks and watched somebody like Charles Hanway being 80 meters in the lead on the final lap. And he happens to take the turn on the, on the trajectory, on the path where his skate blade goes into the only rut in that corner on the last corner and wipes out and doesn't win a gold medal. Or the fact that, uh, a puck that was shot, um, uh, the, the length of the ice, um, travels and hits the post a millimeter or two realistically, uh, one direction. Uh, the puck goes in and Canada doesn't win gold in, in hockey. Um, the, the list was endless. All of these moments that I witnessed, there was another one in curling where the, the men's team, um, we were about to lose in the semifinals. Sorry, it was the qualifying game. We weren't even gonna make the playoffs. And a team who makes this shot 99% of the time throws it and the rock hits something in the ice and it picks, it's a term in curling where it hits something and just goes off. Course. If that rock doesn't pick, we don't make the playoffs much less when a gold medal and luck is there. And, and I think that's one of the exciting parts. That's one of the things that we can't fully control. And it, it's exciting and it makes it such that we never know what's gonna happen. It keeps us on the edge of our feet or edge of our seat. And, and, um, yeah, it is, it's why people tune in

Mathias 1:16:13

for sure. The uncertainty is the, the value.

Kyle 1:16:18

Absolutely.

Mathias 1:16:20

How much time do you have, Kyle?

Kyle 1:16:22

I still got lots of time. Okay.

Jesse 1:16:26

Welcome back Jess. Thanks guys. My computer was on the fritz. I don't know what was going on. Um, I got a question that I've been mulling about since we were talking about the ego, and I thought it was really interesting how you personified the ego and you're having this conversation with the ego. And I was wondering if you did that on purpose and also. If you can do that with other things like your confidence or your doubt or your motivation and personify these things that you're dealing with and actually have a conversation with them. Because I was thinking, as you were talking, I was like, all these things we think about, we think about, we think about, but we don't actually talk about them. Maybe we talk about that with someone else, but you don't actually have a conversation with the issue that you're dealing with. I was wondering if that's actually something you do, or, or maybe I'm making groundbreaking research right now.

Kyle 1:17:22

It, uh, potentially it could become groundbreaking Jesse. Um, it, it is a strategy that, that actually is quite common, um, in, let's call it sort of psychological intervention, or you'll see it a lot in sort of mindfulness strategies or approaches where you actually do start to personify some of these thoughts and feelings that you have. You create space between your conscious awareness and the activity that's happening sort of below the surface. And, and that space is really important. Like, again, we talk about this pill that we could give athletes, right? One is gratitude for sure. You know, arguably, in order to be grateful or to dis consistently display gratitude and appreciation, you would need to create a space to recognize moment by moment. All that you do have to be grateful for. Right. So this is a bit of a precursor, I would say, to being grateful. Um, but yeah, per personifying it I think oftentimes allows you to view it as a relationship that you have with something else or someone else. Mm-hmm. A different part of you. You, you're not tethered to that part of you, you know, it's, it's gonna always be there and that's okay, but you can create some distance. And I think the more that you can, the more that you can find a way to create a lighthearted relationship, the better. So like for me, I really do like viewing the ego as being like this young kind of immature, primal part of my, my thought process. And it makes it easier for me to kind of, you know, put my arm around it and be like, there, they're there. Like, it's okay. Like he, I know you got upset, your name wasn't in an article. It's all good. Like, things are gonna be okay. Um, and, and I also think it's important to bring some, some, some humor to that relationship at times. Like, I think the more that you can actually create a bit of a, a relationship where you can find the humor in, in how your brain is wired to kind of produce these. Oftentimes lies and deceptive thoughts, the more that you can chuckle at it and the more that you, you aren't taking yourself so seriously. You're not taking your thoughts so seriously. You're not attaching yourself to every thought or feeling that your brain throws at you. Um, yeah, I think personifying is really key. And, and I do like this idea of personifying different parts, not just the ego. I do like, like there's a lot of, I would say, uh, examples of how some of the top performers they have, like these alter egos, when they perform, they have these kind of like stage names or these, these different identities. And again, I think it allows for a stronger relationship to what it is you're trying to relate to. If you're trying to relate to a strong sense of confidence, having this like identity of, and, and this sort of name or label to this version of you, it allows you to put an image to it. It allows you to make it more concrete. It allows you to kind of enter into becoming that version of you, I think, a lot more quickly. I think it's a really great idea.

Jesse 1:20:41

Yeah. That, that's cool. That resonates with me a lot because I, I love relationships, but I don't love all my thoughts. But if you can turn it into a relationship, I think that's cool. I think that's super cool. He laughing out to you. No, it's good. Good thought. Yeah. Thanks. Um, I gotta go to practice pretty soon, but I think we should talk about Raar. Unless you guys did that while I was gone. No, we didn't. I think we should.'cause that's prevalent and we're doing that with our team right now with Kyle. Kyle's coming in once a week and uh, I think that would be super interesting for our listeners. What do you think? Or did you have a different question?

Mathias 1:21:19

No, I agree.

Jesse 1:21:19

Let's go.

Kyle 1:21:21

Yeah, so, so Rock, that's rah. It is funny. RA's getting a lot of traction, or at least it has had a lot of traction, um, within the, the national program. I, this whole idea of raar for me came about when I was reading a book called Acceptance Commitment, uh, therapy Interventions for Sports. It's a real sort of textbooky academic book. And I was going through it. A a buddy of mine recommended it. And, um, at that same time, that's when Glenn approached me to do some work with the men's team in preparation for that final qualifier. And so much of what I heard from Glenn at the time is that the team a needed to find a way to accept what had happened in Edmonton. So this idea of accepting, accepting, it kept coming up from Glen. And the other theme that kept coming up is they, they need to understand what their responsibilities are. That was, so I met with Glenn a couple times at, at Tim Horton's near the sports center. And I remember seeing this, you know, this Hulk of a man who was super daunting at the time, and I shook his hand and I'm like a mental performance consultant. I wasn't sure what his thoughts were on mental performance consultants and, uh, I just really tried to listen into what he was looking for. So this notion of acceptance and making sure athletes understand what their responsibilities are moment by moment. So one day, truly, I was getting ready for the session. The session was at four o'clock, like my intro to the team was at four o'clock. And this is like the morning. And I think I was like having a shower. And then this like idea came to me of like, oh, maybe, you know what we should, we should think about this through the lens of like a card game. Like it's all about probabilities. Like, I wanted to make it concrete so that the guys actually understood like this is not some magic, you know, pixie dust that is gonna solve all the problems. But at the end of the day, we can either act, think, and feel in ways that are going to be productive and increase our probability for success, or we're going to think, feel, and act in ways that are going to decrease our probability of success. And essentially every point is an opportunity where the probabilities are going to increase in our direction or decrease. So it got me thinking of like the game of war where every card you pull out is, uh. It's an opportunity to, to win a point, which kind of, for me at the time, you know, there were some similarities of volleyball. Just keep pulling cards out and first one to, to win 25 points you win. Um, but then I started thinking, well, how can we make it such that the athletes are gonna understand that they actually have control of the deck of cards that they're flipping? Like their deck is not necessarily equal to their opponents. They can find ways of stacking their deck if they make good decisions consistently, such as being open with themselves and listening to their thoughts and communicating clearly to their teammates. So, you know, instead of, um, having a, a deck full of, of sevens and eights and nines, well, if every time I notice that I, my, my mind is directing me in a di in the direction of, of being sort of hurtful to the team or to my own performance. Well, what if I chose going back to the TSU sort of, uh, line of questioning about the decision tree. What if, what if I actually chose that moment just to, to choose to make a better decision? Well, all sudden now I'm actually replacing a seven with maybe a jack. The probability now of me winning the next point just went up. What if somebody hands me a four? Well, if, if I make a bad decision, all of a sudden now I keep that four and I exchange a potential king for a four, now the quality of my deck just went down and my probabilities of of winning the game just went down. So there's this bandwidth that you can start to play with by virtue of being mindful, being aware of the information you're allowing to, to shape or direct your, your actions in the future. Um, and this is all based on that acceptance commitment therapy line of, of research and treatment. So I, I was thinking, well, I got the, I got the game in mind, like the card game is gonna make sense. I think that's gonna resonate with the guys. I, I heard they liked playing cards. I need something though that's gonna be catchy, so I need, I need something that's gonna make sense that they can think of. And, and that's where this kind of acronym of RA came from. I think I had like two versions of it before Raar came. I think it was like Roar or Rare or something. And I'm like, I don't know. So two minutes before, literally like on my way walking into the session with the guys, I'm like, okay, well just raar whatever. We'll go with it. And when people ask me about that time with the team, the way I describe it is I feel like I was like a, a relief pitcher that was. Brought in or maybe a, a, a designated batter that was brought in. And there was one, I had one pitch and I had to make contact. Um, and thankfully I made contact. And it's, I often talk to my, uh, about that situation as me being the pitcher. Like I just threw one pitch and thankfully the team made contact with it. It wasn't me making contact. They happen to really connect to the game. This notion of just being real with themselves and about recognizing that A, our brains aren't helping us to perform. Our brains are lying to us. More often than not. Our brains are sending false alarms to us more often than not. We're not bad people, you know, just because we, we felt pressure and we might have succumbed to that pressure in Edmonton. That's normal. That's a, that's the part of the high performance journey. And I, I really do get the sense that for the team at that time, they were just looking for someone to normalize what they had just gone through. I think they were just looking for someone to say like, it's okay. Like that's like, everybody's gonna be okay here. Like, that was natural. Like, what, what just happened to you is normal. Let's move on. Um, and, and I, I think a big part of, of the success of Raar, so recognize, accept, reconnect. It was this kind of relabeling or branding of, of stuff that's been in the literature for literally 40, 50 years. Um. It just, it just resonated really deeply with guys this idea of like, okay, we're being forced to recognize that we underperformed in Edmonton. Okay, we need to accept this if we're gonna have an ability to achieve this qualification. Um, and similar to what we're kind of doing, you know, this year where we took kinda one week at a time to kind of unpack each concept. And thankfully at that time there was a group of, and, and very similar to this, you know, to this year, there's a group of leaders who are just digging into this and they're being leaders and they are asking great questions, and they're connecting to this in real time. And they're, they're sharing real time thoughts, which makes it more likely for everyone on the team to start to realize that, oh yeah, I, if I share this thing, people aren't gonna laugh at me, or I'm not gonna feel like I'm an outsider, or people aren't gonna judge me because everybody else is kind of thinking and feeling the same way too. I remember the first time I was doing one of the workshops and like, uh, you know, somebody gimme a, gimme a, an example of a thought that, uh, that you've had recently in practice that you know would be quite unhelpful. And, and somebody puts their hand up and they share this thought. And it was, you know, a fairly extreme thought. And, uh, I said, great. Like anybody else, anybody else experience that same thought and like nobody else had their hand up, but they're all facing me, right? So, um, I'm like, oh man. So I'm like, yeah, I, I, I said, I, uh, I see some head nodding. It's like, yes, I see some people like, you're not, you know, you're not alone. Eh. And then that kind of opened the flood gates though. And then everybody else started sharing. And then true enough, he started to have this kind of like shared experience. And I remember right after that first session, Dan at the time being an athlete, he comes to me, he is like, I was sitting at the back of the room, he said, he said, no, nobody was nodding in their head for that first one. He said, I see what you did there. Um, that's

Jesse 1:30:03

funny.

Kyle 1:30:03

But you do need to feel like things are normal in, in, in fairness to the athlete who shared the thought, it was a normal thought. It was an absolutely normal thought to have in practice. Um, so I, I think though it, it has become this, you know, I think there's a bit of like a legend around this rah and Dan has been trying to get me to bring it back year after year. And, and I, you know, part of me, and maybe it's my ego wants to bring new stuff to the program, like, you know, that's old. Like, let's forget about that. But, you know, Dan I think has done a really good job at reminding me that, um, making sure that athletes understand RAR and develop the skills that support RAR are no different than athletes going to the gym and lifting weights. Every year or working on the same stuff that they've worked on for the previous six years, there's foundational pieces that, that need to be sharpened every year. And, and, uh, this has, um, this has found its way into being one of those foundational pieces.

Jesse 1:31:04

Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's cool. I, I mean, like, so this week you were telling us to, to notice our thoughts or recognize our thoughts Yeah. And jot them down after practice. And it was just crazy how many obscene thoughts run through your mind when you're actually focusing on the thoughts. Like, there was a couple where I would change a couple ball. I'm like, all right, see your world championships. Like, I'm going home tomorrow. It's like one ball. Like, it's crazy. It's wild. Yeah. And then I just kept, kept, uh, coming back to this idea where you were like, I don't remember the number you used, I think you said like 85 or something, but like the majority of your thoughts are lies or something like that, right? Yeah.

Kyle 1:31:47

Yeah. It is interesting, like, again, step one is always just to really practice recognizing all these thoughts and feelings and, and part of it is so that you can create a little bit of space between these thoughts and, and you, so going back to the idea of kind of personifying it a little bit, like when you start to just kind of sit back or stand back and become an observer of all this that's happening, you start to realize just how, how much noise there is. And how it doesn't, it doesn't really hold any power. Like it only holds power when you actually grab hold of those thoughts and embody those thoughts and feelings and start to act on those thoughts and feelings, which, you know, unfortunately a lot of us have created those habits over their lifetime. We, we mindlessly connect ourselves to those thoughts, and we just start to embody those thoughts. We start to be the, like, how many, like, again, we, we all know guys who have had those thoughts about like, man, like I, I, I, I just need to get outta the gym. And, and sure enough, two weeks later they're outta the gym and then it's like, Ooh, like, I, like, I can't believe I just did that. Or maybe I shouldn't have done that. Or like, you know, I, I think oftentimes some of the, the worst decisions when I talk to athletes and get them to kind of reflect on decisions or regrets that they have, almost always, those regrets are associated with moments where they actually didn't recognize the thoughts and feelings that they inadvertently latched onto and ran with for a period of time. Like, those became the, the undercurrent of the decisions that they made for a period of time. And then they, when the emotions faded away and the thoughts subsided. They realized, oh no, like this thing is, this current has, has drifted me far away from my, my path.

Jesse 1:33:50

Yeah. It, and to the extreme point, it almost becomes like, or you think it becomes your identity almost. Right? Like that's where it can get really dangerous. And I, I've definitely feel like I've, I've, I haven't got quite there, but dang close a couple times in my career where you're, you're so latched, you're so intertwined that it, it feels like it's, there's no space, like you said, there's no space between you and the thought it, you, you are the thought

Kyle 1:34:18

and then the, the wild part of that, it does become your identity. And then you start to act in ways to uphold your identity. Right. But that, that's what becomes the, the scary part is so you, you, you start to embody this and all of a sudden it becomes your identity. And even though you know it's not something that you want or that you like about yourself because it's part of your identity, and because our brains and minds are working so strongly behind the scenes to uphold our identity, it starts to encourage us to act in ways to promote that. Mm-hmm. It's even more of a snowball effect.

Jesse 1:34:59

Mm-hmm.

Kyle 1:35:00

Is that why? And now try now try to untether yourself from that. That

Jesse 1:35:04

good luck. Yeah. Yeah. Good luck, TES. I'm just gonna say bye right now'cause I gotta run to practice. Okay. But Kyle, thanks so much. My pleasure. I'll uh, see you on Wednesday, but that was awesome. That was really happy practice. Awesome. Thank you. See you ts

Mathias 1:35:16

cool. Is, is that, uh, upholding your identity, part of the reason why people tend to spiral downwards or upwards?

Kyle 1:35:27

Uh, I don't know what spiraling I, I would say though, it's, it's why people have a tendency of, of predictably behaving in a certain way.

Mathias 1:35:39

I see.

Kyle 1:35:40

Like, it, it's, so, for example, I'm sure you've had enough teammates or coaches or people around you where in certain moments you probably knew how they were gonna behave before they did. And, and, and you could've almost probably written out the next 10 minutes of their life, even though for them, it, it was a complete surprise to them and it wasn't a surprise to anybody else around them. And I do think that identity piece creates these patterns of predictability for sure. Like, um, you know, like if somebody, for example, um, I, I, I think when you start looking at especially habits. That are rather unpleasant or people are, are trying to break certain habits. Like, like let's say people are trying to, um, sleep better. Like that's a common one we hear now. Like there's actually so much attention to sleep hygiene nowadays. And I, I even think young athletes are just way more aware of the importance of, of sleep and how it's a primary requirement for optimizing recovery. Um, but you have some people who identify as being like night owls, right? And some people, even though it almost doesn't exist, people like are convinced and, and they will argue with you that they are, they are a night owl. They do their most, their best work late at night, and they are the kind of people that don't need a lot of sleep. And it becomes such a deeply sort of entrenched belief that even when they try to change their sleep habits, consciously, their mind is, is feeding them all of this information that you don't need to do this. It's not necessary. You don't need much sleep. You're not, you're, you're different than everyone else. Your recovery is different. Don't worry about all this. That's, that's the undercurrent thoughts that they're being bombarded with because all those thoughts are trying to stabilize and, and, and hold true that identity that they've built over years.

Mathias 1:37:49

Is there a, um. A process by which something becomes your identity. Like a, it's like a thought, then a story, then a belief, then a then your identity or something like that.

Kyle 1:38:02

Well, yeah, I think, I think we have, um, and I'm not gonna necessarily try to put it together in this perfect side order or model, but definitely there will be thoughts that happen to all of us and then these thoughts repeated over time, uh, they'll become habitual, they'll become thought habits. Those habits are going to become beliefs in us. Those beliefs then start to entrench themselves into our identity. And then that identity tries its best to save itself and to, and to, to stabilize itself over time. So, you know, what we, what we start seeing is even like simple actions, like, um, if you were, for example, to change the five people that you spend the most time with, you would notice that just that environmental change would trigger different thoughts. And over time those different thoughts would become a little bit habitual. And then over time those automatic thoughts become beliefs. Then if you stay in that environment long enough, all of a sudden now you're gonna be probably become like a member of that, of that group. You're gonna feel like you are, you identify really deeply with this, this new environment you're in. So whether it's you changing the people you spend time with, or even like changing like your, your social media feed or like the algorithm, like if you were to, for example, pick up somebody else's algorithm and consume only the information that they're consuming that would be completely different than yours. You are going to put yourself in a, a space that's going to conjure new thoughts that could lead to new habits, that could lead to new beliefs, et cetera, which I think is so important. That's what we're trying to do with obviously athlete development, is we're trying to put them in a really great environment, be consistent and coherent with messages so that we support the development of beliefs that lead to the development of high performance identity.

Mathias 1:40:16

That's so interesting.'cause in a, in a kind of really simplified sense, you are your thoughts eventually, which is why it's really important, like we're saying, to disassociate, to create separation from the thoughts that we don't want to be Right. Because left to their own device, long term, you ruminate on them and they become ingrained in your identity.

Kyle 1:40:39

Yes. Hmm. Yeah. The vast majority of your thoughts and feelings are, are habits. Those habits were created in the past. Therefore, your future thoughts are constantly going to be the byproduct of your past. So people wonder why they can't get out of of cycles. They can't, they can't get out of the, the sludge of their past. Well, if they're not actively bringing new thoughts and conjuring up new feelings and actively developing new patterns of processing situations, the past is constantly going to be carrying them forward.

Mathias 1:41:19

That's cool. I had to be really conscious about breaking a, uh, a habitual thought or a belief that was building in me around between like grade 12 and even up to my third year university. I lost in the finals of various tournaments, like back to back to back to back. It was like five in a, like every final I got to, I lost, like, I have so many silver medals from that time period. And I was starting to build this, this story that like, I, I'm good but I can't perform in finals. And luckily it, it didn't become my identity or maybe it was on its way, but uh, it did take a lot of conscious ever, every time that thought came up, I had to like battle it essentially. Um. I won, which was, which was nice. But, but it's just so interesting, those random things that how, how, how distant from reality they can actually be, but then how real they can become once they're ingrained.

Kyle 1:42:19

Oh yeah, absolutely. And, and this is, this actually, um, connects I think closely to the conversation that we had about labeling and branding. We will quickly brand ourselves a certain way without actually really exploring that part of us. What I mean by that is you were your mind because it was trying to use a shortcut to streamline things, to make things simple. Your, your mind was quickly trying to just label you to yourself as someone who might underperform under the biggest moments. Well, h here's likely how that happened. You probably didn't have any real concrete metrics of your performance or your success. Your mind was being overly sort of simple in its approach, being kind of like a neanderthal and saying, well, I lost so I bad. Oh, I lost again. So I performed bad. I lost again, so I performed bad. I must be somebody who loses in big moments. So. You know, somebody like me, or what I do with athletes would be to, to make sure that they're not labeling themselves too quickly, especially as it relates to these identity pieces. It's like, so, you know, it'd be like, wait a second, you've lost three times. So we know that that's one piece of evidence, but we need to bring in way more evidence before we allow your mind to label you as something forever. So I would ask for things like, well, what performance metrics did you actually look at in those finals? I didn't really have any. Okay, well let's figure it out.'cause oftentimes what happens is people will say, well, I lost three finals in a row. I must not be good under pressure. And then when they dive deep into the performance analytics, they realize, well, actually my, my serving efficiency was to my standard, my, you know, whatever was to my standard. This was above standard. This was just near standard, maybe slightly below. Everything was within the, with ballpark. If anything, I actually performed well compared to my average. It just so happened that we lost. And then you can bring that information back to your identity and say, well, wait a second, hold off here. I'm not somebody who underperforms under pressure. I happened to have lost three times under pressure, but I actually maintained or built upon my, my average performance in those moments. I'm actually somebody who performs better in those moments. And it completely changes the, the narrative.

Mathias 1:45:00

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And the simplification is crazy. Like even because I wasn't winning, the opposite of winning is losing, therefore I'm a loser, right? There's winners and there's losers. That's how simple it is. If I'm, I'm not winning, therefore I'm a loser. And it didn't get bad, but it was starting to build, it's starting to snowball that, that story. Um, well, it's cool

Kyle 1:45:24

to answer really quickly. You know, I'm sure there are some coaches that probably listen to this, and, and if there are, um, you know, I, I think this leads to a really important insight or maybe, you know, call to action, let's say softly to coaches, which is, it's really important that coaches find ways of ensuring that the goals or the standards of performance are clear for athletes so they understand how to assess their performance. It has to be something that is very specific that athletes can look to so that they don't, uh, fall victim to that oversimplification. Because coaches oftentimes, and volleyball's tough, don't get me wrong, it's a sport that it's tricky sometimes to provide really specific performance indicators or standards or benchmarks for athletes. But it's really important if we want athletes to leave a game with the perspective that we're hoping them to find from that performance. If we want them to leave feeling like a winner, even though they lost because of how well they performed, we need to make sure that we give them that sort of set of glasses to look through so they can see things the way that we see things as leaders.

Mathias 1:46:44

That's cool. I even think if you even, you can even leave as a winner if you lost and perform poorly based off your response to the loss or the poor performance as well, which I think is a cool frame. That's helped me a lot.

Kyle 1:47:01

Absolutely. Especially if the objective is to learn.

Mathias 1:47:03

Yeah. Fair.

Kyle 1:47:05

I just worked with, uh, I'm working with a, a great young golfer. He's, he's looking to, to turn pro and he played in the Canadian amateur here in, in Ottawa. Gao and I caddy farmed for a couple days and the goal of that time together truly was like, forget about outcome. Like he's realistically a guy who probably could have finished top 20, I think last year we finished 21st or something and our goal was top 20. But that was just to put something on paper. But the real goal was this is the first time that him and I were going to be able to spend that much time together, a couple practice rounds together. Two, at least two rounds in the tournament if he miss, you know, made the cut or missed the cut. So we talked about this is just gonna be a, a deep dive, full immersion into mental performance and we're gonna come away with this with such a better understanding of your game. This is gonna be a turning point for your career. After the first round, he doesn't performed that great and, and obviously his brain starts to throw all of these thoughts and feelings of inferiority, of embarrassment, shame, frustration, annoyance. And, you know, I had to create some space to allow those emotions to die down just a little bit. Because, you know, it's, you can't, you can't expect somebody to rationalize with you when they're feeling strong emotions. This idea of emotional refractory period where people, when they're feeling strong emotions, they're actually unable to listen to anything that goes against the emotions they're feeling. So, uh, we give it space for the emotion to die down a little bit. And then I said, Hey, like, what happened to all this learning stuff? I said like, A, your performance wasn't that bad. Um, b there's probably like five or six really low hanging fruit that we just discovered that are going to have a profound impact on the next six months of your career. Okay. And then all of a sudden we start to find perspective. But we do need to make sure that that stuff is clear. And even when it is clear, we need to make sure that we keep beating that drum for athletes, especially young athletes, to really believe and buy into it.

Mathias 1:49:07

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Kind of related to, I, I want to move on to one last topic after this, but kind of related to earlier when you're talking about it's really difficult to maintain that long term perspective. Human beings were, were meant to, we're optimized to. Live in the present. Yeah. And to survive. Um, that was something with my club team this year that I coached their U 17 and very, very similar to investing with your actual money for retirement. I unconsciously always viewed, um, practice as like an investment too. And, uh, attempting something that you're not good at yet or something that you don't know how to do is an investment into future you. Um, and that's like such a difficult balancing club volleyball because right now is the biggest moment for these kids, even though they're only 16. Um, and they wanna win nationals and if they win nationals, that would be like the biggest moment of their lives so far. So you don't wanna discount that, but you also want to, um, in help them invest in the future. So if they're just only relying on the skills that they can do well right now, and they're not trying their spin serve because it's not gonna help them win this year, um, I think that's taken away from that, from that long term, um, view. So it's kind of a balance there. I forget what you're talking about and how that relates, but

Kyle 1:50:33

Well, it, it, it, I'm so happy you brought that up. Like it, not only is it a balance, it's, it's a, I think it's an extremely difficult balance, you know, and for me, this rightfully, I'm happy you brought it up. It it, it points to the idea of understanding competing goals. Like at every moment we have multiple goals that we're trying to achieve, and those goals are often working against one another. Like even like right now, like my goal is to, uh, deliver really great sort of messages and insights that potentially can add value to some people listening. At the same time, my goal is to do really good work with my full-time job that I need to get a few projects done. At the same time, my goal is to be a really great dad and to spend time with my kids because I wanna make sure that I'm a really positive role model. At the same time, my goal is to be a great husband with my wife. At the same time, my goal is to make sure that I stay healthy and well, and I move around and I stay active. Today the list goes on and on and on at any moment, dozens of competing goals. So it, it's a matter truly of trying to, you know, I would say prioritize and organize these goals into kind of what's important now, and, and by really trying to, or by identifying what's most important. Now you can start to compartmentalize a little bit. Right now, I am fully invested in this conversation. Why? Because this is the most important thing right now, in this moment. And when, when we end this conversation, the next most important thing is gonna be the next goal. So often time though, because we don't prioritize, we allow ourselves to get distracted by all the other goals as it relates specifically to your, to your sort of line of questioning. I think this goes back to who you surround yourself with as an athlete. You and I talked actually a lot about this. I remember now, like if this was like five years ago, I remember we talked a lot about, um, do your goals align with the goals of the people that are supporting you? This is tri this is a tricky question. It's a delicate question and I, and I wanna enter this conversation delicately because the truth is it's, that's not always the case because there are competing goals. So, you know, like you said, let's say your goal as a coach to this club team is to help this team become the best group of, of people possible. Or let's say your goal maybe is to have the most positive experience they can have in volleyball, hoping that that's going to lead to motivation for them to want to continue on in the sport. But let's say the athletes you're working with, or let's say one athlete you're working with, they don't care about fun at all. They wanna be a member of the national team. Well, there's gonna be a disconnect at some point. You trying to optimize for enjoyment and satisfaction and confidence building at some point is gonna undermine maybe their ability to receive the feedback or to have the intensity or to develop the work ethic that they feel like they need. This is no different than than certain skills, right? Like we know that, for example, the university game is different from the international game, and we know that trying to optimize success potentially at the university level could at times have athletes shy away from practicing skills that are required to succeed internationally. So how do you navigate that? And I think it's through having open conversations, I don't think there's one great answer. I don't think you can ever fully prioritize one over the other. I think if you're a really great coach, I think you're gonna create space to ensure that all of the athletes that you're coaching have opportunities to, to work towards developing the skill sets that they are going to need to achieve their later goals. Hmm. Like you wanna be a, you wanna be somebody? Uh, it's funny, I, I was writing some stuff down for the, uh, program, the Wheelchair program, wheelchair curling program, uh, this week, and I was asked for a quote on like how I see my role with the program. I reflected and I thought like, I'm only gonna be with this program for a short period of time. Like I only have so little time to have a positive impact on this program. I wanna do like the people before me and, and leave this program in a better place than when I found it. And, and I really do feel like there's a lot of similarities with coaches. I, I, I wanna make sure I have the privilege of helping to shape and support this individual's journey towards the goals that they are looking to achieve. I need to find a way to make sure that in the short time that I have with them, that they leave better off than, than when they joined. And that could be because of life skills, technical skills, um, you know, sports specific skills. It could be anything. But I do think there is a, a give and take, and I do think it's an open conversation asking about goals, making sure that's clarity, making sure that it's constantly being discussed, checking in to ensure that athletes are being, are feeling valued constantly. Making sure that you're asking tough questions and not making any assumptions.

Mathias 1:56:08

Yeah, that's really, really cool. Cool point. I think it's important for athletes to decide for themselves, um, where their priorities are. Um, because. Now, which with just a little instant reflection here. My goal, like I didn't win at all in club volleyball in terms of just medals and, and podiums. I had a really diet club season or club career. Uh, I have won national championship at eSports. Uh, I didn't win anything internationally, but I was just on a constant upward trajectory in terms of the teams that I was making. I had never been cut from a team in my whole career, or I never was until I got injured and couldn't play anymore. Um, and I think that was, that was because that was the approach I took was just invest, invest, invest, invest, invest. It's not about right now, I don't care if we win this tournament. I need to get better. I need to get better. And that's why, that was the trajectory of my career. If some players are optimizing for winning, they probably would win, would win a lot more for me. Maybe they would get to the same level and be winners. Um, but it's just interesting now that I see where I was investing my, my time, um, and what I was prioritizing, how that was a direct influence on, on my career.

Kyle 1:57:29

Yeah, that's a super cool sort of in the moment reflection.

Mathias 1:57:32

Yeah. Okay. You, you actually have a couple more minutes here, Kyle, or

Kyle 1:57:37

I got, I got like two more minutes. Yeah, let's just do one more.

Mathias 1:57:40

Okay. Okay. My, okay. Uh, let's, let's wrap this thing up with a little, a little reflection. What. What do you see happening in the world of mental performance that is common practice, um, that you would change if you could

Kyle 1:58:01

ha Yeah. Um, so I will say that I think a lot of pe I, I think, I think there are so many great intentions in the space of mental performance. Like I really do wanna start there. And I, I think all of those great intentions though, at times can lack structure or they can lack concreteness. Like I, I think one of the things that if, again, if I could wave a magic wand, um, I, I really do think it's, it's necessary for practitioners in the space of mental performance to find ways of making, um, these skills more concrete and finding ways to assess the impact of the work that they're doing with athletes. And I, and I know, I, I know, you know, if, if some mental performance consultants were to hear that they, there'd be, you know, conversations or debates about, well, you know, how can you go about assessing reliably? And you know, there, there, there's a lack of valid measures. And, um, I will say though, that. Proxy measurements are really important to use when looking at high performance in practical terms. So for example, I was chatting with Dan about this yesterday. I don't know what the data is, but having watched all of VNL, I would guess that Canada would be in the top five, um, of all nations as it relates to, uh, timeout effectiveness. So somebody would say, well, what does that even mean, timeout effectiveness? Well, if we actually looked at, let's call it the three points after every timeout that's taken, and if we did an average point per play following timeouts, I bet you Canada is in the top five there. So then I guess the question becomes, what is that a reflection of? Well, in my opinion, that could be a reflection of, um, the clarity and quality of instruction and understanding of, of what to do next that came, or that resulted from the timeout. It could also be, um, so it could be a, a source of directing focus, narrowing attention. It could be source of, of bringing the team together and actually creating more cohesion, whether it be on the task or whether it be on the group. Right there, there are these psychological pieces that could be measured sort of by proxy to using some of these performance analytics that are easily available. Just like what's a team's, what's a team's, um, relative efficiency or points per possession, points per play, uh, when they're in the red zone. This is something that we've talked a lot about in volleyball. Like there's something there like that literally is how, how well does a team, uh, how well are they able to get across the goal line? Like how, well, when they're in the red zone in football, how often do they score per, per possession In the red zone, there's something there that is psychological in nature, especially when you start to compare it to standard performance metrics. So if on average, for example, team Canada averages X per point, well if, if, if their number is statistically greater or lesser in these moments of high criticality or high importance, we can assume that there's something psychological that is happening there. And this is where I think mental performance really does need to go. Like we need to collaborate really closely with coaches and performance analysts to be able to start to make, I would say like informed, informed guesses as to what certain performance metrics could suggest or inform us as it relates to like, the toughness of a team or the focus of a team or the, the, the determination of a team or the ability to stay connected and engaged on task. The cohesion of a team. Like in some sports, they've done a pretty good job at this, right? So like there's some, there are some, uh, analytics in, in sports like basketball or baseball where it's like, uh, wins above replacement when a, when somebody's on the field or somebody's on the court, the team is just better off and they could even tease out the impact of their own individual performance, right? So for example, a guy like Steph Curry, when he's on the court, his team is just way better shade. Gil just Alexander his team is way be better even when you remove his contributions offensively. Like there's ways of teasing that stuff out, which would suggest, well, when, when he's on the court, if you take away his scoring and you take away his defense and the team is still better, why is that? He's obviously bringing something to, he's bringing a presence to the court. He's bringing, he's, he, he, he might be coordinating or quarterbacking the team. He's bringing a leadership, he's bringing something there. And in volleyball, for example, we haven't, we haven't gone there yet. I think, I think a lot of people, I, I do believe some nations are probably there. I won't be surprised if, if some of the more advanced nations are there. I wouldn't be surprised if the US is there with their performance analytics. They're probably working with some, some big corporations there, and they're able to tease out and understand the game in different ways than other nations. Hmm. I do. I do think though every sport has probably a half dozen or a dozen of these opportunities to better understand the intangible parts of performance.

Mathias 2:04:15

That would be cool. Seeing those statistics,

Kyle 2:04:19

like we, you know, we're trying to horse around with it a little bit in curling. Like we, we just need more data points. Like we wanna see in moments of high criticality, our athletes do they have the same shooting percentage as in sort of regular moments of, of low pressure. We've been trying to get athletes to start to even, um, retroactively after a game rate, moments of perceived pressure. So instead of rate of perceived exertion, RPE, we talk about RPP rate of perceived pressure. So if you throw 16 shots in a game, I want you to write down for each shot what your RPP was, not your RPE, and then we can start to find some correlations. Wow. Like this person, when they're, as their rate of perceived pressure goes up, they're shooting percentage drops. Yeah.

Mathias 2:05:08

Because being clutch is being the same as always. Right. Actually

Kyle 2:05:12

being clutch according to the literature is actually going above your performance average. Mm-hmm. Which is, you know, extremely rare.

Mathias 2:05:20

Yeah.

Kyle 2:05:21

Like, uh, most people think they need to be clutch to win championships when in fact they just, they just don't, they just need to not choke. Yeah. Like that. And that's often a message that I've shared is you just need to be somewhere in your performance bandwidth, even if it's at the bottom range, that's probably going to be good enough for you to achieve the vast majority of your goals.

Mathias 2:05:44

Right. That was amazing. Kyle, thank you so much for coming on. It was awesome chatting with you again.

Kyle 2:05:52

Um, I'm, I'm, I'm really, truly grateful to, to be on, uh, and I'm really pumped for you guys for doing this. Like, uh, it's, it's cool to see the impact that it's having at different levels. Uh, and it's so cool that a guy like you as a platform now to be able to, uh, bring some of this to, to so many listeners. So thanks again. I really appreciate it.

Mathias 2:06:10

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Alrighty, I think that wraps up episode number 41 of the Pit to Pro Podcast. Thank you everyone for listening and signing off.

2:06:22

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