Episode 6: Acknowledge, Accept, Adjust
Vanessa Shannon on How to Build Emotional Agility and Better Ride the Waves of Life
About This Episode
Today’s guest is Dr. Vanessa Shannon (@cardinalmindset). Vanessa has served as the Director of Mental Performance for the University of Louisville Athletic Department and Norton Sports Health since October 2015.
Prior to moving to Louisville, Vanessa spent two years at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, FL, where she served as the Mental Conditioning Coach for several programs, coordinated Psychological Test Preparation for IMG’s NFL Combine Training Program, and served as a Vision Training Coach for the Academy’s Major League Baseball Off-Season Training Program.
Dr. Shannon was also an Assistant Professor of Sport and Exercise Psychology at West Virginia University, and prior to that was the Department Chair of Exercise and Sport Sciences at Tennessee Wesleyan University.She holds a PhD in Kinesiology, Recreation, and Sports Studies with a specialization in Sport Psychology and concentration in Counseling from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and competed as a member of the Women’s volleyball team while attending Rice University.
This episode, we deep dive into the necessity of emotional agility. Vanessa outlines the consequences of neglecting these important tools, and we spend a ton of time laying out an approach to developing higher levels of emotional intelligence. The episode is PACKED with really clear and concrete tactics for building awareness and creating capacity when it comes to your emotional life! Enjoy
Links and Resources
Permission to Feel - Marc Brackett
Unlocking Us with Marc Brackett
The Gift and Power of Emotional Courage - Susan David
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
My Secret to Staying Focused Under Pressure - Russell Wilson
Episode Transcript
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
emotions, play, permission to feel, emotional agility, awareness, stuck, stress response
Vanessa Shannon 00:00
Squeeze them, drop them, squeeze them, drop them. And now I'm able to potentially create a relaxation response. But more importantly, I'm focused on things that I can control and do in that moment and ways that I can adjust rather than being kind of on the continual hook of thinking about how I feel.
Pete Kadushin 00:29
Welcome to the mental training lab. I'm Pete Kadushin, your host and my job is to have fun conversations that leave you with actionable tools, little experiments that will help you improve your mindset and mental skills so that you can do the things you love at a higher level. Today's guest is Dr. Vanessa Shannon at Cardinal Mindset on Instagram and Twitter. Vanessa has served as the director of mental performance for the University of Louisville athletic department and Norton Sports Health since October 2015. Prior to Louisville, Vanessa spent two years at the IMG Academy down in Bradenton, Florida where she served as the mental conditioning coach for several programs and coordinated the psychological test preparation for IMG's NFL combine training program. She also was experienced as an assistant professor of Sport and Exercise Psychology at West Virginia University, which is where we met and part of that was the department chair of Exercise and Sport Science at Tennessee Wesleyan University. She holds get ready for this. It's a long one, a PhD in kinesiology, recreation and Sports Studies with a specialization in sports psychology and the concentration in counseling from the University of Tennessee Knoxville, and she competed as a member of the women's volleyball team while attending Rice University. This episode, we deep dive into the necessity of emotional agility. Vanessa outlines the consequences of neglecting your emotional experience. And then we spend a ton of time laying out an approach to developing higher levels of emotional intelligence and emotional agility. There's simply so much packed into this episode. And if you're looking for links to any of the books, or talks or concepts we discussed, you can find the show notes at MTL dot Academy. All right, No more waiting. It's showtime. Vanessa, I'm so excited to have you on the mental training lab. Thank you so much for being here.
Vanessa Shannon 02:11
I'm excited to be here.
Pete Kadushin 02:13
So when I asked you what topic you wanted to dig in on, you immediately came back with emotional intelligence and emotional agility. And so with that, as the backdrop, I'm curious if you have a story that really demonstrates the positive consequences of really addressing these two skills, or if you have a story that shows sort of the catastrophic consequences that can happen if an athlete or a coach was to ignore these two things.
Vanessa Shannon 02:39
I think unfortunately, it's easier at the moment to have a catastrophic example, so to speak. I can certainly come up with some positive examples, because it's definitely something that I've put at the forefront of the work that I do with our athletes here at the University of Louisville, in general, and particularly over the last year, but I get to travel with many of our teams, and I was traveling with one of our teams, and this was actually pre COVID I guess that's how we're gonna start referring to things as pre and post COVID. So this was a couple of years ago. I'd been here for a couple of years. I traveled with this team a couple of times, and, and, you know, knew the team pretty well. And we were on our second game of a road trip. So we had played on, you know, probably a Thursday or Friday, now playing on a Saturday or Sunday, and actually had had the more difficult challenge on the first game. And we're facing it, you know, a still challenging opponent but but definitely perceived as less challenging. And we were at practice. And all of a sudden, I looked over and one of our best players and one of our captains just had tears streaming down her face, and I walked towards her. And as I started to approach her, the tears got stronger, and she kind of kicked into sobbing. And I as I got closer and closer, I could see her kind of tense up. And when I got next to her, I just you know, I just said really calmly, Hey, what's going on? Which is what I usually say because you can say things in that moment that sound completely ridiculous, right? Like, how are you feeling? Or, is everything okay? And obviously, everything's not okay, who knows what they're feeling, right? So I just said, Hey, how you doing? What's going on? And, and she just looked at me and said, I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine, literally three times, and then proceeded to continue to practice and just tears streaming down her face, sobbing. And so you know, we we then kind of collected our things. We went back to the hotel. I didn't say anything about it. She didn't say anything about it. Played the next game. And then the next week I was meeting with the team did a team session with a team and she was walking out and she was kind of, you know, straggling at the end and I just walked up to her and I said, do we want to talk about, you know, practice the other day, or do we just think it was kind of a one off thing? And? And she said, No, no, we should probably talk about it and, and it ultimately was just the manifestation of her suppressing emotions for a long period of time. And they just came out in a really ineffective way at an unhelpful time.
Pete Kadushin 05:22
There's there's a couple things that stand out here. First, the elegance of a simple question, asked, honestly. Because it's so easy to bring accidental judgment to the table with how are you feeling? Are you okay? As if you needed to be okay, right then. And so I love that piece. And then to highlight it as sort of the suppression of the long term suppression of emotion, which is something I think that we collectively but certainly athletes are trained to do, and that it's got to go somewhere, it's got to come out at some point, and that it showed up in the middle of a practice and I have to imagine affected how the the next performance went for that athlete.
Vanessa Shannon 06:02
Absolutely. Yeah. And and I love the fact that you kind of touched on the question and what to ask in that moment. And certainly, you know, we all are still learning as we're kind of bumbling through this field of peak performance and performance psychology and, and I definitely make mistakes still and ask the wrong question. But I do think it's important to be thoughtful in that moment, to try and kind of really quickly, in your mind triangulate the data that you have about that individual, and maybe what is the best way to approach them? Yeah, and and ultimately, there is a lot of evidence to support the fact that suppressing emotions does come out in ineffective ways, and then it tends to linger. And so it did, right in that moment, it affected her in practice, and then the next day in practice, and they do self evaluations, this team after every match. And so it was really interesting to see. And one of the things that we've added in time, as I've as I've worked with that program, is some components of mindset, or some components of emotional management, emotional control. And so certainly, she was self aware enough to realize that it had impacted her performance as well.
Pete Kadushin 07:13
Which, again, being able to work from that place of awareness first, and certainly something that I think we'll dig into as we move into this conversation around sort of the intelligence evolving into agility, potentially. But before we get there, I'm always curious about your own performance journey. And so if you had to write your own story, if if you could give me some of the relevant chapter titles, or if you were going to write section titles, what are a few of the significant ones around your own performance experience?
Vanessa Shannon 07:47
Oh, man, which section or chapter titles. One would probably be an expression that actually my mom taught me, which is I'm not okay, but I will be. And that would be the the chapter title of really my Collegiate Athletic experience. I played volleyball at Rice University, and I grew up in Southern California, playing very competitive volleyball and winning a lot. I was lucky enough to be a member of a club, and we won a lot. And I chose to go to rice, because I wanted to have the division one athletic experience. But I also wanted rigorous academics. And it's not to say that, you know, all colleges can't provide rigorous academic experiences, but I want to kind of an Ivy League feel division one athletics. And that's not to say the Ivy League is a division one athletics, because it is, but it was the right fit for me. But I went there. And we were in the Southwest Conference at the time, which was all Texas schools, and we went 0/10, my freshman year, and I also, unfortunately, lost one of my best friends from high school that year. And that was actually my first lesson in emotional agility to be honest, because people would ask me all the time, how are you? And I finally told my mom, the next person who asks me how I am, I'm probably going to lose my mind and scream and yell. And so she kind of said to me, you know, what, why don't you do this? Why don't you instead say I'm not okay, but I will be. So I think one of my chapters would certainly be I'm not okay, but I will be. My more recent performance journey chapter would probably be when the body fails, but the mind still goes or something like that, because I still play sand volleyball two nights a week, and I think I have really good volleyball IQ, but my body will just not move as quickly as my mind thinks. So those are the two that that come to mind.
Pete Kadushin 09:38
You're the wily veteran now.
Vanessa Shannon 09:41
I don't know if I'm wily. I am I'm the wise veteran. Yeah, that's what I would say.
Pete Kadushin 09:49
And so the the first is I'm not okay, but I will be. And then the second is when the body fails, but the mind is sharp. The mind is there. I wonder how your own performance experience, and then certainly as its evolved into the the performance coaching that you're doing, how does your own experience shape the work that you do with athletes on a day-to-day basis?
Vanessa Shannon 10:13
You know, that's a great question. I think, you know, I think ultimately, all of us take the lessons that we've learned, and then we kind of try and, you know, dissect them and figure out what it was about the situation and the experience that taught us what we learned from it. And and then we use that accordingly. I think, for me, probably the greatest thing that I learned, in my experience as an athlete was empathy. And just the understanding that so many people have so many different experiences, and the influence that athletic identity can have on an individual's, you know, entire multi dimensional self concept and life in general at this level, in particular, and in high school, and, and in college. And I could continue on. So I could say it's about this level, but it really happens in different ways, and has different nuances across the way. And just understanding that the work that I do has to take the whole person into consideration, I think it you know, we want to sometimes just isolate the athlete as the athlete in a vacuum, and then that won't do the trick. You won't have all of the information that you need to actually serve the athlete in the best possible way. So I would have to say, empathy and understanding, you know, and I say that, you know, kind of ironically, because I think at times, I don't practice it well with myself. The later chapter title would exemplify that. I still go out every week with the expectation that my body can do more than it can and then I have to manage expectations or reality comes crashing down, I guess, is a better way of putting it.
Pete Kadushin 11:54
Yeah, I always try and explain to the clients I work with the friends that I talked to that it really my entire experience and performance psychology is selfish. They got, I want to be happier, healthier and better at performing. And so I'm just using myself as patient zero. And then you know, I can I can square that up with my my morality by then feeling like I can share those lessons as I go on. But you really speak to the idea that we ought to practice the tools that we're trying to share with others, and that it's certainly also not perfect. And so it's always a constant work in progress. And the thing that stands out to me is sort of the thread of emotional agility. And I think empathy for me certainly lands in the bucket of emotional intelligence, that capacity to understand as if you are someone without inhabiting their space or feeling that sense of sympathy, like, well, that must be really hard for you. And so for you, the the carryover lesson of understanding, teammates or friends or family members own individual worlds, being able to project yourself out into that space, is something that you then can draw on in the work that you're doing. And I'm sure it, it shows for the clients and the athletes that you work with.
Vanessa Shannon 13:15
I hope so I hope so I was I was, you know, I was that athlete that you spoke to earlier, when we talk about kind of the sport ethic or the sport ethos in this world where you got to grit it out, and you got to find a way, and you have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and and win at all costs and sacrifice your body for the team. And I was absolutely and and what I realized I was absolutely that person in high school, and felt like I couldn't make mistakes, and all eyes were on me and the expectations were high. And then the irony is, as I reflect back, I used to jokingly say that I got into this because I was a mental nightmare. And I had no ability to maximize my potential via my mental performance. But the irony is actually in high school, I recall, like a very specific, simple incident, but I know I was doing it many times, where my serve wasn't going well. I was hitting into the tape and under the net a lot. And I remember my dad telling me it's your toss. It's your toss, just focus on your toss. And he would sit at the back of the gym. And when I would go back to serve, he would say, good toss, right before I served, and I thought oh my gosh, I have to tell him to stop doing that. And what I realized was he actually that was my first experience with just changing my thoughts and directing them neutrally at the task and aiming them at success and my process and what I needed to do to be successful. And it changed my serve. And then I think in time because of that I just started adopting that. You know, if I went back there to serve area four, I'd say serve area four headed to area four, focus on area four. And so you know the truth of the matter is I've been doing this a long time with myself, but I just hadn't been giving myself the same grace that I think I've now learned, you have to give yourself and I grant to our athletes, which is, sometimes you're going to go back there and think about your toss and be really effective with your toss. And sometimes you're going to go back there and think about the fact that if you hit it into the net, your team might not win a national championship. And that's going to happen, and that's okay. And you can find a way to make that serve and be effective anyway. So, you know, it took me I would say, till my freshman year of college to really become more emotionally agile. And I think, although it was a terrible experience for me, at the time, and terribly sad to have lost a friend, it taught me this lesson, that self compassion, and emotional intelligence, and your self awareness are all so important in your ability to be successful and happy and resilient and all of the things that we all know are important in life.
Pete Kadushin 15:59
You mentioned the thinking of the athlete as a human being, and that you have to do that in order to effectively engage a person like that in a performance, a mental performance coaching setting. But there are athletes who would prefer that you ignore the human and just focus on the athlete. No, no, no, no, we're here to talk about my toss. We're not here to talk about that thing that's happening, because I just lost a friend or broke up with my boyfriend or girlfriend or, etc. And we're getting more sort of of the the the tangled web here because not only do we have empathy, but you mentioned self compassion, and self awareness. And what's interesting is that idea that you could use the tools of mental performance, around shifting thoughts or moving your attention or controlling your energy. But if you're doing it with sort of that traditional sport, ethos of toughed it out dreaded out, ignore the stuff that you don't like, they can be as much a weapon as they are a tool. And that it wasn't until you were able to infuse a little bit of softness and self compassion into your own experience, that it really unlocked the full potential of having trained your mind but also your heart age. Does that tracking?
Vanessa Shannon 17:09
Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. And I think, you know, when I reflect down back on the question that you asked about, what did your own sports journey kind of teach you? Or how does it allow you to better connect and interact with the student athletes that you work with today? I think the other piece of it is vulnerability, right? And the willingness to be vulnerable enough to share that exact journey with them and say, Look, like I was like you, I thought, like you, I felt like you. And it took me longer than it's taking you now to you know, to ask for help or to work on it or to fix it. But but certainly that is exactly, it's it's that you can have that peace of knowing what to think and how to be most effective. But if you aren't willing to allow for the fact that every once in a while, you're gonna make a mistake, and that's okay, then it's probably not going to work for you.
Pete Kadushin 18:03
I love the the permission that's built into that, that I don't have to be a robot as your mental performance coach, and that you don't have to be a robot as an athlete. And that as you're walking to the back, and getting ready to serve with potentially a national championship on the line, that it's okay if your thought process isn't perfect, if it's not clean, and efficient and potent, and it's really about how you handle the thought, Oh, my God, this is it. I could screw this up. It's how you handle that. And give yourself grace, more so than did you start with the laser focus? And are you in flow and all of that stuff?
Vanessa Shannon 18:41
Yeah, I think unfortunately, what happens is and what's captured and mediated when athletes are watching professional athletes or other athletes on TV, or there's moments where all the you know, ducks are in a row, and everything lines up perfectly. And and now I wouldn't, you know, I would argue and I love it. We're hearing more and more often professional athletes coming out and talking about their struggles and acknowledging their struggles. But you know, I speak to our student athletes here and I say, you know, you all we all tweet the success. But how many of you actually tweet the disruption or tweet the failure? Right? How many of you take to Twitter if you go, you know, to 2 for 20 in a week in baseball, and a three game series on the weekend, or a four game series on the weekend and a midweek game, nobody does that. So I think it is about giving them permission. And I know at some point, we'll talk about Dr. Mark Brackets, but permission to feel but I'm very jealous of the fact that he came up with that expression first, and he marketed it first because it's so poignant and it's so profound, just giving people the permission to feel.
Pete Kadushin 19:47
Yeah, I mean, it's time to go there. And I also love that when I asked you to pass over some resources so that I could get on your level around emotional agility and emotional intelligence that you sent that over because I was actually introduced to him through Unlocking Us Brene Brown's podcast, and so this combination of vulnerability and then the permission to experience what you experienced as you're experiencing it is, I think, a particularly potent human tool that then certainly spills over into the athletic context. And, and so to bring in some of Mark Bracket's work, you know, he has the tool ruler. And I'd love to know, well, first, we can rule out what ruler is. And then I'd love to know how that plays out if you use it with the athletes and coaches you work with, or if it's kind of floating in the background as you engage them.
Vanessa Shannon 20:41
You know, it's kind of floating in the background more so I would say. I love his ruler tool, because it's an acronym for recognizing, understanding, labeling, expressing and regulating. And so it's all about kind of this process of what we really should be doing with emotions. And what we're not doing with emotions. So I think it's a great tool. And it's a great acronym, it's a sticky message. It's, I would say I've taken ruler, or I've taken what he and what also Dr. Susan, Susan David talks about in her book, emotional agility, as well as really Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. And I use three A's instead. So we talk about acknowledging, accepting and adjusting. And so I'm missing some of the pieces there that requires I'm making the assumption that that our student athletes here can actually accurately label their emotions, because that's one piece of the ruler, this idea that we have to label emotions accurately. But it is giving them again, that permission to feel or that path to emotional agility by let me acknowledge how I'm feeling, let me accept that it's normal, I think we could probably have a third or fourth really A in there, which would be let me appreciate that, even though it's normal, it may not be super helpful in this moment. And so let me find a way to adjust to it. And let me find a way to be successful, despite the emotion if I can't make the emotion go away in this moment. But ruler, I think is a great tool. Again, it's recognizing emotions in not just yourself, but others. So we kind of bridge that gap between emotional intelligence. A lot of times, I think we think of emotional intelligence as just awareness of ourselves. But it's about awareness of not just ourselves, but others. Understanding kind of, again, causes and consequences of emotion. So that's that acceptance piece, this idea that there's a reason you're feeling the way that you're feeling. That's a big hang up a lot of times for people. They can't figure out why they're feeling that way. They don't think they should be feeling that way. Again, they don't believe they deserve to be feeling that way. And then L is labeling emotions accurately, E is expressing emotions. So having the willingness and again, you know, we talked about vulnerability, and Brene Brown. And I think, again, we could tie Dr. Susan David's work in here in terms of courage. And I know Brene Brown speaks to that, too, having the courage to express your emotions, to embrace your emotions, and then the R is regulating emotions effectively. So for me, again, that's just kind of the adjustment piece.
Pete Kadushin 23:23
There's, there's so much fun stuff to dig into. I'm ready. And I think what stands out to me the sort of the evolution that I, again, I don't speak directly to clients on this, but it's always hovering in the background, is this shift from first emotional literacy. Right? Do, do I know what that emotion is? And that's really the recognize and understand, right? So a lot of times I'll ask a client, what are you feeling? Or where do you feel that in your body? And they go, I don't know. And if we can't get past that, right then the the acknowledge pieces already, we're already gone. That's, that's really the awareness building, and then putting language to something that's really difficult to put language to sometimes. Right, emotions are inherently non logical, right? That searching for why sometimes you come up with I don't know why I was angry, but I was. And so starting from literacy, and then building into this intelligence, it's not just now can I put a label to it? But can I also understand why it's here and then kind of consider how it's impacting me or how it's impacting others? And then from intelligence really into fitness. Right, so I can be emotionally intelligent, but if I didn't sleep well, last night, I'm not emotionally fit. If I didn't eat well, if there's some sort of small tragedy happening or a large tragedy happening in my life, I'm not going to have access to those tools and skills in the same way. And so trying to understand where a client and athlete a coach is at and then building from those three A's or four A's now? Or building from ruler
Vanessa Shannon 25:03
Five
Pete Kadushin 25:03
Five we're up to five
Vanessa Shannon 25:04
Because you brought up awareness. So yeah,
Pete Kadushin 25:08
We're by the time we're done, we're gonna have like seven or eight
Vanessa Shannon 25:11
Yeah, we're gonna have to write a book.
Pete Kadushin 25:13
I'm in. Let's do it. So really figuring out then where are they at. Is it is the hose kinked at understanding and labeling? Is it, that they can label it, but then they don't know how and when to express it? Because sometimes writing a six paragraph Facebook post is not the appropriate way to express whatever you're feeling and going to a trusted friend going to somebody like you or if coach you have a good relationship with them that maybe that's a more appropriate time and place to express something. And, and so I'm guessing I'm wondering then, based on sort of this the set of frameworks that you've rolled out, what do you do in order to help build someone's emotional intelligence or emotional agility? What does it look like to actually lift some of those weights with our heart?
Vanessa Shannon 26:08
Yeah, I think you bring up a good point, and there are some other A's in there are too because I would say I start with the awareness piece, right? We kind of have to, we have to start there. And I think you, you know, you spoke to this and it's it's so important to acknowledge and remember that there are things within us as well, as things external of us, that can diminish our awareness at times. So it's lack of recovery, lack of sleep, increased stressors, a pandemic as an example. And so the first thing is sort of to check in on the awareness. Are they even aware that they are feeling some kind of way? And are they aware that how they're feeling may be actually influencing their behavior or their performance? And understanding, again, right there, there has to be empathy and there has to be understanding and acceptance that it's it's normal, given the circumstances that they may not be aware.
Pete Kadushin 27:03
And so I want to point to this, right here. If you are suddenly aware, and then as soon as you're aware of something you're feeling, you go, nah, that sucks, or it's inappropriate, I hate it, I don't want that. We're stuck, right? That's where the hose is kinked. An athlete won't be able to move forward from there, and so they're just going to be constantly stuck in this cycle of, I feel like crap, oh, here's that thing. No, I don't like it, and then ignore it for a little while, it pops back up. And so that opportunity to offer some self compassion, right, given the circumstances we're in it makes sense that I might feel this is really step one. And if you can't get past that, then do not pass go do not collect the reward of anything else related to intelligent reward.
Vanessa Shannon 27:49
Don't collect the reward of resilience, happiness, enjoyment, anything. Yeah, no, and that's the ticket, right? That if they know how they're feeling, and you're exactly right, and I talk about this. I think, you know, in the work that I'm doing here with our athletes, I think we prior even to the pandemic, because we're seeing a shift in this during it, because of this external stressor for everybody that people can't control. They can only control their behavior related to it. I would, you know, argue there we have our athletes are pretty self aware. We work on that a lot. We work on it a lot. But it's the acknowledgement and the acceptance piece. It's the acceptance piece where they really get stuck. If they've been trained their whole lives, and usually not purposely, right. It's by the simple things that parents and coaches and teachers say. I've even said them, I've caught them, you know, myself saying them to my nephews or to my nieces, or to my friends, kids, where we say something like, oh, there's nothing to be nervous about, oh, there's nothing to be afraid of. And the next thing we know, again, we've impeded that permission, right? We've we've not granted that permission. In fact, we've suggested to them that how they feel is not normal, and that other people may not feel that way. So you know, you've got the awareness piece, you have the acknowledgment piece, which is the willingness to actually say it out loud. And at in your example, you did that. But if we don't get to the acceptance piece of and it's okay to feel that way, then you're just stuck in this cycle to your point of, well, I feel some kind of way, but it's not cool to feel that way, so I'm just going to try and pretend like I don't. And then you can see how that vicious cycle over and over just builds and builds. And then it comes out and really ineffective ways.
Pete Kadushin 29:33
Well, and the TED talk that you sent over a by Susan David, right, she she uses some really sticky language like the tyranny of positivity. Right, this idea that we've kind of polished everything and you alluded earlier to this idea that on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, whatever other cool social media there is out there. Everything's polished, right? Everything has been run through our own emotional filter that says, that's okay to share. That's not okay. And so we end up with this sense that if unless we have this very narrow band of positive emotion, that's the only thing that's okay to be experiencing and expressing. And anything else needs to either be ignored or immediately adjusted. And I can't just allow it to be to, you kind of run its course. And if we can't get to that acceptance piece, right, going back to that very first thing you shared around, I'm not okay, and I will be. Right, acknowledging in part of that, that mantra, I imagine is accepting that you're not okay right now, right? That you can't, you can't share it unless you're like, nah I'm not okay. And that's okay. This was a big piece for me, when I started learning about Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, was the idea that the full catastrophe, the whole range of the emotional palette, is really what we were designed with, we were installed with that software for a reason. And that not only is it appropriate to feel sort of the other colored emotions, right, so the the frustrations and the stresses and the angers, but also the sads and the griefs that all of that stuff isn't just sort of, like unfortunate byproduct that we got to try and clip out and throw in the trash. Right? That it's, it's really important to have and to appreciate for what it is, even though it's not pleasant. Right, but that that discomfort is actually really a part of our whole experience of living. And without it, we would not only would we be less interesting, but we'd also be less effective.
Vanessa Shannon 31:34
Absolutely, yeah. And you touched on, you know, a couple of things to tie back to as well in terms of in Mark Bracket's book, he uses kind of energy and pleasantness as, as this graph to create these categories of emotions. And, and his, you know, suggestion there, which is what everybody in the literature on this topic and emotional intelligence and emotional agility is suggesting, and exactly what you suggested is it we can kind of categorize them, but it's to understand them, it's not to judge them, right. So it's not to categorize them as good and bad emotions. It's simply to say, these are the types of emotions we have, and these might be why we might be experiencing those emotions, and these are what those emotions might tell us. Susan David talks about emotions being data, not directives, right? And so if we try and ignore that data, then we can't adjust, we can't take action, we can't change our situation. And I love what Mark Bracket talks about in his book, which is it's not about eliminating one category of emotion. It's about understanding that life is about having a balance of those emotions. And I'm going to misquote her and it's unfortunate, because it's another sticky quote from Susan David's TED Talk. But I believe she says something to the effect of discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life. Right. So that is part of it, it's part of it. And we have to be okay with it. And we have to accept it and understand it. And I've always really lived kind of on that premise that it's quite difficult to understand these things that we categorize as good emotions, if we have no experience with the things that we've categorized as bad emotions. So even if you think about it in a binary way, like that, they're both necessary then, because we can't have one without the other.
Pete Kadushin 33:28
Couple of points. You nailed that quote from the TED Talk. And the other thing that really stood out to me, she said, I had a client Tell me once, I don't want to try because I don't want to feel disappointed. Said another one said, I just want this feeling to go away. And she paused and she said, You have dead people's goals. And everybody laughed at the TED Talk, it was delivered wonderfully and said, Look, only dead people get unwanted or inconvenient or don't get unwanted or inconvenience by their feelings. You can't avoid these things as part of life. And so that idea, then that discomfort is the price of admission to any sort of meaning. And then to go back to your your graph, right? So you were talking about having energy on the y axis and then pleasantness on the x axis, right, so this idea that you could have high energy positive, high energy negative, low energy positive, and then low energy negative experiences, these emotions, and positive and negative carry some judgment in them, even though you might try and strip it out. Right, the idea that well I want the positive stuff. I don't want the negative stuff. And the point you're making and the point that Mark Brackett makes is that it's not to avoid. We don't want to categorize so that we can eliminate because Susan David said we can't and my my felt experience says that we can't. Instead it's really about balancing, it's finding a way to do more of the things that allow us to feel joy, to have some of those positive high energy, low energy and to recognize that we have control over some of the things that might be bringing us the suffering and the unpleasantness.
Vanessa Shannon 35:06
Absolutely, yeah. You know, and as you speak to that too Pete, I think, as we talk about kind of pleasantness and finding ways to create situations or experience situations or understand situations so that we can have more of those emotions that lie in the pleasantness piece of things. I think, you know, one thing that has to be addressed is, we have this positive psychology movement, and it kind of got misinterpreted, right? Like we had this research come out and this information come out, and these voices come out. And these minds start to talk about these things, and write books on these things and discuss these things. And unfortunately, when it was consumed, either by all of us, or I don't know whether it was just by mainstream media, I don't know. But when then it was re kind of presented back to everybody, it was like, well, you just have to be positive all the time. That's the ticket, right? The ticket to happiness is just be positive all the time, which is a real impossibility. There's another good TED talk that I should mention by Russell Wilson, I don't know if you've heard it, but he did a TED talk. I think it's called the secret to my focus under pressure or something like that, I'm going to get the title wrong. But it's a bit about his work in this space, with Trevor Moad, who is his mental conditioning coach, who he's worked with for a long time, but it's about neutral thinking. And it's a really interesting thing, I think, to be coming out, particularly from Russell Wilson, because he even acknowledges in the TED Talk, I'm a pretty positive guy, like I am that guy where people think they look to me for positivity, it's just in my nature. I'm the guy who comes into the room and kind of makes everybody smile. And, and he even acknowledges that he said, but you can't be that way all the time. It's impossible. It's it's difficult. Life makes it so that it's not possible. And I think that's why I love that quote by Susan David, where she just basically says discomfort as part of it. Right? It's about understanding that that's part of it.
Pete Kadushin 37:18
Building off of something else that she said in her TED Talk, she she mentioned that rigidity in the face of complexity is toxic. And she was speaking specifically about emotional rigidity, this idea that I would either be stuck in sort of an immediate stimulus response, this thing happens, and I'm angry, this thing happens and I'm pleasured, and I'm happy, or frustrated, or whatever else, that that rigidity is a real problem. But I also hear from coaches and athletes all the time, this mantra of don't get too high, don't get too low. And so I wonder how you, I guess how those things mash up for you. And And is there a way that those two things could live together? Or are they in conflict, right, this idea that we could be emotionally agile, and that we also don't want to be riding the roller coaster up and down all the time? Or, again, maybe we do and that's just my own bias, or I've adopted what coaches and athletes keep saying over and over again?
Vanessa Shannon 38:19
Well, I think it's about the the meaning and the intention, right, behind it. If If what coaches mean, because I hear the same thing, but I also teach the same thing to athletes, and I'll explain. If what coaches mean is, let's be less emotional, let's not get too high, let's not get too low, let's be less emotional then no, that's, that's in conflict, right? Like, that's not exactly what we're trying to do in the space of emotional agility. If instead, what coaches mean, which is what I mean, when I talk to athletes about it, let's be more emotionally agile, so that when we get frustrated, we can process through it before we get so frustrated that it affects our performance. So we're not getting as high in that regard. Or as low I guess that would be a low if we're for labeling, it doesn't matter. Or let's not get so excited, that we kind of are unreasonable and now we're complacent with the work that we're putting in because we're overconfident. So for me, I think those two things live in harmony, because I think part of emotional agility is about understanding that there are going to be waves of emotions, but about also understanding that if you learn to be a great surfer of those waves and process your emotions, then you're not necessarily going to get clobbered by waves as often. I do think you're probably, you know, your perspective and I'm interpreting it that some coaches are using that expression of let's not get so high, let's not get so low, to mean let's be less emotional. I think that's accurate, but I think it could be reframed in a way that is harmonious with the idea of emotional agility.
Pete Kadushin 40:05
And I'm thinking through this as as we're having the conversation, and this is part of the joy of having these conversations is that I want my thought process to be constantly evolving, in that, when I think about those highs and lows, and I love that you use the analogy of waves and surfing, because no wave can last forever, right? Simply, the physics of waves suggest that they happen, there's a beginning a middle and an end, and then they're finished. And for me, that thought of the, don't be too high, don't be too low is kind of central to this, trying to avoid the negative, trying to really hold on to the positive that we we get stuck either at a peak or we get stuck in a valley, because of we're defining ourselves by the experience that we're having, and often refusing to have the full experience. And so for me that I'm thinking about it, as you ride the wave, it's either a great wave or you get your ass kicked, right, but then the waves over and you you go and you grab your board, and you paddle back out, and you get to do it again. And that the it's really the there's a time component to it, that if I can allow something an emotion to last the time it lasts, and then move through it, that I'm ready for the next game, the next practice, the next play. And I remember Tiger Woods back when he was the best golfer in the world. You know, he would slam clubs, he would curse, he would he would get frustrated, and somebody asked him about it. And he said, well after a shot, I want to perform, I want to execute perfect every time, and so I get frustrated when I don't. And I imagine my frustration as a ball of energy above me. And I can keep that ball around until I get to the next shot. But part of my pre shot routine, then is to absorb that ball of energy and allow it to be, help me be more focused, more present more dialed in to the task at hand as opposed to allowing it to turn me into a runaway train, and really affect my performance. And so he gave himself permission to feel and then found a way to use that energy to make him more lethal and more difficult to beat afterwards. I don't know if any of that makes sense.
Vanessa Shannon 42:14
No, it makes great sense. And I think it's a great, you know, applicable example of an athlete finding a way to, you know, kind of just reinterpret their emotions and not categorize them as good or bad. But understand that they can be useful or harmful, depending on how we allow them to influence our performance moving forward. You know, the wave analogy and the surfing analogy, I might it might gravitate towards it because I'm from California, and I grew up you know, near a beach, but also and it's it's on my wall in my office, I have it on my wall in my house. There's a great Jon Kabat Zinn a mindfulness expert quote, you can't. And I actually learned this from Dr. Ed Etzel, come to think of it, you can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf who he actually said that, to me my first year as a faculty member at West Virginia, when I was kind of overwhelmed by some stuff, one of the many phrases of wisdom he imparted on me. And I really gravitated towards that just from the awareness perspective. But I think surfing as we move through kind of the ruler, or we move through the A's, as we were discussing before, you can see how that analogy applies along the way. Because I think and even in the high and low situation that we've been talking about, because to your point, you know, you're gonna right away if you're gonna get wrecked by a wave. But there's a third option, which is to let a wave go, right. So you don't have to ride every wave. And I think it's the same thing when it comes to emotions. And we realize that we can manage our reactions and our responses to things. So am I going to let this frustrate me? Maybe I'm not going to because it's not valuable enough to frustrate me. Maybe frustration comes when this happens, because that's valuable enough, and that's something that I'm really going to allow to have some of my power and my emotion. I don't know if that makes sense.
Pete Kadushin 44:10
I love the third option. I always appreciate when I've gotten stuck in some sort of dichotomy, that somebody always waives and goes, Hey, there's there's always another choice. Even if that choice is just rejecting the premise that I've designed as the thought experiment or the analogy. And, what you just pointed to, I think really is the the last R and ruler which is regulating, right, that ability to recognize frustration having a cause and that sometimes it's worth expressing frustration, right when injustice occurs, it's not that we should just remain equanimous and have no reaction and be very rational. Right? There are times where outrage, frustration, anger would be the appropriate reaction. Right? But knowing the difference between when it's not just appropriate but useful to express and when it's useful to notice and then go, you know what I can regulate my experience, and it's actually not worth getting frustrated over. The fact that they don't have the right type of salad dressing. It's not gonna break, it's not ruining everything, there's no, I can breathe through this. I think that's huge. And one of the things that I imagine a lot of this work leads to is that capacity to know the difference between when it it's useful to express and when it's useful to regulate.
Vanessa Shannon 45:36
Absolutely.
Pete Kadushin 45:38
I want to bring this down to like the rubber meets the road level, because I already pointed to the fact that I'm selfish. And I want to get better at this, I believe that this is one of the highest points of leverage for human beings, period, full stop, whether you're an athlete, or otherwise. And so if I was to want to build my emotional intelligence, or my emotional agility starting today, what would I do?
Vanessa Shannon 46:06
Well, I think it starts with kind of a little bit of a gut check or a self evaluation and saying, you know, if I think about the rule or model, or if I think about all of the A's awareness, acknowledgement, acceptance, adjustment, what where am I stuck, right? Where do I most often get stuck? I think a lot of times, we tend to evaluate from the perspective of, well, what am I good at? But I find that when it comes to things like this, sometimes it's better to take a different viewpoint, a different vantage point and say, Where do I most often get stuck? And then how can I work on that piece of it, right. So you know, if it's the awareness piece, and we have to raise awareness. And so we can do that in a number of different ways. I think the most common thing that we're seeing people lean towards in terms of increasing awareness is increasing mindfulness. Mindfulness is going to increase awareness, it's going to increase our ability to attend to things. And I think that's certainly a useful foundation for this because if we can attend to our thoughts, if we can be aware of our thoughts of our emotions, then we can better regulate them, right. So. So I think if it's awareness, then you have to drive up your awareness and, and you would be more of the expert in that space, I would argue than I am in terms of different ways other than meditation, practicing the pause, you know, simple things like mindful eating, I always say with our student athletes, which sounds crazy to people, but it's actually super important. How about mindful driving? How about we just, how about we're just driving when we're in a car, right, instead of driving, listening to the radio, trying to send text messages and emails at red lights. So literally practicing being where our feet are, but also understanding that awareness and mindfulness is it's dynamic, right? Like we're meant at times to go into the past to reflect, to learn from that to be able to move forward, we're meant at times to go into the future, to plan to predict to think about those things. And but we're also at our best when we need to be we can find ourselves where our feet are. So the awareness piece, building that awareness, I think is important. I think sometimes it takes also bringing in kind of the people around you, right, and a willingness again, to be vulnerable, to have the courage to say to your friends, to your family, to the people that you trust, you know, what, what do you think about how I'm managing these situations? What do you think about my emotional agility? Do you find that there are times when I lack awareness of how emotional I am, or how I'm allowing my emotions to drive me rather than finding a way to express them and regulate them and recognize them and be aware of them? If it's the acknowledgement piece, then I think it comes down to just really getting used to having a language or really getting used to using the language of feelings. Right. And and Susan David speaks to this in her TED Talk. And Mark Brackett talks about it and Brene brown talks about it and everyone in this space really talks about it. Shawn Aker and Amy Moran and more of the positive psychology speak to it as well. Instead of saying I'm angry, simply say, I'm feeling angry, right express an emotion is, is identifying the emotion and suggesting how you are emoting, how you are feeling rather than allowing that word to define you and encapsulate you. And they've done a lot of work in different spaces, you know, healthcare as an example, in terms of the language that they use in identifying individuals who are experiencing certain diseases, certain struggles, rather than saying cancer patient saying an individual who is battling cancer so that the disease doesn't identify the person. It doesn't become the entire person. And we should do the same thing when it comes to emotions, we should get really good at expressing how we feel, not owning the emotions or allowing the emotions to own us. The acceptance piece, I think, is the greatest hurdle. And some of it, I think, is honestly just reading more, listening more, the more voices that you hear, suggesting that you are allowed to feel that way, suggesting that you have the permission to feel that way, I think the more likely people are to give themselves that permission. And the adjustment piece is understanding how that emotion may influence you if you are allowing it to influence you in an unhelpful way. And so I'll use an example of our student athletes. But when we look at it from a really, you know, kind of basic physiological or biological or psychological perspective, it's really our body is designed to survive, right. And our brain is designed to identify threats in the environment, and then organize the systems to respond to those threats. That is the stress response, right? That's the fight or flight response. We have this homeostatic system, our body is designed to be comfortable when we're not comfortable, systems go into play in voluntarily, and they do things to help us resume comfort. So it's too hot, we go outside, we sweat. It's too cold, we go outside, we shiver. And part of that general adaptation syndrome. The first part of it is this stress response. It's this fight or flight response. And the brain is constantly surveying the environment for threats. Well, when we're not in a pandemic, what is the general threat for athletes? It's failure, right? Or it's or it's discomfort, or it's something that they're not used to, that's what they're going to perceive as a threat or a danger. And so what a lot of people don't realize, and I think what we're taught because we speak about psychological activation and psychological arousal, and we're taught about kind of that piece of the stress response, a lot of people go right to, okay, it's going to elevate your heart rate, it's going to cause an increase in blood pressure. We see an increase in respiratory rate. But the things that people sometimes forget is muscle tension, and dilation of the pupils, which between muscle tension and the fact that you have musculature around your eyes when those tense, the pupils dilating now we have muscle tension, and we have a narrowing of the visual field. And for most athletes, neither of those things are good things. In fact, for most athletes, those things can end very badly because if I'm a wide receiver or a slot receiver, and I've just caught a ball, and I can't see a defensive end or a linebacker coming at me from the side, we have a serious problem, right?
Pete Kadushin 52:46
This is, this is where a lot of injury can be traced. There's always freak accidents, but a lot of injury can be traced back to the consequence of an inappropriate stress response.
Vanessa Shannon 52:57
That's exactly right. Yeah, yeah. And so it's not just about what it's going to do to performance. It can set you up for injury. But if we look at performance, you know, and it doesn't matter, I speak to a swimmer, we always talk about like, stay in your lane, stay in your lane, we're talking about their thoughts being in their lane. But if I'm Michael Phelps, who's done this before, and I've never met Michael Phelps, just as an aside, so everybody knows that I'm not sharing a story is shared with me directly. But if we look at Michael Phelps coming off the wall in seventh place, and finding a way to chase people down and break a world record, which he did, right, and at the Olympics, I believe it was in Beijing, the only way he's chasing those people down is if he sees that they're in front of him. So if his if his visual field has narrowed so much that he literally is only able to see his own lane, that can be a problem. You think about a pitcher in baseball, right? The ability to be able to manage base runners with your periphery, rather than having to actually turn around to make a pick back move or see whether you need to make a pick back move. So point being the muscle tension, I think has obvious consequences. The muscle tension and then we have the dilation of the pupils, those both cause visual disruptions and those can be problematic. So when it comes to the adjust for me with athletes, we talk a lot about adjusting to that, right, adjusting to that stress response. How can we do that? We do that through breath control, smell the roses hold, blow out the candles, right? We do that through, I always talk about the expression making lemonade. So it's a you know, real modified, brief PMR progressive muscular relaxation. Let me create a relaxation response by creating tension. Pretend like you have two lemons in your hand, squeeze them, drop them, squeeze them, drop them, and now I'm able to potentially create a relaxation response. But more importantly, I'm focused on things that I can control and do in that moment and ways that I can adjust rather than being kind of on the continual hook of thinking about how I feel.
Pete Kadushin 55:03
Yeah, yeah, the brooding is something that Susan David brought up. That sort of getting captured by if I'm not bottling it up or pretending I'm positive that this this brooding and being captured, stuck to whatever is generating that stress response. And you pointed out that it starts from threat, but that we could follow this backwards and you were actually the first person who ever told me and started to unpack this idea of fear of success. So discomfort can come from, oh shit, I'm throwing a perfect game. I'm a goalie, there's a shutout. Like it could be a good thing that's happening, that's making me suddenly feel uncomfortable, which then registers as threat, which then pushes me outside of my sweet spot. And the other thing that stands out to me here is that it is not a, in terms of how these things relate to each other, it's not, I want one piece, and then I'll grab another piece, I can pick any A and just start there. That this is really there's a hierarchy and that you build on a foundation of awareness, and acknowledging. And that allows or unlocks the ability then to accept what you're feeling. And you can't adjust until you've done all of that other stuff. And so I love that you pointed to the fact that athletes and coaches if they have the capacity to do this, but then certainly for people in our role, who are helping navigate this sort of landscape, being able to identify where the bottleneck is at is really I think, step one, and then addressing that, so that people can climb the pyramid and get to that top where they can adjust in the moment, by using some of these tools, whether it's breath control, muscle tension, and then relax.You know both of us, were over here, squeezing lemons and dropping them as we are going. That it really requires the ability to know where things are stuck first. But that there is a system, it's not just closing your eyes and hoping that tomorrow you're going to be able to, to do it. There's something there's things that you can be doing. You just outlined a whole set of skills that somebody could be working on starting today. So that they would be more equipped when that moment arrives, whether it's a job interview or having to ask somebody out on a first date, or certainly, you know, getting ready to throw the first pitch in your first ever college baseball game.
Vanessa Shannon 57:25
Yeah, and you brought up two really important things if I could just kind of mention those. One is, you know, I always have asked the question, when I speak to a group of individuals, group of performers the first time, what is the kind of greatest disruption that athletes face? And they usually say themselves, which for a long time, I was like, you're so right, and we're here to talk about what's happening between your ears and kind of our thoughts and emotions. And, and absolutely, but more and more often, actually, I would argue the greatest disruption that athletes face is success. And it's either because it makes them complacent and they feel like they've arrived, or it's what you spoke to, which is this fear of success. As we become successful, we drive the expectations up and then success becomes more and more difficult to achieve. And the other thing you mentioned in terms of kind of these tools and steps is and I say this all the time to our student athletes, and I say it multiple times, because I think the first time I say it, they kind of all go, what? That doesn't make any sense. But I for me, it's about routines, right? Can you create a routine for yourself, because you want to be doing these things all of the time, so that when you need to be doing them, you are already doing them. And the reason for that is sometimes our awareness is down. And sometimes we don't realize how frustrated we are until we're three holes into a game of golf, right or until we're two sets into a game of tennis. And so it's so great for athletes in particular, performers in particular, to incorporate this into your routines. Incorporate these tools and strategies into your routine. Because that way you're already doing it when you need to be doing it.
Pete Kadushin 59:11
I mean, what you do more of you do more of and to take it one step further, when you're under pressure you do what you've trained most. I used to in class all the time and say you don't need to pay attention to me because I'm the most important thing in this room. Right. But if you are someone who treasures peak performance if you're someone who wants to be able to show up when the moment matters, every moment in class that you're daydreaming and not being purposeful with your attention, you're getting better at daydreaming and not being purposeful with your attention. And so for that sake alone, being able to move through the system that you outlined around emotional intelligence and emotional agility. If I wait another day, it means I've missed an opportunity to be doing that so that it becomes habit when I have the important opportunity, or the important challenge that arises, whether it's interpersonal, whether it's sport related, whatever it might be. Those meaningful moments are going to draw on my emotional capacity. And I don't want to wait until the day before the national championship to be like, hey, Doc, what do I need to do? Because then it's too late.
Vanessa Shannon 1:00:22
Absolutely. Aristotle, right, you are what you repeatedly do.
Pete Kadushin 1:00:26
Hmm, there it is. You are what you repeatedly do. And so I have one question left, I want to be mindful of, of our time. Although I told you earlier, we could talk probably for three more hours on this stuff.
Vanessa Shannon 1:00:39
For sure. I don't know that anybody would be interested in listening. But we could.
Pete Kadushin 1:00:43
I mean, I would be interested. And so the last question is actually something that came up, I was in the car with Mack and Ian and Jesse coming back from one of our first Midwestern regional conferences. And we started talking about the beautiful moment for each of us in our particular sport, or performance experience. What was that one moment that for us just kind of hit the tuning fork and resonated for its beauty? And so I'm always curious, and you can you can apply this to your experience playing volleyball, or it could be your performance now as as a mental performance coach, or anywhere in between? But what is the beautiful moment for you? And why is it beautiful?
Vanessa Shannon 1:01:24
Oh, I think I'm gonna sound really cliche And my answer to this, but I feel like I've been really blessed and privileged to have a number of beautiful moments. And I would, you know, say the same thing. I get asked often, like, you know, who's your mentor? And I think I have so many great mentors. I have so many great colleagues in the field. But if I had to pick one, I don't know why when you said that this strange moment stood out to me, which was a play that I made in a high school volleyball match. And I think the only reason it was a beautiful moment to me was because it was one of those, it was a defensive play, I dug a ball. And it was one of those moments that looked like it came out of a movie, right? I dug a ball, nobody thought I was gonna get to, it was a really impactful point, it helped us win a match to move on in the State Championship tournament. We had a really big crowd there, which wasn't necessarily always typical. And it just kind of all came together in the way that you would see in a movie. The irony is the beautiful moment only lasted until the next day, because my picture was on the cover of our local newspaper and I actually had my eyes shut while making the play. And so my brother who's four years older and a much better volleyball player. He played at Pepperdine and won a national championship there, called me immediately. It was like, you've got to be kidding me. This, you know, this moment you described to me last night on the phone with all this excitement and it turns out you didn't even have your eyes open. It was luck. So, but that was a beautiful moment.
Pete Kadushin 1:03:00
I love it. I love it. And what this tells me is that if we blindfolded you, you could kick ass in volleyball.
Vanessa Shannon 1:03:07
I mean, that's what I said to my brother. You should actually be more impressed that I made that play with my eyes closed, right?
Pete Kadushin 1:03:14
You didn't you didn't need sight, you're using your eight other senses.
Vanessa Shannon 1:03:18
That's exactly right.
Pete Kadushin 1:03:20
Well, Doc, this has been a blast. Always wonderful opportunity to, to spend some time talking about how to help people do the things they love at a higher level, and particularly around a topic that I think you pointed to the fact that it's getting a lot more traction, and I think is getting more mainstream. But it's still something that, I think is a huge high point of leverage for the athletes and performers that we work with. And so I hope that as people I know, as people listen to this, that they're going to be able to pull out some really great nuggets that you shared and, and hopefully be able to level up so that they can do the stuff they love at a higher level.
Vanessa Shannon 1:04:00
Well, I appreciate the invitation, Pete and I just want to say kudos to you on the podcast, because you know, I think it's such a fantastic way to get all this information out to performers, athletes, exercisers. But as we talk about all the time, these are tools and skills that people can use in their everyday lives.
Pete Kadushin 1:04:20
Yeah, it doesn't. And again, shout out to my dad, he straight out of the gate when I started going into this said, well, isn't everything performance. And the longer I do this, the more I recognize that like, yeah, I'm breathing different before I step out of the car for a first date. Right? I'm trying to pay attention different while I'm playing board games with my family so that I don't blow up when somebody stabs me in the back while we're playing Settlers of Catan. And all of these in big ways in little ways, have certainly influenced my life and my capacity and then my goal is always just to be able to pass it on and so, I'm grateful for the opportunity to have learned from you and to continue learn from you and then I can only hope to keep passing on the information and the wisdom that you share.
Vanessa Shannon 1:05:05
Well ditto my friend. I learned from you all the time as well. So thank you.
Pete Kadushin 1:05:09
Alright, that's it for today. If you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe to the show and don't forget to rate and leave a review. If you want to dive deeper into the concepts and concrete practices from today, I'm talking access to show notes and the transcript for the episode and a whole bunch of other mental training goodies. Head over to MTL dot Academy. That's MTL dot Academy. Each week after the episode goes live, I'll also be sharing a worksheet that's going to help you level up your mindset and mental skills. And the only way to get access is through our weekly newsletter. So when you hit the bottom of the webpage, don't forget to sign up for that too. Until next time, be well.
