The Psychology of Sport

0:00i have a confession i'm probably the least sporty person you're ever likely to meet much to my father's lament i don't like playing and i don't even like watching sport but what i am interested in is beyond physical fitness is what makes a great athlete why do some sports professionals rise to the occasion while others just crumble under pressure and do the lessons

0:34from sport transfer to other areas of life such as business or even parenting with me to discuss the psychology of sport is dr jim taylor jim holds a phd in psychology he's written 18 books including the complete guide to cycling psychology and train your mind for athletic success and he's the co-founder of mind to a startup developing an app that empowers athlete performance well-being

1:05and mental health hello jim good morning good afternoon paul great to be here um i love chatting it up i'm talking shop with talking psychology with people who are equally passionate about psychology exactly let's do that then i mean let's start what's your story how did you start off down that path of having a career in sports psychology yeah well there's a um a perspective that people become psychologists to figure themselves out and that was definitely the case with me um i was a i was an alpine ski racer in my youth and i was i was okay um but my mind my head i was known as a mind

1:39job or a head case um where my mind got in the way of my skiing my fastest and um and so they didn't really have sports psychologists back then or mental coaches but i took the summer course related to everything i do with athletes um in terms of helping them perform better and i applied it to my ski racing and i took the next year i took a quantum leap i made the bottom of the u.s ski team i competed against the best in the world um and i had amazing results compared to the year before but what amazed me most was the the change in my psychology that produced those results

2:13and so when i got to college i like everybody else took psych 101 and the way i put it is that i didn't choose psychology it chose me and and ever since then i've been on this this journey of exploring the mind um initially in sport but as you intimate in your in in your introduction um everything i talk about for example related to sport it's really it relates to life and for me performance is performance i don't care whether it's you know again i work with athletes business people surgeons performing artists there are there are some some differences around the edges but the

2:50fundamental core of performing your best of creating a sense of well-being and mental health that applies across the board because it's not ski racing psychology or sports psychology or corporate psychology it's life and that's what interested me in this because i think anyone who knows me as i mentioned in in the introduction why am i reading a book on the cycling psychology and i was i sat in a cafe somewhere and a friend came up and said sorry has somebody given you that i mean what what are you doing and but right in the introduction it's wonderfully put that you say yes we are talking

3:25about the subject of cycling but it's more than that it's life it's it's everything else and it's that mental training which when i read it and went through it i saw so many overlaps with the behavior work that i do but i think let's start at the beginning for listeners and start at the basics in your view what percentage of athlete success is mental versus the physical well it's interesting you ask that paul because when i first get work with an athlete individually or i give a talk to a group i always

3:57ask this question how important is the mental side of sport compared to the physical and technical side and very few say less important reasonably the majority probably say as important but a large number say more important and again given what i do for a living i love it when they say that but i don't even think that it's more important because you can have all the all the mental stuff in the world but if you're not physically and technically capable of executing your sport the mental side doesn't matter but it is an essential piece of the puzzle that is neglected because you think

4:28about the highest level of any sport they're all genetic freaks they're all incredibly physically fit they all have the best technical skills and tactical skills they all have the best sports science the best data the best coaching the best nutrition so on any given day what separates those who win from those who don't by by by pure elimination it's often the mental side and so the challenge then is that everybody says it's so important and there's this is the contradiction that everybody thinks is so

5:00important and yet if i then ask how much time is devoted to it so a typical in an elite athlete i mean they can they can train in four five six seven hours a day and for young athletes it might be one or two but then i ask how how many hours do you devote each week to mental training and there's a lot of hems and haws and ums and it's sort of a rhetorical question is the answer is largely zero because one way i put it is that all athletes do mental stuff they do things to motivate themselves to stay positive to relax to focus to deal

5:34with their emotions but mental stuff is not mental training just like going into the gym every three weeks and doing arm curls is not conditioning and so one of my major goals in my career has been to varying degrees of success i will admit um is getting athletes and coaches and parents to see that mental training needs to be approached the same way as physical training and if i may continue very briefly the question then is why is this is this major disconnect between importance and and effort

6:08or time put into it and here's my thinking on the physical side either or technical side on the field this the court the course the rink the hill the track whatever the venue is it's very tangible you can see it you can touch it you can measure it you can feel it so it's easy for for athletes to wrap their arms around oh yeah if i go into the gym and i on a consistent training program i'm gonna get stronger and that'll make me a better athlete the problem is that the mind as you well know is not tangible it's

6:41like grasping onto fog and you can't wrap your literally or metaphorically wrap your arms around something that's intangible so a lot of my work involves making the intangible tangible yes and paul i'm a word guy and i believe words are one way we can make the intangible tangible for example i talk about mental training athletes can relate to training i talk about the mind is made up of muscles athletes can appreciate muscles they can be weak they can be strong they can be injured but for sure they need

7:15to be exercised if they want to be really strong and then i talk about mental tools a hammer tangible a screwdriver a drill tangible and so the more you can give because people can't talk about things they don't have vocabulary for yeah so you're overlapping and unusual concepts onto familiar concepts so they can just go ah i see what you're saying it's like that and i know what that is in another area of my life exactly and also there is still a stigma around psychology so even if it's

7:47sports psychology and that's why i don't that's why i don't call it sports psychology i call it mental training because it's like you wouldn't believe the number of calls i get once someone has a problem now you don't wait to get injured to do conditioning why would you wait to get mentally injured to do mental training that surprises me a little i suppose going back to what you were saying how things have changed and the athletes you see today are absolute like say uh huge people so i'm thinking

8:22of rugby for instance uh when i was growing up um the rugby players were big people but they weren't toned people they were just large gentlemen really um nowadays they are like all jack reachers they're all sort of very toned buff men and so that's progressed on now what surprised me about the mental side is in the world we're living in especially over the last decade the awareness of mental health mental conditions the importance of that i would have thought that actually that

8:53would have made people more open to the mental health training aspect of things yeah and it has to a degree so probably in the last decade um a lot of very famous successful athletes like simone biles naomi osaka michael phelps noah lyles the list goes on have come port and said i'm struggling mentally and emotionally and to a degree that's been an inflection point in two ways at an individual level a young athlete a 16 year old athlete looks up at their heroes and go oh my gosh he's struggling or she's struggling maybe i can too they're getting help maybe i can too and

9:26they've been very open about seeking mental help noah lyles lyle's talks to the sprinter talks about working with his mental coach and his therapist all the time and so that that's made it more young athletes and families parents have been more receptive to that at an institutional level millions of dollars have been poured into at professional teams and universities in the u.s where sports obviously is a very big deal um you know pouring resources into the psychological

9:56aspect of sport not only performance but also well-being as well as mental health and so and so we're seeing some of that but still the numbers are daunting for example i was just talking to um the uh the head of of sort of life psychology at an ivy league school um in back east um and they have i think three sports psychologists on staff do you know how many athletes they have in their athletic department take a guess hundreds nine hundred fifty okay so three to nine hundred and fifty

10:33so just the numbers don't work so there's still a disconnect because yes i i there is a psycho educational component to what we do and it's largely what i do and just disclaimer i have a phd in psychology i have clinical training but i don't practice clinical psychology i don't do mental illness i respect those who do it's never been an interest of mine but i do but i do mental health and i do well-being as well as performance because they go hand in hand a mentally healthy athlete is going to

11:03be a better performer and they're going to stay in the sport line and so so there is movement but i've been in this field for decades and every five years or so i say oh you know in the next five years every youth program every sport every professional collegiate program is going to have a full-time sports psychologist or mental coach on staff but i've been saying that every five years for many five years and it's it's a big sticking point in our field because there are many people coming out with graduate degrees in sports psychology or mental training and there are no jobs

11:36okay and and the other the other part of that is that yes at the higher levels of sport where there is money there's movement there's some traction but at youth sport level it's largely non-existent or not well executed so i work with youth programs all over the country in europe and nobody's figured out how to deliver it and i don't mean this to be a commercial for our new app but mine too is designed to fill that space meaning to educate athletes and coaches and parents in a way

12:10that meets them where they are in the digital age meaning on their phones on the go i just want to sort of circle back to you mentioned i guess alongside the mental training and support is the need for support with families and coaches so i suppose do you see more people um moving towards mental coaching and you even families understanding that that's part of the need for their child who is excelling at their sport yeah um for for sure there is movement in that direction but it's still not

12:43seen as a proactive preventive strengthening approach it's more like my kid is struggling let's call dr jim taylor or whoever and and you know that can have benefits but again goes back to my metaphor of you don't wait to get injured physically to go to go to a conditioning coach so i mean certainly there is a lot of interest and when i give talks i do a lot of parent talks i do a lot of parent education too because i've written five of my the books that i've written are parenting books and um and so

13:14there's definitely interest but there's not yet complete buying let's put it this way within the ecosystem within the culture of sport and especially youth sport the mental side is not seen as an integral part yet and plus there's the issue of time and money youth sports don't have a lot of time and a lot of money to bring the right people in so there are a lot of barriers as well as opportunities yeah okay and you mentioned the you know one of the reasons you feel that the mental side of it

13:48is not as caught up yet the physical side is that lack of a tangible reinforcement you know i always think in terms of that behavioristic side of getting reinforcement to continue the behavior so let's give some reinforcement to those who may be not considering that mental health side can you share an example of a success story where your work with an individual in their mental training has helped them move through to a level which they couldn't have done without you so here's i'll tell

14:18the story and sort of mirror along so athletes are doers they want stuff to do to get better so part of the tangible aspect is i give them stuff to do to get better so again working with this one athlete who became an olympic champion we you know she's she's obviously phenomenally gifted you don't get that far if you're not a genetic freak work hard and are also not or who isn't already pretty darn good mentally yeah and so think about this is you take an athlete a 16 year old in any sport i can do

14:51pretty much anything with them and they're going to get better because there's all this room for growth but one of but if you think about an athlete who's already one of the top athletes in the world they're here 99.9 99.5 percent and this has been one of the great challenges when i work with athletes at this level is what can i possibly do to take them that one half of one percent that gets them to the very top yes and and so a lot of it is doing stuff whether it's mental imagery slash visualization

15:22the most powerful mental tool in sport okay go on tell me a bit more about that oh my gosh we could spend an hour just talking about mental imagery but you i'm sure you're aware of the research that shows that simply imagining yourself performing can help you psychologically it's motivating it builds confidence because you're getting positive successful reps even though it's in your mind it's a way to manage your your physiological intensity whether up or down it's a way to stay focused the simple act of imagining yourself performing takes focus because it's easy to drift back and

15:55forth it's also where you can train emotions and emotions are a huge part of my work so you know the research is very clear though that imagery is not just a mental thing it's not just picturing stuff in your head it actually triggers your motor programs so there's good research that shows you can actually improve technically just by doing imagery and if you combine it with actual physical practice you get better faster yes um routines pre-competitive routines pre-training routines getting prepared mentally and physically it's a very powerful tool self-talk

16:28again the research on self-talk is just out of this world what henry ford the inventor of cars at least from the american perspective um said um if you think you can do something or you don't think you can do something you're right because we rise and fall to the level of what we believe we're capable of and so and yet we're wired to focus on the negative and this is an evolutionary thing and we can get in a whole i'm it's in many respects very much of an evolutionary psychologist because we're these highly evolved beings with this motor cortex and this prefrontal cortex

17:03but most of the time we react to the world like we're still animals survival instinct fight or flight etc etc whole nother conversation so how easy is it i'm just thinking of someone who maybe doesn't have that mental resilience when they come to you and who doesn't think they can make it yes they are physically fit and good at the sport but have a issue with their own i guess self-doubt and anxiety how just telling them that to say to themselves that they're they they're good that they can do it

17:37it sounds like that that's not going to be enough and they might even reject that as a strategy because they go oh what difference is that going to make how do you break through that yeah so there are two ways one is think of when you go into the gym to get stronger if you just do three reps you're not going to get stronger but if you do 20 reps and you do that five times a week that adds up and so it's retraining the brain and this is not just thoughts self-talk is grounded obviously in neurophysiology and of our brain so what we we we rewire the brain and is it easy no but becoming the

18:13best athlete you can be is not easy either nothing in life that's a value is easy but if you do it enough it can turn around you retrain your mind in a positive way plus it's not just the talk you you combine it with success in the sport with support and encouragement from coaches with getting your physiology involved because our mind and our body are constantly talking to each other so if i'm really bummed out what's what's what's what's my body going to be saying like this sort of all down

18:45and it you you can't think and feel ways that are inconsistent with what your body is selling telling you so it's why i call it you know walk walk strong like yeah okay shoulder back you can't think oh i suck i'm terrible i'm gonna do really bad today when chin is up shoulders are back chest is out i was thinking about you you will we're talking about physical sports here and you might tell me i'm going off at a funny angle but there are sports which are not physical um the mental sports for

19:15instance you know chess probably being the most mental sport um so you don't have that physical power but you have that mental power do the techniques for mental training still work in that area and are they still as important yes absolutely and one thing you've seen with the rising chess stars is they are all incredibly physically fit okay yeah because they realize that like like um chess is an endurance sport and it's physically demanding to be thinking and there's a lot of research on on cognitive efficiency

19:46and cognitive fatigue that your mind gets tired and so if your body is fit the brain the mind is not the separate entity floating in space it is a it's a physical organ so if your body's in shape your mind is going to be more in shape too also amazingly enough just in the last year or two i've been working with math elites yes i've heard of that tell me more yeah so these are these are kids who compete in math competitions and and it's all the same stuff and i still you know i have them get working out and eating

20:20well because our brain needs fuel for example and and you know these math competitions can be three hours four hours long and halfway through they're cooked because they're just out of fuel out of mental fuel so you know i'm not a nutritionist but i bring in that aspect as well because if you're not properly fueled in sport or in math or chess the brain is not going to work it needs it needs its fuel so if we can continue on this path this is i think where it starts to get interesting um i basically take

20:51two paths in my work one is mental training and that's the things i've talked to you about using using mental exercises and mental tools like imagery like self-talk like intensity control like focusing tools all really important but again with this athlete i talked about the olympic gold medalist she wouldn't be one of the top athletes in the world unless she was pretty darn good at it but pretty darn good is not going to get you to be the best in the world you have to be really good at it you can't just be pretty strong or pretty good technically you need to be unbelievably and that's

21:23those margins at this level we're talking about such small margins where races races are won by tens of seconds and but then the other path is deeper and this the metaphor i use is a horse this and this i'm gonna i'm not an equestrian by any means i've ridden horses a number of times in my life but but this metaphor came to me how do you get you're riding a horse and how do you get a horse to run fast well first it has to be trained like a thoroughbred a racehorse you have to train it that has to have good genes of course and that's why the whole mating thing with the horses breeding is a big deal you

21:58have to have good genes you have to train it so it's capable of running fast but also you have to look at what is holding it back and where the metaphor gets interesting is that for an athlete they're both the horse and the rider so what's one way to ensure that your horse metaphorically or literally won't run fast you pull back in the reins so there's a part of our minds our unconscious mind that typically pulls back in the reins because no matter how capable that horse that thoroughbred is

22:31capable of running it's not going to run fast if you're pulling back in the reins so what i found is that there are certain attitudes and emotions that basically set athletes up for failure so before they even left begin the competition game over and so this is where in my work i go deep now i don't do psychoanalysis but but i explore the unconscious because there are three unconscious forces that pretty much uniformly hurt us and again this is a life thing this can be birth relationships with work

23:04the first is evolution so survival instinct the primitive brain is not very smart it's not smart at all it only knows one thing death avoid death that's it avoid death that's all and we spent the last 250 million years ensuring that we're really good at that but that doesn't work in modern day sports or society fighting or fleeing whether it's your boss gives you a bad review running away doesn't help and jumping over the desk and attacking your boss doesn't help either same with relationships

23:38partners things like that family kids whatever yeah yeah so but when an athlete goes to perform in their sport they experience what's called in sports psychology anticipatory arousal which i hate that phrase because when you use that phrase when you talk about arousal with kids what's the first thing they think about paul yeah they start giggling exactly they start giggling precisely so but but nonetheless you feel your intensity increase and that can reach anxiety that is your primitive brain perceiving the situation as a threat to your life now yes in some cases in some sports people die

24:14but for the most part most sports you're not going to die you're not going to die on the golf course unless you get hit by a bolt of lightning i suppose you're not going to get hit on this you're not going to die on the soccer pitch or the tennis court or what have you so it's not about physical life it's about it's about psychological life self-identity self-esteem uh attachment to your goals yes this this this part of my work is about letting go of the reins not completely you need to

24:45maintain control of the horse but enough so it can run fast so some of the obstacles some of the attitudes i see that are harmful are over investment where your self-esteem your self-identity is too attached to your results such that when you go to the line to perform your life is on the line your life is threatened now again psychological life not physical life but it but your primitive brain your amygdala it doesn't know the difference let's see um perfectionism perfectionism is a double-edged sword because it drives people maniacally to become successful the problem with being a perfectionist is you

25:18rarely can ever experience true success because to experience true success you need to take risks but the inherent aspect of a risk is it doesn't always work out and if you are more focused on the fear of not being perfect you're not going to take those risks the third is fear of failure the number one reason why parents send their kids to me they don't know that's why they send their kids to me but that is the heart of the issue and we live in a culture an achievement culture massive fear of failure it's epidemic in our culture because it used to be you know if you got a b i'm solid if i was

25:54eighth solid now if you don't get an i've had kids say i got an a minus i was devastated or i finished third i was devastated yeah and that's a whole nother conversation that's the whole sort of mindset almost from carol dweck isn't it that that i've experienced a failure therefore i am a failure exactly right and that that ties with the overinvestment it's it's not a failure of the situation it's a failure of the self it's a personal attack on my value as a person um let's see what else um

26:25a preoccupation with results you know i totally support the fact that results matter if you hear anybody say results don't matter they don't live in the real world because you don't get ahead in the world by working hard although that's necessary you don't get ahead in the world by being nice that may or may not help you get ahead in the world it's a meritocracy by producing results and you climb the food chain whether it's to the premier league in soccer or to carnegie hall or winning the nobel peace prize whatever do you ever get any resistance from people who come to you

27:00uh i mean i'm thinking you for the things that you've just said there if you tell someone to stop being preoccupied with results i can imagine a very competitive person telling you jim i can't do that no and i never say that and here's a metaphor that i use is forks in the road so focusing on results being being preoccupied with the results trying to be perfect being more afraid of failure than pursuing success that's the bad road but paul nobody chooses to go down the bad road and that's where the unconscious forces come in but the reason why a lot of people keep going down the

27:34bad road is not only is it habitual they don't see an exit imagine you're driving down the road and there's no highway and you don't have a monster truck so you can't go off road you're gonna stay on that road even though you know it's not a good road and so a big part of what i do is show them there is a good road there is a fork in the road you don't have to go down the bad road and they go oh there's a good road well i want to do that but the way i put it it's a simple but not easy choice it's simple paul would you rather go down the bad road or the good road duh of course you're gonna want

28:08to go down the good road but all those unconscious forces are pulling you down the bad road it takes a tremendous amount of strength a tremendous amount of effort to finally take the good road do you find that the athletes that you work with do easily transfer the lessons that you give them into other areas of their life or do you have to open that door as well well i have to make them aware of it that yes that i say right from the start this isn't tennis or soccer or ski racing psychology this is not even sports psychology this isn't even psychology this is life and you

28:39can apply to any aspect of your life and one of the most gratifying things again i've been doing this for a long time all of people that i worked with in their teens and now they're in their in their 30s and they go you know i still use this stuff in my work so it's not really about greatness it's about your own personal greatness yes and one of the things that's coming into my mind and this might be a bit challenging so please tell me to get back in my box um if it is but it's just coming to my mind again from the area of psychology that's involved with the thought about the mind

29:10body connection and how important that connection is and how people often forget that's crucial aspect is the idea of placebos now placebos are always fascinating for people because they are nothing and yet they can have an effect on people yeah one study that comes to mind because it's relevant um to sport and actually cycling was one by a chap called um christopher beady in 2006 where he took a group of very experienced cyclists and he told them that they were testing the

29:43effects of you know different doses of caffeine on the performance in a time trial and in reality on some of the trials the cyclists were just given a sugar pill you know a placebo and nothing but they were told that they received that very potent dose of performance enhancing caffeine now the interesting thing was as placebos are like this the cyclists who believe they've taken the caffeine produced significantly more power than those who didn't and they completed the time trial faster faster as well and i think another aspect i remember as well is that their performance often

30:19scales with the expected dose that they were given so cyclists rode faster when they thought they had more caffeine versus a small dose of caffeine and actually changed their performance within that as well even though they were having nothing at all now i love that as i said because it just highlights that mind body connection and the power of belief but with placebos it's a lie you know that psychologist was tricking those cyclists into thinking one thing when they had another how do you ethically harness

30:53that power of belief and ritual i suppose is a big part of it to help i guess athletes build that genuine and sustainable confidence over time yeah yeah so the ultimate determination of confidence is success yeah and so you can do all the positive self-talk and the preparations and the routines and and getting support from others but if you don't have success that's not going to be resilient confidence and i know this research and there's another study where they actually lied to people um cyclists telling them

31:26that they were that they were going slower following an avatar on a screen when in fact the avatar was going the same speed and so again it goes to the power of if you believe a situation that impacts you physiologically and so so ultimately for confidence to be sustained and resilient to setbacks there has to it has to be ground in reality because otherwise it's just like i'm just bsing myself and so you need that

31:57but you you first need to change the direction of the confidence instead of this vicious cycle turn into an upward spiral where it's like yeah i believe you can do this and for example a coach saying that to an athlete that is massive because they the athlete needs can't can't generate them that themselves so it's like the coach is giving them a piece of their confidence in them now does that mean they're all of a sudden crushing it no but that little bit of confidence results in an improvement in performance and that's that success and they go like oh wow i didn't think that was

32:31possible and then their belief is gets a little stronger and then they have a little more success and so on and so forth until their confidence is high and it's grounded not only in the effort they put into it but also in terms of being more positive and gaining more confidence but also the world is validating those perceptions and you absolutely need that that's the real world yeah and i find that fascinating because every time you're sort of talking there i'm thinking again of that reinforcement theory and self-identity you know the reinforcement you get after performing an action

33:05that helps you to feel i am the type of person that does this it might be i am the type of person who is confident i am the type of person who goes forward and wins and that and that strengthens that and when it happens once more you get that second reinforcement and you get better again now that is such a strong theory isn't it and i love being able to see it in practice with what you're talking about another aspect though i'm interested in is pressure you know being a sports professional is pressure you know performing in front of other people but it's also i think something

33:39even non-sports people like me feel because when i have to go and speak at a conference and i'm speaking in front of a thousand people that's pressure same stuff and it's very different performing in my room to myself than it is stood up on a stage performing to somebody else what's happening i guess psychologically and physiologically when an athlete chokes yeah yeah so this is the holy grail of my work in a way because another big reason why athletes come to me or their parents send them to me if

34:12they're young is they're performing great in training and but they can't try that translate that into competition and this is this is actually a good sort of test of my effectiveness i suppose because if somebody's performing well in training that means they're physically technically tactically capable of performing well and so in theory you should be able to translate that into competition but the difference what's the difference between the two training doesn't matter practice doesn't matter the competition matters and that changes your entire psychology and that's where a lot of people

34:48struggle and the great ones they don't let that happen it's because whether you're speaking in front of a group or you're competing in your sport what's the threat because what's the pressure the pressure is i'm gonna die and it goes back to the primitive instincts the survival instinct and so a lot of my work is about letting go recognizing that no matter what happens to you you might lose miserably you might not make it in your career in your sport or you might just do badly today it's not life or death

35:21you will be okay because in almost all cases you are but it's but when you're about to go out there and perform oh my gosh i have to do well today whether it's for my parents or to make the next level of of of a team or or whatever it might be what about working with people around the athlete i mean we talked about working with the athlete themselves but we mentioned the support with families for instance and i know that you work with parents of young athletes as well what's the biggest mistake parents make in trying to support their children oh caring too much yeah yeah in my first parenting

35:57book from i don't know it was early 2000s um in in in the one chapter um i break i i very i make it very simple um and this is my advice to parents and in the book it's highlighted it's capitalized highlighted italicized bolded and three exclamation points after three words get a life because we live in this insanely toxic youth sport achievement culture kids know that it's important

36:30or and even though it's not it's just it's just sports but that parents become the weight vest or even worse they climb on their back and it's like if parents are that invested in their kids and i've seen this before then where their happiness is on the shoulders of the kids that's a crushing burden so it's like get get a life of your own if you're putting your self-esteem your value as a person on your kids get a life find something that of your own that you can own that brings you meaning

37:05satisfaction and joy yes so so the bottom line with all this is um i i don't think i don't want to swear out here although i tend to um i have this thing called the effort attitude you can figure out what the f stands for um it's just like the basic idea is like you're not saying effort to to your sport because if you say effort to your sport like why do it you're saying effort to the outcome and when you do that you liberate yourself there's nothing holding you back because the only thing that holds you back is fear of failure being judged and that ties in again self-identity self-esteem

37:38if you can make the if you see you can if you need to be invested but not too invested and that's a difficult balance though isn't it because one side you need discipline you've got to have discipline to be an excel at any sport but to have that effort attitude as well to say it doesn't matter it almost feels contradictory no i didn't say it doesn't matter i say ultimately all you can do is give it everything you've got and result come what may and again the paradox here is if you do get

38:09everything you got you're more likely to get the results you want and it's your and it's your only chance of getting to the top or or let's even say as to getting as far as you can yes it's hard but again kids are you talked about support around kids coaches sports programs um teammates uh parents the broader youth sport culture all sending often bad messages and we are victims of our culture or

38:39beneficiaries of our culture and so if we're in a culture that's all about results it's it's nearly impossible to think otherwise and then a lot of times that's an uphill battle i fight with with the kids i work with because i i know that it's it's unhealthy and it doesn't work that's the amazing thing it doesn't work and the more i can educate coaches and parents the more they get on the side of the kids would you also transfer your idea that that get a life mentality onto the kids as well

39:12and i and i'll share an anecdote which made me think of it i went to school with a hockey player and she was young but a very talented hockey player and it was lucky because our school had a good uh women's hockey team and so she was selected for the england under some things um and then she did finally leave school go and train properly she went to the olympics um and played for england at hockey so absolute top level hockey player now i bumped into her later in life in i think around 30 and i said to

39:45her what your life must have been fantastic you've gone all over the world playing the sport you love which you've done since early age and she said yes it she definitely didn't think it was a bad life however she said i missed out on so much life because she didn't come to the pub with us like we did you know at school when we first could go to the pub she didn't come to the discos with us because she had to be up at three in the morning to do training or or go to a different part of the country and play hockey so she missed out on so much of her life that later in life she

40:19and again i'm not going to use the word regret but she does look back on it thinking what did i miss out on so that gets her life could it be something actually you say to the individual athlete as well without compromising actually their attitude towards being the best that they can be yeah that's a tough one because an athlete like that or the professional and olympic athletes i work with they're making a choice to live a life um they to go on a path less traveled and and that's a choice there are benefits and costs

40:49um and you accept the the costs and you focus on the benefits or you leave the sport and and certainly athletes do that my i have two daughters who are on the same ski racing path as i was on and they realized that they they they wanted a more robust and more traditional high school experience so they left the sport and and was sentient is one of my daughters in college now and after four years away from ski racing she's racing again for the college team okay and and so she's reconnected with

41:20it in a situation where she can enjoy it where it's not her life just her life she's able to have a college normal college experience but still do something she's always loved and so but and this is what you're really getting at is the issue of balance and i think the reason i'm interested in all this as i said at the beginning is isn't because i'm a keen cyclist or rugby player or soccer player but i am interested how it can be transferred into life now i think everything you've been talking about everyone listening should be going out i see but let's be a little bit more specific i think

41:54everyone knows exercise is good for your mental health of course but from your perspective what is it about that structure and discipline of sport i suppose that can be so therapeutic for managing conditions such as anxiety yeah so i mean there's a whole body of research on the value of exercise um in terms of treating clinical anxiety clinical depression because it changes your physiology and depression and anxiety are fundamentally neurophysiological and physiological experiences yes but at the same time in terms of just achieving in other aspects of your life thinking

42:29about here's a good example so i was working with a world-class athlete in the sport who was getting ready to retire and he said i have no skills like what am i going to do out there in the real world i have no skills and i go well are you motivated yes are you disciplined yes do you know how to deal with frustration yes um can you deal can you um can you overcome setbacks yes so maybe he's not going to be a brain surgeon but for most areas that don't take highly specialized training those are the qualities

43:00that make you successful and so it sounds very similar to people coming out of the military who who often say the same thing i can't do anything but the military and then you talk about transference of the skills that they have and they go oh yeah often military personnel coming into the civilian world do very well and very successful yeah for sure and and so but but a lot of athletes don't think that because there's there are self-identities all around i'm an athlete and they retire then who

43:34am i but they are still people with capabilities with skill sets with experiences that translate directly into so many aspects of life so let's get practical let's can we give some give some tips i suppose to people who might be business leaders entrepreneurs you know people you know who do not identify themselves as elite athletes but they are definitely doing things where they're under pressure they wish to perform and they want to be the best they can be how can the mental

44:09routine of a pre-race cyclist be adapted to a a pre-boardroom routine i guess for someone about to enter a high pressure meeting what would you suggest that they do yeah i mean it's all the same stuff developing a pre-competitive or a pre-board i have to present to my board for example and i work with high level executives c-suite people and and we we talk about all the same stuff because you're going into an environment where in which you could fail you might lose your job whatever and so you need to be

44:40prepared and you need to be prepared physically in terms of a good night's sleep um a healthy breakfast if it's a morning meeting um you need to uh be positive about it you don't want to be going in like they're gonna just kill me you need to be well prepared in terms of what you're gonna be talking about so just like your game plan in a sport you need to have your game plan you need to rehearse your game plan if you're giving a presentation with the deck and you need to make sure the deck is really good and compelling and you need to make sure you know it because in a boardroom

45:12you need to demonstrate that you know what you're talking about that you're competent that you can do the job that the board of trustees are paying you to do so so again it seems kind of weird for people but but the same thing that you do with athletes getting ready for an olympics or a world cup soccer match or whatever it might be same thing in terms of of um uh giving a presentation at work and you might just be a salesperson it's not this is not just c-suite people presenting to the board

45:45um i've worked with with medical with surgical teams talk about a team sport yeah and he's like talk about pressured yeah yeah i mean a soccer game if you lose it's like okay but if you lose you lose the patient in an or well let's stick with the boardroom for now as an example what if that person creates the mental imagery self-talks themselves goes in does the best they can do but doesn't win the pitch doesn't succeed and so they think they failed despite everything that they've done they

46:20failed what would you say to them yeah um feel bad especially in a situation like that it didn't go well and for example i pitched to um an investor group um about two three months ago and um i failed miserably this is for mine too for investors i failed miserably and i felt bad because i i did my research i was as prepared as i could be but i didn't know what it was like going in and being asked questions and having 10 minutes to present the company and um yeah i was bummed out but but same with

46:53my training i i have bad try i'm a very serious um age group triathlete now and i just got back from the world championships in australia and um so i'm very serious about it and so i um you know i have bad races last year at the world championships i had two bad races and it was like yeah i was bummed because you know aside from my work and my family that's all i do and all i care about and um but but the problem with me with me doing what i do for a living is i have to practice what i preach and so i i used a lot of the same stuff um where it's like okay yeah things didn't go well now first why

47:27didn't they go well first of all i felt i allowed myself to feel like crap and then after that i um you know lasted a day or two and it's like okay what went wrong and i sat down with my coach and i said what's going on here why did this happen we figured it out and we then you know because you know you can't change the past but that's okay but we can understand because if those who don't understand learn from the past are bound to repeat it so now what do i do to prevent that from happening again and so this year at the world championships i made all these changes and i

48:01crushed it i had a great two races there you go yeah and for this this board person giving a presentation okay what do i need to do next time and so use them as lessons as i said earlier unfortunate aspect of life's lessons they tend to be very unpleasant and so it's fine to let yourself feel bad for a certain amount of time before going into the debrief and debrief yourself what went wrong but to start with i think a lot of people don't they think i can't feel bad i can't

48:32actually do this um so they ignore it but you say don't do that right no no because think of it this way um just like positive emotions encourage us to pursue the things that led to those positive emotions the purpose of negative emotions is to ensure that we avoid those situations that cause those negative emotions like fear if we're afraid of something we run away so when we're in that situation again good idea to run away so we learn and so it's like i don't want to feel that feel that bad again so what do i need to do to turn that around and and also we live in a culture

49:06sort of broadly speaking that emotions are signs of weakness and yet they they are the ultimate fuel at that with my high level athletes yes i do mental training because even though they're really good mentally there are ways to sharpen it but ultimately the emotions are are what are what going to or what's going to enable them to ultimately reach their goals so for example um if if you're afraid afraid of failure if you um are afraid of not being perfect that's fear is driving you that's

49:38holding the reins so so this um with this athlete who won the gold medal she was from a country that the culture is not of emotionality and from a family that not a lot of emotionality and so we're still this is a work in progress but we're working on getting her to feel deeply yes and why don't we why don't we like to feel deeply because we're free afraid of feeling bad and yet we can't choose we can't cherry pick our emotions oh i'm just going to feel that love and joy and inspiration in order it's two sides of the same coin you can't feel the good emotions if you don't allow yourself to

50:11feel the bad emotions yeah um i think before we wrap up i just want to talk to you about the new venture that you've you've got called mind to what is it and what's your goal for creating it yeah so um i have created a ton of intellectual property um over the years just my knowledge base what i know and i have a boutique consulting practice where i work with no more than maybe 10 or 12 um people and i'm able to have such a small practice because i will pat myself in the back i charge extraordinarily high fees but reassuringly high yes but but you know i the market has told me

50:46i have that value you know you know the free market system anyway but i i'm driven my purpose and passion in life is to create and to have an impact and so i've been wanting to have an app develop an app for a number of years but it's really complicated and these two guys two young guys um approached me um at the beginning of 2004 2024 sorry not 2020 2024 and said we have this idea and they tried to do it on their own and they just they didn't have any content expertise

51:18and um and so they said would you would you come on board and so i came on as a co-founder and i'm chief content officer and the app is about developing uh it's an app to provide ways to like i said earlier meet athletes where they are like yes hardest part for you sports programs for professional teams for college programs is how to convey valuable information so we're we're almost we're going to start beta testing next week and the idea is where a sports team for example might

51:51have a mental coach or sports psychologist involved probably doesn't but the coaches and the athletes can go onto the app and we have what i call the roadmap and i use this metaphor journeys and journeys are basically like mini courses of like total of 25 minutes or so with um with um mini lessons of three to five minutes because the research shows that three to six minutes is the sweet spot for keeping people's attention and so for the last year and a half i've been in charge of creating the content in in in using the latest research the latest technology to figure out how best to reach

52:27young athletes and not as young but all level of athletes and so um the app is called mind to the website is mind2.io and that gives you an explanation but it's been a way where i can scale myself basically where i can upload myself i can upload myself to the matrix if you will and it's not just me we've got other experts bringing content as well um but but i think we've created we and we have this massive library of journeys of these of these mini courses we've got like 170 that cover everything from sports mental performance in sport to um to well-being to mental health and the goal ultimately

53:04is to roll this out to where we can create content for corporations or just life because that's what i was going to say it sounds like like we've been chatting about it can expand beyond the athletes to become the business people right yes and just people who want to be better and um because you know you know the self-help market is massive it's a multi-billion dollar market but nobody's figured out how to have a real impact yeah well i wish you the best of luck with it it sounds really magnificent and you know it's mind2.io and i'll put the link in the show notes if anyone wants to go

53:39and click that and have a look um before we go i just wanted to mention your book which is behind me so this is the book that i got caught reading and one of my friends went what are you doing it's a complete guide to cycling psychology and and you wrote this with um cycling legend mark beaumont as well now if your app is anything as good as this yeah then you're on to a winner because well i just i'm just gonna you're humble i'm gonna shout about this a little bit because christmas is just around the corner i think this book is such a great present because i am not

54:15joking this is one of the nicest looking books in the whole of my collection of books it's beautiful the photography in it is wonderful the feel of the book is great and how it alternates between marks anecdotes and stories behind the scenes of him cycling and then you come in with the psychology of moving on and you you outline the mental training and the unconscious um things that people need to be aware of i think it's absolutely a stunning book and i've got it and i'm not a

54:45cyclist so they are i think that's that's the endorsement that i'm going to give for that one it couldn't be any better yeah well i certainly appreciate the blatant commercialism there for on my behalf so thank you for that i don't do it on every podcast i tell you that a lot of the times but that is a is a really good book no i appreciate that and it was a wonderful experience and mark and i have become great friends and the publisher did yes visually it's a beautifully engaging book um for those who want something a little broader um my other book train your mind for athletic success is written for for all athletes and all people and um if they go to

55:19my website um drjimtaylor.com i list all my books there as well and again i don't need i don't need to sell books if just if it's of interest um but more than anything for me is just if you want to grow if you want to become the person you think you're capable of becoming in however in any form just find a way to get on that road and begin the journey and because there's no there's there's no one road to roam there are all kinds of ways there's seminars there's there's counseling there's coaching there's reading there's apps it's their youtube channels um tiktok i'm not sure you can

55:52change your world from there but who knows um yeah some people do i guess so you're right you're right but um but the main thing is just like i think one of the great lessons for me in this past year working at particularly this one incredible young woman athlete the gold medalist as well as just my own triathlon experience as well as my work with with this um with mine too is just you never know what's possible until you put yourself out there and then it's like you you then it's like oh my gosh

56:24i didn't know that was possible but then all of a sudden it's possible and it changes your world like all of a sudden this gold medalist who's now world champion she's like she she was unimaginable before and if you can't imagine it you can't believe it and if you don't believe it this this takes us back to the very beginning of our conversation whatever you think you can do you don't think you can do you're right you're not going to pursue it so just open this idea like we haven't reached what we're capable of and the only reason to the only way to find out that find

56:57that out is to just put yourself out there take the shot risk failure and good things will happen like i use it i use this expression a lot good things will happen because i can't say you'll win a gold medal or you'll play for for man you or whatever but whatever your capabilities are you will maximize those capabilities and you will become the best you can be and and that's that is a victory that's the victory in the end yes what a great way to end i think you people listening to this hopefully you might have come for the sport and you've come away at the other end thinking

57:30actually i can apply this to lots of other areas of my life um thank you so much jim for coming on great pleasure it's been wonderful chatting with you um again i just love talking with people who are passionate about what i do and yet who have different experience than i do different experiences and so it's been a real pleasure thank you so much for having me paul super and people you can learn more by going to dr jim taylor.com finding out all about jim you've got so much information on your website about the work you do and the techniques there so that's great and obviously visit mind2.io as well thank you very much until next week see you then

58:04you you you you you you you