Mental Skills Monday

Hello, Cadre. Happy Monday. This is Garrett Westwell here, your resident expert in sport and performance psychology. To start the week, I want to start off with a good phrase that I really like and simplifies what I'm going to be talking about for the next few minutes, and that is be where your feet are. This is a phrase I've heard so many times in the. In the sports psychology field, I honestly, I'm not 100% sure the origin of it. I usually like to make sure that I make correct attributions to who says those quotes that I live by, but I think be where your feet are is a really powerful one, and usually, as I do throughout my lives, want to use examples to illustrate.

Hello. Hello, Chris. Thanks for joining. I like the name. Nice and straightforward. It's good. Not Chris. One. Not Chris, dude, just Chris. I love it. Um, thank you for being here. I think, um, one there. There's two examples that come to mind with this concept would be where your feet are that I've, um, kind of come across. One was in a podcast. One was in a client that I work with. So, one, um, is in a client that I work with. He's, um, a baseball player. Luke, thank you for joining as well. Um, so, this baseball player and I've been reading a lot about baseball just from working in the sport.

Baseball is a big sport for sports psychology just because it is very mental. If you've ever played or watched it, you can imagine there's just so much downtime where it's mental. But the whole thing that we were talking about is figuring out how to segment the game. So, for those of you that know or don't, baseball is a game of nine innings. You have only so many, so many at bats and so many pitches, but really, all you can control is this exact pitch, this one pitch at a time. In other words, being where your feet are of, you can't control what happens in the fifth inning if you're in the first inning and all those different situations.

So, for this client, him and I worked on just figuring out and specifying when the last pitch ended and the next pitch was beginning. So, being very clear about segmenting. All right, last pitch happened. You know, kind of using that as a learning opportunity of what happened, what worked, what maybe didn't work, what did I learn? And then zooming into, all right, that pitch is over. Now it's the next pitch. Now it's the next pitch, and now it's the next pitch, and it just. You're breaking the game.

Into winnable chunks, rather than trying to win a nine inning game in nine innings, win it with this exact pitch. So, Luke, thank you for pointing out that maybe heard breaking down work days in the same regard. You've heard all those productivity people. I break my day into three chunks and I win each chunk and they're all crazy. And yeah, there's plenty of ways you can phrase it, I think, breaking it. Yeah, just like you said, Luke, six to ten, have a, have a chunk of time. Ten to two, maybe you do something differently.

Maybe you do meetings or other different stuff in quarters. That's a great way. So that baseball player, he found it very helpful to, to just break it into winnable chunks and be where your feet are. Another example, in a similar light is a podcast. I was listening to, one, that shameless plug. I was on the podcast and talked about goal setting, which I've talked about that at length on this app, so feel free to check that one out. The podcast is called the sport psychology of, and the podcast episode that I listened to was the, the sports psychology of throwing an interception in football.

So quarterbacks throw an interception. It's a very high pressure decision making opportunity. Luke says they can only really win ten to two. Everybody has their most productive timeframes. Mine is around that timeframe, usually wake up early. So like nine to one, I find, is my most productive. Other three, not really great. Right. Um, so on this, on this episode of the quarterback and the, specifically the art and the science of sports psychology of throwing interception is breaking it down and being clear with where your feet are.

So you throw, you throw an interception as a quarterback, right, or you make any mistake in life and you're frustrated. Rather than trying to repress that frustration, embrace it, sit with it, recognize it's there, acknowledge it, and give yourself a time limit to experience that emotion. And then, you know, yeah, be where your feet are. If you're ticked off that you made a mistake or for whatever reason that you're frustrated, sit with that frustration. Maybe say to yourself, all right, I'll give myself 30 seconds to sit in this.

Really embrace it and experience it and be a human. And then after that, it's time to move on, maybe learn, try to figure out the lessons that you learned from that moment. If it's a quarterback thrown interception, what adjustment do I need to make with the line protection? What do I need to communicate to my receivers and my running backs? How do I need to read the defense differently, make those adjustments, and then, boom, guess what? You're where your feet are now it's time for the upcoming drive or the upcoming play.

So I think that's a good quote for all of us to live by, is just be where your feet are. It's simple on paper, but in practice it can be really hard and it's always a good reminder of where my feet are. Right now, if you're in that ten to two block, like Luke said in that comment, be in that block. Be if it's 1005 and you're trying to get work done, be in that moment exactly where your feet are. Because that's the only moment you can control. And if you do that and stack those present moment actions throughout the day, you're going to enjoy it more.

You're going to probably be more productive. You're going to just overall have a much more fulfilling experience in life. That goes for anything. Sport, anything with leisure, anything with work, relationships, life. Just be where your feet are. So take that into account. This Monday you can't control. Tuesday, you can't control. Wednesday, you can control. Today you can. February 19, I just had a check. You can control that day. So go ahead, control your Monday. And then when Tuesday comes, you get to that and so forth.

But be where.