mitch greene podcast

This podcast explores mindfulness and its application in daily life. In this episode, sports psychologist Dr. Mitch Green discusses mind chatter and its impact on performance, particularly in sports. He shares his journey into sports psychology and how he helps athletes overcome mental blocks. The conversation emphasizes accepting and befriending mind chatter, developing routines, and the role of gratitude and humor in managing it. The focus is on taming the monkey mind and being present to achieve optimal performance. Hello friends, this is Clayton Platt and welcome to the magic of the moment, mindfulness in real time. This podcast is dedicated to the joys and challenges of bringing more mindfulness into our daily life. We examine the disparate ways to become more aware, improve our connectedness with family, friends, and workmates, broaden our perspective of how we see the world we live in, and lay the foundation of achieving our potential, becoming the very best versions of ourselves. In each episode, I dig into these important topics with guests who bring their own unique story of how they define mindfulness in their lives, the ways in which they live into this definition, along with the obstacles they face in doing so. In the end, I hope to spark your curiosity about how this plays out in your world in real time. In our episode today, renowned sports psychologist and friend Dr. Mitch Green and I discuss the topic of mind chatter and its impact on performance, particularly in sports. We explore the concept of mindfulness and being present in the moment as a way to manage mind chatter. Mitch shares his journey into sports psychology and how he helps athletes overcome mental blocks. We talk about the importance of accepting and befriending mind chatter, as well as developing routines and rituals to stay focused. Our conversation also touches on the role of gratitude and humor in managing mind chatter. I welcome Mitch Green. I really want to begin by letting you tell me a little bit about where did the book come from, Courage Over Confidence? What's it about and sort of how does that inform what you do as a sports psychologist? Sure. I am a clinical psychologist with a Ph.D. in clinical psych, and the first ten years or so of my private practice was very traditional. Nothing sport related really at all. I was at a point in my career where I wanted to either stick with what I was doing and commit to it full time or change gears. Obviously, I changed gears and added sports to my repertoire. Part of the reason I added sports was I had been, even back in grad school, thinking about sports psychology before there was even really much of a field of sports psychology because there were some players that I was following in Major League Baseball, especially, who everybody knew were having collapses on the field, mental collapses, when they were otherwise some of the best players in the world. Chuck Knobloch especially captured my attention being from New York, and at that point he had joined the New York Yankees when I was in grad school. As I know you remember, Clayton, all of a sudden couldn't accurately throw the ball from second base to first for some reason, some sort of mental block. He wound up being in the outfield after that, and then eventually was out of the league a few years later after being an All-Star and an MVP. I never forgot that, and when I had this chance to decide which road to go down in my professional practice, I thought, you know, that Knobloch question still is bugging me. How is it that somebody so good could stink so bad? One thing has led to another, and now my whole career has sort of been about helping people figure out what that voice is that sort of sabotages all their best efforts. I've given the name Mind Chatter to it, and I know we'll dig in a little bit today to what Mind Chatter is and how I help, but that's kind of my origin story, if you will. Yeah, yeah. Boy, oh, boy. I remember us talking about that earlier, and I was living in New York at the time that Chuck Knobloch was having those issues, and the shortest throw possible in baseball, from second to first, and his inability to do it accurately. I think Steve Sachs had the same issue with the Dodgers later. Yes, prior. Oh, prior. Okay. You know, as an athlete such as I am throughout my life, boy, there have been so many times when looking back, I think that my ability to perform at a higher level really could have been supported by being able to control the monkey mind, the thoughts coming in, the doubts. Yeah, so I really applaud the work you do, and I know that the range of clients that you have really goes from middle schoolers up to Olympic and professional athletes, which is pretty cool. Yeah, I love my practice in that way. I don't get bored because I could be talking to a middle schooler or a high schooler, and then the next call or in-person appointment could be someone heading to Paris in a few weeks. And, of course, the conversations are different in so many ways, but in many ways, they're coming to me for much the similar thing oftentimes, which is how do I tame the monkey mind? How do I manage the chatter? How do I deal with expectations? Who am I? Am I my sport? Who am I without my sport? What's really on the line? So it's a diverse practice in that way in terms of ages and ability levels, and it gives me great joy to feel like I'm making some difference with some of these people because I know how hard they work. I mean, really, everybody I talk to are competitive athletes with kind of a capital C, and they put so much time and energy into their practice settings, their gym settings, their skill work, reviewing video. And if the mental game is what they need to kind of take them over the hump, it gives me really great pleasure to help them. Yeah. Yeah, I think that, again, one of the things that you and I have talked about in the past, and I think that has really brought us together, the overlapping sense of dealing with ego, for example, the focus on results versus at this moment what needs to be done. How can I be the most relaxed and let all the preparation that I've done flow into this moment as opposed to having the doubts and the thoughts and the monkey mind, the mind chatter, making my body tense, getting in the way of my performance. We talked privately, and I think I want to really bring this to the fore right now. My work with mindfulness is really about capturing the ability to be private, and that's in many respects exactly what you're doing in your practice. We may come at it with slightly different ways, but the idea at the core is allowing the person, the athlete, to simply be at their best by being present and not letting all the outside obstacles, the internal dialogue that's getting in the way create a focus on if I don't perform at my best now, the world will end. Yeah, just to pick up on this idea of being relaxed, it reminds me a lot of athletes want to compete and be relaxed, and I want them to compete and be relaxed, but the fact of the matter is oftentimes they're not going to be relaxed, and they think that there's something wrong because they're having shattery voices in their head that are, and a body sensation, of course, as well, that is nothing at all look like relaxation, and so thoughts are coming in that says you're not relaxed, this could mean you're not ready, and just like you in your way, I'm getting them to look at those thoughts in a, because those are the thoughts in the moment that are coming up for them, in a nonjudgmental way. I'm trying to get them, just like you, to not have to feel like they need to do anything about those thoughts, whereas the instinct is, particularly for an athlete, is like to try to get rid of them or block them out so they could focus on other thoughts, and you and I both know that's not so easy to do. Absolutely. We are speaking the same language when we're talking to people, and I'm also trying to get them to see that those thoughts actually are okay that they're there. In fact, it makes total sense that they're there because the mind is looking to protect them from possibly getting hurt. It could be physically getting hurt, or it could be psychologically getting hurt, like their ego getting busted up, their reputation taking a hit, or feeling as though their reputation is going to take a hit, and that the mind is looking to protect us. So, if anything, we're actually going to make room for that thought rather than reject it and judge it. So, in that way, I think we're very much alike. 100%, and I think that sense of acceptance, right, sort of acknowledging what's happening physically and mentally, knowing that that doesn't make them a bad person, it makes them human, that that's part of the human experience. In many respects, if we can be there, we can know that this is not problematic in and of itself. It's how we react to that that can cause the problems, right? And so, our ability, as you're saying, to sort of acknowledge that, sometimes I would say, befriend it. Befriend it. It's there. It's not there trying to screw you up. It's a friend that has taken perhaps an ill-advised approach at this moment, but it's trying to help you. It's trying to keep you out of trouble. So, instead of wasting the energy and trying to tamp it down and push it away, accept it. Acknowledge it, and also recognize that the physical manifestation of that, the nerves or whatever, is just how you care. Yeah, what makes it particularly confusing for athletes is, first of all, they perform at a much less of a rate than they do practice, generally speaking. You could practice 90% of the time and actually compete 10% of the time. That depends, of course, on your sport and your age and other things, but you're practicing much more than you are competing. And in practice, most of the time, although this could depend as well, you're not having as many chattery thoughts and doubts because there's really not much at stake, generally speaking. Can things be at stake in practice? 100%. So, when they get to a tournament and all of a sudden there's a flood of second-guessing and negative thoughts that show up, they really can be caught off guard, and that's a big part of the work that I do there. They're thinking something is wrong with them. So, that's particularly for the athlete. It is confusing in that way because I feel so confident in practice. I play my best in practice. I'm willing to swing away in practice, but in the game, there's a voice saying, what if you swing and miss? What if you strike out? What if the coach then pulls you out of the game? What if people laugh at you? What if your average goes down? What if you miss a college recruitment? What if your parents get mad? And on and on. And so, that's why it is sort of like teaching a new language to them, a new whole language to them that they otherwise don't know. And I see myself as a teacher, as an educator, as much as a clinician. So, I want to dig down into that a little bit. What are some of the teachings that you share? What are some of the techniques and tools that you might offer an athlete of whatever age, whether it's a young athlete or an Olympic athlete? Well, there's a number of things. First of all, that we don't have as much control over our thoughts as we think we do or wish we did. That they are not their thoughts, or as I might say, that they are not their chatter. I think one of the big takeaways from the work I do with athletes is that they come to see that there's a them, so to speak, and they're the ones who sign up for the tournament. They're the ones who get up early to go for the long run. They're the ones who hit the weight room late at night to get their session in. But there's also another voice that shows up that is the voice that's looking to protect them, as I said, from possible harm, the one that wants to keep them safe, the one that would rather them just stay in bed than go to that event on that Saturday morning because it's afraid that they might, again, be risking it all. And so teaching them that they are not their chatter, that they don't have much control as they think they do, are probably some of the biggest pieces. And then that leads into developing basically a whole new strategy for them to approach the tournament, which has them anticipating and planning for the fact that that voice is going to show up versus the complete opposite approach, which is, I pray to God I don't have those thoughts again, and I pray to God that I'll feel just like I did during the week. And, of course, that sets them up for an even bigger sense of failure because they think, I can't even do this right. And I think the other point of education and teaching, Clayton, is the idea that there's nothing wrong with you, that you're not a coward or a wimp or a loser, because I sometimes have these big, tough men or women, terrific athletes who compete on big stages, have this hidden fear that they publicly share with me, or privately share with me, I should say, that there's something really wrong with them because they have a doubting voice that shows up. And so disabusing them of that and telling them that there's nothing wrong with them is also maybe one of the biggest lessons I teach them. Yeah, that sounds like the imposter syndrome, right? It's like, I'm not as good as everybody is telling me at the core. I'm vulnerable. I have weaknesses. And I love the sense that you're talking about preparing the athlete that the mind chatter will show up. It's like, this is not something that we're going to take a pill and magically it's going to disappear. It's going to be there. And in many respects, it's like preparing yourself for the party, for the party crasher. You know, if you know that this can happen, you're going to be less flummoxed at the time that the person crashes through the door and you go, okay, cool. I didn't invite you, but you're here. You know, the key's over there. Make yourself at home. I'm going to be focusing here as best I can. Yeah, and this is where, again, it fits into the mindfulness frame, which is when the chatter shows up, it's not interested in present moment. It's not interested in now. It's interested in future you and the possible consequences for you if this tournament doesn't go the way you want it to go. Or time travels to the past and goes, remember last time you felt this way? And what if you screw it up again just like that? So it takes you completely out of the moment. And if they're not aware, anyone's not aware of that's, in fact, what chatter's job is, which is to warn you unnecessarily in this case. By the way, there's plenty of examples of having chatter that's completely advantageous, right? If someone's going to, if you and I, Clayton, are going for a jog and there's a cliff 100 yards ahead of us without much thought, conscious thought, there's a voice, though, there's something inside of us that says, you know, it's time to turn around and go the other direction because there's a voice that gets that we need to be safe here, that you don't want to get hurt. So chatter in and of itself isn't good or bad. It's, again, it's a protection. But in this context, in the sports context, it takes us way out of the moment. And the big question for athletes is often, once we get to this point, is, all right, well, I know what I'm not supposed to be thinking about, but what should I be thinking about if not for all that stuff? And that brings us back to the present moment. What in the present moment matters. What is in the present moment is important. And this is probably part of the most fun part of my job, which is what was going to work for Clayton might not work for my next client or for my next client. Everybody, we have to tailor make a kind of a focusing plan or a present moment plan that's going to kind of fit their sport, fit their strength, fit their weaknesses even, fit their strategy, fit what the coach is trying to get them to do without having them get too caught up in all of that, as you're saying, without having them overthink all of it. So that leads to kind of goal setting. And we could get into that conversation, if you want, about how I do goal setting because it is very much dealing with present moment awareness. Yeah, I want to come back to that definitely. And I also want to, I love the thought that, you know, mind chatter, the voices in our head can play a very important part to keep us out of real danger. You mentioned running and noticing you're coming up with a goal. How about something simple as stopping on a sidewalk before you cross the street? There's a voice in your head that says, look both ways. Absolutely. And without that voice, we might just go right into traffic. So we do have to listen from time to time. And I appreciate you bringing that up. The other thing is I want to go back to that wonderful sort of metaphor you had about the mind traveling forward or traveling back and not being in the present. And I want to talk about two golfers. And most recently, there was the U.S. Open. And one of my favorite golfers, Rory McIlroy, was leading and seemed to have things in total control and then sort of fell apart, missed some fairly makeable putts. And I'm wondering, we don't know what was going on in his mind, but if you had to guess, how would that play into that scenario of the mind not being present at that time? One of the things I do like about Rory McIlroy is he is pretty open about his work with sports psychologist Bob Rotella, who is a very well-known sports psychologist. Golf is not a game of perfect, amongst others. And he does give us some clues into his mindset. No, I don't know exactly what he was thinking on those putts. But he's someone who acknowledges, despite how many majors he's won, it's been like six years since he's won one, that he has struggled from time to time. And I do encourage anyone who's listening who's interested in this also to watch the Netflix documentary about the Pro Tour, the name I'm blocking on at the moment, unfortunately. But Rory is one of the people they follow. And Rory, you could see Rory in real time kind of struggling, despite being the favorite at the tournament. So we could imagine that Rory in that moment is having several chattery thoughts that have a lot to do with, don't screw this up. Don't blow it. You've got it. Just don't screw it up. And it's possible that those thoughts mentally and within his body have him super tight. And I think a big interesting thing to me is not just being mentally tight, but his shoulders being tight, his chest being tight, him not breathing and kind of finding his breath, his buttocks being tight, his legs being tight. And all it takes is just an inch or two being off for that putt to sail left or right. And so we would want Rory as he walks up to those putts, now I don't know how much he was or wasn't to be conscious of his breath. I would be talking to him about his breath, because that is something, as you know better than me, is something in the moment that he can focus on. I would want him to get the sort of colossal joke of it all that here he is, having shown how talented he is, and there's still that stinking voice that's going to tell him how much he could suck if he blows it. I mean it like chatter always shows up at the perfectly worst time. And if I could inject some humor, have him inject some humor in that moment, that can loosen somebody up as well. Interestingly, Bob Rutella shared that he's just trying to get Rory, or Rory shared that Bob Rutella is trying to get him just to have more fun out there. And it's sort of a corny word that like, how much fun is it to be on the 18th with all that pressure? But there could be some, again, you could kind of have some way of kind of breaking the tension by acknowledging like, boy, even after all that I've shown you today, there's still a voice that's telling me what if you suck and blow this. And then the last thing I would say about focusing is, and of course I don't know what Rory was doing or not doing, but I have found with my golfers, having a couple of small cues, present moment, in the moment cues can help. Because when we get tense and tight, we often tend to make the same mistakes. For example, of course I'm making this up, Rory doesn't bring his club back far enough, or he doesn't follow through. When we're tight, we are literally more like this than like this. And so we would want him to have something in the moment where he would emphasize the length of his stroke, for example, if that in fact is something. So that gives you a little bit of a feel of how I would be thinking about things for Rory. Yeah, yeah. Well, I love the sense of injecting fun or humor, maybe gratitude, right? I was thinking about that. Would it be possible for someone walking up on the 18th green on the final day of a majors and the crowd up above to take that thought that says, how many human beings have this experience? How freaking lucky am I? So yeah, maybe that leads into blah, blah, blah, blah, but at that moment you're saying, you know what? I'm blessed. I'm blessed. Yeah, and for some that could help. For some they could find that. I think that's what's interesting, because some people I could suggest that and they would go, wow, that's really great. It really sort of takes me out of the fear of the moment and makes me appreciate it. And others would not find that helpful. I mean, again, that's the art of this. It's more art than science, which is we do sometimes get people to look up at the trees. Look up. Look up at the trees, because sometimes you don't really even notice where you are. Smell the pine. Smell the grass. We have sometimes people, and you see athletes do this, baseball players and golfers. They'll pick up the grass. Sometimes they'll stick it in their mouth. Taste the grass. Like get into your senses that are in the moment to kind of ground you in the moment where otherwise you're already thinking about whether you're going to be carrying the trophy or not or walking off in tears, you know? Yeah, I love that sense foraging. That's something that I'm actually doing some real exploration on and want to bring that into my practice, which is just as you described. What do you see? What do you feel? What do you taste? Because if you are actually sensing those things, you cannot be anywhere else but in the present moment. So that's brilliant. The other thing, you talked about the cues. One of the things that I did read about one of Rory's coaches was that he was noticing he approached his putts differently than he normally would. So one of the things that I've become more and more aware of with pro athletes, and actually not even just pro, but athletes in general who have had solid coaching, and that could be athletic coaching and it could be help from a psychological standpoint, is creating a routine. So I'm watching tennis and I'm watching Novak Djokovic bounce the ball, sometimes I think 12 or 13 times, but he's bouncing, bouncing, bouncing, bouncing, bouncing, bouncing. And I'm thinking this is his routine. One of the things that keeps him in the present, but also is driving his opponent crazy, but when we see basketball players come to the line and do the same thing every single time they approach that. And what I'm feeling from that, and you can lend your expertise to this, is that if I'm approaching this the same way every time, I'm now getting into a routine that is something that is comfortable for me. There's a comfort level that's being brought back into this moment because I'm home. This is what I do when I come. I do this, I bounce the ball, whatever it could be. And knowing that if I do this, it doesn't guarantee the shot will go in, but it does, it brings me home to this moment and my focus is on this and not this. Yeah, I think routines and rituals are extremely important for athletes, especially athletes that play sports, for example, like tennis, where there's so much stopping of action and starting and stopping of action where runners, for example, who are running the two-mile, you're not stopping in between. So it does give us a sense of control over circumstances where, because one of the points that I bring out in athletes that sometimes seems obvious but isn't so obvious is that they don't have direct control over the outcome of the point, which no matter how hard they hit the serve or no matter whether they pinpoint their placement, it doesn't guarantee that they're going to win the point. So you do want to sort of try to find some things that organize you and give you this sense of control and having a good routine as part of it. But young athletes learn that just bouncing the ball however many times isn't enough. Your mind is clicking along. You could have the best looking ball bounce, but if you're thinking about how terrible this is going to go and how much you're going to double fault, I don't care how many times you bounce the ball, it's not going to work. So it has to accompany sort of a mental process as well of what we might call like a reset. You know, every time you get there behind the baseline and you start bouncing the ball to serve, it's sort of a reset. The past is over. The future hasn't happened yet, right? All of this is very much your or my language about being in the moment. And that as you go through your bouncing ball routine, you're also perhaps resetting yourself for just that point right now or even just that ball toss right then and there or even your strategy right then and there, the things that are in the moment that you want to put your attention on. And for the, you know, what separates many of the Djokovic's of the world from other very talented players who never make it to Grand Slams is how well you can reset. It's not how hard to serve and it's not your ground stroke necessarily. How well can you reset? I know this for having worked with – I work now with a number of young pros who have been told by umpty-ump coaches who have coached some of the greats that they've got the goods. But they're not in Grand Slams yet and part of the reason they're not there and they're talking to me is because they are so inconsistent emotionally and forget to reset or don't reset or overly negative that those rituals or routines don't really work as well as they should. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. I remember one of the points during the finals of his past Wimbledon, watching an amazing point with Alkaraz and Djokovic and Alkaraz hit an insane shot after a very long rally and Djokovic – it doesn't happen a lot. But I would tell you personally what has changed my appreciation of racket sports for me has been basically acknowledging a good shot. Not every point ends in tennis or squash or whatever because you made a mistake. Sometimes you can acknowledge that was an amazing shot. Yeah. My feeling about that is that what happens internally instead of the negative – either the negative that, geez, how did he do that? Or the negative, how could I allow that to happen? The appreciation of that is a positive and creates internally a positive response. Yeah. And that's one of the things that you and I have talked about in the past is even in the face of difficulty, how can we reset, as you said, and get our minds onto a positive framework? And that's not – when I talk about that, I'm not talking about Pollyanna. I'm not talking about Stuart Smalley looking in the mirror and saying, gosh, I'm good enough. I'm talking about actually visualizing from a positive standpoint what the next – what the process is allowing me to do because that – again, I use the word relaxed and you said you can't always be relaxed and I concur completely with that. But not having the tenseness get in the way of our ability to perform, right? Yeah. And so the positive puts us in a framework where we can actually be in the flow, relax into that moment and do what our bodies know that they can do. Yeah. I say to people the way I think about chatter is it's like maybe that top 20% of like extra, extra nervousness that I'm trying to get managed. You'll still flat out be nervous, regular nervous, but then that gives you the chance to get into the flow of the match, as you said, and into the flow of the game. And where if you just stay at that high level with chatter sort of hanging around, you don't get to that place to experience all that you're capable of. And that's usually, you know, when people come talking with me. Just as an aside, I love it when people like Djokovic, you know, he's at the point where he's humble. You know, he's at that maturity level now where he gets that he's not the only game and down and that he's surrounded by other talented players like a young Alcaraz and can clap for them. He respects that like on any given day. It reminds me of Derek Jeter. He was so humble. He was like the hardest thing in the world is to hit a baseball. Like he went up with such humbleness that the idea that like anything can happen here and I'm not like, I'm not bigger than the moment. I'm not better than anyone else. I'm just trying to, the way Jeter would talk about sort of being in the moment to me, I just always admired because he wasn't looking to like dominate. He was looking to just sort of settle in. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great example. And I always liked, it's hard not to like Derek Jeter, you know. Yeah, he didn't talk much. You know, he didn't talk much crap and he just showed everything right out on the field. I think that's especially being in the New York market where you could get caught up in saying too much and before you know it and, I mean, and he showed up in the biggest moments. I mean, he is hard not to admire. He really is. Yeah. That's exactly right. You know, one of the things that you and I talked about, in fact, you showed me in your office the inner game of tennis, which was one of the books that was given to me back at a time when I really needed to work on my inner game. And one of the things that I remember about that and I so appreciate was Tim Galway talking about teaching and just throwing the ball and just hit. Not even telling someone how to swing, but just throwing the ball up and just hit the ball. Hit the ball. Yeah. Hit the ball. And realizing that the body will often pick up the right technique simply, you know, in that moment if the mind isn't getting in the way. And to me there's so much there about just allowing yourself to do what you know, what you've practiced, what you've prepared for, whether that's in sports or whether it's in the courtroom or, you know, making a presentation. And I think about that with so many people today, you know. Yeah. People who are not trained presenters having to present to their deans or to their companies and just being able to appreciate at that moment just to let it happen. And so let's go back to courage over confidence because. Yeah. But let me, can I just say one thing about that? Because that Galway book is something I still sometimes go back to. That book inspired me to write this book. So it is related to this. And I very humbly in my mind thought if I could write a book that's sort of a modern version of this 1970-something book by Galway, then I've gotten somewhere. I'm not claiming that I did that, but I aspired to do that. He also in his own way talked about these two voices in your head, one that is looking to achieve and improve and the other is my mind chatter voice that's looking to sabotage it. Right. And he would tell people ball hit, ball, in other words, observe the ball, notice the spin on it, notice the pace. So he was having people occupy their mind with something in the moment like the spin on the ball. And as you said, then he would just tell them to hit it. He wouldn't tell them where to hit it or to overly focus. The other thing about Galway that I think is important in this conversation and has a lot to do with the way my book turned out is he talks at the end of the book about competition. There was a quote in there that I, about if, I'm butchering it, but the spirit of it was, if competition means that your ego is always at stake, then you'll sort of, you're never going to feel like a winner. That is not the quote, but the spirit of it is this idea that the true competition is from the Latin root. The word competition is competitor, which means to seek together, which is Clayton and I go out on the court. And in order for me to seek what I'm capable of, I need a Clayton on the other side working hard to see what he's capable of. And from his seeking what his capabilities are, I learn more about myself and what I can do and what I can't yet do. And that spirit that I'm a performance and who you are and you enhance me and together we create something. A lot of that comes from Galway and influences everything that I do now in my work and has a lot to do with the book. So when you segue to the book, I want to give my props to Galway for his inspiration. Yeah, well let's segue to the book right now. And I want to tell you, having read both books, I can see where the seeds of Galway inspired you. And I want to tip my hat that I really believe that you were true to them in your own way. And I think there's an authenticity there which is to be saluted. So congrats on that because I really think you did bring into present day a lot of these concepts that influenced you early on. And the other thing that I want to point out is that one of the brilliant aspects of how you constructed your book was at the end of each chapter, the action items. So let's turn it back over to you in terms of, so what did you want to accomplish with this and, you know, how are some of the ways that you find the themes of this playing out for the people that you work with and for people who can read the book in the future? Well, I had a couple things floating through my mind when I wrote the book, which was easy. I want it to be an easy read. I want it to be practical as you're suggesting. I didn't want them to have to think too, too, too hard about what I was trying to say or what I was suggesting. So I knew I needed a lot of examples or as many examples as I could and practical suggestions. And I wanted it to be an approach. In other words, I didn't want to just write about different concepts. I wanted to, like, place it in such a way in order because I do in my work with athletes in my office have sort of an order to things. And I thought in my office I never referred to them as sort of steps, but I knew in the book it would be helpful to sort of say, here are the steps you could take. So I was very, very conscious in the book about writing it in plain speak and like the way I talk, on trying not to repeat myself over and over like I find a lot of books do. They could be half the size as far as I'm concerned in the book because they just say the same thing over and over again. And I was committed to try to make my voice come out on the pages. And the feedback that I've gotten is that it does read easy, that it does make sense, that it is user-friendly. And even now it's a little – it's a year plus later since it's been out. I don't think to myself, oh, God, I totally forgot to include this section or I should have included that. I feel myself that it sort of feels like it's – not that there's not more to talk about, but it stands on its own still, I feel like, for anyone who sort of just really wants to understand how much mind chatter can interfere and how to manage it. I feel like it stands well on its own. So I'm happy about that. Yeah. And I can confirm that. So I really want to congratulate you on a job well done. And I don't think that I'm finding – again, it's reinforcing for me in your voice, it's reinforcing a lot of the – sort of my personal journey on being able to be a – I'm not a – I don't see myself as a, quote, unquote, competitive athlete so much anymore, but an athlete who wants to enjoy these moments and not have my mind chatter interfere with having a good time. Why am I there? Yeah, you know, you mentioned – yeah, well, I'm competitive myself. And I feel like it's interesting when you say that. Like, I wrote the book with kind of a competitive mindset. I thought, like, I don't want this to just be okay. I want this to be – I want this to, you know – I want this to knock – I want to knock this out of the park. You know, I took this on. I took it on as a full-time job while I kept my full-time job. In other words, I – you know, the funny story that I tell is my wife's family, they celebrate Christmas. So, like, my kids grew up so we both celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah. And Christmas is a big deal in our family – in her family. And her whole family came down, and she's got a big family who I love. I love, love, love. They came, and I was on my final deadline of my final month of my book. And I was – and it was, you know, a few days before Christmas, and we went out to this huge dinner. And I – and I, you know, I talked about this with my wife, of course. But I went to the dinner, but then I stayed overnight in a hotel because I knew if I sort of spent the whole weekend, you know, like, this book wasn't going to be – that's how – that's how locked in I was on this process, which was – which was – you know, and I had my wife's blessing. And then, of course, my – her family made fun of me for it in a loving, teasing way. But I was like, I'm not letting anything get in my way, if I don't have to – of course, something's got in my way – of writing this book. And I had this mindset, like, I don't want it to just be good. I want it to be as great as possible. And so I have that competitive – I have that competitor in me, even professionally. Like, I don't want to – I want to make – I want to make as big a difference as I can. I don't want to just sort of, like, make some mediocre difference. That gets me out of bed every morning. It really does. Right, right. And I want to appreciate the fact that you can – what you're demonstrating is that you had a goal and you had a process that you needed to complete. You set some boundaries, right? And that's really hard, right? Yes. That's one of the things that so many people suffer with is, like – They do. I've got the family here. Maybe that's where I should be. And at that point, you have the ability to look inward and say, in order to get this done, this needs to happen. I'm going to share this with my wife. Let her know that I – all things being equal, I'd love to be with the family, but I have to do this, right? So you're communicating and that the honesty in that is really helpful. The other thing is this, and it's something that holds a lot of people back, and you and I have talked about this. Like letting perfection be the enemy of good. It's like you wanted this to be as good as it could possibly be, but you weren't allowing any sense of perfectionism to say, well, if this isn't the most – if this isn't a New York Times bestseller, I don't want to do it. So you want to do the very best thing you can and get it done. Yeah, look, just like the athletes, it's very much like an athlete getting ready. I had an outcome in mind, but I can't control whether this becomes a successful book or not. That's not, like, up to me, totally. I mean, if it was, then everyone would just write really successful books. And I had to do just like I work with athletes. I had to sit down each day and kind of get clear about what my goals are. You know, I had to talk to myself in such a way my chatter would say, what if no one reads this? What if this is a big all to do about nothing? What if this only makes sense to me? What if no one reads it? And I had to kind of work through that chatter and plow forward with the idea that while I'm here now in the moment, what do I want to try to focus on? It was a parallel process to an athlete getting ready for an event and having a – and what's important and letting some of those chattery thoughts come and go, just sort of part of the, you know, the book writing process, just like they're part of the athletic, you know, journey to get where an athlete wants to go. Very similar. Yeah, it is. And I think about the – again, we talk about routine for athletes being that – Right. The ability to get comfortable in that moment, going back to that routine, something that says, I've been here before. It's okay. Right? Yeah. a book, a podcast, a presentation, a work with a client, knowing we have a routine. And you talked to me before about, you know, between meetings, taking that moment to reset. Yeah. Right? Because the work you do, I can see it can be fought with compassion and concern for the person you were just with. But the next person coming through the door is a new person. They need your full focus. And you talked about how you take a moment just to get centered. Yeah, I think the good news is – well, I've done this now for a while, so I do have some sense of pacing myself and energy management. And I think I mentioned to you this once before, but I actually find the sessions, I'm most mindful, if you will. I'm most in the moment with a client. In fact, it's harder to be mindful when I'm not with a client because there's so many things I could be doing. I could be working on the book. I could be answering emails. I could be doing a million things. So I actually found being with clients helpful. Not that they're not challenging in their own right and not that I always know what to do. But for me, I guess I found myself in the right profession. I find that actually invigorating and reconnects me because I could sit down in my chair, and I sometimes consciously say this to myself, like, it's just me and them, right? It's just us now. And what do they have for me, and what do I have for them today? And be curious about it. So, thankfully, my sessions enliven me rather than, generally speaking, then sort of sucking the energy out of me. And that has to do with experience. That has to do with pacing. That has to do with how many clients I see. I mean, I've learned over the years. I would not say that was always true for me. But at this stage of my career, that's really true for me. Yeah, and I think that sense of coming back to the intention, you know, what does it mean to happen now? And I think, you know, again, to me, this is a great example of mindfulness in real time. For me, what I might do is I might close my eyes. And I do, for example, before I go into a presentation, before I'm doing a one-on-one mentoring with a mindfulness client, before I do my Friday morning mindfulness sessions, I take that moment just to say, why am I here? What's my intention for this moment? What's my role? And so often, it's so interesting, I think about this in the business world, people going into meetings. They go into a meeting, and they forget, what's my role here? Yeah, that's a good point. I think that's what I – I don't necessarily close my eyes, but I do get clear and take it seriously that people are coming and going out of their way in their lives to show up to see me and to share things that are very private oftentimes. And I take that like this is why they're here, and this is what I'm here to do. Whatever else can wait. And so I do get clear about my purpose, if you will, or my role, and have my own ways of being mindful in real time. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think, again, between the lines, one of the things that I read from what you're saying that I truly, again, appreciate is there's a sense of it's a privilege to serve. Oh, yeah. Right? Yeah. And our ability – and I think this gets back to then for the athlete in the same way, it's a privilege to have this opportunity. It's like this is an opportunity that not everybody gets. Right. Again, even if you're young, it's like not everybody has this opportunity, and it's something I like. I'm doing this because it's something I enjoy. It's something that's fulfilling. Right? Yeah. And being able to set that intention and take the moment to say, okay, this is where my focus is. It's here because this matters to me. Yeah. The other thing that I just – along the lines of the athletes that I remind them of about, yes, the fact that this is what they wanted. Like I will sometimes say to an athlete, if I told you six months ago that you'd be winding up, like, in a national championship game, you would have been like, sign me up right now. Like, I'm in. Now that we're here, you're starting to kind of question it all. So I will remind them, just like you're saying, of this happens to be what they wanted and have worked so hard to achieve. And then I also remind them of this, which is, you know, they may not – I eventually try to get to this place. I'll do it in a short way with us. But I want them to appreciate that they actually signed up for – that they won a challenge, that when they signed up to play on this team and compete in these events, they didn't want it to be easy. Because if it was easy and they just won all the time, and I do some sort of silly kind of stories with them where, you know, I have these magic powers and it gives them the ability to just win, but I don't tell, like, you know, the conference they're in. In their conference, nobody will know. They'll still get a win, but nobody knows that they actually played against, like, inferior opponents. I'm like, if I could set that up for you and you could just win and be the champion, but you didn't have to play against all these hard people, which means that you didn't have all that chatter. So you could just sort of roll in and just crush people. And I go through this whole story with them, and I go, guess what's going to happen? And, you know, they eventually figure it out. Like, you're going to say to me, Doc, can you get rid of this situation for me? And I'll say, what do you mean? You're winning. This is what you've dreamed of. The medal is around your neck. And they'll say, yeah, but something's missing. And I'll go, what? What could be missing? You know, and then eventually we come to this place that there was no challenge. I didn't earn it. It wasn't worth it. And I go, oh, you didn't tell me that. You told me you wanted to win. You didn't tell me you wanted a challenge. And I go, well, I wasn't even realizing that until now. And now I realize this is kind of what I've signed up for. Like, now I get it. The mental challenge isn't something they necessarily knew they were signing up for. But guess what? That's another version of a challenge that you've signed up for. And now we're going to sort of talk about how to work on it. Versus thinking that there's something wrong because this is so hard. I'm like, no, actually, you signed up for hard. You didn't maybe think of it that way at the time. But that was on the list of things you signed up for, which is this shit gets hard. And now we're here. But the good news is we have some ways to deal with hard. And, again, just a way to frame it for people, which is to be grateful. You're doing something you love. And also, you actually signed up for this, believe it or not. You know, it's funny. I was thinking as you were finishing this, sitting in the dugout with Little Leaguers. And, you know, they play six innings. And it's the fifth inning. And they're down 5-0. And you can see the faces. And I remember having this conversation with them. I said, let me ask you this. What's more fun, winning 10-0 or winning on a walk-off in the bottom half, right? What would you prefer? And they go, oh, man, the walk-off. I said, well, you don't get a walk-off unless you were behind. There you go. It's all about perspective, isn't it? It's all about perspective. It's all about perspective. I want to say this has been so much fun. Thank you. We appreciate it. Thank you for sharing some of the motivations and, you know, what went into making the book. I love actually going in the direction of some of the practical aspects of, you know, writing for the holidays. To me, understanding that this is how life works, right? And how do we accomplish what we need to accomplish in the midst of this world and create environments where we can do our best work? And, you know, when you're in that hotel room meeting your deadlines, I would imagine that there was a flow. And, you know, and that's something to celebrate, being able to find those moments. They happen in many different ways. Our ability to be aware of them, I think, is huge. Be aware of what got us into that spot is huge. And I know that there's so many people who benefit from your work as they're, you know, in their corner, as their sports psychologist. I applaud that. Thank you for spending time with me and sharing so much. So thank you so much, Dr. Michael Green. Thank you, Clayton. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Cheers. Cheers. I want to thank my producer, Mary Ann Sanders of Brutal Macho, a media company that produces graphics, audio, video, and live events to help expand your reach. And also the support I've received from my friends at Meditation for Leadership. Meditation for Leadership is an organization that teaches individuals how to achieve enhanced awareness, connection, perspective, and potential to improve leadership effectiveness. A benefit for both individuals and their organization. Meditation for Leadership, making organizations more mindful and effective one breath at a time. Until next time, this is Clayton Clark. Stay safe and stay present.