Conquer Your Mind Podcast

This is the first episode of a podcast that explores the theories and philosophies behind the human mind. The human mind is capable of creativity, problem-solving, empathy, and innovation, but whether it can be considered the most powerful weapon is debatable. The podcast will feature guest speakers and discussions to explore different perspectives. The host also shares a guided meditation practice and introduces the philosopher Immanuel Kant. The mind has been responsible for both positive and negative actions throughout history, with examples of influential figures like Hitler and Gandhi. The podcast also highlights a military soldier who published a book about training the mind for world peace. Hello, world. Welcome to Episode 1 of a much-anticipated podcast. Here, we'll be breaking down the theories and philosophies behind the mind, why it's so cool and unique, as well as bringing in guest speakers to put our minds together. If you didn't laugh at that, that was actually a pun. So, the human mind is capable of creativity, problem-solving, empathy, and innovation. However, whether it can be considered the most powerful weapon is open to interpretation. The human mind has been responsible for both incredible advancements and destructive actions throughout history. So, we're going to be going over a quick overview. I have some discussion questions, but I'm going to go over the basics first. So, we're going to bring in our guest speakers, we're going to discuss a bit, and then we're going to see if our opinions contrast or go together. I'm going to bring it to a conclusion and sum it up, and then I'll transition you guys into Episode 2. And each episode will ultimately contain a theme, and this one being the theories and philosophies behind the power of the mind. So, now, before we get started, I'm going to take you guys over a quick one-minute guided meditation, just to show you guys a sneak peek of what I do in my day-to-day life. All right, let's get started. These instructions guide you through a one-minute mindfulness meditation practice to be done any time, any place. Begin by becoming aware of your body in this moment, and the sensations of your body touching a chair or the ground. Now, guiding your awareness to your breath. Breathing in, rest with the sensation of the in-breath. Breathing out, rest with the sensation of the out-breath. Breathing in, breathing out. Meeting your experience with acceptance, friendliness, and curiosity. If a thought arises, simply note thinking and return your attention to your breath. Breathing in, breathing out. All right, we're back. Hopefully, you guys enjoyed that a bit. That's just a small glimpse of what I like to do once a day, before bed, or right when I get my morning started. Not only is it more than a minute, it's around five minutes or so, five to ten minutes, and if I feel like it, sometimes I'll even get into my meditating state, and I'll sit, cross my arms, close my eyes. It's a really, really great experience for myself, and it calms me down. Anyways, let's get started with some theory. We'll begin with the famous mind philosopher, Immanuel Kant, born in 1724 until 1804. Immanuel Kant is one of the most important philosophers of the Enlightenment period, circa 1650 to 1800. Kant's views on the philosophy of mind outline much of his epistemology and metaphysics theories. Kant argues, like Locke and Hume before him, that the boundaries of substantive human knowledge stops at the experience. Thus, we must be extraordinary circumspect concerning any claim made about what reality is like, independent of all possible human experience. But like Descartes, Kant thinks that the central parts of human knowledge nevertheless exhibit characteristics of necessity and universality, and that, contrary to Hume's skeptical arguments, there is good reason to think so. The human mind designed every tool and weapon for the past 100,000 years, or possibly even more. Does the idea of being able to apply one's knowledge against his fellow man or woman make the mind a weapon? No. It's the human mind that has to battle against the elements of nature, and in more recent times, not to distort said human nature in the progression towards our future. Music break. Bonjour tout le monde. That means hello everyone. We're back with a well-deserved music break. I had to include a little bit of French culture in there. It feels really nice, a bit calming music. I hope you like that, Mr. Johnson. Now we have our guest speaker, actually, so we're going to introduce the celebrity real quick. Hello Jude, how are you doing today? Hi, I'm good. How are you? I'm good, I'm good. Couldn't be better. All right, so Jude, I have a couple of questions for you, and then we're going to be engaging in some conversation, hopefully. We'll see how it goes, and by the end of it, we'll see if we can concur with our thoughts, or if our thoughts do not go together. But yeah, overall, I just have a couple of questions. Is that okay? Yeah, sounds good. So Jude, what is the mind to you? Well, to me, the mind is definitely an endless place. It's filled with thoughts, ideas, people being creative. To me, the mind is different for everyone. No mind is alike, no matter what, no matter what's taught, no matter how people are raised. Everybody's different. They make their own decisions, and I think without the mind, there would be nothing. That's an interesting answer, Jude. All right, my next question for you actually leads into a bit of ethics and morals. Just going off of recent events, it's quite evident that the mind is the most powerful weapon on this planet, especially seeing recent events such as the Israeli-Hamas war and other events going on right now. But what do you think plays a large role in these wars? Do you think the mind can play a large role? And if so, is the mind more powerful than any weapon on this planet? Well, personally, I actually do believe that the mind is the most powerful weapon because to bring up what you mentioned, the war in Israel and Palestine, I think that people can be very biased towards their own culture and their own country. I think that people don't really get to see an outside perspective when they're suffering, when they're actually going through it, because it's just harder. With your mind, you can't just look past things, and I think that with it being the most powerful weapon, the power of convincing others, the power of being able to control an entire country, an entire society, is extremely dangerous. It could be really dangerous. For example, we could talk about the Koreas. Which one? Oh, South Korea. South Korea, sorry. I didn't know which one it was. But take into account South Korea. An entire country is, you could almost say brainwashed into believing. It's all manipulation. Yeah, exactly. It's all tyranny. Look at all these tyrants. Hitler, for example. Stalin. All these guys had these mindsets. Putin. Yes. Although they were very, very bad people, their mindsets were incredible. They were insane. And the way that they were able to use them as the most powerful weapon, more powerful than any nuclear weapon on this planet. Their mindsets were just at another level than any other civilian, that they were able to brainwash their country as a whole. That's why I personally think that the mind is the most powerful weapon on this planet, and I'm happy that you do as well. The mind, I completely agree with what you're saying, because the mind is what controls people. You can try to bomb, you can try to fight, you can try to shoot, you can try to kill people, civilians, but that will never, in the end, that will never stop whatever the conflict or whatever the situation is going on. In the end, it's about the person in charge and their mind and how they're controlling the people around them, which is the most dangerous aspect. Because you could have weapons and somebody who has a good ethical, moral view, and they can still control their country, their citizens, without having to use the negative aspects. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, of course. We're going to stop talking about the bad stuff now going on, but we'll take some good things for account. Let's look at some events that actually brought some light upon the mindset and some people that really, really used their mind for good. Currently, we have a recent news event. I think overall, there's many influencers such as Kobe Bryant, Madame Curie, all these people who did so good for their environment around them. It was all through the mindset. It was all through morals and ethics that they had that just reached out and inspired the youth, inspired everyone around them. Today, we have a new guy. His name is Vlad Belyavsky. You may not know who he is because at first, I didn't either until I read this really cool article about him. Vlad Belyavsky is a military soldier. Today, he's in Kiev for Ukraine. He's been fighting for a year now, but that's not why I'm highlighting him right now. I'm highlighting him right now because he just published a book 13 years after it was conceived. He's a 33-year-old guy. He published his first book called The Pyramid Mind. He actually stated that if we all trained our minds properly, we could live together in harmony. At best, he imagined that his book might even stop wars. Although he's still fighting today, he serves. He serves for his country. He tries to do good. He tries to create peace. He hopes that he never gets the chance to hurt anyone in battle. He hopes that he can use his mindset and he can inspire others to train their minds like he does and to ultimately create world peace. I find that really, really inspiring because this is something in today's news with the Russia-Ukraine war. We don't have many people like this nowadays, but this is all from the heart. I believe that this 33-year-old young man is going to do some great stuff in the future. Just like Kobe Bryant, Gandhi, all these amazing influencers, I feel like they're ultimately the reason why we can edge world peace. One last thing that really stood out to me about Pilevski is that when he attended university in Kyiv, he actually studied international relations. That's where he came across Seneca's writing on Stoicism. I'm going to quote him right now. He says, This book was written 2,000 years ago, and it was speaking to me. That was the first time I understood the power of literature. There could be another guy in 100 years who reads your book, and if it has value, it could influence him. That's what's great to me. Ultimately, this figure just wants to inspire others around him and just create that aspect that Seneca did on Stoicism and sort of create his own philosophy. I really hope that this works out for him because from this article, he really seems like a really great person and an influencer. Overall, I believe that we've built our thoughts throughout the few or many years of our lives from concepts and the beliefs that were basically just instilled in us by our families and our religions, our educational institutions like HSC, and even our governments. So like we've been talking about, I feel like there aren't many ideas that are exclusively our own. So even our guy here in Kyiv, I feel like he's doing super good for our community, for his community, sorry, and he's doing everything he can. But overall, it's all because of how he was built, how he was raised, all these ethics that's been going on. So with that, I'm just going to transition into one last question, and then we'll just sum everything up and go into a short conclusion. So Jude, how are we going to differentiate between the humans using the power of their minds for good, like our soldier in Kyiv, and those using the power of their minds for evil, like Hitler, Stalin, all these bad figures who we talked about previously. So I agree with the points that you were making earlier, especially when it comes down to intent, like morals, empathy, and how people sometimes are just raised with the lack to feel that empathy, especially with those figures that you listed. When we look at their childhood, when we look at their history, we see that they were never really raised in a happy, positive setting, which completely can change the trajectory of one's life. I think that while some people are raised with a positive attitude, like the author that you mentioned earlier, it can really have positive effects on the world, and that's when I think people can use their mind for good, because they can understand the repercussions of their actions, and they can feel empathy for others, while these negative figures that use their mind for the bad really let emotion take over, and the fact that they don't really know how to feel empathetic for others, and that their actions do have repercussions to them. They obviously grew up with that mindset to not feel empathy, and I completely agree with every single one of those statements that you made. Honestly, I really appreciate having you here, and thank you for your time, Jude. Thank you. So, to leave you with one thing to think about as we end off this episode, I hope you appreciate the theories behind what we have here, how people are raised, their ethics, their morals, why war goes on, are evil, are good, everything of the above. I feel like really just sat with me, and I'm able to think in deeper thought now with our mindsets. So, overall, I hope you enjoyed this episode. We'll see you on the next one, and yeah, have a good one. Episode 2? Welcome back to Episode 2. All right. So, hey, listeners. Yeah, so Episode 2, wow, it's already Episode 2. So, what we're going to focus on here is more so the power of the mind again, but within something more specific, and this time it's going to be athletics, so the mental side of the game. And overall, this is more of a heart-spoken or anecdotal episode in my opinion, and that also means that I don't have a script that I have to stick to, and I think that that is something that will be interesting for me because I get to speak from the heart, and I get to speak from my experiences, which hopefully goes well. But yeah, so here's an overview. I'm going to kind of say what I might be talking about, and then we'll bring in our guest speaker, but all right, let's get started. So, I'll be going over a bit of pressure, performance, will to succeed, sort of small topics per se to just go over them and kind of see how they each have their own significant contributions to an athlete's mental game, so how they can control their mindset and outweigh any negatives. And then I'll be bringing in my guest speaker, talking a bit about not only my experiences, but his experiences as well, because every athlete's personal mental journey is different. And then we'll be closing it out. Hopefully this will be a quick episode. So, let's get started. I'm going to begin with a quote that Michael Phelps, so if you don't know who Michael Phelps is, Olympic swimmer, probably the best swimmer in the history of swimming. He's done a lot of great things as an athlete, and he's been advocating for mental health for quite a while. So, he starts it off with, I think that everything is possible as long as you put your mind to it and you put the work and time into it. I really think that your mind controls everything. So, he really understands the mind and how he can train it to help him perform better, and he's always really given significant credit to his mental conditioning as an overall factor for his success in his competitive or professional swimming career. And, you know, I really model that quote after my journey in mental strength and mental health as an athlete. So, really good quote to begin with. So, let's get started. All right. So, for me, it all started, I guess, at the age of, transitioning to the age of 16. This is when I first started my year of AAA hockey, 15, 16 years old. First year of AAA hockey, it was my youth 16 year, which is arguably the most important year in a youth hockey, minor hockey career. It was my first year of AAA, like I just said, and I was chosen to play for a pretty good team in Ontario, the Burlington Eagles, and thankfully, that was my hometown. I was really fortunate to be playing there because a lot of people have to move around for their youth 16 year, and they have to find a team that'll take them, and they'll drive around, and some people drive up to like 45 minutes to find a good team for their fitting. So, again, youth 16 year, very important year, and already, I was feeling the spotlight, I was feeling the pressure on me, and the season hasn't even started yet. So, of course, this is when I'm not too experienced with my mental health. I'm not really sure. I have no background knowledge on it. I don't think many people even do at that age, to be honest. Yeah, so it starts off a bit rough, let's just say that. I have that pressure on me, and I'm not performing the way that I was expected to perform, and overall, it just turns into a snowball effect, I guess you could call it. So, if it was a tiny snowball of pressure, it just builds up, and builds up, and builds up, and turns into this boulder of a snowball where I can't bear it anymore, and it turns into something that's just constantly on my mind, and it starts turning over to my day-to-day life. Now, I wouldn't say it affected my academics because I always prioritized that, and I always turned that into... I always tuned out everything else when I was focusing on academics, but everything else in my day-to-day life, like staying at home, interacting with friends, I wasn't really going out anymore because of how much my mental health was affecting me as an athlete. So, when I say my mental health was affecting me as an athlete, I really mean the performance was getting to me. If I had a bad game, I really wouldn't be feeling well after that. I would be taking it out on myself, trying to work harder, which obviously is really good as an athlete, but at the same time, it's really damaging as a mental health advocate, I guess, self-proclaimed advocate. But, yeah, that was my U16 year. It was really rough. I felt too much pressure on me, I guess. I focused too much on the big goals and the big things that every 15-, 16-year-old would focus on. Oh, I want to get drafted, I want to go to the OHL, and that obviously really got to me, and I think that if I knew a bit more about the mental side of the game, I would have had a much better performance during my U16 year, but it's okay. We all learn. There's nothing you can control, and that actually set me up for success where I am now, in my second year of U18, playing up in the OJHL, playing with the GOJ, and overall having a really good year. So, scratch where I'm at now, transition from U16 to U18. Still, again, not much knowledge on the mental health side of sports, how 90% of the game is actually mental, and I didn't really learn that until probably the summer transition from my first year of U18 to my second year of U18, which is actually the summer of me going into grade 12, which was pretty recently, but, you know, I'm thankful for that, and I really want to go over that, but, again, this is the year where I was really misjudged by my coach, and I feel like he played a large role in my mental health, athletic mental health downbringing, I guess. He really tried to push me to get better, and in a way, wasn't doing anything. If anything, it was harming my capabilities a bit more. Again, I was mistreated, I guess, I would say, and, again, my mental health was at a decline, and it reached an all-time low about transitioning to the new year, and that really affected my gameplay, it affected my daily life once again, and I was just in a state where I didn't really want to do much. I was just, I was distraught, I guess, in a way, and I never knew that a sport could really do that to a person until I started searching things up. I started trying to do my research, and that's when I came across Jeff Schmogie, and you obviously don't know who Jeff Schmogie is, nobody really does until, but I do, and he, so who is Jeff Schmogie? What am I saying? What am I talking about? Jeff Schmogie is probably one of the most influential people I've met in my life so far. Background on him, he is my mental strength and conditioning coach. I met him through doing lots of research, through friends, through teammates, on social medias, and I just reached out to him. I thought that maybe telling him my story and seeing what he would think about it would benefit me, and really, it did. He turned me into the strong-minded, I think, athlete, I would say it, athlete that I am today, and if I didn't have him, I honestly don't know where I would be right now, as an athlete, as a person, as a student. He changed my experiences with sports. I probably wouldn't even be playing sports right now if it wasn't for him. So, what did he do? Well, Mr. Schmogie put me into his program that he created. It doesn't really have a name for it. It's mostly called Schmogie Strength, and this program really picked little parts of my mental game, and it made me strengthen it overall, and it was life-changing. He got me into meditating. He got me into yoga. He really made me watch my gameplay. After every single game, he made me sit down and watch every single detail on what I could have done better, what I didn't do good, what I did do good, and he just brought my confidence to an all-time high where I was able to start performing the way that I was expected to perform, the way I was deserving to perform. So, yeah, I'm super thankful for him, and overall, I've been having a really good year all because of him and all because of that experience that I've had here. So, yeah. The next topic I really want to talk about is how, as you climb the pyramid of level sport, the mental strength and the mental demand really increases. So, again, the second I hit that U16 year, that AAA level, the mental demand got so much higher than comparable to a AA or a single A level. So, I think all athletes feel that pressure and feel that sort of demand as they climb that pyramid of levels, and I'll be going over that with my guest speaker in a second. But, yeah, before I get into it, I want to talk about my first OJHL experience, and this might not happen for everyone. This was probably something that I guess I was unlucky to get, but, yeah. So, it was my first practice playing for a team that was pretty good in the OJHL, which is the Ontario Junior Hockey League, Junior A, and background on that, I was 16 at the time, or no, 17. I was 17, and I was playing with 21-year-olds. So, 19, 20, 21, this is the average age that a junior hockey player is. And when you're playing with them, they're supposed to sort of treat you with respect, treat you with the sort of quality that a normal teammate would, and that's what you do as a professional athlete or as an amateur athlete. That's what you're supposed to do. But, unfortunately, I wasn't treated the best as a 17-year-old rookie, I would say, and it was not the best experience. And, again, that affected my mental health as an athlete, as a person, and it really shows what other people do and how that has an effect on you overall. Like, even walking in the hallways and someone compliments the smallest thing about you. Oh, I like that hairband that you have. I'll take that as an example. Or I like that bracelet that you have. And that small compliment can make someone's day, truly. It can really make your day. Or even a small remark, like, oh, those shoes look old, those shoes look dusty. Like, what's going on with that? That can negatively impact your day. So, overall, mistreated by my teammates. I was getting, you know, just that rookie treatment, I guess, that you can commonly stereotype it as. And, yeah, in practices I was getting worked harder than most other people. I was getting slashed in the back of the ankles as a teammate. So, you know, most people say that it's to push you to work harder, and others say that it can be considered hazing, but I think it's a mix of both. I think, again, they want you to work harder as a rookie, as a first-year, in a league larger than most minor hockey leagues. But I personally didn't think it was a fit for me, and that's when I got sent back down to U18, and now I'm having the best year of my hockey career, and I'm really thankful for that, and obviously these experiences have shaped me. And, yeah, I'm open to talk about any experiences that I've ever had, and hopefully this conversation goes well with my guest speaker. So, let's welcome him now after this short music break. All right, everyone, we're back. So, here we have, you know, off-the-golfer Sam Boych. So, hey, Sam, how are you doing today? Let's introduce you here. I'm good. How are you, Philip? I'm good. I'm good. All right. So, Monday morning at 9.03 a.m., you know, let's start talking about your experience. Let's start talking about golf. So, obviously, OFSA is one of the biggest athletic tournaments in Ontario. You know, D1 coaches, D3 coaches come to watch and analyze your one single tournament, I guess. So, that one performance can basically just dictate where you end up for the next four years of your life, and it's such a huge experience. Did you feel any of sort of that pressure? Like, even me thinking about it right now, I can feel some of that pressure. If so, if you did, what did you do to calm yourself down? Let's hear some of your experiences with OFSA. You know, it's like when you go into that situation, if you don't have the nerve, if the nerves aren't there, then you don't care. So, it's like when you're put in that environment and you know what the stakes are, it can be a little hard to calm yourself down. But then, for me, my way of pretty much overcoming that completely, not completely because there's always some sort of nerve, is just reverting back to the oldest, my oldest teachings, like with my dad and my first golf coach. Like, those little things that stuck in your head when you were between the ages of, I don't know, eight and 12 are super important and key for a person's growth, not just an athlete. So, I think that that has been my best strategy when looking to work through something which is nerve-wracking. Awesome. So, now, like I said before in my podcast, so I took up meditating and sort of yoga classes to improve my mental health as an athlete on and off the court and the ice. Like you said, you bring yourself back to your old practices. So, is there anything specific that you might bring back that benefits your well-being as a whole, like meditation or something like, you know, any stretches or? Yeah, it's definitely, with golf, the thing I've always tried to do is be in a meditative state the entire time. If I'm playing in a tournament or if I'm really trying to do my best. If I'm playing with my buddies, it's a different story. But if you're playing in that setting and you're trying to win and you're trying to shoot low scores, it's almost like you have to be in that meditative state where you're not thinking about doing well. You're more thinking about what is in front of you rather than the end result. Because that's the biggest thing with golf. As soon as you think you have it, it's going to kick you right in the face and you're going to be back to square one. So, focusing on the next thing rather than something which is 50 shots ahead is the most important thing for sure that I've always been taught since I was a kid. Awesome. Now, one last question for you. So, you can use offside as an example here or even any tournament. How do you get dialed in for a competition? How do you get in that zone that those athletes kind of need to get into? You can take a couple seconds to think about it if you need to. You know, it's like, I usually have like, when I'm going to do something that I'm a little bit uncomfortable with, usually there's a count to three before it happens and then there's no backing down once you say three. So, it's like, I have this mode where you're walking to the first tee, whether it be ten or one, from the range and you're coming up to the tee and you're like, okay, I have to go into a different mode now. And since there's nobody else around you to sort of push that competitive fire to ignite, it's really up to you. So, my way of getting dialed was definitely walking to the first tee and just thinking about my first shot because I'm knocking off the principle of thinking of what's ahead of me. And then also, I'm getting in the zone for that first shot, which I will then feed off of for the rest of the round. So, then I won't lose focus. That's the best answer I could have probably thought of. It's like, same with myself. Whenever, before a hockey game, I like to get isolated. I like to obviously do my meditation. I like to be in a mode where I can flip that switch, like you said. So, that's the perfect way of putting it out. Yeah, to end it off, thank you for coming out. You guys heard it here from yourself, from OFSA comp competitor, Sam Boych. So, thanks, Sam, for everything. I hope you have a great day. Thank you, Philip. It was a pleasure. So, now that you've heard it from one of our guest speakers talking about current events, wars, and influencers, and now that you've heard it from our OFSA competitor and athlete and student-athlete, as well as myself, hopefully you gather all this information and take it in and sort of have a good experience with it and overall come to a sort of realization how powerful the mind can be and how it can actually be the most powerful weapon in the world and be considered that powerful weapon. And again, as an influencer, as an icon, as a leader, as an athlete, all these people sort of believe how the mind is the most powerful weapon. And most importantly, us as a human race should sort of believe that. So, again, I hope you take this in and we'll catch you on the next episode. Have a good one.