Mindset Secrets for Midlife Athletes - What Would Simone Biles Do? (Ep. 23)

0:00 So you remember, in episode 17, when I was talking about isolation in midlife, and one of the suggestions I gave you was try a new hobby or some new activity during this time. And isolation really can be an issue at midlife, for sure. Well, and at any time of life, I suppose. Time of life, I suppose. And we need to keep talking about that, Because if you're going to take up a new hobby or game or sport, doing it with a healthy mindset, a growth mindset you may have heard of before, is going to make or break your experience. I'll grant you that neither one of us is probably about to go pro in this new sport at this time, but still, how we think about what we're diving into matters.

0:53 Let's talk about it. Welcome to Mind your Midlife, your go-to resource for confidence and success, one thought at a time, Unlike most advice out there, we believe that simply telling you to believe in yourself or change your habits isn't enough to wake up excited about life or feel truly confident in your body. Each week, you'll gain actionable strategies and oh my goodness, powerful insights to stop feeling stuck and start loving your midlife. This is the Mind your Midlife podcast, Just to make sure that you know that I try to follow my own advice and, as an aside, coaches need coaches.

1:40 We can't always follow our own advice, but I do try coaches. We can't always follow our own advice, but I do try. So in the last couple of years in my 50s I've taken up golf and violin and mahjong and so I'm willing to try. I have for the violin I have a pretty good background in music. I had played other instruments, but never a stringed instrument. I love games and logic. So mahjong was kind of a given. And I have zero experience with sports. I did do taekwondo for a little short while while my kids were doing it and I've done a million different types of exercise, but sports no. So those three examples of taking up something new for me anyway, kind of run the gamut from likely to learn it fairly easily to unlikely to learn it easily, and I'm sure this is the case for you and yours might be the opposite scale.

2:36 For me mahjong has been the easiest to learn by far and I'm so entertained at how it feels like it's just sweeping the country in the US anyway, and even beyond just midlife. Women which I think is maybe the stereotype all sorts of ages, men and women starting to play. Now am I amazing at it? Well, I'm not going to play a tournament anytime soon, but I love it and I love the community of it. Play a tournament anytime soon, but I love it and I love the community of it. Now, violin and golf, as I was saying, not so easy. They both involve some type of physical skill, physical dexterity, in different ways, and so that's an added layer of challenge.

3:19 Of course, I'm going to keep going with both, but the question is how I'm going to decide to think about my progress so far and how I decide to think about where I'm headed. And the same is true for you. Whether you're taking up a new game, a new sport, a new physical activity, the way you think about it and how you treat yourself is fully the key to your experience, and I mean really to whether you stick with it. I believe. So the idea for this episode, so the idea for this episode came from a talk I attended online with Frankie Canojo, who's a mindset coach like me, and she was talking about mindset in golf.

4:06 This was for the women's golf group that I belong to, and I realized, whether it's golf or it's some other new type of activity, we all may need a bit of coaching to move forward. So we're going to talk about mindset in sports and we're going to make sure that you go away from this with exactly what you need as a 40-something, 50-something, 60-something woman starting a new activity that maybe is rather taxing for you. So first I have to go to the goat. I looked up Simone Biles and I looked up to see what are her tips on mindset when it comes to, obviously, gymnastics for her, and I found an article in fortune that was very interesting.

4:58 So she was giving 10 tips that she uses for her mindset and I'm going to give you a few of my favorites that I think apply to us as well, and you could certainly Google Simone Biles fortune and you could find the article as well. So here are my favorites. Number one favorite of mine find humor in the stress. I, I kid you not, I believe that if we could have more of a sense of humor about more things in our lives, everybody ourselves and everybody we're talking to would be so much happier and probably more productive and successful.

5:39 It's humor is is creating a lightness for a time when we might get bogged down in worry or bogged down in frustration or bogged down in anger, or bogged down in one of those emotions that is harder to feel and deal with. And of course, this doesn't mean that I'm saying to make fun of yourself and put yourself down and put someone else down Heaven forbid, we don't want to do that. What I'm saying is, if you can remember that having a sense of humor really, really cuts into stress.

6:20 If you are getting frustrated about something going on with a sport or an activity that you're trying to learn, maybe just laugh when you can. Maybe just laugh when you can. You will be happier. You will, I dare say, even be healthier. That's why laughter yoga exists, and I'll put the link to the laughter yoga episode in the show notes as well. Just laugh when you can. It doesn't have to be putting yourself down, it's just a lightness. And that's what she said. She said I know I'm probably going to do the same thing 100 times and I'll eventually figure it out, so I'm going to add a little humor, and that's a great lesson. She also says fake it till you make it.

7:01 What a great piece of advice, Because when we start something new in midlife, we it's almost as if it's almost as if our brains think we should already be good at it Because we already have all this life experience, we should be good at it, right? If I started playing volleyball right now and I've never played volleyball in my life shouldn't I already be at least decent at it because I'm already experienced in life? Well, no, probably not. Maybe if I'd had some similar sport experience, but otherwise probably not. So when we start, we struggle, sometimes as midlife women, to be a beginner, because in life we're not a beginner.

7:42 In our career, we're not a beginner In raising kids. We're not a beginner In many things in life right now we're not a beginner In our career. We're not a beginner In raising kids. We're not a beginner. In many things in life right now we're not a beginner anymore. And so to take on that beginner role is a switch. So why not? And when she says, fake it till you make it, why not just act as if? Now Simone Biles was actually talking about smiling during her routine, so maybe this fits in with the humor as well. She didn't feel confident when she was learning a routine and her coach was asking her to smile, and so it took her a while to even fake a smile, and then she was faking a smile for quite some time. Well, in case you didn't already know, smiling with a fake smile still changes the chemical composition of your body in the same way a real smile does.

8:32 So if we extend that past faking the smile, maybe faking a little bit of self-confidence when you head out to play whatever the sport is, or if you're not really in the mood to be there, not really in the mood to go, faking it just a little bit, saying hello to the other people and faking that smile a couple times, maybe then it becomes real. I thought that was pretty interesting advice from her. Now my third favorite of her top 10 items. This is a combination of two. But write down and visualize your goals. So here's something that I learned in golf, sadly fairly recently.

9:12 So I have been getting better and I have been a little bit happier with how my shots are going and where they're going and how far they're going and my if you play golf you'll know what I'm talking about my, my shots are straight. They generally do go straight, but they don't go very far, and so I'm I'm working on that, I'm trying to figure that out. How do I make them go more up in the air and farther. So as I work on that, I got into a conversation with I think it was my husband and a couple of other people that we were playing with I don't remember who it was and they were saying, well, where did you want that shot to go? And I said, well, farther. And then one of them said, well, you picture it.

9:57 Right Before you take the shot you look and you say, here's where I want it to go. And you see that spot. And I kid you not, I had to just kind of drop my jaw and smack. You know, I feel like it was like a head smacking moment. What? No, I don't do that. And then, why not? Why am I not doing that? Why am I not saying, okay, here's where I want it to go? And it's such a simple and tiny example of visualizing your goals. Your goal could be just where the shot goes. Your goal could be the where the shot goes. Your goal could be the score you want to have. Your goal could be the length of time that you're able to do some physical activity.

10:38 What is it? See it she says write it down as well. Maybe you have a note in your phone where you're kind of keeping track on how your sport that you're learning is going, write down. My next goal is my favorite is visualizing it, and the irony of that is I didn't visualize where I wanted the shot to go. I love to visualize in a year from now, where is the podcast going to be? Where is my coaching business going to be? Where's my family going to be? What are we going to be doing? How's my health going to be? All these things and I'm not even visualizing where I want my shot to go Really. So I ask you the same thing Are you visualizing what you want to happen when you're up to bat, or when it's your turn, or when you're playing this new game?

11:28 How do you want it to come out and let it be light and fun? The vision is happy and excited and light and fun. And you're just holding on to that vision inside. Now I'm sure you're thinking and I'm going to say it that doesn't mean that's exactly what's going to happen on your next try. It's not that magic. However, it does mean you're probably going to be closer and if you keep holding on to that vision and keep practicing, you're probably going to be even closer the next time. So her tips write down and visualize your goal, Fake it till you make it. Find humor in the stress.

12:08 I love those. Then I thought you know what, as midlife women, maybe we have a little bit different focus when we start a sport or an activity than Simone Biles might have or than a younger person might have. We're not going pro, right? We're not going to the Olympics, we're not going to the championships. We are trying to be active. We might be going to the championships, we are trying to be active. We might be trying to make friends. We are trying to get healthy. We just want to do something fun. So let's kind of focus now on what are some tips for mindset specifically for us, and one of them is a lot of sports, for midlife women can really be about community.

12:53 As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, I'm going to bring in a former guest of mine, Lisa Alfano, to make a comment about community related to mindset in sports related to mindset in sports. It's amazing what we tell ourselves and how that helps us and how that it hurts us, where I'm not good enough, I'm not strong enough, especially when you have a community of athletes that have varying levels of being advanced or slow or fast, and rather than comparing myself or comparing yourself to someone else, you find that niche, you find those folks who are similar, and it helps push you and helps you get better.

13:36 But it also doesn't wreak havoc on your mental state. And I'm part of a triathlon group where the level of athleticism is off the charts, as well as folks that have been doing triathlons for years but that are slower and then they're middle range and then they're like world champions, right, and so that always lends to folks like me, who compare myself to others, to feel I'm not fast enough, I'm not good enough, I don't want to go train with them. And then I realized we're all part of a community and they're all supportive and if someone goes ahead, someone goes ahead, and that's something that I have to tell myself every single day and I forget to sometimes. So it's a little bit of a struggle. Okay. So she brings up a few things that we really need to talk about.

14:18 So my midlife focus tips for you community is key. Watch out for the comparison and the fear, and let's build resiliency. So you heard her mention what we're telling ourselves and that leads us into this discussion of comparison with other people, and comparison with other people is not something that we ever want to do, and this could be applied to a business. It could be applied to anything you are trying to do. It could be applied to parenting. I mean literally anything you are trying to do. Comparing ourselves to others is always comparing apples and oranges.

15:02 I'm just going to say that again. Comparing yourself to others is always comparing apples and oranges. You don't have the same experience they do. You don't have the same body they do. You don't have the same life they do. You don't have the same anything they do. You might have a lot of similarities with whoever you're comparing yourself to, but not enough for you to have exactly the same path, which means comparing yourself to them is never going to be helpful. I got on my soapbox there for just a minute. So I love what Lisa said, because if we can find a community to do our sport or activity with.

15:42 Most of the time at this point in life, we're not going to run across people who are trying to be the best and shove everybody aside. Most of the people you're going to run across in some type of active community are people who want to help and want everyone to succeed, and want you to have fun, and want you to get even better, and they want to get even better themselves. At this point in life, we have learned for the most part that being supportive is the absolute best way to be, as opposed to knock down the other guy and keep going. Now, the other thing with comparison is comparing yourself versus what you thought you could do or what you thought was going to happen, and this is where we have a fear.

16:28 It's a deep-seated fear for a lot of us and I would put myself in this category a deep-seated fear of looking silly or being embarrassed, a fear of making a mistake. It's all related. There is a fear deep in our subconscious minds of looking silly, being embarrassed, making a mistake, and it's there for so many of us. And the interesting thing about this is maybe this is where the humor comes in Again, not that I want you to put yourself down. Putting yourself down, whether you're trying to make a joke out of it or not, is not good. So if you take a shot in golf, let's use golf still, and it doesn't go well. and then you say I'm such an idiot I couldn't hit a tree with a you know whatever.

17:13 That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about just saying hope the next one's better. And laughing not putting yourself down, but allowing there to be humor is so powerful. Let's say you've started a hiking group, or started you've joined a hiking group and you trip over a log. Now let's assume you're fine. You just feel silly because you tripped and you're like somebody saw me and now I feel embarrassed. I'm in fear of being embarrassed, so chuckle about it and say are no worries, I'm keeping going, whatever. What an opportunity to teach yourself that that fear of being embarrassed or making a mistake is not something that you need to worry about.

17:55 And the way the brain learns to let go of a fear like that is repetition of situations that are okay. So putting ourselves into situations where we're trying something, we might make a mistake, and if we make a mistake, we're letting it be okay. For me, humor is the best tool for that. For you it might look slightly different, but training your brain that making a mistake is okay. Maybe it's just recognizing how other people react, because I'm guessing that other people will react are you okay? Or oh, it happened to me, no worries, next one will be better. That's probably how they're going to react and that lets your brain learn over and over, gradually, gradually, that you don't have to fear the mistakes or looking silly, and that leads into resiliency.

18:48 So Carol Dweck wrote a book about growth mindset and fixed mindset, and I read this when I was a teacher. But in a business scenario, you may have read the book or at least heard of growth mindset versus fixed mindset. When we start something new, especially if it's a physical activity, it's really important to have a growth mindset, and she's really talking about the same thing I'm talking about, which is allowing ourselves to expand to something new and letting it be okay if we don't do it quite right and we make a mistake. And so I have two more kind of tips for you to think about. Number one what if you, before you, went to something you were nervous about or something that often frustrates you, even though you want to learn it?

19:31 What if, before you went to something you were nervous about or something that often frustrates you, even though you want to learn it? What if, before you went maybe you're still sitting in the car you asked yourself what's the worst thing that could happen today in this game or in this hike or in this, whatever Legitimately what's the worst thing that could happen? My shots keep going wrong, I don't have a great score, I strike out a lot. When I'm at bat, I lose Legitimately. Ask yourself what is the worst case scenario that could happen today and then will I be okay. And how will I be okay? And I bet you'll be okay, and I don't want you to focus anymore. After this little few minutes of thought on the worst case scenario, we're going to flip it and we're going to go back to the vision of what you want.

20:15 Please, please, flip it. But even just taking a minute to tell your brain, which is going to tell your nervous system, you know what even if that happened I would be okay those cortisol levels start dropping, we might be back in the parasympathetic nervous system. We might be able to actually play this game or do this activity. So think about it, know that you'll be okay. And then we have to flip back to visualizing what you want and say what is the best case scenario. So maybe we call this a little worst and best practice. Before you go into the activity, try a little worst and best minute. Definitely do the best after the worst.

20:56 And then I want you to remind yourself that you are a freaking successful person in life. And it might have been business, it might have been child raising, it might have been finding a great partner to be in a relationship with, it might have been gardening, it might have been whatever volunteering, taking care of animals. You have done amazing things in your life. Well, did you ever make a mistake in those? Did you ever have to pivot? Yeah, so just just a little self reminder. Oh, I've had success in life and I figured it out. You know well, maybe you don't, but one of my favorite phrases is I can figure it out, I'll figure it out, you can figure it out, you'll figure it out.

21:37 Resiliency that's how it, that's how it starts to happen. Now we have to also want to catch the self-talk, and so most advice you're going to hear about mindset in a sport or an activity or in any situation really, where it's easy to get frustrated, is to have an affirmation, to flip it around and affirm something positive. And I'm going to give you that advice and give you an example, but first I want to kind of help you through that, because if you are frustrated right now with how something is going in an activity that you're doing, and I say to you just say an affirmation, it's going to be okay.

22:18 You're going to be frustrated with me Because we're in that emotional response right. So what I want for you to do is try to practice just pausing when you are feeling a strong emotion. I want you to just pause for a second and say what am I feeling right now? And maybe it's frustration or anger, or maybe it's you're just feeling dejected. There's so many different emotions it could be and you can grab my story cycle free resource to help you kind of figure that out. You'll see the link in the show notes what am I feeling right now? And then what am I saying to myself in my head? You're just taking a second to recognize this.

23:00 I'm not telling you, you you have to change it, just recognize it. Am I saying I always stink? Or oh, here we go again. Oh, so frustrated. Usually it's something like that. And then ask yourself is that really 100% true, really Almost always? The answer is no. We're just worrying about it. We're just kind of projecting something onto this current scenario and sometimes that's enough to minimize the extreme nature of your emotions and how you're feeling. Just pause, recognize the feeling, recognize the thoughts. Is that true? Probably not. If you need a little bit further, then what I love are butt affirmations, and I also love to call them that.

23:43 I want you to have a sentence that has a butt in the middle, because if we're saying an affirmation, over and over and we're like in our head going that's ridiculous. I don't believe that. Well, it's not going to help or it's not going to help as quickly. But what if you said I'm so frustrated with how this is going today, but I know I can keep getting better? Your brain focuses on the part after the but, because the but just negated everything you said before it. Maybe that's an affirmation that you can write down, or you can say, or you can remember, you can have on a sticky note, or you can have on a calendar reminder in your phone. Try it All. Right, you're ready to start something new. You're ready to start an activity in midlife? What to do when you're ready to start? Let's have Lisa tell us.

24:24 Oh, definitely reach out either to a mentor, to a coach, or find a community of other folks that are in similar stages as you, and even who have more experience than you, and talk with them. Do that research, do that connection, do that collaboration, get as much information as you can and, honestly, go with your gut, I mean, if they really like it. There's a lot of the nuances and training aspects of starting a new sport or starting a new activity, and you also want to make sure that you're safe in terms of injury free and what do you need to do in order to do the sport. So, yeah, reaching out to others and finding a community is, to me, the number one best way to move forward with starting anything.

25:05 And my OMG moment from today is something that Lisa also is going to share. What do we ask ourselves as we play and as we learn? Here you go. For me, it doesn't matter the level of the level, where I'm at. It's the matter of am I happy and content doing it? Am I building friendships? Does it bring me joy? And when the answer is no to that, that's when I'll stop. Okay. So are you starting something new and you're feeling stuck? You maybe got some tips from this episode. I hope you did, but maybe you need a coach or you need someone to kind of walk with you through this and help you actually move forward from where you are.

25:47 Let's talk about whether you and I working together, for that would make sense. You can go to CherylPFishercom slash coaching. You can set up a free call with me. Let's see if we can create a positive experience out of a challenging one and give you some. Here's how I'm going to move forward items that you actually want to do. That's powerful. Now, make sure you've hit the follow button, because next week I have a professional organizer joining me to talk about something totally different, joining me to talk about something totally different. We're going to talk about cleaning out now, before we saddle other people in our life with all our stuff, and at this point in life, this is something that we all need to hear and consider.

26:33 Oh my goodness, let's keep creating confidence and success, one thought at a time.