A New Way for Athletes, Coaches, and Parents to Approach Sports & Life

06/25/24 • 44 min

As part of a high-performing team you want to collaborate, support each other, and be a team player... but in the same breath, you also want to hit your numbers, earn your bonus, and chase down your next promotion.

You try to be ‘positive’ but the projects, responsibilities, and requests keep piling up. And you try to be a team player but the gnawing feeling of your personal goals, results, and targets weigh on your shoulders.

The default approach is to set goals, create priorities lists, and do your best to finesse your way through the company hierarchy.

Unfortunately, this can foster a lack of communication, a self-serving culture, and stressful work environment. We’ve all heard the clichés like ‘suck it up,’ ‘grind it out’ and ‘be a team player’ — which can help you get short-term results.

But, this approach is not sustainable nor optimal. Maybe it’s time to flip our approach. Instead of focusing all of our energy on what we want to achieve, we need to prioritize who we want to be and how we want to show up.

By ‘slowing down’ and gaining clarity on your inner world, you get grounded, centered, and ready to tackle the outer world.

This approach is how you optimize your individual performance as well as maximize your impact as a leader and a team player. It allows you to flip the switch from ‘what can I get from my company?’ To, ‘what can I do for my company today?’

In this insightful and interactive 60 min session, Dr. Cassidy Preston pulls back the curtain and shares the principles and strategies he uses when coaching professional athletes, surgeons, hedge fund managers, and CEO’s to show up at their best day-in and day-out.

You will learn how professional athletes break free from the weight of results, perform when it matters most, and be a team player. You will learn how leaders and CEOs build trust, resolve conflict, and create accountability in high stakes environments.

What about surgeons... Have you ever wondered how they handle the pressures of a life or death surgery? Or how they respond and interact with their team when unforeseen complications and adversities arise? Here’s a clue — they challenge the status quo and think differently about success and failure.

It’s time for you to flip the switch and train your brain like a professional athlete.

The default approach is to set goals, create priorities lists, and do your best to finesse your way through the company hierarchy.

By ‘slowing down’ and gaining clarity on your inner world, you get grounded, centered, and ready to tackle the outer world.

It’s time for you to flip the switch and train your brain like a professional athlete.

Previous Episode

2 Approaches to Sport and Life

What if worry, frustration, or feeling down are not the problem? Instead, they are symptoms based on your approach to sport and even life.

In our society, the way we talk about emotions is backward. We label ourselves and others as anxious, sad, or frustrated.

That is not who we are—it is what we are feeling, and the distinction matters. When you identify with an emotion, you've got a self-perpetuating problem.

More importantly, it's not true. Emotions are a feedback tool, specifically about your approach to sport and life.

If this resonates with you check out my breakdown of the 2 approaches to sport and life. Please note that this is not a catch all framework as there are surely exceptions and other factors to consider. But I encourage you to try it out and see if it works for you.

The Outside-In Approach

Most people easily get caught up in the “outside-in” approach.

This approach means we're allowing the outside world to affect how we feel on the inside, often identified by highs and lows in emotional states.

Specifically, they'll have charged emotions, such as worry or anxiety, and then go straight to careless and reckless.

Or they may go from deflated and frustrated to elated and thinking they’re untouchable.

In the “outside-in” approach, we oscillate back and forth because we're focused on the outside world first. The thought process around this approach looks like:

What's going on around us?

What are the results?

What do people think?

What's the situation like?

And how does that make me feel on the inside?

The answers to those questions then dictate how you feel on the side. In other words, your mental state becomes dependent on the external world.

This approach is fueled by needing to achieve external results.

Of course, the external goal or intent is to achieve the desired results, but it is a fantasy to think sport or life can be all sunshine and rainbows where everything's positive all the time.

This approach does not create reliable results and it generally makes sports and life way more stressful.

The good news is we can flip our approach.

The Inside-Out Approach

I want you to strive towards an “inside-out” approach.

This approach is about prioritizing who we want to be on the inside first - then we go and tackle the outside world.

Someone with this approach focuses on getting grounded, being intentional, and taking control of the things they have control over.

The thought process for this approach looks like:

Who do I want to be?

How do I want to show up?

What traits or mindset do I want to step into?

Reflecting on these questions helps us slow down so that we can take control of our mindset, attitude, and approach.

This approach isn’t without emotions and feelings.

But the emotions are more grounded and centered - like being in the flow state or having love, gratitude, and enjoyment.

There is some oscillation in these emotions, but they aren’t as emotionally charged and you will generally stay way more even-keeled.

Here are some ways to develop and stick to an “inside-out” approach.

Set Your Intentions

The first step is to set your intention.

This can be something you do every day for the rest of your life.

Take as little as one minute to reflect on how you want to show up at the start of each day. It is in that moment that you look within — taking the “inside-out” approach — and get clarity on who you choose to be.

This sets you to get grounded and centered before you tackle the day.

Reset Routine

Right in line with setting your intentions is building a reset routine.

This routine is about identifying and rehearsing what areas in life you are susceptible to an “outside-in” approach and resetting to an “inside-out” approach.

You can go check out our full video on how to build a reset routine.

Stay Adaptable

Once you develop your intentions and reset routine, the work isn’t over.

It's really important that you adopt a growth mindset that focuses on continued learning, adaptations, and constant evolution. As your landscape changes, you need to constantly refine your approach and set your intentions accordingly.

Final thoughts are to make sure to apply this to both your sport and your life. Make the “inside-out” approach the default way you operate in life and it will not only optimize how you show up and tackle the external world but, more importantly, you will find a lot more meaning along the way.