55. 10 Lessons From High Performing Athletes to Help You Grow With Grace & Ease (Part 1)

Kelsey Vaughn: Welcome to The Authentic Path, where we explore the intersection of leadership, performance science, and ancient wisdom. I'm your host, Dr. Vanessa Calderon. I'm a Harvard-trained physician and healer with over 20 years of leadership and business development experience. I blend science and ancestral wisdom with proven strategies to help you get the results you desire in work and in life without losing yourself along the way. Let's get started.

Dr. Vanessa Calderón: Hi friends, welcome back to the podcast. I'm so happy to have you here. We are jumping in and talking about something new and different today. I wanted to explore something that I think we often overlook, especially as what I consider us, which is high performers. So high performers are folks like all of you listening, leaders, entrepreneurs, professionals. that whether or not you realize this, ⁓ you ⁓ performing higher than lot other folks. If you've gone through medical school, law school, if you've changed careers, if you've decided that ⁓ you are taking on leadership roles, for example, that makes you high performer. ⁓ And ⁓ I to you in continuing to do what a lot of you want to do, which is How else can I grow? What else can I experience in life? can I be more successful? ⁓ I want you to be able to do that with grace and ease. ⁓ so ⁓ we are talking about today ⁓ something that I see a lot of us overlook. Okay? Because I think what ends up happening when we're thinking about growth ⁓ we spend a lot of time ⁓ on strategy. on how can we do more on figuring out the next step, you know, my next five steps or my three year plan. And when you really study growth and when you study excellence, like true sustained excellence, you start to see that what people are doing is just the very tip of the iceberg. not necessarily what people do ⁓ is making them excellent or growth mindset. What actually matters is how people think, is how they relate to pressure, how they move through failure, they care for themselves along the way. ⁓ one of the most beautiful places to study this is an elite athletes. And I, ⁓ I thinking through how athletes think. so what I created for all of you, ⁓ is a three-part series looking at this topic from different perspectives, from elite athletes, from coaches, and of course from underdogs, because boy, do I love me and underdog story. this was also perfect timing because it is NBA playoff season, my friends, and ⁓ I ⁓ basketball. I love play it. I love to watch it. I'm also just by the way, a five foot tall Latina. So ⁓ even though I love to play it, I'm not incredibly tall by any means, but I am very gritty on the basketball court. we big Knicks fans at our house. My husband grew up ⁓ a big Knicks fan, New York Knicks. he's been a fan from the beginning. So he is not a fair weather fan. He's been a fan from the beginning. It was. really hard to be a Knicks fan for a long time because they weren't doing so well. And over the last couple of years, they've gotten really strong. And so it's been super fun to be a Knicks fan these last couple of years. we went to one of the playoff games last night and we took the kids and were super invested. ⁓ And so if you hear anything in the news or if you're listening or watching the NBA playoffs. And you see the Knicks win, just know we're cheering for them. So if you're not a Knicks fan, that's okay. ⁓ actually by birth am a Lakers fan. I grew up in LA and it's also a super fun time to be a Lakers fan because they have LeBron and Luca Donczak right now and they're just amazing playing together. But anyway, ⁓ let ⁓ move and jump into today's conversation. So today I'm doing is I'm going to walk you through 10 ways high performing elite athletes think differently. And then I'm gonna give you a few different things that you can start doing to gently integrate these ways of being into your own life, into your leadership, into your business, into the way you think differently, into the way you live. so one, ⁓ so gonna start with ⁓ an example from Kobe Bryant and Michaela Schiffrin. ⁓ So we all know Kobe Bryant. He was a professional basketball player in the NBA and Michaela Schiffrin was an Olympic Alpine skier. ⁓ going to use them to ⁓ about an example ⁓ their ways of being that really supported them ⁓ growth and excellence. ⁓ this is process ⁓ outcome. Process over outcome. So let's start with Kobe Bryant. So when you look at Kobe, if you were to study Kobe Bryant, he of course played professional basketball in the NBA, was an incredible athlete. ⁓ ⁓ something called Mamba mentality, the Mamba mentality. And that's a philosophy that ⁓ focused on this relentless self-improvement, ⁓ the sense of obsession with mastering his craft. Now I'm not, I don't really resonate with the word relentless, but some of you might, some of you might really resonate with that word. But what I do really appreciate is his self-discipline. So the Mamba mentality essentially was if you were to look at what he practiced, it was every day the same time he would get up and he would have these wild early morning practices at like 5 a.m. every day. ⁓ And, you know, a lot of people about the winning, but he wasn't just chasing wins. He was actually deeply devoted to the craft of basketball. So he would get in the reps all of the time. And he, that's, that's how he wouldn't essentially say, am I succeeding? Am I putting in the reps? Am I focusing on improving myself and the craft? And so his devotion to the craft, the process over winning was one of the reasons why I wanted to share his example with all of you. And then similarly, Michaela Schifrin, the Olympic Alpine Skier, she has spoken over and over and over again about how she always focuses on returning to the basics. after becoming the best Alpine skier in the entire world, how what she does is she is committed to staying a student. deeply committed to staying a student of her craft. I think about Kobe the same way. They were both deeply committed to staying students of their craft. And think that there's an incredible humility in that. If you think about the humility in knowing I am one of the best at this, the best athletes in ⁓ the ⁓ and know that ⁓ I know everything. I know that I can get better. And not from a place of, inadequacy. ⁓ It's because I'm inadequate. It's because I'm humble and it's because ⁓ I'm to always stay a student. And I just think that's so powerful. ⁓ And for you ⁓ as ⁓ looking grow as a professional, as a leader, as an entrepreneur, ⁓ this look like releasing this constant pressure of having to arrive somewhere. And instead asking yourself, how do I show up well today? Because when you shift your focus to the process and really honestly fall in love with the process, think about folks like Kobe Bryant or Michaela, really, had already ⁓ the pinnacle of their success, ⁓ they were ⁓ love with their craft. They were in love with their craft. And so all they did was continued to focus on the craft, on the process, and really removed the outcomes completely. me give you a personal example. ⁓ So now ⁓ in my we have this goal ⁓ of the podcast. So for all of you listening, thank you so much for listening. I super appreciate it. ⁓ And you're enjoying it, please share the podcast with your friends, with your family, with your colleagues. We'd love your support in growing the podcast. And when I was thinking about this, I, we had two separate goals. have the outcome goal, which is, you know, increased podcast downloads by X number by X time. then I was also super, super clear on the process goals. ⁓ what is it? What process steps do we need to take for this to ⁓ true? ⁓ ⁓ is continue to create. excellent podcast because the podcast will grow if we continue to create things that people want to listen to. ⁓ me, what that meant is falling in love with the process of podcasting. And really love the process of podcasting. The fact that I get to sit here and really be in community with all of you, ⁓ those you watching on YouTube, it's so fun that we get to build this community. Those of you listening. ⁓ on iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. It's fun that we get to be in community together. And it's fun that I get to create something that my intention is always that it brings some value to all of you to make your life a little bit easier, better, more exciting, to help you think differently, think bigger. And I love that I am in love with the process of podcasting. So one of my process goals is How can I continue to fall in love with the process of podcasting? And then the other is, this is another process goal is how can I get myself be in community with other podcasters, ⁓ ⁓ on ⁓ a guest to other podcasts ⁓ have them ⁓ ⁓ podcast to really help them grow? And these are just process goals for us that I think about ⁓ and really sort of how I focus. the outcome goal is focusing on the process goal. ⁓ gonna go on to number two. ⁓ number one again is process over outcome. ⁓ two, I love, love, love number two so much. Okay, spoiler alert, I love all of them, which is why I'm teaching them to you. But love number two. And number two is training the mind. ⁓ Not the body, ⁓ but the mind. And the two examples I have for you here are Michael Phelps, know, the most decorated Olympic swimmer, Alyssa Lu, Alyssa Lu, who came out of the woodworks for the Olympics, Winter Olympics and just blew us all away. she is from Oakland, up in Clovis, shout out to the Central Valley of California. If you're listening from there, ⁓ I spent... Half of my life, I grew up in LA and then we moved to the central part of California. So shout out to my Central Valley So talk a little bit about them and why I'm including them. And it's so fascinating because I think ⁓ nowadays people understand how important it is to train the mind. And I think that that was always something we focused on. I think elite athletes always focused on training the body, training the body. ⁓ training the mind is equally important. So I'm going to start with Michael Phelps. a long time ago, I learned about this exercise that Michael Phelps did, and then I became a huge student of the exercise that he did. And I started bringing it into my coaching with my clients because it was so powerful. So one of the things he does is this visualization exercise. So he would mentally rehearse. So he would train his mind. before his races and what he would train his mind to do is not to win, but he would train his mind on what he would do when things went wrong. So one of the things he would do is he would do a visualization exercise of getting water in his goggles, getting water in his goggles and really feeling like, ooh, what does that feel like? Ooh, stress, anxiety, fear. Okay. So when I'm feeling that, what do I get to do? And so he would practice, if I have water in my goggles, I have to do this and this and get the water out so that I can keep swimming. It was, it's so powerful. The reason why visualization is the bomb and why it works so well is because your human brain cannot tell the difference between what you are visualizing versus what is actually happening. And we have done a ton of functional MRI studies to show that when you are visualizing that same exact action, it's actually lighting up the same parts of your brain, the motor cortex, the parts of your brain that think that it's doing that action. So it's powerful. You can rehearse this. And so I'll bring this into my coaching with my clients if they're going to have a really difficult conversation with their board. So I coach this of this big multinational organization ⁓ She had to have a conversation with her board and it was going to be a tough one. They had to talk about metrics and all these things that she was feeling really difficult to bring up. And I walked her through some really powerful visualization exercises and it was incredible. The outcome she had was incredible. I did this with one of my clients who's a physician who was getting recertified with her medical boards and she test anxiety. And so we worked through a lot of these visualizations to support her. And what she said was powerful. She was like, man, I woke up the morning of my test and I didn't have any of the same anxiety that I've had before. I wasn't nervous at all. And I showed up and I killed it. And by the way, I do this for myself. I had to talk in front of a stage of, I think there was 2000 people in the audience and it was this type of stage where all the bright lights are on you and you look out on the audience and you can barely see things because the lights are so bright. And at the time it was going to be the biggest stage I'd spoken on. And I was super nervous and I was like, all right, well. I know what to do. So I visualized myself walking up there, connecting, doing the things that I do. And it was incredible when I walked on that stage, the nerves that I had felt just slowly melted away because I felt like I had already done it. I had already prepared for it. So visualization is incredibly powerful and it's one of the tools I use with my clients all of the time because the science behind it is so good. so let's talk a little bit about Alissa Liu and training the mind. okay, you guys all know Alyssa Liu. She's the figure skater from Oakland who is incredible. ⁓ she became the youngest national champion when she was 13 years old. And of course, you're like only 13. You're a figure skater. You're an athlete. So there's a lot of mental pressure that shows up with that, including perfectionism, all those types of things. So she retired when she was 16. And so what's so fascinating about this is that in 2026, so just recently, she had this incredible comeback on her own terms to folks. So she had trained her mind that, hold on a second. I love figure skating. I love it. It brings me so much joy. It's part of who I am. And I don't want that to be taken away from me because of perfectionism or anxiety or external validation or external pressure. Sound familiar, my friends? External validation, external pressure, perfectionism, anxiety, all of the things that essentially rob us from the joy that we want to experience doing the things that we love to do, doing our craft. And so she trained her mind to focus on joy. So she came back on her own terms. to focus on joy, not to focus on winning in the Olympics, but to focus on really showing up and having the most, like really connecting to her craft and having so much fun. And if you see her on the ice, you can just see her flowing with that love and excitement for what she was doing. And that is just so beautiful. And of course, there's so much wisdom in that. us, high performers, as leaders, as entrepreneurs, as professionals. There's a beautiful reframe here that it's not just about pushing harder. So if you think about Michael Phelps and Alyssa Liu, it's not like they pushed their body harder, harder, harder. It was about partnering with the wisdom of their higher consciousness, partnering with their mind and really supporting themselves and training their mind. So think about like, What do you focus on? What is it that you focus on when you're trying to achieve something? Because normally what I see is that we're not normally focusing on giving ourselves the space for things to go wrong and prepping for that. Because the truth is, it's okay if things can go wrong because you can trust yourself to have your back and take care of it. And it's also okay for you to focus on joy. Guess what? If you lean into joy and really love what it is that you're doing, turns out you can have way better outcomes. It's a big thing that I do now in my business, in my coaching and consulting business. And I talk about this with my team all the time, which is, hey, hold on. What we do is like super awesome, important work. And we only do it with joy and with fun because we love what we get to do. Getting to bring all of these tools out there and putting them in the hands and in the minds of mission-driven people, that's incredible. We are part of helping consciousness, of really shifting consciousness to a higher level. And that is really awesome, really powerful, and also so fun. I want you to notice what thoughts you constantly rehearse, what narratives you're reinforcing, because those thoughts that you're thinking, of course they shape your reality. And so training your mind is incredibly important. And of course it's a huge thing I do with my clients. Okay, the next one I want to talk about might hit a lot of you hard. And by hard I mean might really resonate with some of you. Because truthfully, no matter how much work I see folks do on themselves and their growth. Many people I work with still are still really shackled by failure. The concept of failure and all of its different flavors, like don't want to disappoint anyone because ⁓ And if you follow it ⁓ the way down to its chords, because then I'll feel like a failure. I want to let them down or ⁓ I'm afraid to do this thing like. do something bigger because what if I fail? And failure continues to be at the core of really people don't understand, but that's actually what has probably driven you for so long is your fear of failing. What pushed you so hard, what got you to be to where you are today was your fear of failure. But sweet friends, your next level of growth cannot be driven from fear of failure anymore. Because that is just gonna keep you stuck in the same things that get you to overwork, to burn out, all of those types of things. So we really get to redefine our relationship with failure. And I talk about failure a alot because something I really had to heal for myself. ⁓ it's something that I see really affects high achievers, folks like us that are so committed to growth. ⁓ really ⁓ wanna be perceived. as failures from ourselves or from anybody else. And so the way I'm approaching failure today is really reframing it, not as all of those negative things, but really thinking about failure as feedback, failure as feedback. And so the two athletes that I want to share with you that really I think do this well Michael Jordan and Simone Biles. ⁓ Jordan. Let's start with him. ⁓ ⁓ done a lot of teaching around failure and I often bring Michael Jordan into this example because ⁓ guys Michael Jordan, greatest basketball player of all time, arguably. I love thinking through Michael Jordan and the way he thinks and felt and how he really played the game. And, ⁓ you he like six NBA championships. He holds the record for the most MVPs. the highest career scoring average, his two Olympic gold medals with team USA for basketball, including the dream team, which if you haven't yet seen that documentary, it is so good. And he's hero to so many people, you know, you guys remember that commercial, if I could be like Mike and they made that movie like Mike with little bow wow. And my son loves that movie. And by the way, LeBron James is number 23. Why? Because he chose it for MJ, for Michael Jordan, who was number 23. So all of this to say is that he's exceptional. He's an exceptional basketball player. And here's another thing about Michael Jordan that you may or may not know. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. He was cut from his basketball team. Isn't that wild? So I just think it's so important for us to know that the greatest basketball player of all time wasn't so great. There was a time in his life where he wasn't so great and he got cut from his team, but he did not let that failure define him. He was so committed to his craft. was so committed to getting better that he's like, okay, well, guess I'm just going to have to practice. There's a documentary or no, it's not a documentary. It's just a movie of Michael Jordan's, historic, the relationship that built with Nike. You guys know the Air Jordans, the shoes, Well, what's so interesting about is that Nike ⁓ before was not, known promoting They were known promoting all these other things. And the guy that was leading Nike at the time, he had this big vision to grow. so ⁓ wanted to grow outside of what they were doing. I think at the time they were only known as a running company, like running shoes. And really wanted to change that. And so ⁓ ended up Michael Jordan and Michael Jordan was incredible. He wanted to sign him. But Nike wasn't known to be a company that promoted basketball players. think at the time Adidas was the big company. so ⁓ Jordan wasn't excited to sign with Nike. He's like, no thanks. ⁓ his mom, who ⁓ was incredible woman, of course, ⁓ you he had this incredible woman supporting him. His mom this vision and she shared the vision with MJ and he bought in, which is like, if we go Nike ⁓ and we can build a relationship with Nike like never before. And instead of usually what they would do is they would pay the athlete a certain amount of money to essentially promote them. But she didn't want just that. She was in so much belief over Michael Jordan and his success she said, we will go with you ⁓ we can get a percentage of every sale the Air Jordans, of the shoes that you're making for Michael for the for the entire time that they're being sold. Can you believe that? That was so long ago. No one had ever done that before. And it was a really smart bet. She bet on her son. She bet on his greatness. And of course, they're making a lot of money because of that, because Air Jordans are still one of the most popular shoes that people want. the here is failure cannot define us. Failure has to be just part of our feedback. And I'll tell you as an entrepreneur, well, before entrepreneurship, when I was still super, I don't want to say shackled by failure, but I'll say driven. When I was still really driven by fear of failure, I didn't actually have the conscious awareness that I was making so many of my decisions because I was avoiding failure. Like I was pushing myself so hard and growing. And I thought, I thought that I was like, ⁓ my God, look at everything I can do. This is when I was a physician and a leader and so much like linear growth. I didn't realize that what was driving me was I thought I was just wanting to be excellent. And I think there was part of that, but underneath it, I didn't want anyone to think that I was a failure, that I wasn't good enough. I had so much imposter syndrome, all that kind of stuff. I was so insecure shift now into ⁓ an entrepreneur. And I'll tell you, holy smokes, if you choose to be an entrepreneur and you choose to stay in the game of entrepreneurship, you have to get over this whole concept of you just got to learn how to fail because the faster you fail, the more successful you will be. I'm going to say that again. The faster you learn how to fail, the more successful you will be. And I really think that's true in any. industry, any line of work and anything that you do in life. But I had to learn the lesson in entrepreneurship because I was so committed to getting this work. I'm so service driven, so committed to getting this workout in the world. And it was super terrifying and scary in the beginning. I'd never done it before. I wasn't sure how, what if I fail, so on and so forth. I just had to learn how to fail. I had to learn how to befriend disappointment. I had to learn all of that stuff so that I could really continue to move forward. And I am so, so, so, so happy because what used to drive me before this fear of failure has really turned into what can I learn now? And failure doesn't feel scary anymore to me. It just feels like another lesson. Okay, cool. It just feels like data to me. Like, okay, like this is feedback for me. And what drives me now is what else is possible? What else is possible? So I want all of you to sort of redefine failure for you. And I said I had two athletes that I was going to share here. So Michael Jordan and Biles. So ⁓ Simone OK, you guys all know the Olympic gymnast. Man, OK, ⁓ she incredible. she has achieved ⁓ historic, she's ⁓ she's an incredible woman. And I'm going to tell you in a second everything that she's done for herself. But before I do, let's talk about failure and Simone Biles. So you don't already know this, in 2020 at the Tokyo Olympics, Simone Biles was there and she had to withdraw herself from the Olympics. So is like ⁓ on world stage, millions of people watching her and she had to withdraw. Why? Because she experiencing something that is really well known in mental gymnastics. fact, ⁓ have a new friend ⁓ she happens to be ⁓ mindset coach for gymnasts. And so she and I were talking about thing that can show up in gymnasts. And ⁓ a mental block where gymnasts lose spatial awareness when they're in the air. Can you imagine how fatal that could be? If you are doing the types of things that gymnasts are doing, but you lose your spatial awareness. And let me tell you, by the time Simone Biles got to the 2020 Olympics, she was already so incredible at her craft. So incredible doing what she had been doing. She had practiced it so much that she could do it in her sleep. she experienced this mental block that can show up from high anxiety and fear, where you just get completely disconnected. It's like, The only way your body can tell you to stop, stop, slow down, stop. It's like your body trying to give you these cues because your mind just keeps going, pushing harder, pushing harder. But your body has to tell you to chill out. It's called the twisties in gymnastics. And she had experienced that. And so she pulled out. How scary. Can you imagine in front of the stage of all these millions what that meant for her? she does that. She steps back from the Olympics. And then, so that was in 2020, and then she achieved one of the most historic dominant comebacks of all time, really led her to this status as the most decorated gymnast in history. She comes back three years later in 2023 and wins the world championship. ⁓ I say the most decorated gymnast, I mean of all time, including men and women, male and female. And she goes on to create Olympic history, surpassing 37 total medals. And then again, in 2024 goes to the Paris Olympics and leads the U S team to gold. So it's so powerful to think about what's possible when you do not let failure define you. When you are not afraid of the concept of failure. Like you can decide some people that I've worked with, so paralyzed by the concept of failure, they don't like the word. They won't even use it. They'll use something else instead. And I'm going to tell you, do whatever works for But failure doesn't have to be sneaky or scary. It could just be what it is. Okay, something didn't work. Who cares? Let's figure out how to make it work. Get over it. It didn't work. Get over it. It's not that big of a deal. The world is not going to stop turning because something failed. Get over it. it's just time to get back up and learn and figure out how to make it successful. And what I want to offer all of you. Instead of approaching the concept of failure as this big like, ⁓ my God, I'm so afraid, tie to your self worth. I'm not good enough. No, let's get over it. It doesn't have to be judgment. It's just information. Let's just see it with curiosity. And really what want you to take with you is this. How can I learn to fail? Faster and faster and faster because the faster I learn how to fail and how to get over it the faster I will be successful gonna go ⁓ on to our next example ⁓ and the way, I am noticing that This episode is a little longer than I thought so I'm gonna give you the last one and then we're gonna take a break and then we'll come back and do the last five in our next episode so this ⁓ is Felix. ⁓ So an Olympic sprinter and ⁓ sharing, using her to share with you an example of nervous system regulation. Nervous system regulation. does that even mean? It means regulating our mind and our body and really regulating our stress response. And I think that concept of like regulating your nervous system ⁓ is being talked about much more now than I have ever heard it talked about in my life. But over the last like two to three years, just in the collective consciousness, I think as people are really reconnecting to their mind and reconnecting to something so much bigger than themselves, I really it's part of the transition of consciousness that we're experiencing where people are connecting to their bodies and to their emotions. And again, to bigger than us, you know, whether that's spirit, divine, God, whatever you call it. And I think I have seen is in this whole shift of consciousness, we are talking about things we never used to talk about before. And we are ⁓ words to things that never had. We never had labels before. So nervous system regulation is one of those things, even though existed ⁓ forever ⁓ people you know, in certain very like esoteric fields had talked about it. wasn't in the, in the plain common vernacular. So not everybody was talking about it. ⁓ now I see like 20 year old influencers ⁓ IG, on Instagram and Twitter talk about nervous system regulation. ⁓ I think that's great, by the way, I think it should be common knowledge. I think everybody should talk about it because I think the more you can expand your nervous systems regulation, then the more The more is what's possible for you. Okay, so let's talk about Alison Felix. so for those of you that don't know who this is, she's an Olympic sprinter. ⁓ not just any Olympic sprinter, she is the most ⁓ ⁓ in ⁓ of track and field. both and women, by the way. So not just for women, she is the most decorated medalist in all of track and field. So. ⁓ She's spoken about navigating her physical performance through many life transitions. Okay, like returning to competition after experiencing an incredible trauma. she was already an elite athlete and then she became pregnant. And she was pregnant and she was going to give birth, she experienced incredibly traumatic. It's called ⁓ preeclampsia. So preeclampsia can be, and she, so you can have ⁓ degrees of preeclampsia. could be mild to very severe. her preeclampsia was incredibly severe. So what ends up happening with preeclampsia is your blood pressure can go ⁓ high, ⁓ can start to develop seizures as you're about to give birth and it can affect the ability for you to deliver oxygen to the fetus and a whole bunch of other things. It's super, super, super dangerous. And So what happened to her is as she was giving birth, she developed severe preeclampsia and it was so severe that She had to have an emergency C-section. And people talk about C-sections a lot, like just common, I had a C-section, but it's a serious surgery. It's a surgery you're getting cut into ⁓ and an emergency C-section is no joke. ⁓ Your life is on the line as is your baby's life is on the line when you're having an emergency c-section. emergency c-section had to happen when her daughter was young. So the fetus wasn't fully formed yet. And caused her daughter to stay in the neonatal ICU, the NICU, for one month. That's super, super traumatizing. you can imagine, you have... You're carrying this baby. You're super healthy and fit. You've never had any physical problems. In fact, you're an elite athlete. then you go ⁓ you're, ⁓ following all the right plans. You're following all the right things. You're taking all the prenatal vitamins and of a sudden you have this severe preeclampsia. That's terrifying. ⁓ And have to have an emergency sex C-section. And now your daughter's in your baby is in the NICU, not overnight, not for two days, but for an entire month. So what that did to her is it caused her to have this constant state of hypervigilance, of nervousness, of fear. She would describe how she would hear these like screams and persistent like beeping monitors. If you've ever been in an ICU or in any hospital, let me tell you, you guys know I'm an emergency medicine physician, the sounds can be really terrifying because you don't know what specific beeps mean and what if this beep means that something is wrong with your baby? And so she would have ⁓ these sort of anxiety attacks of hearing beeping sounds, hearing screams of the babies and ⁓ to ⁓ work through processing all of that trauma that she experienced. And processed that trauma by doing a bunch of really powerful things. But one of the things she did is she channeled a lot of her emotions. into advocacy work for maternal health, specifically with black women. Black women experience preeclampsia at larger rates than other populations. ⁓ other thing she did, which I thought was really awesome, she an advocate for ⁓ athletes who also mothers. We don't often talk about that, And then, of course, she recovered physically. She recovered physically she chose to ⁓ back to her craft of being an elite athlete. So just spend some time here because this is no joke, my friends recovering from a regular birth is no joke. Yeah. Just like a vaginal delivery because what's happening to your I was an athlete growing up and I'm also a mom of two young kids ⁓ and holy smokes, man. I super. healthy, physically fit when I got pregnant the first time. But what happens to your body is crazy. Your hormones, the way your muscles change, the way you tear ton of your abdominal muscles when your belly grows. really, it's a lot for the human body to hold. Women are incredible that they can do that with their bodies. It's incredible. And ⁓ recovering just a natural birth, a natural healthy birth is a process. But now think about recovering from a surgery and a birth and an emergency surgery, c-section. It's a whole different story. So she had to learn how to recover from the postpartum recovery of surgery also from the trauma and how to come back to her elite training when she did that. ⁓ her comeback involved a very different kind of ⁓ process. ⁓ that was really challenging for her because here she is, someone who's never dealt with a lot of like physical incapabilities and now having to come back to learn ⁓ to be an elite athlete again and how to train her mind and her body and how to regulate her nervous system because she had so much trauma that she had experienced ⁓ how to do it in a way where she wouldn't burn out again because she wanted to adjust her life to ⁓ being a new mother, dealing with all of these things. And her comeback was incredible because of course she didn't just come back. She came back to break records in track and field and of course became a leading advocate for mothers who are also athletes. I just think there's so much groundedness in her example. And think this is where... ⁓ the conversation becomes important and relevant to all of you because ability to perform is not just connected to ⁓ your capability, it's deeply connected to your nervous system. And I think is one of the most important skills that I work with my people, with all of my clients. that I think it's such a like a subtle skill nobody ever talks about, but regulating your nervous system. Holy smokes. It really expands what is possible for you. The more you can hold discomfort, the discomfort of a difficult conversation, the discomfort of growth, the discomfort of failure, the discomfort. I just coached a client this morning. Man, this woman is incredible, Latina leader and doctor, and she's going through a big area of growth and ⁓ career transition, the discomfort of not knowing what is next, the discomfort of uncertainty. When you can hold all of that in your body, what becomes possible for you is incredible. just think it's so powerful to think about that. So ⁓ all of you, ⁓ might look like, how do I regulate my nervous system when I'm gonna have a difficult conversation? When I'm going to talk on a stage, when I'm going to do something big, new, different, is what becomes, that's really what defines what's possible for you. Okay, sweet friends, we talked about a lot in today's episode I going to just review what we talked about today, wrap up and then will pick up on this next So we talked about number one, over outcome. And I gave you the examples of Kobe Bryant and Michaela Schifrin, the Alpine skier who really focused on in love with their craft, being deeply devoted to their craft ⁓ the outcome ⁓ staying a student of their craft ⁓ after they had achieved the pinnacle of their success. ⁓ two, we talked about the importance of training the mind. And hello, I hope you know by now that I am ⁓ believer of training your mind. Absolutely think that is the one thing that really separates, you know, ⁓ the folks are not just successful on paper, but really feel success in their bodies and are really enjoying the life that they're living while they're doing these big, audacious things ⁓ is when can train your mind. And the examples I gave you were Michael Phelps and the vision exercises he does, and Alyssa Liu choosing joy and training herself to live in joy as opposed to external expectations and perfectionism. then we talked about failure and really seeing it as feedback as opposed to making it mean all those things about you. And we talked about Michael Jordan and Simone Biles and system regulation with Alison Felix. Alright, sweet friends, we are going to wrap up today. And if this stuff is resonating with you, I want you to know that you're not alone. Listen, these are the things that I work with people on all of the time. These are the things I help my clients with all of the time. so if this is if you are in a state of growth or if you are looking to create alignment in your life or take your life ⁓ another level, your business, your leadership to another level, I would love to help you do that. So I work one-on-one with clients in a really powerful, confidential container where we do all of these things and ultimately connect you back to the most authentic version of yourself because it's that version that always knows the answers, that is deeply in touch with your intuitive guidance, doing big audacious things in the world and it's a powerful place to be. So can schedule a consult with me. The link to schedule the consults is in the show note and we can talk all about you ⁓ talk about ⁓ is it that you want to go and we can really identify the patterns that are probably holding you back, keeping you stuck and help you step into a new way of living, of leading that is aligned, that is sustainable, that is giving you the impact that you want to help in the world. All right, friends. I will see you all next week. Adios.