Dr. Daniel Jacobsen is the founder of MindFit, helping coaches and parents build mentally tough athletes through proven sport psychology training. Daniel has spent 8 years working directly with high school, collegiate, and elite athletes not in a lab, not in an office, but on the court, in the locker room, and in the high-pressure moments that define seasons.

On this episode Mike & Daniel discuss the impact of mental training on athletic performance. Jacobsen emphasizes the significance of meditation within teams, citing historical examples from the championship-winning squads of Phil Jackson, who employed meditation to enhance team cohesion and individual self-awareness. Jacobsen outlines the transformative process athletes undergo, not only in their sports but also in their personal lives, as they learn to prioritize their objectives and cultivate a diversified identity beyond athletics. Furthermore, he discusses the keys to achieving flow states in performance, highlighting the essential stages of struggle, release, flow, and recovery. Jacobson's insights provide invaluable guidance for athletes and coaches alike, aiming to foster both peak performance and personal development.

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Have pen and paper handy as you listen to this episode with Dr. Daniel Jacobsen, founder of MindFit.

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Phil Jackson.

He won 11 rings with Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, right?

The Bulls and the Lakers when they went on their dynasty runs.

And what their teams would do is they would sit in a circle and before practice, every single day they would do a meditation together.

Now that might sound kind of hippie woo woo or like, like we're not going to do that.

I promise you.

It changes things.

The team starts to think differently, you start to interact differently.

Players start to recognize their thoughts better before they start to recognize ruminate.

And you can just get to know yourself better and you get to know your teammates better when you're kind of doing this session.

So number one easiest fix is just a five minute team meditation as often as possible.

Dr. Daniel Jacobson is the founder of Mind Fit, helping coaches and parents build mentally tough athletes through proven sports psychology training.

Daniel has spent eight years working directly with high school, collegiate and elite athletes.

Not in a lab, not in an office, but on the court, in the locker room, and in the high pressure moments that define seasons.

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Have a pen and paper handy as you listen to this episode with Dr. Daniel Jacobson, founder of Mind Fit.

Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast.

It's Mike Linzing here without my co host Jason Sunkel tonight, but I am pleased to be joined by Daniel Jacobson from Mindfit Academy.

Daniel, welcome to the Hoop Heads pod.

Thank you.

I'm excited to be here.

Thrilled to have you on.

Looking forward to diving into the mental aspect of the game of basketball and the game of life.

Want to start by going back in time to when you were a kid, Get a little bit of your background.

Just talk to me a little bit about just how your athletic career got started.

What got you interested in sports, who got you interested in sports?

What are you.

Some of, some of your earliest memories?

Yeah, I'd be happy to share.

So for me, everything actually started when I was born.

I was born with Wolf Parkinson white syndrome.

So it's a heart heart disorder where my heart was just beating faster than it should have and I almost died at birth.

So I had to be emergency life flighted to primary children's and all that stuff.

Obviously, I don't remember that, but on my birthday every year, my mom always tells me that story.

And I had to go to the doctor every year until I was like 12 years old.

And they told me that I was clear of it.

But because of that, I had such a keen awareness of my body and of my health and how I felt doing everything that I had a fear of dying from a heart attack or something.

I had a fear of dying from heart failure.

And so the way that I kind of cope with that is, is I played sports.

I made sure that I was active, I was out, I was rock climbing, I was playing football, baseball, basketball.

I was running around and trying to make sure that my body was as healthy as it could be.

That was my introduction to sport.

And my father was a football coach for my entire life.

When I was a baby, I was in a football onesie for the team that he coached, Riverton High School.

And so I grew up watching those guys and idolizing these, these high school athletes and these people that I thought were heightens.

So yeah, that, that was my phase growing up and why I love sports.

Which one of your sports was your favorite as a kid?

Football.

For me, football was my favorite.

I had some anger issues, so I just liked hitting people.

That was my big thing.

When you think about some of the people that had an influence on you in those early years, your dad, coaches.

What's one or two things that you remember from one or multiple of those people that you feel like had a big influence on you then, but maybe is still also having an influence on who you are today?

That's a very good question.

Everything.

But there's one moment that really stands out for me and that I share with my clients all the time, is I was a freshman and I was.

I was playing football, I was trying to play basketball, I was trying to play baseball, and all the sports kind of made my social life take a dive.

And my scores on tests in school, they dropped.

And I couldn't balance everything.

It was really difficult for me.

And one night I was crying in my room at 1am I was trying to do my homework and I couldn't handle it.

I.

There was just too much pressure from everything.

And so my dad comes down to my room and he was one of my coaches, and so he's my father and my coach, and he says, what are you willing to sacrifice in order to be great?

What are your priorities going to be in life and how are you going to make sure that your time is managed properly?

Do you want to be just a good athlete or do you want to be an athlete and a student and a man of faith and a future good husband and father?

Like, what do you actually want to achieve in life?

And that night, it didn't.

It didn't hit me like lightning, right.

It was gradual over the next couple of years, and still gradual.

I'm still learning this, but what are my priorities going to be?

And that's probably the biggest lesson that a coach or my dad had on me.

Yeah, no, that's a really good lesson.

Right.

I think when you start thinking about.

They always say that to be great at something, right.

There are sacrifices that have to be made in order to be great in one particular area of your life.

And then I know that just in things that I've read and listened to, and I'm sure you've probably heard this too, that sometimes we look at people who have tremendous success in a certain area, whether that be an athlete, a musician, somebody in business, just somebody in our life that has achieved some success.

And a lot of times we see that success in that one area, but we don't necessarily see all the other parts of their life that maybe aren't ideal, that maybe we wouldn't want, or we don't see all the hard work that goes on behind the scenes.

In order to get them to the point where they can perform publicly as an athlete or a musician or the success that they've had as a business person, what things did they have to go through in order to get to that point?

And so I think that that's a lesson that if you can learn that right, that you have to decide in your own life, be intentional about what it is that you want to do.

I think that's always an important part of, no matter what your profession, but particularly in athletics as a player or as a coach, that the more intentional you can be about what it is that you want to do, the more you can buy into the process that it takes to get there.

And you always hear right about the athlete that says, I did what I did and I didn't consider the things that I left behind a sacrifice.

Like, I'll just give you an example from my life.

Like, when I was in high school, I didn't go to dances in high school because a lot of times I was just going and playing pickup basketball.

And people would say to me, like, don't you.

Didn't you want to go to the dances?

Or didn't you miss that?

Or are you.

Do you regret that you didn't go?

And I'm always like, that wasn't a sacrifice for me because I was doing what I wanted to do.

It might have been a sacrifice for somebody else, but for me, in that instance, it wasn't because I was doing what I wanted to do.

And so it sounds like that's the kind of lesson that you learned of.

You had to figure out what it was that you wanted to do and then figure out, what is it that.

How am I going to get to what I want to do?

Am I describing that correctly?

Kind of the advice that, that your dad gave you?

Absolutely.

That was a great way to sum it up.

I mean, I see Michael Jordan behind you.

There's a lot that I can say about him and, and what he accomplished and his identity and how.

What he sacrificed, Right?

So.

But everybody has that.

Every single athlete, every single musician, every great actor, anybody that you see is doing great things.

Even the, the normal, like, quote, unquote, average Joe, like, that is just a good father.

I say, just a good father, but, like, that's probably one of the best roles you can have, right?

Or, or is a.

Is a good mother.

That's all part of the sacrifice and the identity.

So it doesn't apply to just athletes, but it's especially pertinent to people that want to Perform such as athletes.

Absolutely.

Makes complete sense.

Tell me a little bit about how you got interested in the psychological side of sports, the performance side, the, the mindset side of sports.

What was it?

Was there one light bulb moment for you?

Was it something that you came to gradually over time?

How did you get into this space?

What made you interested in it?

So I, I actually always wanted to be a physical therapist.

Well, originally I wanted to be a professional athlete, but I, I obviously I didn't have the skills or the ability to actually do that genetically.

I wasn't big enough to play football, right, totally fine.

So I thought a different avenue to be able to still be involved in sports was physical therapy.

I had busted my knee, I rolled my ankle, I had a concussion and I would go to the physical therapist and they would fix me and I would get back to play.

But I thought that was awesome that they could do that.

And just the understanding of human body was fascinating to me.

And then I served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ and basically I was just out preaching to people, counseling with them, trying to help them live better lives and just serving them.

And I realized that I love sitting in council with people and helping them go through whatever problems they had.

And people had really big problems that they were throwing on me as an 18 year old, I was like, I am not qualified to be able to help you with this, but Jesus can help you.

That was kind of my where I was at, right?

But now that led me to I love sports and I love counseling.

How can I do that?

So I found psychology and I didn't want to be like a therapist because that sounded awful to me personally.

I didn't agree with a lot what of what those people are doing.

They're good and they're great, but it wasn't for me.

And so I was like, how can I put these two worlds together, sport and psychology?

I had no idea sports psychology existed until one of my buddies told me about it.

And I was like, bingo, perfect.

That is exactly what I want to do.

And so I dove into sports psychology and I went and got my degree and studied it and been applying it to athletes.

And it's been my love ever since.

So how do you go from I'm studying it, I got an understanding of it.

How do you take that?

And before we get into what you actually do and talk about some of the issues, how do you take that from this is what I want to do to this is what I do?

In other words, how do you create a business around what it is that you want to do.

Talk to me about building the business side of it, what's worked for you, what you've enjoyed about that piece of it.

It's been a long journey, a long road, as any business is.

And this is where my performance, the performance side of performance psychology, really helped me a ton.

I actually did door to door sales, which is brutal.

You're.

You're cold knocking on people's doors and you have to pitch them either bug spray or solar or alarm or, or something.

And if you're listening to this, you're.

You might be a homeowner and you might have gotten people knocking on your door.

Yeah, that job sucks.

It's super hard, but you can make good money if you get really good at it.

The problem is it's very hard, but that's why it makes good money.

So as I was going through college, I would do that in the summer as my summer job.

And it taught me so many principles of success and hard work and dedication.

And I would actually use what I was learning in sports psychology.

Visualization techniques, focus and attention control, arousal and anxiety management, how to get into a flow state.

And I would apply that to what I was learning in sales and marketing and business.

And so it actually just made a lot of sense to me as soon as I learned about sports psychology, that was my path and I never faltered from that.

But I learned a lot of skills along the way in my, in my job as a sales rep and as I was going through college to get my degree.

Yeah, it makes sense, right?

And then again, once you take life experiences and then you build those into what it is that you're trying to do with your life or in this case, in your business.

Talk a little bit about the clientele that you typically work with and what the process is for, let's say, onboarding a new client.

Let's focus on an athlete.

Again, pick.

Clearly, this is a basketball podcast.

So if you're going to talk to a basketball player, someone approaches you to, to work with them, what does that process look like?

I love working with basketball players there just because there are so many amazing examples of basketball and sport that I can use and athletes that I've personally worked with for basketball, the way that the process looks is an athlete.

I work with high school athletes.

That's right now my specialty.

I think that college athletes, they have sports psychologists on campus typically, so they have access to mental coaching.

But high school athletes, they just don't have the same access.

And they need that access they need these mental skills.

The difference in athletes is no longer physiological.

It is now psychological.

Right.

We.

We've trained ourselves to be so elite physically that now the.

The difference in the barrier is mental.

So that's why.

That's my clientele and that's why I would work with.

So if you're a high school basketball athlete or a coach, I actually prefer working with teams, but they would come on.

And I have a free school community.

Have you heard of school?

I have, yes.

Cool.

Yeah, it's just.

It's a platform where you can have a community and courses and everything.

I have a sports psychology community.

It's completely free.

So they would hop on there and check out all of the sports psychology trainings.

And if they're like, hey, Coach Dan, I want to work with you more.

The number one thing I will always, always ask is, is what is your objective?

What do you want to get out of this?

Because then that varies on how we're gonna go through this training together.

If they say, oh, I just wanna play better, hey, cool, we can totally do that.

If it's, I want to be a Division 1 scholarship athlete and I want to get nil deals and become the best, like, in my state, then, okay, cool.

That's a very different path that we're gonna take.

So depending on what the goal is, or if a coach comes to me and says, I want my team to win state championships, that's a very different path than I just want them to play well.

Right.

So it depends on what your objective is.

That's what I always start with.

In your work with, as you said, you like to work with teams.

So clearly in the course of doing that, you start to see, I'm sure, patterns of things that repeat themselves with athletes with teams.

When you think about the biggest obstacles or challenges to.

And you can take this question with either an athlete or a team or a coach, however you want to approach it.

But what are some of the most common obstacles or challenges that you've seen that players, teams, coaches have to overcome in order to be able to have the type of success that they want to have?

I love this question.

I actually just did a deep dive in this.

So for a team, let's talk about a team.

Because you can't win by yourself, no matter how great you are.

Right.

A team needs to go through at least four stages in order to win any kind of championship or tournament at all.

Number one is forming.

This one's the most obvious.

You need to have your tryouts.

You need to Put your team together, have the right personnel, have the right coaching.

Forming is the first step to any kind of team.

The second is storming.

This.

This is where a lot of teams actually skip, and this is why.

So the third step is norming, and the last step is performing, where you're actually winning games.

A lot of teams skip this storming stage, and then they wonder why they're never able to perform.

So what does that look like, a storming stage?

The perfect example is in, remember the Titans, right, where you have.

You have Julius and then you have Gary, and they are just butting heads, the two defensive captains, right?

And they're butting heads and they don't get along at all.

But they're really holding each other to a higher standard.

Because at the end of the movie, you see Gary say, julius, I was afraid of you, of.

Of you and your potential.

I saw what you could become.

So it was all out of love and respect.

So this storming phase is all about holding your teammates and your coaches and coaches holding your players.

It's all around accountability to a higher standard.

At, like, you have to almost yell at each other.

You have to have this passion to.

If you skip that part, you're never going to go through a performing stage.

You have to go through that.

And that's why a lot of teams skip.

And then obviously there's norming, where you're getting to know each other and you're.

You're actually starting to get into flow states, which I love talking about flow states.

But.

And then, yeah, you're performing.

You can win championships.

All right.

When it comes to storming, this is one of the things that I think back to my career as a player.

I think back to different teams I've coached, and there are some players who are capable of holding a teammate accountable, right?

Calling somebody up and saying, hey, we need you to do more of this or more of that.

But that is difficult for a kid who's a high school basketball player, right, who might be 15, 16, 17 years old.

It's uncomfortable to.

If you and I are teammates, it's uncomfortable for me to walk up to you and say, hey, Daniel, man, you're not carrying your end of the load here.

You're not working as hard as you can today in practice.

We talked about this before the season, that we have this goal in mind, and in order for that to happen, we got to give 100% every day in practice, and you're just not bringing it today.

That's easy for me to sit here and do on a podcast as a 56 year old man, it's a lot harder for me to do that as a 17 year old junior in high school with, with my teammate maybe who's a senior.

So when you work with teams, I'm guessing that one of the things that you do is help them to understand A, why that has to happen and B, how they do that.

So if I'm a player, I'm a coach, and I'm listening to this, I'm saying, well, yeah, that sounds good, but how do I help my players or how do I help myself as a player, hold my teammates accountable?

What's the, what's the key to me being able to have those difficult conversations?

Really good question there.

And there's a couple different paths that we can take to get there.

Number one is just looking at leadership itself.

There's different types of leaders.

There's example leaders, servant leaders, vocal leaders and tactical leaders are all the positive kinds of leaders I look at.

So if you're not vocal, then be the example, right?

Be the, be the one that's actually the first one and the last one out.

Be the one that's putting in the extra reps. Be the one that's doing your mental skills training.

Be the one that's doing that.

People will see the difference in you and they'll, they'll want to follow that.

Or you can be the vocal one.

But one thing that I do with teams at the very, very start of working with them is obviously, what's your objective?

But then the second thing I, I do every single time is I talk about team identity.

But what are your guys?

What are your expectations for each other as a team?

And this is an exercise that you can do with your team.

If you're listening to this is literally just have every athlete have a piece of paper, they write their name at the top of it and they pass the paper around to all of their teammates.

And their teammates write down one sentence or phrase of what their expectation is for that player.

So whether you're a starter, whether you're on the bench, whether you're a freshman, it doesn't matter whether you're the head varsity guy, you're the captain of the team.

Every single player writes down what their expectation is of you.

And so as a bench player, right, people are probably writing like, play hard in practice, go hard in practice to make the team better.

If you're obviously the captain, they're going to write down their expectations of you as an, as a captain.

And then I have These athletes put this in the locker, put this in their locker where they can see it every day, where their teammates can see it.

And so that way, when you're actually confronting somebody and saying, hey, this is our standard, they can point to that and at least reference that and say, you know, what the expectations are.

And it's important.

We can talk a lot about this, but it's important to have high love with high expectations.

If you say something out of love, they're gonna receive it.

It might take some time, right?

You're.

It's not going to be like two minutes.

It might be a week or two weeks.

There's storming phases, can last a while, but they're necessary.

And the last thing I'll say on this is one of my great mentors would always say, there is no comfort in the growth zone, and there's no growth in the comfort zone.

So if you're comfortable, that's probably not a good sign.

You probably.

You need to find ways to get uncomfortable.

So if it is uncomfortable to approach your teammates and your coaches, that's good.

You need to be doing that.

That makes sense, right?

I think that anything that you read, anything that you hear in terms of growth, right?

It's always get out of your comfort zone.

Right?

That's where the growth lies, that you have this band of, hey, this is.

I'm used to this.

It's comfortable, whatever.

But if I'm in this band, I'm not.

I'm not growing.

So in order to grow, I need to get out of that band and to challenge myself.

And then to go back to what you said at the beginning, part of that answer, which I think is critical, and it's something that I've talked to numerous coaches about, I've talked to other sports psychologists about, in terms of.

You have to have a standard set so that you have something that you can point to.

Hey, if I'm going to have a conversation with you, Daniel, I'm a coach and you're a player.

And before the season, you told me, hey, I want to be a college basketball player, and I want to help our team win, and I want to be the most coachable guy on the court.

Well, now, if I go through the season and you're not giving me effort or I gave you something, and you looked at me and rolled your eyes, I can now come back to and say, look, all I'm doing is holding you accountable to the things that you told me were important to you.

And then it's very easy, as you said if the guy's got it hanging in their locker, I can point to that very easily and say, look, this is what you're expected to do.

This is what we wanted you to do.

This is what you said you were going to do.

Now we have something that we can turn back to.

Whereas if you don't have that conversation initially, right.

Then it becomes much harder.

Then I've not only got to have the conversation, but I also have to then define the standard that maybe I have for you, but you'd never agreed to that standard.

And that's where things get sort of wishy washy and it's more difficult to have that type of conversation.

So to me, I always feel like it is very, very important to set those expectations ahead of time so that everybody understands what they are.

And then it's very easy as a coach.

Right.

Hey guys, we talked about how we were going to give 110% or we were going to have eye contact every day when we were in the huddle or whatever it is.

And now if the team's not doing that, it's not, hey, coaches picking on us or coaches this or that.

It's coach is holding us accountable to somebody that we.

Something that we already agreed to back in October before practice even started.

And I think that's critical.

That's a critical piece of it to me.

Yeah.

And you know who was one of the best at that?

It was Greg Popovich.

He was the best at holding his teams accountable, especially right through the championship eras.

It was, hey, this is the standard.

The standard is the standard.

The other coach I think of is like Nick Saban.

Right.

It doesn't matter if you're basketball, football, whatever.

Right.

But the standard is the standard.

It takes what it takes.

Right?

That's the, that's the Nick Saban thing.

Success takes.

It takes what it takes.

There's not, there's no shortcuts to, to getting the type of success that you want.

Let me ask you a little bit about confidence.

And I know one of the things that you had sent over to me that we talked a little bit about was just players developing confidence, what that looks like.

And I know one of the things that you said was that sometimes the people who appear to be the most confident, that's really not the case.

So talk a little bit about just confidence, how you define it, and then get into the conversation of maybe somebody who looks confident or tries to portray confidence.

Maybe that's a false premise and maybe they're not as confident as they look.

So Just let's get into the topic of confidence and start with your definition.

So I define confidence by an equation.

It is your evidence multiplied by your self talk.

So what I mean by that is evidence is things that you have done in the past, actions that you've taken that have stacked proof for being who you say you are.

So if you say hey, I'm an elite basketball player, but your behaviors don't align with that, that's called cognitive dissonance.

And you're separated from that actual identity.

Your behaviors and your evidence don't match.

Whereas if you say hey, I'm an elite basketball player and then you behave in a way you do the 5am workouts, you're doing the actions that it takes, that's when things start to multiply and then it's all times by self talk.

So the reason it's multiplied is because if either side of the equation is zero, then the whole thing is zero, right?

So when I'm talking about self talk, I am not talking about positive thinking.

A lot of people say positive psychology, think positive, be positive.

But I'm going to tell you as an athlete that's, that's wrong.

You like that actually is probably detrimental because in sports crap happens.

Teams are going to score on you, people are going to go on a run on you, you're going to get ran over, you're, you're going to get punched in the face, right?

Mike Tyson's quote, everybody has a plan till you get punched in the face.

So that self talk is actually neutral self talk.

And something I teach all of my athletes is don't think positive or negative, think neutral.

If you see Steph Curry, Kobe Bryant, they go down the court, they shoot a three pointer, they might celebrate a little bit, but what are they doing immediately?

They're getting back on defense.

The same thing.

If they go down the court and they shoot a three pointer and they miss, they don't hang their heads and be all sad, they get back onto defense, right?

They don't.

They're not worried about the past or the future.

They are as press present as possible.

And that's where flow states happen.

So presence and self talk.

So that's where you would say next play or next shot.

And that's what your self talk needs to be.

And then the identity side of it is right, I'm an elite athlete or I am a good basketball player.

And so kind of playing with all of those is what creates confidence.

Do you, when you think about that next play mentality and I've Talked to different people who have the belief of sometimes you have to have the, oh, I'm trying to think of the, the right phrase.

But I have, I have a routine for sort of dropping the last.

Dropping the last thing.

So maybe it's just, I like this, or maybe it's just a quick clap.

And that is my signal to myself that I need to move on to the next play.

I know this is one of the conversations that I have with my daughter right now, who's a sophomore in high school and she's a kid that when she's shooting the basketball, when I'm working with her, she's very focused on every single shot and her reaction emotionally when it goes in or it doesn't go in.

Like she'll get on a hot streak and she'll make seven or eight in a row and then she'll miss.

And all of a sudden she's, you know, her heads going like this.

And I'm always like, look, if you're a good shooter, every single shot, I think this is the point that you were making with Kobe or Steph.

Right?

It's every shot is its own entity.

I take this shot, it either goes in or it doesn't.

And then, guess what?

I get to do that same thing again.

Whether I made or missed the previous one has no relevance to the one that I'm about to take now.

And that's a hard place to get to.

But that's a conversation that I have with my daughter all the time of, you have to be able to move on from the next thing.

And I love what you said about, it's not about the past.

It's not worrying about what's going to happen in the future.

It's, I have to execute what I'm doing right here in the moment.

So talk about sort of that mistake, ritual piece of it and just making sure that you're focused in the present as opposed to, again, the past or the future.

I like to keep it as simple as possible for athletes, especially mid performance.

Right.

So I have a cue word and a physical action and that's it.

So you mess up, you miss a free throw, you miss a three pointer, you make a foul, whatever, pound your chest and say, I got this.

Or next shot, next play, whatever you come up with.

Or you can, yeah, wipe your brow.

Um, I, I, I personally like the, like tapping your chest or biting your jersey or something and keeping it as simple as possible.

You are, you're allowed five seconds to, if something really bad happens, allow yourself five to 10 seconds to think about it and then flush it.

That's what their sports psychologist said was always flush it like a bad pitch.

Flush it.

Like get rid of it.

Like it just goes away in.

Into the vast ocean of nothingness.

Right.

And then you're right into the next moment.

Yeah.

I think that that's something that you have to find what works for you.

Right.

Everybody has something different.

And a lot of times it's good to get a suggestion, something that you can take, and then you got to figure out and personalize it for yourself that.

So that you're able to do that ritual.

And it actually does what it's supposed to do, which it pushes it away so that you can move on and focus on.

Focus on the next thing.

Tell me a little bit about how a player.

Because this is one of the things that I think from a player or a coach standpoint, right.

Is what we're trying to do is get the best possible performance out of ourselves or out of our athletes, out of our teams that we possibly can and do that as consistently as possible.

And we all know at the same time that in sports we all go through slumps.

And so when it comes to a basketball player, right.

A slump might be for one quarter of a game, maybe a slump is I lose confidence for three or four games.

I have to figure out what do I need to do to.

To change that in order to.

And again, this is assuming that somebody has the requisite skill to be a good shooter and they just kind of go through a bad stretch or for whatever reason, they.

They lose that feel, they lose that touch, they lose the confidence.

Whatever word you want to use.

But what is.

What are some keys in your mind for a player who might be having a slump or for a coach who is trying to help a player who may be suffering through a shooting slump.

Really quick story on the extreme end of this, and I'll touch on that is.

So when I was playing baseball, it was youth baseball, and I went six years without getting on base unless it was a walk.

I didn't hit the ball and get on base for six years, but for some reason I kept playing baseball.

And I have no idea why.

I just loved the.

The vibes of being at the ballpark, I guess.

And I liked playing in the outfield, whatever, but it was awful.

That was a very bad time for me.

So that was a big slump, right?

Six years, not a single hit.

That's unheard of in.

In baseball.

Right.

But what I did is after, like, five years, I was like, all right, I'm sick of this.

I can't do this anymore.

So I got the tee out every single day, and I hit two buckets of balls every single day.

And I made sure that my physical cues were all built out.

And then without even realizing it, I started to visualize as I was going to bed, unintentionally, right.

I hadn't studied sports psychology, so I didn't know how to actually do that.

But I would be laying in bed, and I would watch myself hitting baseballs and, like, watching the.

The ball leave the pitcher's hands and go across the plate and.

And feel my body swing and go through the motion.

And so, yeah, you're right.

Slumps can be a quarter, right?

That's like a not really slump.

You're just kind of off.

Right?

But then also there's the law of averages, where, hey, if Steph Curry misses every single three that he takes in the first half, that just means law of averages.

He's probably going to be super hot in the second half.

Right?

Whatever happens, everything's going to pan out to your skill level.

So number one is increase your skill level.

What can you do to actually tactically get better at the thing you're trying to do, Whether it's hit a baseball or make a free throw or throw a spiral, whatever sport it is, obviously, for basketball, it's going to be your dribbling, your shooting, your hand, whatever, really getting physically good at that skill and then mentally rehearsing that skill for at least five minutes a day.

Because mental rehearsal is one of the most powerful tools we have.

Your brain does not know the difference between thought and reality.

If you think it powerfully enough, you will.

You will gain the confidence back to get out of said slump.

I think that mental piece of it is really important.

And it's interesting that you shared your baseball story and I'm going to share a basketball story about me that I've shared a couple times on the podcast with different people in.

In sort of the.

The appropriate time.

But I went through a. I guess you would call it the yips when it came to shooting free throws.

And so when I was in high school, so whatever, I'm 56 years old.

I still have the free throw percentage record at my high school of like 89.8% or something for a season as a high school.

As a high school senior.

And then when I went to college, I.

As a freshman, I didn't play a whole lot.

But then as a sophomore, I was like, halfway through the season, I think I was shooting right about 90% and for some reason, all of a sudden, I just completely lost the ability to shoot free throws.

It just completely went away.

It's like the, the Rick and Keel, Chuck Knob Lock, Steve Sacks baseball.

I can't throw the ball back to the pitcher.

I can't throw the ball to first base.

Just completely.

It just completely left me.

And I finished that season.

I think.

I think I went, made one out of my last 10.

And I would literally be in practice just being so nervous that we were going to do a free throw shooting drill or we would do that.

And like, literally I couldn't get the ball anywhere near the basket.

Like, the shot just completely abandoned me.

And so that was for like the last, whatever month and a half of the season when I was a sophomore.

And then as a junior, I think I shot.

I kind of fixed it.

I changed my routine.

I never.

One coach, a coach never talked to me about it ever.

Like, you would think that a kid who went from shooting 90% at the free throw line to not being able to even hit the basket, that a coach would have come and put their arm around me and said, hey, there's something, something strange is going on here.

Let's.

Let's see if we can help you.

But I think everybody just thought we're just going to ignore it.

And so somehow as a junior, I shot 76% and then as a senior I shot 82%.

But I never, I never fully recovered to the same level of confidence that I had before.

And so in a way, I feel like that was a failure.

But then in other ways, I'm like, I kind of did that all completely on my own.

Like, I had no knowledge of sports psychology or things that people have said to me about, hey, now, this is what somebody should have told you or could have told you that would have helped you to, to break your way out of that.

And so it's in one way, it's sort of my most embarrassing moment, but also kind of one of my proudest that I solved that thing all by myself, where I literally was at a point where, I mean, I would stand at the free throw line and just like, I mean, I couldn't get the ball anywhere near.

I just couldn't psychologically, I just couldn't do it.

And then by changing my routine and doing some things, I eventually got myself back to the point where I was a good but no longer a great free throw shooter the way I had been before.

So just curious in that situation, whether you think about me specifically with free throws, or you think about from a baseball perspective, like Rick and Keel being a great pitcher, and then all of a sudden you just can't.

Can't throw the ball over the plate.

Clearly, it's a case of there's something short circuiting in your mind.

How do you solve that?

What advice would you have for an athlete who goes through that?

Because I know for me, it was one of the most debilitating, embarrassing situations that I could have ever gone through.

So if there is an athlete who's going through that or a coach who has an athlete who's going through something like that, what advice would you give somebody who's in one of those situations where again, the yips, for lack of a better way of saying it, that.

Is a crazy story, but you overcame it, right, by getting a new routine.

So what I would look at is probably three different things depending on the athlete to kind of diagnose what the heck is happening here.

Number one is focus and attention control.

There was a study on, on free throw shooters specifically that the ones that were able to intentionally pinpoint and focus on the back of the rim for 0.947 milliseconds.

So almost one second the people that averaged that were 80% free throw shooters, and then the next group that averaged 0.4 milliseconds of focus, intentional narrowed focus on the back of the rim dropped down to like 64, like 55, 60% free throw shooting.

So that's one thing is, hey, where's your focus?

How are you managing that?

And there's a lot of good examples of that.

One would be like Serena Williams, where you're going from, like her here, her pre serve routine, right?

She goes from a narrow external focus on the ball to a broad external focus to the court, and then back to a narrow external focus and then a narrow internal focus on her body and as she's moving.

So as a free throw shooter, it would be the same thing.

What's the routine?

What is my narrow focus?

What is my external focus, my internal focus?

And talk about that.

The other thing I would touch on with an athlete, if that kind of doesn't work, is let's work on our mind body connection and how we can connect your.

Your nervous system again, and then the next thing would be the actual nervous system work.

Right.

You said, like, I was nervous if I was going to do free throw shooting, like, I didn't want to be part of that drill.

So, hey, let's work through that.

Let's work through the nerves.

Your.

Your sympathetic nervous system was probably firing like crazy, and you weren't able to rest.

You weren't able.

You're.

Cognitively, you couldn't rest.

Physically, you couldn't rest.

And so, hey, let's work on some techniques and ways that we can get you back into a parasympathetic state, just like your rest state, to be able to actually work on that skill again.

So those are a couple different ways I would go about diagnosing it.

Yeah, I mean, that's, again, all advice that if I go back, whatever, 35 years, it's all advice that I wish I would have had, that in some ways, I probably tried to do all of those things without really understanding exactly what I was doing.

I know that the.

The biggest thing for me was is that I could.

I could trigger a physical reaction and myself just by thinking about, I'm gonna have to shoot this free throw.

And I could literally feel myself like I could be sitting in a chair right here.

And if you'd have talked to me during that time and said, hey, you're about to shoot five free throws or you're about to do this, whatever.

And I could literally feel myself tensing up in the moment of doing that.

And obviously, prior to going through this, I had never experienced anything even remotely like that.

And it just.

I guess what I always come back to when it.

When it comes to this situation is that the mind is such a powerful thing that I think about the number like you talked about improving.

Right.

Improving your skill.

And I mean, again, I was as skilled of a free throw shooter as you probably were going to find as a high school player.

I mean, when I was practicing, I'd routinely make 98, 99, 96, 97 out of 100, just standing and shooting as a.

As a high school player in practice.

And it was just amazing, Daniel, that all of a sudden, like, just one day just Was.

For whatever reason, it just was gone.

It just.

It just something like a trigger of a moment that.

The only thing that I.

The only thing that I remember is that there were.

We did a drill sometimes where at the end of practice, you had to swish five in a row.

And if you didn't swish five in a row in a certain time, then you had to get up the next morning at 6am to shoot free throws.

And I always remember thinking it was kind of stupid that I had to swish them.

I'm like, If I'm making 10 in a row, what difference does it make if it's a. I mean, I understand the idea of precision and whatever.

And that was, obviously the idea is to get you to focus and shoot a perfect free throw.

So if you're a little bit off, then it's still going to go in.

But that's the only thing that I really remember of being like, I don't want to get up in the morning.

But that seemed like a pretty small trigger to.

To get me to go kind of to the place, the dark place that I went to.

But like I said, it was, in a way, it was my biggest failure, but it was also kind of my biggest achievement that without any real help from anyone, I kind of figured out a way to condition myself back into being able to get to the free throw line and not be sort of the psychological wreck that I was for a month and a half when I was a sophomore.

And so it just, to me, it always.

Yeah, Mike, we could have overcome that in a week.

Yeah, you would have been.

You would have.

You wouldn't have had to deal with it.

I agree.

I mean, I think, I think if we knew, if we knew what we knew now, I think there would have been a way for me to be able to probably snap my way out of it quickly.

And probably what would have happened is I would have recognized it right away.

Somebody, a coach would have recognized it right away and somebody would have jumped on it and tried to get it figured out before it became this kind of big, giant monster that I, as you said, you know, always firing, that I was carrying around with me all the time.

So it's just interesting, again, the power of.

The power of our mind to do things, to unlock what we hope is good things.

And then occasionally, you know, something like what happened to me there, that it was not, you know, not a positive situation.

But again, it's.

It's the power of what our mind, of what our mind can do.

And I think that that's why, again, the things that you do and other people in this field are able to do with athletes, to help them to, to manage that and figure it out.

I think is.

Is just a critical thing.

And I'll ask you one more thing related to this.

And I think this is a part of what kind of caused my maybe outsize reaction of missing free throws is that I think so much of my own identity was tied up in.

I'm a great free throw shooter.

And, and then suddenly when I wasn't for maybe one day or for two days or for five minutes or whatever, it was, that suddenly I was like, well, how can, like I'm Mike, the guy who always makes free throws, and now I'm not making free throws.

Well, what, what's my dad gonna think?

What's, what's my, what are my teammates gonna think?

What are my coaches gonna think?

And I think a lot of my identity was tied up in that.

And then when it went away, like, I think that added to my psychological stress.

We can go a full hour on just identity and the effects of identity on every aspect of your life, especially performance.

So to deep dive on that would be too much for today's scope.

But identity is huge.

And if what I tell athletes kind of for this specific situation would be, obviously, don't anchor your identity in being an athlete.

Because that's where we see a lot of athletes that get out of college or retire from professional sports and they go into the dumps.

They just suffer psychologically, like they don't know who they are anymore because they, their full identity was an athlete.

And so I would say diversify that identity.

And that's where the beginning of the podcast where I say my dad asked me, what are you willing to sacrifice?

What are your priorities?

That's where I formed my identity of, okay, faith, family, sports, social life.

I'm a student athlete, right?

Having diversified identities, especially even within the sport.

Like not just I'm an elite free throw shooter, also other things.

I'm sure you had that right, but probably diving deeper into that.

The other thing I would say that I wanted to touch on with this thing and we can move on is thoughts are the language of your brain, right?

So when you think something and it's here.

But emotions are the language of the body, right?

So you could feel the tension when you like that emotion is physical.

So any athlete that's listening to this chart, your emotions, please.

You will see a huge, huge benefit from this.

When you feel anger or sadness or happiness or anxiety, map it out in your body so you can recognize it.

And then you can have this little two way channel of being able to control your body with your brain and also being able to control your brain with your body.

I really like that.

Is that, would that be something that you would do in a journal, in a notebook on a daily basis?

Do you do that during, After a Performance, like at a practice, what's the methodology for sort of recording those emotions and how you feel and how that relates to your potential performance?

I have a full like 7 module training on just this.

So I would just do a little stick figure of your body and then if it's hard, like at least once a week, just check in and, and ask yourself, where did I feel this on that day?

Or, or just in the moment, Chart this.

So I actually have an app where you can chart this.

And so at any moment just pull out your phone and just say, hey, I felt this thing.

I felt jealousy and I felt it behind my left eye, or I felt anxiety and I felt it in my stomach, or I felt this.

And you can chart it on your body.

So it depends on your ath.

Like if you're super emotional and you need to chart these things, chart them.

If you feel like you're pretty even killed, then chart it once a week.

So it's all dependent on the athlete.

So once I have that information, as I start to chart that, what can I then do with that?

That can then help me to perform better, be more calm, be in a more relaxed and prepared state.

What do I take that data that I'm collecting about my emotional state and where I feel that?

How do I take that data and turn it into something that I can use as an athlete?

Very good question.

So it's the two way street, your brain and to your body, that connection right there.

So the reason that you chart your emotions.

So for me personally, I feel like anger right behind my right eye.

I.

And I can feel the anger happening before I think a thought of anger, right?

So I can feel it physically and then I can use my brain to kind of override that emotion and be like, no, like don't, don't think that way.

Or like stay neutral, whatever kind of Q word you want to do for that specific emotion.

Like, or I would feel sadness in my chest and I'd feel it in my chest before I think it, right?

You, you would feel tense thinking about free throws before you actually started to think about doing the free throws, right?

So if you can feel that first, you can then use your brain and say, wait, that's, that's not true.

I don't need to think that way.

I don't need to feel sad, I don't need to feel nervous.

This isn't a big deal.

And just like minimizing the stress can help in that circumstance and it works negatively and positively.

If you feel yourself being euphoric and super happy.

You probably feel that maybe in your fingertips or your toes or your whole body and feel that emotion and it just makes everything so much stronger, positively as well.

When you can kind of help, that two way relationship with your brain and.

Your emotions makes total sense.

Let me approach this from a coach's standpoint and think about if I'm a high school basketball coach and as you talked about earlier, when you're working with teams and you're trying to help that team to be at their best.

So let's say that I'm a high school basketball coach.

I'm listening to this.

I don't have access to somebody like yourself who can come in and give a workshop or do those kinds of things.

I, I want to take something that I can use to help my team from a psychological standpoint, from a mental well being standpoint, to be at their best.

What best?

Whether that's just priming them for practice, whether that's trying to help them to remain calm, to perform better in a game.

What's one or two things that a coach could take from what you teach that they could use with their team.

Listening to this episode, hey, I can take this and I can implement it tomorrow with my team, start to get them to think about something that can help them to perform better.

Number one, congratulations.

You now have access to me for free.

So go to the free community.

Number one is you do have access to somebody to run this for you.

I have all kinds of free trainings that you can show your team that you can do.

But the other thing I would say is, and I've been wanting to mention, this guy is Phil Jackson.

He won 11 rings with Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.

Right.

His secret weapon was a man named George Mumford.

And I don't know if you've, if you've heard of George.

I have.

Great.

So I would go and read, especially for basketball, go and read 11 rings by Phil Jackson.

And George Mumford was his, his Zen guy.

He was his team sports psychologist for both the Bulls and the Lakers when they went on their dynasty runs.

And what they, what their teams would do is they would sit in a circle and before practice, every single, every single day, they would do a meditation together.

Now that might sound kind of hippie, woo woo.

Or like, like we're not going to do that.

I promise you.

It changes things.

The team starts to think differently, you start to interact differently.

Players start to wreck like they start to recognize their thoughts better.

That whole thing that we just talked about with recognizing emotions in Your body meditation is the same thing for recognizing your thoughts before they start to ruminate.

And you can just get to know yourself better and you get to know your teammates better when you're kind of doing this session.

So number one easiest fix is just a five minute team meditation as often as possible.

I love that.

And I think it's something that when you start to talk about, there's two aspects to that.

One is getting to know your teammates.

Right.

And being in a different environment than what's typical in a practice setting or in a locker room or during a game.

Right.

It's a much more calming environment than the ones that teammates typically interact with.

I think that's part of it.

And then the second piece of it is I do think that when it comes to that meditation, right.

And slowing yourself down, you're putting yourself in a place where you're able to be aware of yourself and your own thoughts.

And I think so often as athletes we're, yeah, we're focused on our performance, but we're oftentimes focused on our performance and how it relates to the external as opposed to the internal.

A lot of times I'm like, well, how.

What's my game going to look like for my coach?

Or what's my game going to look like to my teammate or to the fans in the stands as opposed to, again, what do I need to do?

How do I need to center myself, how do I need to ground myself so that I'm ready to perform at my best?

And I think that meditation, what it does, it just grounds you in.

I get inside myself and I try to get a better understanding of who I am, what makes me tick.

And then I'm doing that collectively with a group all together now.

We're all sort of seeing that same benefit.

And I think that's where you get that, as you said, that connection between, between teammates, if that makes, if that makes sense.

Absolutely, that's, that's exactly the point I was making.

Very well put.

All right, so if you think about just what you get to do on a day to day basis with your athletes, what brings you the most satisfaction when you're working with a team or an athlete?

What are some of the outcomes that you'd like to see from the teams that you work with or the athletes that you work with?

Obviously winning, right?

Winning is, is huge.

When I see a team go from kind of struggling or like not winning in their past, like as like an organization, but being able to go through this mental skills training and start to win that's awesome.

That's very satisfactory.

But that, that's probably not the most satisfying.

That's what people kind of expect the answer to be.

The most satisfying part for me is to see the transformation as individuals and as a team outside of sport actually, if the way you do one thing is how you do everything.

So if you are trying to be the best, best athlete possible and you're putting in your, your heart, your soul into the sport, put your heart and soul into being the best student possible, into being the best brother or sister or cousin or mother or father, those relationships are much more important.

And I love seeing that transformation much more than I like seeing the winning.

The winning is awesome, don't get me wrong.

I love it like, let's go out, let's use these skills to win.

But are we winning off the court as well?

I think that's really well said and I think it's something that.

It goes back to what you talked about earlier in terms of laying out the priorities of what's important to you, right.

And being intentional in the way that you approach your sport, your life, whatever it may be, that if you do that, it's going to enable you to end up in a better place.

And that's not just going to benefit you as an athlete on the court or on the field, but it's also going to benefit you in your life ultimately.

And I think that is something that there's value in that.

And it goes back to at so many coaches on here, Daniel, that we've talked to that talk about the sport being a vehicle to be able to impact their players lives, right.

That I love the game of basketball.

I get to coach basketball.

I love diving into the X's and O's and the culture and the how do we win and all those kinds of things.

But then what I also get to do is use that sport that I love to be able to have an impact on the people that I coach.

And so I've had so many coaches say that to me that what really matters is the, those relationships and the fact that I'm able to have that impact.

And so I'm guessing that through the training that you do when you're working with a team, I'm assuming that players and coaching staff are involved in the sessions and participating.

And so not only are they getting the benefit of the sports psychology piece of it on an individual basis and team basis, but they're also just spending time together, talking, going through the activities.

And by doing that, they're getting to know one another, which then strengthens the bonds which goes back to what we talked about.

It's a lot easier for me to hold you accountable if I understand who Daniel is and I know what his family background is and I know maybe an area that he struggled or I know where his success is or I know where maybe he feels a little bit less confident.

If I know all those things about you, it's a lot easier for me to support you as a teammate.

So I'm guessing that again, when you're working with a team that it's not just the value of the activities themselves, but it's also that interconnection that you're creating as a part of that.

If, if I'm on the right track there.

Yeah.

And one thing I love with teams is team flow states being able to go through and when you see like those, all the no look passes and like everybody's just on the same page, they're flowing super well.

It's like it's seamless.

They're not, they're not even trying that hard.

That's a team that's put in the work.

Like obviously they've put in the reps, but they've probably also like been through the storming phase.

I bet you they fought a ton.

Michael Jordan behind you, he fought everyone.

He fought everyone.

But then they show forth love and, and that's where the team really gets to grow and go through performance states.

Let me ask you about the flow state because you talked about that a little bit earlier and it's one of the things that anybody who's an athlete has gotten into that at some point in their career.

Some people get into it a lot more often than others, but everybody's probably experienced that in some way, shape or form.

If you're a basketball player, there are times where it just feels like anything you put up towards the basket, you feel like it's going to go in.

And we've had games like that.

Some people who are very skilled have games like that all the time.

Some people maybe only experience that once in their career.

But I guarantee that just about anybody who's played the game has had a game or a stretch where it feels like just everything flows naturally.

You're not really thinking about what it is that you're doing.

There's no concentration on oh, I got to get my hand placement right for my shot or I've got to have the perfect follow through or my feet have got to be in this particular.

It's just everything is just.

Is just Happening.

And so one of the things that I think I hear from athletes all the time is, well, how do I get like that?

I have the skill to be able to get there because I've gotten there before.

How do I get there more often?

So when you talk with athletes about getting to their flow state, how do you work with an athlete to help them again?

And we can't all be there 100% of the time, but how do you help athletes get to that flow state more often?

Flow states are another thing that we could talk another two, three hours on.

So to answer that specific question of how to get into flow states more often is, number one, understanding the phases of flow, flow and when.

So the father of flow, Michali Csikszentmihaly, he dives really deep into this.

And then we have more recent research by, like, Steven Kotler and other guys.

But all of the research indicates that there's four phases to flow.

Understanding these phases will help you get into flow.

Number one is the struggle.

And you talked about this, Mike, where it's some.

You're in your channel where your skill level is matched with your.

The difficulty of the task.

If the difficulty of the task is too high, then you're never going to reach flow.

If the difficulty of the task is too low, then you're not going to get into flow.

You need something that's the number they came up with in the studies is 4%.

Now, you're not going to be able to always get an exact number from this.

But something that's a little bit harder than what your current skill level is, that's the struggle phase.

The second phase is release.

You need to let go of the struggle.

And this is why meditation and that kind of mental skills training is so important.

Athletes skip that part and then they're like, why can I never get into a flow state?

Because you're bottled up.

You're like, you're like a Coca Cola can that's been shaken up and you're ready to burst.

But you, you haven't gone through the rest in order to get back into a state of flow.

So you need to release it.

And the way you do that is your mind needs to go somewhere else.

So the meditations are helpful to have the ability to do that in a game.

Like you said, Mike, I'm not focused on my hands where they're going.

I'm just in the moment.

And then the third state is actually being in that flow state where you get into the moment.

And the thing that happens is you Get a concoction of, I call it a neuro cocktail, where you get norepinephrine, adrenaline, dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin.

You get all these things flooding your brain and it feels very, very good.

And it, you, you feel, oh, this is something that I just could, if I could be this way forever, this would be so cool.

But flow only lasts three minutes to 50 minutes max.

Like, you can't be in flow longer.

Your brain can't handle it.

The other thing that happens in flow to understand is called transient hypofrontality.

All that means is that your prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain that is responsible for reasoning and decision making, logic, it needs to turn off.

You need to turn it off.

And the only way you can do that is with proper training beforehand.

That's why the, the skill and experience need to match each other a little bit.

So you can turn that front part of your brain off so that you're completely operating in your limbic system, which is basically just think like muscle memory.

I'm not thinking about the present moment, I'm not thinking about anything.

Like, I'm just in the moment.

That's the flow state.

And then the last phase, which is just as important as the rest, is recovery.

Eight to nine, ten hours of sleep.

If, like, as a high school athlete, especially as a college athlete, you need to rest, like all the grind culture of like, I got four hours of sleep.

No, that is not good.

I promise you, you will perform better if you get eight to ten hours of sleep.

And so going through that recovery phase.

And then in that 24 hour window, after you feel like you got into a flow state, do another meditation, relax, go for a walk outside in nature.

That's the best thing that you can do to let your brain recover and get back into a state where you get ready to go through those phases again.

Struggle, release, flow, and reset through rest.

Two things.

Sorry, that was longer.

That was probably longer than what you wanted.

But no, no, that was perfect.

That was perfect.

It was a great explanation of it and, and I think it was a great idea in terms of how, how I can get there.

What are the stages that I have to go through in order to get there?

Two things stood out for me.

One, the rest piece of it.

I think that's criminally underrated in all walks of life.

I've often said, and with the podcast, that when I'm doing stuff late at night, there'll be times and I'm sure that people out there can Relate to it.

Coaches who are studying film late at night.

There's times where I've sat in front of my computer and I have a task that if I'm coherent and awake, that I can do in like two minutes.

And there have been times that I'll sit in front of my computer and, you know, and I'm trying to finish one last thing and I'll be there for 40 minutes falling asleep or with brain fog and I can't do it.

Whereas if I would just go to bed and wake up the next morning, I could accomplish that in two minutes.

And so I think that the ability to rest and recover is something that, as you said, with the grind culture that as athletes and hot being a high achiever, it's something sometimes that we tend to put to the side, that we sometimes underestimate the value of being well rested.

And I can speak to this maybe not necessarily as much as when I was an athlete.

First of all, I don't even remember that much about how much I slept or didn't sleep, to be.

To be honest.

But I know that as an adult and trying to function and do things in my normal life that when I got enough sleep or when I get enough sleep, I am way, way, way more productive, creative, functional, efficient when I'm getting good rest.

I think recovery is underrated for any walk of life, but for athletes it's certainly really important.

And the other thing that stood out to me that you said about the flow state is that it becomes automatic, right?

You're not thinking about what it is that you're doing.

The term that came to my mind was that automaticity, right.

That I don't have to think about what I'm doing when I'm going to shoot the basketball or I don't have to think about when I'm bringing the ball up the court making a decision.

Things are just happening because I'm recognizing patterns and I'm in places that I've been before because I've put the time in to be able to practice.

And so that's your chart, right, of the.

The meeting of the skill level and being able to get there with the challenge that's involved so that I'm in that right spot where I'm being challenged.

But it's not up here and it's not.

It's not down here.

And I think that when I can relate to playing my best or even as a coach, when I'm coaching my best, when I'm into the game, when I'm doing whatever it is that I do.

I'm not physically thinking about, okay, next I've got to do X or next I've got to do Y.

It's just my body, my mind is taking over and doing things naturally.

And then maybe that allows me to put some of my cognitive decision making to higher level thought that I need in order to be able to perform at my best.

And so I think there's a whole bunch of things at work here.

But the bottom line is, is that there's a requisite level of skill.

You have to have to be able to get into flow state.

Then you have to be able to trust yourself to allow that skill to take over in a dynamic situation like you do in an athletic contest.

And then as you said, once you go through that process, you have to give yourself both your mind and your body time to rest in order to sort of cement that learning in, into you so that the next time you can come back and, and get to that again.

And so it's, it's a process of recognizing within your mind, recognizing what your body needs, how to do that, and just continuously being intentional about what you do.

At.

It's a word that I keep coming back to a lot because I think that too often athletes, coaches, just people in general, that we kind of put our life on autopilot, we end up doing a lot of stuff that if we really sat down and were intentional about, why am I doing this?

What am I doing?

Goes back to the advice your dad gave you.

What, what do you want to do and how do you want to do it?

And if you figure that out, it's a lot easier to maximize all the things that, that you've been talking about tonight.

Couldn't agree more.

All right, I want to ask you, before we wrap up, I want to ask you a final two part question.

So part one, when you look ahead over the next year or two in your business, in your field, what you do, what do you see as being your biggest personal challenge?

And then the second part of the question, when you think about what you get to do every single day, what brings you the most joy?

So the first part of the question, your biggest challenge.

The second part of the question, your biggest joy.

As far as the business goes, it's obviously being able to make money on the back end, which is difficult.

But I want to be able to provide as much value as possible in order for that to be reality.

If somebody is paying me, I want them to be like, wow, he provided 10 times the amount of value than What I actually paid him.

So that's the ultimate goal there.

Uh, so.

But the.

That's the biggest challenge is being able to feel like I'm providing that much value to people.

And within the next year, I want to win.

Probably not within the next year.

Within the next couple years.

The ultimate goal is I want to help a team win a state championship in every sport.

So if you're a basketball coach, you listening to this, and you're like, hey, I can really use this guy to help help win a state championship.

I want to be on that ride with you.

I want to be with the team.

So reach out, and I'd love to help out.

And then the biggest joy that I have in working with athletes and teams is, like I said earlier, is being able to see them transform as a person individually.

And I have so many people that reach out to me, and they're like, hey, this.

This helped me be a better wrestler, but also I'm a better student now, and I. I feel like I have a better relationship with my siblings, with my parents, and with my teammates.

And to me, it's all about relationships.

We are here to be in relationships with people.

And, like, I love my family, and I hope that other people can have that kind of connection.

Connection with people.

As humans, we are tribalistic, right?

We love being in tribes.

That's how we develop.

So find your tribe.

And that's where I find the most joy, is helping other people find their tribe.

Well said, Daniel.

And I think it sums up very well what you talked about throughout the entire episode in terms of how you conduct your own personal life, but also how you conduct your business.

So kudos to you for that.

Before we get out, I want to give you a chance to share.

How can people connect with you, find out more about what you're doing, get connected to your classes, and the things that you're doing on that side of it.

Share, email, social media, website, Throw it all out there.

Anything that you got, how people can find out more about what you're doing.

And then after you do that, I'll jump back in and wrap things up.

Yeah.

Mike, first of all, thank you so much for having me on this.

This has been a pleasure.

For those of you that are listening, we record this late at night, so that way we're not digging into real family time.

So I know Mike's a great guy and I really appreciate you.

I see a lot of humility from you, and I really admire that, and I want to emulate the same humility that you've given out and the amount of value that you give to your audience and your listeners.

So thank you.

But you can find me on Instagram it's Coach Dantheman or you just look up Daniel Jacobson and then the main way to connect with me and what I would love is go to my school community.

It's completely free.

You can dive into there.

I have so many free resources that I've spent years building out for you.

It's just school.com mindfit and mind is in brain like mind and then fit is fitness mind fit.

So school.commindfit is where you'll find that community.

Perfect.

Daniel, thank you for the kind words.

We will have all of that information that you just shared in the show notes so people who are listening you can find it either on your podcast app or go to the hoop headspod.com website and find Daniel's page and we will have all that up so you will be able to find everything that Daniel's doing.

Daniel to you.

Thank you for taking the time out of your schedule to jump on here, share your expertise and your knowledge.

I think we were able to pull out a ton of things that are valuable for basketball players, for basketball coaches, and just for people in life in general.

I think these conversations for me are always valuable.

I feel like I pick up one or two things every time I talk to somebody who's in this field that not only make me a better basketball person, but make me just a better person in general.

So I'm appreciative of you coming on and sharing your knowledge.

And to everyone out there in our audience who's been listening, thank you and we will catch you on our next episode.

Thanks.

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