Gary Chupik is internationally recognized as one of the top mental performance coaches in the world. He unlocks performance in professional teams, athletes and business professionals. Additionally, Gary has been an ordained minister for 27 years and Chaplain of the Seattle Thunderbirds for 7 years.

Gary’s clients include players, coaches and executives from the Houston Texans, Washington Huskies, Stanford University, USA Figure Skating, Seattle Mariners, and many, many more Additionally, Gary supports folks who feel stuck in their lives and desire a new “Gameplan for Life.”

www.garychupik.com

The world that I live in presently is about being loud and vocal and seen and noticed and powerful and influential. And yet I find that the ways of the most greatest spiritual leaders in the world just never lived their life that way. And you know, up was always down, and down was always up. And so to elevate other people and to have their best interest in mind when we lead, I think, is the way forward.

Welcome to the MY FOURTH ACT podcast. I'm your host, Achim Nowak, and I have conversations with exceptional humans who have created bold and unexpected lives. If you like what you here, please subscribe on any major podcast platform so you won't miss a single one of my inspiring guests, and please consider posting an appreciative review. Let's get started. I am so delighted to welcome Gary Chupik to the MY FOURTH ACT podcast. Gary is internationally recognized as one of the top mental performance coaches in the world. He unlocks performance in professional teams, athletes and business professionals. Additionally, Gary has been an ordained minister for 27 years, and chaplain of the Seattle Thunderbirds for seven years. Gary's clients include players, coaches, executives from teams like the Houston Texans, the Washington Huskies, Sanford University USA figure skating and the list goes on and on and on. Additionally, Gary supports folks who feel stuck in their lives and desire a new game plan for life.

Hi, Gary, good morning from Seattle

and good afternoon from leash. Boy, I have so looked forward to this conversation because you have the kind of profession that I'm sure when you grew up did not exist. So when you were a young boy growing up and thought about your life and what you wanted to do with yourself, what were you thinking about?

Well, I was thinking about being a professional athlete. I grew up in a family of five boys, and so it was sort of organically competitive, I would say, around the dinner table, on the field, on the street in front of our home. And so I grew up with that competitive nature, and it wasn't sort of cutthroat, but it was like I have something to prove. I have a love hate relationship with that, because I feel like I have nothing to prove, and yet I have everything to prove, and mostly to myself. I don't really feel like there's anyone I'm trying to impress, necessarily, but it's been a real journey in trying to figure out who I am. And you know, just like one looks into the sky and sees all these stars you're you know, at least for me, I've been wondering, well, what kind of shapes, what kind of symbols, what kind of images do I see when I gaze at it? Like it's one thing to glance at it, but gazing at it is really interesting, and so I spent a lot of years gazing into the stars trying to find out who I am.

Oh, there was so many doorways for conversation in what you said just now, you mentioned the stars. But what are some other ways in which you gazed both at the future and into yourself, like, what are some specific vehicles that work for you?

When I think you're younger, you are a little bit of a sponge. You could just kind of take in everything, and I feel like a lot of life has been classrooms. For me, I could look back over my life and say, just like someone taking a degree and they're not always sure which classes they need to take in order to get the degree. And I feel I've been on this journey of wanting a degree and helping people and loving people, but I feel like I didn't always get to choose my classes, and so I've been in all of these different classes in life, and my job has been to pass them well, and I've been pretty intentional of most of my life about trying to do that and saying yes to almost everything in my mid teens to late teens and early 20s, and then becoming a little bit more discerning as I grow older and what I do and what I involve myself in. So as I look back over my life, and I think about all these classrooms that I've been in, some of them I chose. Most of them I didn't, and it feels like what whatever was in front of me I wanted to succeed at. And so a lot of my journey has been looking backwards and saying, What do I notice about me? What do I notice about the opportunities that I have? What do I notice about how I've grown and how I've evolved as a person? So it's been a lot of just noticing. I think

I had to chuckle as you talked about the different classrooms, and maybe I'm projecting myself into your life story, I immediately thought, Oh, he got into trouble in some of those classrooms. It wasn't all smooth, nice learning. There were some occasional moments of the school of hard knocks. Did I hear that? Correctly, I think you're

correct. However, I would say that my intention has always been to please my leaders and kind of respect the authorities in my life. And yet, I think a little bit of my stepping outside of that boundary has been testing the waters a little bit and seeing how far I can stray from those boundaries and see, you know, what my conscience would allow me to do and what it wouldn't allow me to do. And so I've had a pretty good relationship with my conscience and let that drive a lot of my life. But for the most part, I've been a people pleaser, and that's been both really helpful, sort of positioning myself to be in the right circles in life and being in the right rooms. And on the other hand, it's been pretty detrimental in other ways.

Yeah, that makes complete sense to me. Let's get a little more granular with to the specific professions I mentioned when I introduced you. Not everybody has the calling to become an ordained minister, and I I think it is a beautiful calling that also comes with tremendous responsibility. So I'll leave it at that opening that door. How did that come about for you? Well, when

I was 13 years old, I had a youth pastor in my life. His name was Brian Fuller, and Brian was a very interesting person. In fact, I found him to be quite inspiring. Most people would look at him and say he didn't have much of a personality, or he certainly wasn't charismatic or flamboyant, but he was very inspiring to me for the strangest reason, and that is that, you know, on a scale of one to 100 he wasn't the guy that was in the 90s in terms of talent, but he had something and some intangibles in terms of his personality and how he challenged those of us that were had to proximity to him, and he was very, very challenging, and so he threw us into situations that we were not prepared for. So I've been a reluctant leader most of my life. I never thought that I would be a leader, and here I am being a leader of leaders with what I'm doing now. I was always a reluctant leader, and a lot of it came from Brian, who challenged me to be the leader that I can become. And so I remember being in junior high, and he's saying through four or five of us in a room that were in junior high, and he said, You're going to plan the next Junior High retreat. And we're all looking at each other thinking, what we're 14 years old, there's no way we can plan the next retreat. And so he put us in a room and shut the door and said, Go for He came back a couple hours later, and he addressed what he needed to address, and if we had some holes, he filled them, and that kind of thing, but he pretty much let us plan the retreat. And if there were shortfalls, he just let them be. And so that was, like, so inspiring to me that he believed in us at such a young age and put us in a position to think differently as we were in our mid teens and growing up. I look at his track record of creating leaders, and it's remarkable the amount of leaders that he's created, and it was just because he had a vision for the people around him that he was the leader of and it's, it was so inspiring. So that's been a model in my life. Sometimes when we're not ready, and we get thrown into positions to have to rise to the occasion, oftentimes we do, and sometimes we don't, but we learn so much along the way. And so that was, that's been a model that's been in my head for many, many years. In fact, I'm teaching at a college today, and I'm going to be saying the same thing. You may not feel like you're ready to lead, but somehow leading or being in a position to lead draw something out of you that you didn't think that you had. And so I'm excited about talking about that today.

Well, it's such a wonderfully elevated way of looking at leadership, which I appreciate and I totally get when I think of being a minister in my life, I always think about part of the job is to create community, to foster community, to do spiritual counseling when needed, and in many situations, there are also financial considerations. You're growing your business that has financial obligations, and sometimes somebody else does that and you don't. But if you had any wisdom for us around how you grow in community and care for that community, I'd love to know that well.

It certainly is really interesting, because the world that I live in presently is about being loud and vocal and seen and noticed and powerful and influential, and yet I find that the ways of the most greatest spiritual leaders in the world just never lived their life that way. And you know, up was always down, and down was always up. And so to elevate other people and to have their best interest in mind when we lead, I think, is the way forward. You know, washing other people's feet, believing in them, drawing the best out of them. And I've always done with the fruit of my life to grow in other people's trees. And so I think that. Authenticity is the new currency, and I think that with the rise of AI and the rise of, you know, all types of different forms of information that people can gather about whatever challenges they have, that it's pretty remarkable. And yet, there's something so powerful about the currency of authenticity. I don't know if ai, ai will try to mimic it, but it can replace it. And so creating a type of community that is both vulnerable and powerful at the same time, I think, has always been something that I've always pursued. So it's held me back in certain ways, like I've had a ton of people say, Gary, now's your time. Be all that you can be. And be on social media everywhere and go be this massive influence, when, in reality, people are trophies, they're human beings. They're people who are wrestling with things, and I'm wrestling with things, and I find that without vulnerability, there is no healing, and there's little growth. And so for me to model that for my community, even at this level where I'm working with pro athletes and teams and high performers in business, it's like that vulnerability that I exude gives them permission to be able to share what's going on in their life as

well. I totally, totally get that. I love the word mindset coach. You are. You use the phrase elite mindset coach because you work with very successful athletes who I would imagine face a lot of performance pressure. So my immediate question when I first met you was, and I'm sure everybody's a question, How did Gary become an elite mindset

coach? Well, there's a maybe an explanation would be helpful initially. Sure there's two different roads that most people in my world go down. There's sort of psychology route correct and mental performance route. And so there's this big why in the road that most people have to decide. And I was just fortunate enough to be friends with Russell Wilson's mental performance coach, Trevor Moad. And Russell Wilson is a quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks at the time in the NFL, and Trevor kind of took me under his wing, and he, you know, we talked about this issue. Do you want to go the sports psych route or or the mental performance coach route? And I was like, I'm not sure. I know the difference. And Trevor had mentioned that to become a sports psychologist, you're really a psychologist, and so you're 80% 90% you're studying psychology, and 10% is actually the performance psychology. I thought, Well, wait a minute, that would mean I'd have to go back to school. I already have a master of divinity. When I have to go back to school and get my master in Psych, I thought to myself, well, I'm in my early 50s, late 40s, and do I want to go back to school and spend the money and all that kind of thing? Part of me still does. I love learning, but or I could study my heart out and put $1,000 of study into sports Psych and then kind of go another route and do the mental performance coach route. But one of the primary differences is that a sport psychologist or a psychologist, they're basically studying psychosis, right psychology, psychosis and what's wrong with people, and a mental performance coach studies what's right with people and then passes on that information. So it's a little bit of a different focus, and I think it's a helpful one to understand, because if you're looking for psychosis in everything, then, like, if every if you're a hammer, everything's a nail, right? And so you're trying to find whatever is wrong with people constantly. I'm not sure that's always the best way or approach. It's a way. It's an approach, but it's not the only way. I decided to leverage my background in coaching, in leadership, in sports, and go the mental performance route. So one day, Trevor said to me, Well, if you were to get help a professional athlete, what would you do, Gary, how would you help them? 30 days later, I put together a little one page or two page sheet, and he hired me on the spot, so he believed in me in a way that I didn't really believe in myself. And to have someone of that caliber who was top of the Mount Everest at the time he was there was nobody more well known in the industry than Trevor Mowat, who was working with a bunch of NFL guys, a bunch of NFL teams, NBA teams, Major League Baseball. I mean, he was all over the place. And to have someone of that caliber say you're pretty good kid, that's pretty impressive. And I think that sort of began my journey. And so going from the Ministry competitive growing up, playing competitive sports, growing up, and then being in the Ministry for 2728 years, and then sort of making a midlife crisis shift. It was pretty big, but it was so much of a coming home for me, because my primary mode of doing ministry was coaching people and bringing the best out of them. It wasn't telling them what to believe. It was saying this is what the greatest religious leaders of our day would teach. And then what can we learn from that? And so it just felt like a very natural, very coming home for me, and I felt like I've been in this classroom for a few decades, almost three decades, and then all of a sudden I'm having fun, really, really a lot of fun. For the first time in my life.

I'm very touched by that story, but the thought I. Had Gary was that Trevor was able to see you and your gifts and who you are because you at least partially made them visible to him so you were seen, or you are allowing yourself to be seen. And if this of a part of your story, and Trevor's story and all of our stories right now. I'm sure every listener has an idea when they hear about elite mindset, what that is and what that is not. I work with very, very successful executives, but I don't work with very successful athletes. What are one or two mindset things that you could share with us. You go these I find to be important, or this is what I've learned about what helps these athletes perform at the level at which they perform.

Yeah, it's a kind of a strange world in some ways, because you want to accept people for who they are, right where they're at. There's a challenge, a way to inspire athletes who already outstanding at what they do get better. And a lot of what people think I do is help fix broken people or broken thought patterns. And that's true. There are many times that I do, but it's how do you take someone who's operating at a 96% success, take them to 98% so what are the hidden reservoirs or treasures inside of someone where there's still more performance, they still have a next level, and part of my job is to bring that out to it's almost like digging for a treasure. And you put your shovel in the ground, and all of a sudden you hear a thud, and you're like, oh my goodness, there's a box right, of treasure there. And so you explore the box and and then you find all these hidden treasures of performance inside and they didn't know that they had it. You knew that there was something there, you just didn't know where to find it. So I find a lot of joy in exploring the hidden treasures of performance inside of people. A lot of it is the acknowledgement of how an affirmation of how hard they've had to work to get to where they are. But what's next. And that what's next, it's, I call it identity based performance, because if I'm going to superimpose a strategy or superimpose a method of, let's say, sports like on someone, but it might not be them, and in order for an athlete to really go to that next level, it has to be part of their identity and has to be an evolution of their identity. I think it takes consistency and patience to be good at anything. Yeah, and so if you're going to superimpose something that's not part of someone's personality, they're probably not going to do it long enough for them to be successful. So it's really respecting the person and who they are that helps them go to that next level first, and then once that that they feel respected and heard and seen, then you can implement something and just ask more questions and say, Hey, I wonder if there's a different way to think about this, or I'm I'm wondering if we could just sort of explore this new thing that is already a part of who you are. But I wonder if just, I'm a big fan of the hybrid, right, like I wonder if we hybrid this. This is bigger personality. This is an opportunity. I wonder if we can rethink this in a way that's more conducive to your personality.

I already just learned a lot by listening to your explanation. Here. I have the privilege of coaching very successful business leaders. I know that I have learned a lot from them about myself and about how I live and think so. I'm wondering you, Gary, you have the privilege of working with already very, very high performing athletes. You're helping them with that extra one, two, 3% and the treasures, what if anything, are you learning about yourself through this work? Or how are you changing and evolving as a human through this work?

What an outstanding question. I'm not sure I didn't ask that one before. I think I'm always amazed at how beautiful people are, like they're literal vessels. That's art to me. Sometimes just gaze up that the constellation of different personality traits and gifting, passions, ambitions, that's really quite beautiful to me. I failed art in school, believe it or not, but I actually resent the idea that I'm a failure at art, because I see people as art, yeah, and I can look at people and just like gaze and just think how beautiful these people are, how wonderful that they are, and just to admire the creation that they are is just pretty outstanding. And so I think in some ways, it gives me permission to notice myself and think about, you know, I wonder if I just judged myself less, yeah, and practice the art of non judgment, yeah, with myself, I wonder how much more free I can be and think and do and not be obsessed and neurotic about you know, why did I think that? Or why did sometimes we just think about ourselves in some ways, in two, in two intense ways? We try to figure ourselves out rather than just notice ourselves. I think just giving myself permission to not judge myself and practice the art of non judgment. Because if you think about it all day long, do I like this meal? Did I like this coffee this person was wearing my interaction with that other person, the TV commercial, the environment, the smell like we're making judgments all day long, and it's exhausting. And I don't know if we know how exhausting judging everything is, but what if we practice the art of non judgment and accepted things as they were? I wonder if it would actually be freeing, or we would live lighter so that we can fill our cup with other more meaningful things. Part of me is, and my evolution, I think, is becoming more non judgmental, and just saying, Hmm, this is really quite beautiful. And I don't I wonder if I have to actually figure out every nuance of what this means or what this does, or the impact that it has on me, but just to be able to say, Huh, I think that's that's pretty wonderful, and to be filled with the simplicity and wonder of what just is lovely.

I know you also support work with non athletes, and you have a program called game plan for life, which is a marvelous name. And I'm curious, how is the work with non athletes around mindset and life choices? How is it similar to what you do with athletes? But also, how is it different?

Yeah, it's actually one of the biggest surprises of my life. When I was working with sports and in the sports world, I just noticed that more and more business people were interested in finding out about the elite mindset and the game plan for life. And so over time it is. It was 80% sports, 20% business, and then it's just done this, equaling out, and now it's 5050, I'm rather shocked, but in some ways I'm kind of not, because what it takes to be an elite athlete, if you think about some of the words or phrases, you know, it takes that resilience, it takes the emotional regulation, it takes the self talk, it takes the visualization of the mental imagery. You know, people can't see themselves doing something, and so in many ways, they're not successful because they can't see with their mind's eye doing something. And so to take all of those sort of the best practices and mental performance in the sports world and apply them to business, most of the business people, I say, Wow, that's what it takes for me to be successful in my business. It's the same thing. I'm like, oh, that's kind of interesting. So 80% of it's probably very, very similar. 20% is nuanced toward the sports or the craft or the business, and it's that's the joy of learning for me, as I get to go learn that other 20% and see how it applies. But in the business world, it's rather interesting, because the business world doesn't do a good job of recovery like athletes do athletes have a rhythm that they live their life with and that recovery is part of their job. It's their job to recover. Business people. It is six days a week, it is seven days a week, it's 70 hours, it's 80 hours, it's 100 hours, whatever it is, and they don't do a gut job of recovery, and it does affect their performance. So yeah, they might be getting stuff done on the surface, however, they might be wasting more time and energy than they think they are by investing in things that don't matter as much. It's a fascinating world, and in the business world, the game plan for life is really helpful, because it helps us live a very well balanced life. In other words, I call it whole life excellence. So it's how to take the mindset that a professional athlete has and then apply that to the other areas of your life, and to take that sort of that sense of drivenness and mission and joy and say, what would it be like if I applied this to the nine different domains of my life, what if I took that same mindset and applied that and I wonder what kind of a blessing I could be to the people around me.

Let me play with this and apply to you, Gary and you know, the fourth act podcast we all part of is a contemplation of, well, is there a next act for me? Is there something else I want to explore? Are there things I want to do more of or less of? Are there things that might sweeten my life? So as you apply what you just talked about, the game plan for life to you, Gary, and as you think of the future, are there things you see evolving or emerging that you might wish to talk about?

Well, your question couldn't be more timely, because there's so many different decisions I need to make. I have lots of choices, but I have to make decisions that will determine the direction of my life. And it's really interesting that so much of my life I've been driven by ambition, but think at this stage of my life, I'm more. Driven by my personality and fulfillment and what brings me joy. And so in some ways, I'm trying to figure out how I can slow down. I have some really big decisions to make about my future, because when you reach certain levels, you get lots of invitations to do things. And when you're younger, you think, Oh, this popped out of nowhere, and it must be some sort of a divine message. And look, you know, these opportunities are popping up, but I think at some level, in your 40s, 50s, even 60s, you get more opportunities than you know what to do with, yeah, and so what are your metrics for making those decisions? And so I've had to sort of think about that a little bit, and one of the most interesting conversations I had that's echoed in me for quite some time is a conversation I had with one of the founders, or I think he was on the Board Advisory for Mindvalley, a friend of mine. And he said, Gary, you know, one of the most important things that you can answer right where you are right now is, do you want to be a $200,000 company? Do you want to be a $2 million company? Do you want to be a $20 million company? Or do you want to be a $200 million company? And he said, the reason why that's important is because the path to get there is different. Sometimes we think we can evolve into the other levels, however it may demand things of us that we don't want to do or don't want to come. And so his recommendation to me was, Gary, if you want to be a $2 million company, why don't you just sort of pursue that, because that will allow you to do all the things that you really love to do. And I have grandchildren now, and so I'm like, one of the most fun things in the world is to spend time with them. So now I'm just like, Okay, well, do I want to go on another business trip, or do I would I rather go see my grandchildren? And they live in the eastern United States, and so part of me is like, what can I do that efficiently gets me there? So I have some opportunities. One of them is, there's a website that has two, 50 million clicks a year globally, and they want to take my game plan for life. Want me to digitalize it and then sell it on their website. There's no other curriculum on their website. Mine would be the only one. And so I think, wow, like, I wonder if I can do that and maximize my influence globally, because I do believe that having a global influence has been in the stars for me for the last probably 10 years. And I remember when I was younger, someone spoke over me in a powerful way, and say, Gary, you grew up in this little town in Saskatchewan, Canada, and it was like a tiny little pot, and you were the plant, and then you were transplanted into a bigger pot. And which was true in some ways, I moved to Seattle and just sort of living life here, and I feel like leadership found me. I don't know if I found leadership, but I think leadership found me. There was a way that I think that you can live your life where leadership finds you. Then I was in leadership in many places, here in the Seattle area, and then my influence grew regionally, and then it grew nationally. And this guy was talking about, Gary, you're going to start off in this small pot. It's going to get bigger. You get transplanted in bigger pot, and then one day you're going to get transplanted into a garden. And I thought, Oh, I don't know what that is, and I don't know what that means at that stage of my life, but he was telling me this, and then he said, But Gary, you think that's going to be the last environment, but it's not you're going to be transplanted into a field that is when you're going to, you know, really experience the kind of joy that you really want to see and the influence you might want to have. And I'm not sure I have any target in mind of my influence, but that's always been in the back of my head. And so here's an opportunity now where this website wants they're in 48 different languages, and there's an opportunity there to go more global. So I'm not quite sure what the future holds. That certainly is in the back of my mind, but I think to myself, Okay, so what kind of a company do I want to lead and run? Do I want to have a big machine, and the answer is, No, I don't. I'm not sure I would like who I would have to become in order for that to happen. And so what is the right size? Maybe a couple million. Maybe. I don't know, really know, but I know that the more intentionality I have about the kind of company I want to be is would be helpful for me as I unpack my the future part of my life,

I really appreciated how you connect influence with joy in the field, rather than striving, and more striving. You know, it goes back to the wholeness of experience that we talked about as we complete this conversation for now, I'm wondering, based on what you Gary know about life right now, if you had a chance to to whisper some words of wisdom into young Gary's ear, not not to change his course of life, but that you want to say to all the young Gary's in the world, what would you want them to know?

There's no. One dominant I'm noticing. I didn't decide it, but I feel like I've noticed it, that the one dominant thought that has been so powerful for me, and maybe it goes back to judgment or control, and that is sort of noticing yourself. And so what do I notice about myself? And I think if I could look back and I can sort of evolve that into wisdom. I would say, Gary, you cannot control outcomes, but you can always put yourself in the best position to succeed. And I want to say that to the wider audience, is that you can throw the best pitch in the world. You can throw the best football in the world you get and it still get hit for a home run, right? And so you can still lose, but you can't control that, but what you can do is always put yourself in the best position to succeed, and so be in the right places, be in the right room, take care of yourself, love the people around you well. And you know, if you just position yourself, you don't have to be in control of the outcome, but if you continually put yourself in a position to succeed, I don't know, sometimes life has a way of just sort of laying out the red carpet for us.

I salute the red carpet. If our listeners want to learn more about you, elite mindset, game plan for life. Where would you like to direct them to?

Well, thank you for asking. That's so kind of you. Most of my clients are on Instagram, but you can find me on Instagram at elite mindset. I'm the guy with the blue verification dot there, and, of course, LinkedIn, Gary chupik, and then people can always google my name and find

out more awesome. Thank you so much for the gift of your wisdom and the gift of this conversation. I just so appreciate

it. It was very much a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The my fourth act podcast. If you like what you have heard, please like us and leave a review on your preferred podcast platform. And if you would like to engage more deeply in fourth act conversations, check out the mastermind page at Achim novak.com it's where fourth actors like you engage in riveting conversation with other fourth actors see you there, and bye for now you.