Mental Performance Coach Gary Chupik joins Kirsten Graham and Jeanne Willson to share powerful insights on Elite Mindset, mindset coaching, mental toughness, visualization techniques, and peak performance mindset strategies that can transform your life and business.

In this personal development podcast, Gary explains how mindset for success is built through experiences, beliefs, and behaviors. From athlete mindset training to high performance coaching, this conversation dives into the habits and strategies used by top performers.

If you want to improve your success mindset, overcome mental blocks, and develop the confidence to perform at your best, this episode is for you.

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Welcome, everyone, to today's episode.

I'm absolutely thrilled that you're here, and I'm also excited to have Gary Chupik.

His company is Elite Mindset, and he is a mental performance coach, so

I'm excited to learn more about him.

So welcome to the show, Gary.

It's lovely to have you.

Yeah, and I'm very excited to be here.

Good stuff.

So let's talk about your journey.

How did you become an Elite Mindset... How did you start your

business, Elite Mindset, and become that mental performance coach?

I'm sure there's a story in there somewhere.

Yeah, there always is, isn't there?

So mine came out of a midlife crisis in my mid-40s, and, and I had to decide

what I wanted my midlife crisis to be.

Did I want to, let's say, buy a Camaro or a Mustang, or did I

wanna rethink my life a little bit?

And so I chose the latter, to rethink my life a little bit.

And, and then through a series of amazing div- what I would call

divine appointments, I ended up meeting the mental performance coach

of Russell Wilson, Trevor Moawad.

And Russell took me under his wing and mentored me, and then he eventually

hired me and, and so the rest is history.

That's fantastic.

So tell us a little bit about those two people, 'cause people

listening may not know who they are.

Yeah, so Russell Wilson at the time was the quarterback of the Seattle Seahawks.

Then he went to Denver.

Now he's with the Jets.

And Trevor Moawad was his mental performance coach.

And so at that time, Trevor was, in my industry, Trevor was at the peak of the

mountain, the, the top of Mount Everest.

He was on ESPN, he was on ABC, he was on TV stations.

He was everywhere.

And so the idea of just spending a little bit of time with him was pretty

overwhelmingly wonderful for me.

And then he said, "Hey, do you wanna meet again next month?" And I was like

a kid in the candy shop, and said, "My goodness, why wouldn't I wanna do that?"

And so we met on a monthly basis for about a year, and it was pretty cool.

Yeah, I'll bet.

Meeting with the top, learning from the best Yeah, learning from the best,

and yet he gave me a lot of freedom to figure things out on my own.

Like, one of the things that he challenged me to do was not to accept

his material, but create my own.

And so one of his assignments for me was to develop my own

mental performance process.

And once I did that, he was... He almost hired me on the spot

when I did that, which was really cool, and so the rest is history.

I spent a couple years with his company, and then went out on

my own a couple years later.

So yeah, it's just been a lot of fun developing my own material.

I don't read much of my competitors, mostly because I get jealous of how

they say things, and so I try not to read my competitors' books and

that kind of thing, or podcasts.

But I do like to read research papers and then extract material from those

kinds of documents, and then find my own unique way of saying things.

Excellent.

Yeah, it, it is your unique way.

It's you, and that's great.

Some people are just, have a lot of experience in speaking, and they have

people who are writing their content or their messaging, and we want the real you.

Yeah, I think so, and I think it makes things interesting.

For example, we live in such an information saturated world where

you could hear the same phrase or hear the same sentence or the same

title about 300 times in a month.

And so to try and say things a little bit differently, like for example, thoughts

are like calories, and if you have too many calories and you don't expend them,

then you get overweight and lethargic, and it's the same thing with our thoughts.

And if we have too many thoughts that we can't expend, and then we are,

we slow down and we get lethargic and we're not very nimble mentally.

And so I just like to say things a little bit differently, like to kind of just put

a little bit of a twist on it, and people tend to re- remember that kind of stuff.

That's brilliant.

Thoughts are like calories.

I'm totally gonna remember that.

Maybe we'll even title this podcast episode Thoughts Are Like Calories.

That's so awesome.

So tell us a little bit about how you work with your clients.

Obviously, you work with professional athletes, but do you work with other

athletes that maybe aren't at that level?

Well, I do.

I- initially I started working out with high school students and then

college and then professional, but even that was a journey.

And it's really interesting because when I was working with high school athletes,

it was such a challenge to do that, and I was thinking like, "Well, if I can't work

with a high school student or athlete, like, what makes me think I could work

with a college athlete or a pro athlete?"

And it just, it just dawned on me that maybe I was aiming too low and that

I was just fishing in the wrong pond.

I knew I had the talent to be able to do that and the work ethic to do it, but

it just wasn't the right pond for me.

And so instead of shrinking back and retreating a little bit, I decided to

press forward even harder, and then I went into the college world more and more,

and then eventually into the pros, and I found my most success, believe it or not,

in the professional re- athlete realm.

So what happened was Trevor Moawad had really encouraged me to let my athletic

skill, like my skill in the athletic world, overflow into the business world.

And so we began to do more and more work in the business world because we

found that the, what it takes to be a professional athlete isn't really

that different to what it takes to be really good at what you do in business.

There are so many similarities.

And so we just began to work more and more in the business world.

And so right now I probably work about 50/50.

It's pretty incredible how- Yeah ... the split.

That's awesome.

And I love that you recognized you were in the right place, you

were just with the wrong people.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, true.

True.

Because there's a, it's a different mentality, isn't it?

The different age groups.

It's different age group.

It was a reflection of who I was as well.

Like for example, working with a high school student or even

a college student, they're just dealing with different issues.

But I think because I had so much experience in leadership, that I just

identified with adults more and, and that was just more, I have a more

of a, I wouldn't say a militaristic, but more of a regimented strategic

approach to mental performance.

And I think when you're talking about an, like an high school athlete or a college

athlete, it tends to be a little bit more raw, but I was very much a strategist.

And so the pros really worked out for me because if they just followed my

regimen, I knew that they would be successful, and they typically are.

Let me ask you this.

You just reminded me of one of the Olympic athletes, I can't remember his name.

He would do visualizations, and that's how he got through one of

his competitions, 'cause his goggles fell off, he was in the water.

So is that something that you incorporate?

It just came to me.

I think most athletes will tell you that their number one strategy for

mental performance is visualization, and there's a pretty simple reason for

that actually, and it actually crosses over to the business realm and even

things that we do in our real life.

And that is, is that when we can't find ourselves doing something that we

really want to do, it's because, now get this, we can't see ourselves doing it.

And because we can't see ourselves doing it, even when we attempt those things,

we're not successful, and a big part of the reason is because we can't see

with our mind, see ourselves doing it.

And so to spend time visualizing ourselves doing whatever it is

that we want to accomplish, I think that's really helpful to us.

Absolutely.

So tell us a little bit about the types of businesses that you work with.

This is maybe the most surprising thing, and it's been actually one of

the most joyful things in the past year, is being invited to speak at

conferences, and ones that you would never imagine would want to hire a

mental performance coach to be a speaker.

So maybe I can say that my last three or four conferences was Google, BVS, which

was Best Veterinarian Supplies conference, AI conferences that I've spoke.

I was the first keynote speaker at an AI conference, and I've spoken at Google.

So I, I never know where I'm gonna get invited, but that's part of the

fun of the, my life right now, is just the unpredictability of who

wants to learn mental performance.

Because I think we've really made a mistake in the mental health

world, and it's a shortcoming that we have not presently fixed,

especially in the educational system.

And that is that we tend to think of mental health as only two pillars.

So we'll have a crisis, so when someone is in crisis, they will turn to mental

health strategies that will help them.

And then that next pillar would be the, what I call the coping pillar, so

we're helping people cope with whatever it is that they're struggling with.

And I think that's really wonderful, but I think it's just falls

way short of what is possible.

In other words, I think there's two more pillars.

One of them is an elevate pillar, and by the way, between these pillars

are bridges of things that we can do to get from one pillar to the next.

And so that elevate pillar is really important, where

we can live an elevated life.

And then the final pillar is to live transcendently, so that you're pouring

into others and you're missions-oriented.

You're very community-oriented.

You want to welcome people into your life.

You want the fruit of your labor to grow on other people's trees.

And so it's just a different way of living.

So I think just to help people cope with their challenges is not enough.

I love that.

Oh, I love your philosophy.

That's fantastic.

So tell us a little bit about your process.

So do you have, do you meet with someone and have an evaluation with them, and

based on their goals- You tailor...

Do you put together a structure for them, or do you use the same one for everyone?

Because, you know, it is mental performance.

So tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, that's a really good question, and one of the reasons why I created

that mental health bridge assessment was to help me understand where

people felt like they were at.

So if they were in, let's say, in that, uh, near that coping pillar, then I

could assign tasks for them to do.

If they were in the crisis or near the crisis pillar, I could help them

cross the bridge to the coping, give them, give them coping mechanisms.

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to seeing you there So yeah, there's a little bit of an assessment that goes on,

and sometimes what people think they need is not exactly what they actually need.

And so there are some question-asking conversations to have around those things.

But I think for the most part, people are... They know themselves pretty well.

They have a pretty good indication of what some of the obstacles

that they're facing are.

And a lot of them, I think, come from a, which from strange and odd places.

Like, for example, I'm really passionate about mindset being an actual equation.

So I think there is a sort of a, a popular equation that might be

communicated, let's say, in pop culture, which is mindset is a conditioned

set of beliefs that drive behavior.

But in my worldview, and when I'm helping a client, it's

much more complex than that.

But it took me about seven years to figure out what mindset actually is, and if I

could figure out an equation, then I can pinpoint where I need to help someone.

And so for me, mindset, it comes from, initially, from experiences

that we've had in the past.

And then from those experiences, that we have thoughts and feelings

associated with that experience.

Now, that experience might have happened to us, or we might have initiated or

somehow participated in that experience.

But nonetheless, we do have thoughts and feelings about that particular experience.

But then we have our response to our own thoughts and feelings.

So now we get to choose how we respond to those things.

And when you're younger, you aren't aware that you have choices.

You just have a response.

But if you put all of that together, then you form a belief,

and primarily about yourself.

So now you've created a belief about yourself from the experience, your

thoughts and feelings, and your response.

And if you put all of that together, you have a mindset.

But it doesn't end there.

There's one more step that Andy McKay from the Seattle Mariners taught me.

He goes, "Gary, that's an incredibly wonderful equation,

except it's missing one component."

And I said, "Do tell. I'm dying to know." And he said that the new mindset must

result in new and improved behaviors, because you can't just change a

mindset but participate in the things that perhaps are unhealthy to you.

And so to have the mindset result in new and improved behaviors in a way is

like cycling back to the very beginning and creating a new experience for

yourself, that you have new and improved thoughts and feelings about, that you

have a new and improved response to, that you have a new and improved belief

about yourself, and it creates a new and improved mindset, which is, in many

ways, like new and improved behaviors.

And you keep cycling, and this is how you build a mindset.

I love that, yeah.

I would think that creating new behaviors would be a logical

next step, but is that the case?

Is there a case where some people do change their mindset but don't

actually change their actions?

Yeah, I think there's, it's a process oftentimes.

I wish I could change overnight just like that.

Like I... And trust me, there's so many things about myself that I don't like or

love, and I have to think, "Okay, how can I get over this hump?" Or, "How can I get

over this mental block?" And sometimes it really is a process, and one of the things

that I find that is part of the process is something called exposure therapy.

And it doesn't really matter how someone might get over a fear, it

kind of funnels down back to exposing yourself to the thing that you fear or

engaging with the thing that you fear.

And so at some point you gotta face it head-on in order for you to accomplish or

achieve the, the intended result, and you have to face that fear, whatever it is.

So sometimes that process might take a few hours, days, weeks, months,

and sometimes it takes years.

Wow.

Yeah.

It was interesting 'cause I was listening to a book today and the gentleman who

was talking has been through a lot of personal development and personal issues,

and it was his awareness or his becoming aware of something that happened to him.

It was just an exchange between him and his dad.

Mm-hmm.

And he said, "When I tell the story, it doesn't really sound all that deep

and difficult." He said, "But for me- Yes ... that went right down to my core

and I still can see it, feel it, hear it, and it was a matter of shifting my

perception of myself," like you said.

That wasn't me anymore.

This is such an interesting topic because I was working with a therapist

and, and she was one of my friends in Canada, and we were visiting.

We had gone to college together.

And we were talking about therapy, and she said, "Would you like to

go through a session just for fun?" And I said, "That sounds wonderful."

So we began to talk about how to think about therapy and mindset.

Mm-hmm.

And so she asked me a question.

It was the very first question she asked me.

She goes, "What happened?" And I said, "I have no idea what you're talking about."

And she said, "Everybody has a what happened story." And I said, "I honestly,

I couldn't tell you what happened.

I, I don't have a lot of childhood trauma." But she said, "Think

about your home life." And I said, "Yeah, I can't really think

of much," after a few minutes.

And then she said, "What happened at school?" And I thought, and then it came

to me And I was as shocked as anyone.

And I remember being in the 10th or 11th grade, and I was taking

a class called geo trig, and I didn't know what geo trig even was.

Like, I did not belong in that class.

I played football.

I was part of the jock crowd.

I, school wasn't my strong point.

But I'm in this class, and I'm in this geo trig class, and I don't belong

there 'cause I'm not smart enough, and the teacher made fun of me because

he was a sort of a... He didn't like the athletes in the school, and so

he had a sort of an, he looked for opportunities, I think, to make fun of

athletes and just poke them a little bit.

But that poking really hurt my feelings, if I was gonna be honest.

And so I, how do you think I felt every time I went to this class,

especially when he put me on the spot and he said, "Gary, what did you

get for question number four?" I'm mortified 'cause I don't know what to

say 'cause I don't know the answer.

But I remember thinking I better make something up.

So I would be a class clown, and I would make up a number that had 14

digits long, and everybody would laugh, and then he would get a little

bit more frustrated and make a little bit more fun of me and then move on.

But that whole experience terrified me.

How do you think I felt about, number one, about myself, and number two, the

days leading up to that class every week?

And so I had an experience of being made fun of- In front of a classroom.

My thoughts and feelings about that were embarrassment and, uh,

obviously uncomfortable feelings.

And then my belief that I created about, or my response, pardon

me, was to try and be the class clown, which I'm not a class clown.

I'm not that funny.

But my belief about myself was I'm not very smart, and so my mindset

was I better not prepare for college 'cause I'm not smart enough.

And so it affected... And I look back over my entire high school

intending never to go to college.

And so I think to myself, if I was gonna coach myself and I was gonna do some

mindset work on myself, what would I do?

Like, what would my 55-year-old self say to my 16-year-old self in that moment?

And if I could be the invisible man, that was a show back in the day, but if I could

be the invisible man and walked m- up to myself in that classroom and whisper

in my own ear, what would my 55-year-old self say to my 16-year-old self?

And I think this is what I would say.

I would say, "Gary, there are nine different kinds of intelligence,

and math isn't one of them for you." There is linguistic in- intellect,

there is musical intellect, there's spatial or kinetic intellect.

There's all these different kinds of intellect.

There's philosophical intellect.

All these different kinds of intellect, and math wasn't one of mine.

And so as I look back, I think to myself, they didn't offer philosophy

or psych classes in high school.

And then at the last second, I decided to go to college, and then all through

my years of college, I struggled at the beginning, but once I started

taking more psych and philosophy classes, I ended up graduating

with honors for my master's degree.

But I would have never have guessed that, uh, in the 11th

grade that I would n- end up there.

But a lot of it was because of the mindset that I had created for myself.

And so there's an example of h- that equation being helpful in helping

someone else decide, okay, what happened?

Where does this thought or this belief come from?

And typically, until we address that thing, we just sit with that, until

someone helps us be aware of it.

Yeah, and sometimes that's from writing, I find.

Sometimes you're writing 'cause you're upset about something.

We call it a brain dump.

You just write whatever comes to your mind, and sometimes it does

lead to some of those situations that happened that formed your

opinion of yourself, and you kept it.

'Cause y- we, we never know.

And it's funny too, because I have kids who are both in college, and sometimes

they'll say, "Mom, you used to say this to me." And I'm like, "You remember that?

I don't even remember saying that.

I said, like, a bajillion things to you, and this is what you remember?" It's- So

it's fr- frustrating as a parent thinking, "Well, what about all the things I did?"

So funny.

That's so great.

I am grateful that you got over that.

And yeah, I can totally understand, though, coming up with the class clown.

I think that's a normal kind of fallback to, "If I can't be smart,

I'm gonna be funny." 'Cause people like smart kids and funny kids Yeah,

it was, it was an ex- it certainly was an expression of my insecurity.

And 'cause I wasn't the class clown, but I didn't know what else to do.

I could lash out, but that really wasn't me.

I could be loud and boisterous, but that wasn't me.

So you just do whatever you can to survive in the moment.

Yeah.

I actually have an experience similar to that when I had moved from New

Jersey to Michigan, so I had a New Jersey accent, and when I had to tell

my teacher, she wasn't very nice to me, and she asked me what my class was right

before there, and the way I said it, not only did she make fun of me, but the

whole class did, and then she corrected me, and I was absolutely humiliated.

And I can still remember the way I, where I was standing, how she said it to me.

It was just absolutely humiliating, and I had no recourse.

I, I couldn't be funny either.

Yeah.

I think there's a pattern here, right?

Number one is an awareness of either the experience or the emotions that we're

feeling or the thoughts that we had or how we responded, but that awareness

is really the first step, and it, that, it takes a safe environment, I think,

as well, for us to be able to express those things or even think about them.

The second stage might be, what can I teach someone or

how can I educate someone?

So education really is that next phase where, yeah, there are nine

different kinds of intelligence.

Most people don't even understand or know that there are

different kinds of intelligence.

So it's not that we're not intelligent.

We just might not be intelligent or have a lot of aptitude in a particular

area of intellect or education.

And then the third area is, how do I integrate this or apply this into my

life so that I can have some sort of some kinetic interaction with the solution?

Like, how do I face my fears, and what steps can I take so

that this is not so scary for me?

In fact, even doing podcasts for me when I first started was just,

I was mortified to do podcasts.

And so here I am hundreds of podcasts later just feeling pretty at home, but

the only way for me to get over that is not to think my way through it.

It's really just to expose myself to the fear that I have.

Yep.

Yep, we gotta move forward.

Yeah.

But I totally get that 'cause I was terrified when I was hosting podcasts too.

I used to have... I have a business partner, and we used to do it

together, and then eventually she said, "You could do that on your

own." I was like, "Oh." But I love it.

Yeah.

I love meeting people like you and hearing how, what a change

you're making in the world.

I appreciate that.

So tell me a little bit about who is your ideal client.

We talked a little bit about different types of athletes and things, but

tell me, like who is listening now who is saying- I need Gary's help There

are two different kinds of people.

I think there are those who feel like they're asking themselves the

question, "What's next in my life?"

And the reason why I think that's w- I can be helpful to those kinds

of people is because I created something called a Game Plan For Life.

So I have, number one, I have a playbook for the mind that I work with

professional athletes and business people, so it's a playbook for the mind.

But number two is I have something called the Game Plan For Life.

So how could I arrange my life in such a way as it moves me

constantly toward my goals and being the best version of myself?

So that's a two-day experience that I provide, but what it does is it answers

what's next in my life with precision.

So it's a pretty incredible experience.

People fly to Seattle all the time, or they fly me to where they are, and I

go through these two days with them.

So it's called the Game Plan For Life.

And so people who are thinking about a transition or figuring out what,

like, what's next in my life, or it's a person who says, "How do I optimize

my life so that I can accomplish and achieve everything that I think I'm

capable of?" And the Game Plan For Life is the perfect tool for that.

And then there's the playbook for the mind, which is people who think, "Man,

I have to get over a couple, let's say, mental obstacles or emotional obstacles,

and, and I just need a little bit of help on the mindset side so I can see

myself doing things that I didn't think I was capable of." And so those are

some of the things that we work on.

And in both cases, the playbook for the mind or the Game Plan For Life,

both of them involve... They're very strategic and participatory, and I

provide the context, but my client always, they're the story, right?

Like, they provide the content.

And then one of the really fun things that I've been doing recently is combining the

two into something called One Day Elevate, so onedayelevate.com, where I'm taking

the best of the mental performance stuff, the best of my leadership material, and

the best of my business stuff, so the Game Plan For Life, the business stuff,

the mindset stuff, and putting it all in one day, and then teaching businesses

how to perform at a really high level.

So that's been really joyful as well.

That sounds exciting.

I can see it in your face that you're getting excited about that.

And a friend of mine always says, "Clarity equals velocity." If, and

you are clear what path you're going, what you need to learn, you know,

what direction, you can do it so much faster than when you're, "Maybe.

Do I do that?" You're uncertain.

That's amazing.

So tell everyone again, if they're listening and they're thinking, "I

want to get ahold of you or get ahold of one of your programs," where's

the best place for them to go?

Well, you're very kind to ask.

I live in two places.

Number one is LinkedIn, so my name, Gary Chubbuck, on LinkedIn.

And then on Instagram, where a lot of my athletes live, my handle is elitemindset,

and I'm the guy with the blue verify dot.

So elitemindset on Instagram and just Gary Chubbuck on LinkedIn.

Perfect.

All right, and CHUPIK is C-H-U-P-I-K, but we'll put all those links

in the show notes so people can get there really fast and easy.

So my last question for you, Gary, is if you could provide one tip to make the

world a better place, what would that be?

There's so many things I could say, but I think the one thing I would say

is you can never control an outcome, but you can always put yourself

in the best position to succeed.

So don't worry about the out- outcome, just worry about putting yourself

in the best position to succeed.

And if you can do that in every situation in your life,

you'll... It's life-changing.

That's amazing.

Again, Gary, thank you so much for joining me today.

You have been amazing.

A world of information and, and motivation and excitement.

Thank you for doing what you do, for the people you do it for,

and thanks for joining me today.

Yeah.

Thanks so much for having me.

Thanks for joining us today on Blueprints for Brilliance Coaching Insights.

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