In this episode, the team explores the timeless ideas of stoicism and how they can help both athletes and everyday people. They discuss the importance of focusing on what you can control, staying resilient through challenges, and managing emotions in difficult moments. It’s an encouraging conversation about building mental strength and using setbacks as opportunities to grow.

Website: The Daily Stoic - Ryan Holiday

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Website: LCC Athletics

Related Podcast: Coach Cut’s Corner

It's time for Stars on Sports. A podcast radio show dedicated to sharing stories about our athletic program at LCC, past and present. Lansing Community College athletics has a strong tradition: 25 national championships, over 190 All Americans, 19 MCCAA All Sports Trophies. Stars on Sports will introduce you to individuals that have contributed to our program success and give you the backstory on what it takes to develop it. We'll also dive into and break down the topics and issues facing athletic departments across the nation and right here at LCC. This is Stars on Sports.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Stars on Sports. I'm joined today by our team, which we've added to today.

But first of all, Coach Cutter, our producer Daedalian, and our job, shadowing producer Malakai. So, gentlemen, welcome to Stars on Sports. We're excited to be here as we record this broadcast.

It's cold outside in the middle of May and the semester is ending and our seasons are wrapping up. But I want to go back to a time a long time ago. The Gladiators, the Roman Empire togas. And when I think of sports history, I love that time period.

But the part I didn't know a lot about and Coach Gutter, I'm going to give you a lot of credit is stoicism. And you've got me hooked on it. I get daily emails, I've researched them. I haven't read the books yet.

And the two I'm most familiar with are Marcus Aurelius and now I'm Epictetus.

There's other ones, Seneca, and you mentioned some other ones, but those are the two that I've mainly kind of learned from and listened to over the last year or, and, you know, you're, you know, have a expertise in mental performance. So, you know, this could go as many different ways as it could.

But just learning that, you know, I don't even know, frankly, when they were, what year they were alive. I should have researched that. But how long ago it is.

But what they taught, how relevant is today's student athletes in general and society in general, you know, and I've talked, you know, I get to interact with students on campus, even non student athletes.

And, you know, talking to a young lady that was a philosophy major and got her take on stoicism that I'll bring up later because hers wasn't as fondly of it as mine was.

But, you know, they have some real neat principles that, you know, when we talk, you know, about separators nowadays and how mental performance and mental Health are part of that. That is very interesting. And the first one is controlling what you can control, letting go of what you can't.

And, you know, I read a great book a couple years ago. We talked about great hardened things, saying an insane world. And that was one of his things.

And that's, you know, one thing I preach to my kids and, you know, something we have a hard time dealing with in athletics because we want to control everything because we think that will help the outcome and help us get to a successful outcome. So I think that is a very interesting one and it teaches us about how to responding to adversity.

I mean, it's really ero, which we bring up a lot of times on this podcast, focusing on effort and not the outcome, competing with discipline, humility and resilience. It's a mindset and again, something we've worked hard to probably make as.

And we'll talk about mantras and that here in a little bit, but, you know, making that the culture of our athletic department here at lcc. So initial takes. I know you, you know, this is, you know, your area of expertise, but we'll try and keep it short.

But what's your first thinking of when you think of stoicism?

If I'm saying it right, yeah, you're far too gracious. It actually started in Greece in like 300 BC and then people like Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca and them started really running with it.

And there's really some core principles behind it of stoicism.

And you see, you know, in the sports world, you've heard for a long time, you know, the first one that you brought up, you know, focus on the things that you can control. Don't get lost in the things that are out of your control. And that's like the first core principle. But stoicism has a lot of myths to it as well.

And there's, there's quite a bit to unpack with all of this.

This could be a long podcast. Daedalian. Thanks for putting in 300 BC anything initially.

Well, I mean, my very first thing is to look it up on the web and try to get a definition of what it is. You've kind of outlined it quite well.

Teaching that virtue, highest goodness based on knowledge, and that the wise live in harmony with divine reason or logos. Is that correct or is it logos that govern nature?

But what I found interesting is this is the first time that I've ever like I usually, anytime I've heard of it, I've always heard it as Managing emotions and being like not emotional about things. And you had mentioned that somebody else had a different take on it. And that's what I think a lot of people end up focusing on.

But I can't do anything more than agree with the notion of controlling what is in your control and allowing that which is not in your control just to exist as it is.

And that was. The young lady thought that her partake of it was suppressing emotion that it wasn't. And I can see where people would think that.

But if you really dig into it, that's not what they were saying. You're right. It is more managing the them than.

Suppressing them because it's an understanding that emotions do not control you. And that's another premise of it. And so like those emotions that you have do not need to dictate who you are and control you.

And we're going to. You know, I remember yesterday you were talking in my office about, I had a couple of things I wanted to talk about today. Stoicism, luck.

Remember, I couldn't think of the third one. It was emotion because of how emotions impact us. So that will be a whole nother podcast. We will dig into deeper.

But you know, when you brought up like virtue, they have four, and this wasn't even part of my script today. But I'm going to hit them real quick. I'm also going to hit. I'm glad you brought up the definition, too. Let's educate our audience on this.

Marcus Aurelia was a Roman emperor, Epictetus was a slave, and Seneca was a writer, a statesman, a mental toughness guru. Before it was cool, they say. But their four virtues are wisdom, justice, courage and temperance.

And again, just sharing that out there because again, those I think are things that you can break down and use for a team, a business, a classroom of doing those things that will lead to success. But I want to bring it back to sports. That's what we're here to talk about.

And they're like, you know, we talked about controlling what you can control. But to break it down with the mindset of sports, there's a couple other things that I had found that they apply to.

And the first one is control, the autonomy of control that focus on the inputs and not the outcome. And again this spring, we can't control the weather. And the weather was very difficult this spring and it impacted performance, the crowd.

I mean, we talked about that with some recent series we had and even across the the world, how sports fans are violent and disrespectful. And creating unsafe environments. But as a player you can't control that. That's my job as an administrator, you know.

But you can control your effort, your mindset and your response. And that's really their.

Again we talked about it at the beginning, but that's really their first main one is you know, effort and attitude are the two things we've learned. You can control which if you do those right in the follow the process, then the outcome will take care of itself.

But you still can't control the outcome.

And it's interesting because emotions and again we'll talk more how much they play into your inputs, like having a good day, having a bad day or angry or you have a grudge, how those can lead to you lead to your input. That definitely leads to probably a more negative outcome.

And it's not the thing I liked about your program and even what I'm trying to encourage with all our programs here at LCC is have fun, smile, enjoy, mundida. And you know, that's not suppressing an emotion, that's embracing it. But again to the extreme it can be a negative.

As we see when you celebrate a home run or you know, hit a three pointer and do a certain gesture in front of the team bench.

So it's more managing those than actually finding joy and you know, hitting the home run or hitting a key three which again in most baseball softball games they have a little celebration at home play for the home run hitter. So I think we've touched on that.

Which leads right into the second one, which is emotional regulation and the third one is adversity as fuel, which I really want to hit on more. But you know, emotions and I think this is important where we have to do better in practice handling emotions on good or bad calls.

I mean we see again, I keep using baseball the reference, but a kid getting thrown out softball for a third strike or a bad call, you know, and that's usually the case in a lot of sporting events. If it's a bad call by the official that the situation escalates where it could be a negative outcome for the player, the coach or the team.

Yet those that manage it better and don't even really give it much attention are moving on and embracing the next play. So I mean you deal with a lot of emotional regulation, you know, weather calls.

Do you have a certain way to deal with it or you know, rely on assistance or.

No, I think it's something that you train and teach ultimately with stoicism. Life will test you and the Stoicism will give you tools to be able to work through it versus the opposite side, which would be excuses.

I know in we live in a world where we like things to be pretty simple. And I knew as I gravitated towards more of this in my coaching journey that I needed to be able to make it really simple.

That talking about 300 BC and Greece and things like that was just going to miss. And a person I found was Ryan Halliday. And Ryan really studied this stoicism and he put a couple books out and I'm, and I actually have them.

And it's, it's really cool because it's called the Daily Stoic. And what's in there is a journal. And it's not a blank page journal, but it's based upon the day.

And every week there's a new teaching and it asks you to fill out, you know, some things about your week based upon those teachings. And then there's also another piece in there that is just called the Daily Stoic. And it's got a date. You know, today is May 13th.

So I opened it to May 13th when I got my office today and I read which is about two paragraphs for May 13. And it's about just a teaching, but it's very simple. And so it's what, you know, Marcus or somebody else said.

And then Ryan takes it and breaks it down and makes it in a little more simple form so you can kind of understand it. And then it gives you some really solid value for yourself.

But also if you're around anybody else, you can maybe help them out too, or help a team out or anything else. So kind of wanted to give some props to Ryan for what he put together.

And Ryan, you know, and he's a pretty popular author and really had brought stoicism to our society, I believe. I, you know, I have a. My former boss brought me one of, you know, because he takes those.

I think he had the book on each one of the four virtues I mentioned. And so, you know, he shared those books with me to read.

And you're jumping ahead of us a little bit because reflection is one of the stoic practices, which we've talked a little bit before, but is very important. And you know, we even talked about it in our previous podcast on military leadership about that after session review, the reflection of the day.

And you know how his journal helps with that because that is a very important practice for student athletes.

You know, more and more of our teams are using journals which we have emphasized yourself and me to our team to help them, you know, with visualization, with learning to be better tomorrow than today and reflecting on that. So, yeah, that I have not used that I've seen it. It's something I should pick up is because I think journaling is important.

I've encouraged it with my own kids to journal because it's a good way to even look back and remember the good things or laughter and such. But before we get into the practices, the one last thing, cause this one is huge for me is of them, adversity is fuel.

And this is one of my favorites because I don't know, I guess that's just how I've learned and was taught. But. And their phrase is obstacles don't block the path, they are the path. And I just like that.

Like, I don't know why, but I want to have the toughest schedule. I want to go through a brick wall.

I always refer to when like, you know, like, they're the perception out there that basketball, you're going to get gypped in basketball in the Big ten on the road, you're not getting any of the call. That's five, verse eight. And I like embracing that.

So if you can win on the road against five verse eight, then that prepares you for anything that, you know, people want to go around the obstacles or, you know, avoid them or, you know, talk about how challenging they are. And I just like embracing, you know, like, one of my things on my desk is embrace the challenges. And I'm not perfect at it.

I don't do it every day and none of us do. But, you know, I think this is a big proponent of their. Their teaching.

And that's one I really think, especially nowadays when we're, you know, when adversity was one of the best teachers of educational athletics, that it's becoming more difficult as we do more and help more student athletes fighting through adversity than letting them fight through adversity. So for elite student athletes, I think they learn that the obstacle is the path. There are no if and buts about it.

That's what we're doing and we're embracing it, and we're gonna go right through it. And that is the way. So, you know, you could lose. You learn from it. You know, if something else happens, you grow from it, you know, but it's.

It's rising to that obstacle. So that's one of my favorite parts of stoicism, is that the obstacles are the path and we have obstacles. I mean, like we've talked. We bring it Up.

Maybe we have to change the podcast. Everyone has a plan until they get hit. You know, we share that a lot on this podcast, but that is the obstacle. And most coaches plan for obstacles.

You know, we've talked about preparation before and we'll have a podcast on that. But you can't prepare for.

I try to prepare for everything, as I've shared, but there are going to be obstacles that come up that, again, how you handle staying calm under pressure are all good things. That again, teaching people, when you see emotional student athletes, teaching them to respond and not react.

And that's kind of the mantra I've used a little bit, respond, not react.

Because, you know, if you're reacting right away, even we've talked about, like when you, when someone asks you a question in an interview or you're giving a public speech is. I've always admired those people that pause for a second. And pausing can be uncomfortable for a lot of us. But responding instead of reacting.

Right, because most people are ready to react with an answer that, you know, you laugh on the Family Feud when they answer the. They hit the button before the question's even done and they get the wrong answer because they didn't let the question finish.

Some of them are hilarious. But, you know, but I think we try and do that too often in sport, too, of being open to that response that I think they've handled on.

So, I mean, you've. I wanted really quick with you, real quick to die.

You know, we talked about baseball and sports, but what about with, you know, you've been in a golf league or your bowling league. Have.

Have you experienced any, you know, like, you know, we were more talking about, you know, the emotional regulation or the, you know, handling inputs. I mean, does it apply to even a lesser. I mean, there's still competition, but even a lesser competition, you know, event.

Well, I will tell you that I just had a frustrating game on Monday of golf, and a lot of it was due to the fact that there were external factors that I could not control, such as the wind was incredibly bad. So we were playing over in Benton Harbor. It's called Harbor Shores. Really great course.

Extremely difficult, too, though, and I think I did pretty good. I had a lot of frustrating shots.

I can't say that my game got any better, but I can say I enjoyed myself, which was the most important part of that whole thing.

In the end, it is. And we forget that sometimes, especially if we focus on the outcome and thought of everything we did to get to that outcome.

Now, my one thing though, is when you're talking about emotional regulations. You grazed over it. But you don't really discourage the victories though, right? Celebrating those victories and taking joy in those.

Because as we've talked about before, you ride that wave a lot of the times and your game only gets better.

Yeah, I want us again, the word manage and balance and moderation, that you should have some emotion. And again, it's when it becomes too much that it becomes a negative.

If you, you know, if your emotions get carried away and you start acting ways you shouldn't. But you should celebrate successes. I mean, we all learn that that's a motivator.

I mean, training a dog, you give it praise for it and it will do continue to do that activity. So I'm all for celebrating successes and celebrating home runs. Like even we've had a little conversation of flipping the bat on it.

And you know, there's a way to do it in front of your own dugout, but if you do it in front of the visiting dugout, then it's more like taunting. So unfortunately with social media and the highlight reel of the news and such that it's become a fine line. What's accepted and not accepted.

And some kids don't even know if they cross that line because of what they've always done done of celebrating successes.

You know, I listened to a presenter a year or two ago talking about the NFL like, you know, every tackle someone's celebrating when that, you know, they're getting paid millions of dollars.

The tackle, it's more that goal line tackle or that fourth down tackle that you should probably celebrate instead of getting up on every play and doing, you know, a certain gesture or thing. So I think we've lost that line and that's what leads to unsportsmanlike behavior.

But I don't want to ruin it all completely and totally, you know, have everyone monotone. And not even when you're mad. I mean, again, if you're mad, that means you care to a certain extent. It's just how mad are you? Back to your point.

And it has been a windy spring, Dadaly, and you aren't lying there. That had been one of our toughest issues with baseball.

We were right off Lake Michigan, so it was even.

Gosh, it had been a tough time spring with the wind for us. Rain and wind, but that's a whole nother conversation. But even when you're mad, you still got to go on to the next play.

If you let it haunt you over and over, then that emotion taking control over you and it becomes a negative. But you can be mad for 10 seconds. That's where the be a goldfish kind of comes in.

Well, and very often, if you allow 60 seconds to pass or so maybe a minute and a half, you're going to find that emotion goes away anyway.

So unless you're holding a grudge or you just can't let it go, and I think golf's a perfect example of that, where that sport lends to people getting mad. They can't let go of the last hole.

That actually goes to our stoic teaching of the day.

Okay.

You haven't even heard it. Ready? So this is. This is from Cuts book here from Ryan Holiday. Yes, we are what we repeatedly do.

Aristotle said, therefore excellence is not an act, but a habit. The Stoics add to that that we are a product of our thoughts, such as your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind.

So that's Marcus Aurelius. And it's right, basically stating that. Yeah, if you're going to hold that grudge, you're going to be that grudge.

You're going to have that negative energy on you and it's not going to go away.

Yeah.

Malakai, you got any thoughts on this?

You know, every single sport I play, I play to have fun, Right. I've never. My entire life from Little League, I've never been the most competitive kid.

I was always just there because I reckon whether I win or lose, I can't really control that. But what I can control is how much I enjoy the sport, how much I can bring not just joy for myself, but also joy for my teammates.

And I do agree with this whole stoic teaching, where it really is about how you manage your emotions and more than how you let your emotions manage you good.

And again, you're right. We forget sometimes in our society become very competitive because of comparison. Like, I gotta be my kid, gotta be better than your kid.

Or, you know, my kid gotta be better than me, than I was growing up and get that scholarship that we forget that it can be fun. And, you know, competition can be a good or bad thing, too. If we all did focus on it being fun, I think, you know, this sport would go a lot longer.

But it also, you could argue, become an intramural or participation award where as you grow up each level and we're at the college level, that competition is a very important piece of that. So we're going along. So I want to really quickly.

You know, again, we've talked about stoicism, But I want to talk about how, you know, you can help grow in this field. And the three things that are.

Four things they've actually talked about is daily reflection, which we've talked about, pre competition visualization, which we've talked about before on our podcast.

If you imagine the worst that you know, you're gonna probably get anxious and such, but you gotta be ready, live in the present, which you've talked about. And then using a mantra, which Brian Cain has helped us with before, and I'm really big on that one. You know, like a three word.

I told you I've had my daughter write on her tennis shoe three words that she looked at before her serve. You know, control what I can respond, don't act. The obstacle is the way.

And then practicing voluntary discomfort, which I don't think enough people do in their practice plan, is practicing in the cold, pushing your limits, choosing the harder path, going early in the morning.

There are certain ways that you can help practice discomfort that I know a lot of coaches want to practice at their game time every day, or if you're going to play on turf, you want to practice on turf.

But if you put a certain set of days aside, especially early in your preseason, that would help you with, you know, feeling that uncomfortableness, learning how to grit your way through it.

So those were a couple things that I had learned from stoicism that we can use to apply to help us be better with controlling our emotions, fighting the obstacle, and, you know, using input instead of the output. So anything quick to add as we,.

We wrap up, don't let your emotions get the better of you.

That's the whole point here. You can't say it better than that. We should end on that. But I'm not gonna, because.

Is it time?

Not yet.

Not yet.

Because I want to wrap up. Because, you know, I love history and I think we can learn a lot about history.

And some people say history repeats itself or history doesn't repeat itself, people repeat history.

I don't care what your philosophy is on that, but I think this is a perfect example of, you know, 2,500 years ago, people were studying our minds and our stuff, and then they had, you know, life and death competition.

Back then, when you talk about gladiators and fighting because people wanted to watch fighting, I mean, it's part of our human history of sitting in arenas and watching people physical contact with humans or animals. So we've gotten a little more knowledgeable on what's right for human behavior or not. But.

But to give these Philosophers credit, because in the last five years, I believe mental performance has moved to the forefront. And rightfully so. And rightfully so with mental health. And there's a lot of experts out there. We mentioned a couple of them today. That.

So I just wanted to give them their credit and, you know, hopefully people can learn and embrace history, but also learn and grow from today and moving forward.

Very good. Yeah. All right, Is it time now?

It is time. Rags. Food question.

All right.

That's what our audience has been waiting for. So, as you know, I've been drinking zero sugar pop lately and trying to be healthier and not as much sugar.

So I've been eating more vegetables, which is crazy. I never liked vegetables growing up because they were green for the most part. I'm not a green person because of the school that I root for.

It's so dumb or whatever, you know, I like carrots because they're orange, but it's just a dumb philosophy to live. But that was me and my kids. I taught them well. Green is yucky. So anyway.

But lately I've been eating healthier snacks, and there's two different ways this can go. I like granola bars. I don't know if that's considered a healthy snack.

I know protein bars are pretty popular nowadays among our student athletes, But I've also been eating celery with peanut butter on it. So that's been my go to lately. Celery with peanut butter on it. And I eat a granola bar for breakfast in the morning.

I'm not a yogurt person, but do you guys have a go to healthy snack? And Malakai, you're gonna be at this. So cut. You have one or Cheetos. Is that really your go to snack?

No.

I was thinking about a guy that interviewed and he put a video out. He was just mortified because he was in the interview, thought he did really great.

And they asked him, you know, like, give us one of your biggest weaknesses. And he just blurted it out, kind of like a family feud or something else. And he said, you know, late night in Cheetos.

Just felt like he totally ruined his interview. So, no, that's what I was thinking of. Yeah. Ultimately, you want to eat as healthy as you possibly can, given the situation.

And in the Sports world, the coaching world. Sometimes you don't have the opportunities or the availability to eat perfect snacks.

You're stopping off of, you know, a 12 hour bus ride at, you know.

Right.

Gas stations or truck stops or whatever. And so you got to try to find some of the vegetables and granola and yogurts and things like that. So. Yeah.

Do you have a go to one?

Not really, no.

Just a variety of those though. You eat yogurt?

Yeah, in the morning, so.

Okay. Granola bars.

Pretty much live on granola bars during baseball season.

Yeah, I hear you. I think the popular healthy snack for.

Student athletes, supposedly a candy bar is.

Going to come up. I haven't thought about because I think a candy bar here and there, like a snicker energy is good. But we'll talk about that another time.

The Dalian got a healthy snack here.

Around the office. I usually keep protein bars around because I find like they fill me up and I don't really get overly hungry afterwards.

And then I'll also sometimes keep some trail mix around. But I wouldn't call that healthy because you got a little mix of everything in there.

And that's partly what I like is I get a little bit of chocolate or something like that in there mixed in it. So it satisfies my sugar tooth. But at the same time I still get some good stuff in there. And then if I'm at home, it's carrot sticks.

But I don't know if I want to call it healthy because I like dipping it in ranch or whatever else.

I like carrot sticks too. Celery and carrot car sticks are easier to.

Honestly, it's my health of a good dip that I dip it in all the time.

You've promoted that a lot on this. I don't mean to.

It's not Dutch.

I like carrots too. So we're gonna go back to trail mix. But Malakai, what do you got for us?

Yeah, I like a lot of fruits. I'm a big fruit guy, so you gotta get.

I've never heard anyone else talk about this before, but I like to get apples and peanut butter and I like to just, you know, I have like a little slicer, slice it down, take about two or three apples, go to town. I mean, it's the best snack ever. It's like a mixture of the best of both worlds. It's crunchy and you gotta try it. If you haven't.

I like both. I never mix them.

Fruit for sure. Yeah, I'll do that a lot of times if there's something around the house.

We'll talk about fruit too in the future, but trail mix real quick. I think it is a good snack because it does have nuts and sugar. It just has too many raisins in it for me, so I like them without the raisins.

You mix it in with everything, you can't really taste it.

Texture, but okay. Hopefully you are enjoying a healthy snack out there and until next time. Go Stars.

Stars on Sports is recorded live at the WLNZ studio. Engineering and production assistance are provided by Daedalian Lowry and you can listen to the episode and other episodes of Stars on Sports on demand lccconnect.org to find more information about our athletic program, visit lccstars.com thanks for listening. Be sure to join us next time for more Star on Sports. Go Stars!