Show Notes

• Lauren’s background in sports
• The cumulative effect of five concussions
• Landing the Yankees gig
• The value of relationship building
• MLB’s commitment to mental performance
• The role of a Mental Conditioning Coordinator
• Yankee case study
• The worst thing Lauren could’ve done in her position
• Mental performance in business
• What Lauren works on with clients
• The problem is rarely the problem
• A common challenge for high performers
• The Dunning–Kruger effect
• The importance of knowing when to zoom in and zoom out
• Language, and how we talk to ourselves
• The joy of watching people succeed – at any level

Connect With Lauren Johnson

Website: https://www.laurenjohnsonandco.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laurennicolejohnson/
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/Lauren-Johnson-114742239927231/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenjohnsonn/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAgiinhnP664j96geaFkdFg
Twitter: https://twitter.com/_laurenjohnson_

Summary

Lauren Johnson is a mental performance coach and keynote speaker. Prior to opening her own consulting practice, Lauren served as the Mental Conditioning Coordinator for the New York Yankees baseball team. She shares why talent is no longer enough, and what elite performers do so they can perform their best, regardless of circumstance.

Full Transcript

Brian  

Welcome to another episode of Life Excellence with Brian Bartes. Join me as I talk with amazing athletes, entrepreneurs, authors, entertainers, and others who have achieved excellence in their chosen field so you can learn their tools, techniques and strategies for improving performance and achieving greater success. Lauren Johnson is a mental performance coach and keynote speaker. She works with professional athletes, military personnel and business professionals through speaking engagements, educational training, workshops and consulting. Prior to opening her own consulting practice, Lauren served as the mental conditioning coordinator for the New York Yankees baseball team. Lauren’s practical, straightforward advice and mental performance strategies, help individuals develop mental toughness so they can perform their best, regardless of circumstance. Welcome, Lauren, and thanks for joining us on Life Excellence.

Lauren  

Oh, thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to be here.

Brian  

Lauren, I’m absolutely fascinated by the field of mental performance, how did you first get exposed to it?

Lauren  

To be totally honest with you, it’s because I was the person that needed it the most. I played sports my whole life from the age of five, even until now; I still play but really I’d say I peaked in college. I really wanted to perform at a high level, even after college. I realized that I was the person that constantly got in my own way. I was the person who created this unrealistic standard for myself, meaning I couldn’t even meet it, I had to be perfect or I was worthless. I didn’t really recognize that this was a pattern that was changeable. I thought it was just a part of my personality. And while sure, part of that is part of my personality, I realized – actually after I had sustained a career ending injury in college – that I found sports psychology, I found performance psychology, and I was kind of floored when I learned about it, because I thought, who would I have been on the soccer field, as a teammate, if I would have known these things. Then I thought, how many people can I help now that I do, which has really led me to the work that I’m doing today.

Brian  

I think most people have some understanding of athletic training and conditioning, even if they don’t play sports like you did. Because it makes sense that athletes would have to work on physical conditioning. But I don’t think people have the same appreciation for mental conditioning. When did the mental aspect really come into play as a focus in sports?

Lauren  

You know, it’s so funny, because I felt the same way. Actually in my freshman year of college, I played for a team that had a sports psychologist that came in to work with us and I liked her. But I think that there’s an interesting time where people really start to dive into the mental performance side. That’s when talent is no longer enough. So that’s, I think, why it doesn’t get adopted super early, although it would really behoove all of us to do that very, very early on, because – you’ll hear me say this often – mindset is not everything but it does impact everything. I wish I understood that at a younger age, but I didn’t because I could get by with my talent, I could get by with working hard, I could get by with grinding it out. Where what I’ve seen, actually, in my time at the Yankees, is that the level where people really start to adopt the mental game is around single A and double A; it’s right around those full season teams where competition is tough. It really starts to challenge them. At the younger levels it doesn’t mean that there aren’t people that really do enjoy it, but it’s not as common and it becomes much more adopted as we go up. Because it’s one thing to be able to have success, it’s another to be able to sustain it. One of those things that allow us to sustain it really comes down to how we think and that really can impact our results long term.

Brian  

You mentioned the Yankees, and I definitely want to jump into that part of your career, but just backing up a little bit prior to that. Lauren, how did your initial exposure into the area of mental conditioning, mental performance, cause you to pursue that vocationally?

Lauren  

Well, I was third game into my senior year of college. I had just gotten back from my fourth concussion and I had a really tough time. With my third and fourth concussion I sustained – they call it post-concussion syndrome, where I had the symptoms of concussion for two and a half years. Most people will have it for a couple of months and I had it for two and a half years to the point where I really struggled with short term memory loss and this thing called word searching, where you just can’t find your words. They talk about how your neurons are just a little bit shifted so it makes it more difficult; we have to recreate those neural pathways. I really struggled with that. I finally got cleared to play. And the third game in my senior year, I go up for a header and this girl just took a pretty tough shot on goal. I headed it out of the way and I remember blacking out for a second. I knew the second I came to – which it wasn’t long – but the second I came to I knew what had happened. I was rightfully freaking out because I just got back and it’s, again, my senior year. So I came off the field and I remember my neurologist, after he had looked at my scans, he said, Lauren, it’s no longer safe for you to play. I remember just…if anybody’s that listening has had anything taken away from you and it wasn’t your choice, especially something that you loved, you could probably understand how I felt in that moment. As an athlete, I was like no, no, there’s got to be another way around this. And he stopped me, he goes Lauren, do you want to remember your name when you’re 40? And it just hit me like a ton of bricks. I realized that it wasn’t safe. So I decided, I had to make that tough decision to no longer play. But I still was a part of the team. I was very lucky to be a part of the team that still wanted me to travel to all the events and be at all the games. My role changed. I was no longer on the field, I was on the bench. And part of me being on the bench is – I want to be honest – I was a little bit bored. Besides, being a teammate and doing all those things, I wanted something to pursue. Soccer was the thing I pursued. So I decided to take another course and I found sports psychology and I was like, what is this? Alright, well, it’s sport, so keep me close to it. I was the only person to sign up for the class, fell completely in love with it. And it was as if, Brian, it was as if somebody held up a mirror and showed me all these areas of my career that it could have impacted if I would have known of these skills and how to develop them. It was such an eye opener for me. Because again, that’s where I went; how come I didn’t know this? How come none of us know this? So it really led me down that path. I actually was a kinesiology major, minored in psychology, and was like, I’m not going to use any of my kinesiology stuff. I’m going straight to grad school, because I wanted to get more of this sports psychology stuff. So it really took me immediately and I think it must have been because of the position I was in. Because I could no longer impact my sport and the thing that I loved in the way I’d originally planned. So if I was going to impact it, this is a way that I could impact it and feel fulfilled in the process.

Brian  

That’s kind of a tough way to trip into that through the adversity that you had with your concussions. I guess I didn’t realize that concussions are so pervasive in soccer. I know we hear a lot about football and hockey and high contact sports. I do know you’re heading in soccer, you’re occasionally bumping into other people. Was your experience…I mean, obviously that was unusual having that many concussions, but is it that pervasive in soccer?

Lauren  

It can be. I have to say my worst one was in snowboarding and I went off a jump I had no business going off of; humbled very quickly by gravity, but that was the worst one. They are cumulative so as you get more, it’s easier to get others. By the time I received my fifth one, I got it off a simple header which is a normal part of the game which is why it was so dangerous for me to continue. But yes, it can happen. I got headed in the back of the head and got a concussion, I was elbowed in the side of the head and got a concussion, so it’s definitely possible. I do know that a lot more people have come out saying that they got them in soccer, but it definitely…I think that part of my time in college…actually my folder…I became the study of how they developed their protocols around concussions. I think it was kind of new at the time.

Brian  

So it’s a combination of yes, it happens, and Lauren plays harder than most people on everything that she does (Lauren:  That, or just not as smart [laughter]. We don’t know.) So you graduated from undergrad, you got a master’s degree and went out into the work world. I know the Yankees, that wasn’t your first gig, but how did you end up working for the Yankees? How long were you with that organization?

Lauren  

Well, that’s an interesting story. So I’ll start with this. I was with the Yankees for four years and it was my dream job. I knew out of grad school I wanted to work in pro sports; I knew they weren’t easy jobs to come by, but I knew that was my end goal. I actually graduated out of grad school, had two job offers. Neither of them were pro sports; one was in more amateur level sports and then another was actually in a military role. So I turned one down, took the other, but the only thing with the one I chose was that it was going to take about six months to be placed, which is very common for this role. So to me, I’m like, great, I get one more summer before the real world, jumping into adulthood. So I took that six months and in the meantime, moved out of my apartment, because I knew I was moving no matter what. I changed my whole life to prep for this. Well, six months goes by and I had other friends that had landed very similar roles in different places and they were getting placed. And I was like, huh, I wonder when I’m supposed to get that. So I reached out and I said, hey, just checking to seewhen I should be expecting placement. And that’s when I got the email back that said, we’re sorry, but the job is no longer available. I still remember that day I saw that email, I remember exactly where I was, and honestly, just crying. I was so upset because six months ago, I’m on cloud nine with two job offers, six months later, I have none. I mean, I can’t go back to the other place. They’ve already filled the role. So I thought to myself, well, what am I going to do? So I reached out to everybody that I knew in the field [to] just let them know I was looking and I kept hearing the same thing. They kept telling me, Lauren, you just need more experience, which as a grad student, is like your least favorite thing to hear. You’re like, well, what do you think I’m trying to get? I’m trying to get experience. So I realized, I was again, searching everywhere. There was just nothing available, even outside of sports. So I decided, well, student loans are coming up, I’m going to need to pay for them somehow. I decided to get a job at Starbucks. I was working at Starbucks one day in the drive-thru and this one moment changed my entire trajectory. When you’re working the drive-thru, part of your job is to entertain the customer while their drink’s being made. So this guy pulls up, I’m chatting him up and he’s asking me questions. I’m asking him questions. Then finally he goes, so are you in school? And I said, no, actually, I just graduated. But it was a fair question. Most people that were working there were in school. And he’s like, great, what did you get your degree in? I proudly told him, performance psychology. And Brian, he just starts laughing in my face, like, full blown laughing in my face and I am so confused. I mean, I feel like you probably know me pretty well at this point, that I’m pretty direct. I’ve no problem with that awkward conversation. So I finally asked him, what’s so funny? He goes, oh, you got those one of those degrees you’ll never use. And my mouth just fell open. I couldn’t believe he just said this to me. I also was like, you don’t know me, like, who are you? I was so upset I actually had to walk away. Somebody else had to hand him his drink. I kept getting mad as the day went on. Have you ever had that happen where somebody says something to you and maybe hurts your feelings or hits you the wrong way and for the rest of the day you just ruminate and just repeat it in your head like a broken record time and time again? Every time it played again, I felt all those emotions all over again. Then I had this moment where I was mad because I was mad; he doesn’t know you, why are you giving him so much power over you?! That’s when I realized I wasn’t mad because he was rude, I was mad because he was right. I’ve learned that you’re not going to get very far if you turn around at your first obstacle. Here I was jobless, after having two job offers on the line, waiting for another opportunity to come my way instead of asking myself is there another way and finding it. And so that was the day that I Googled how to start your own consulting company and I started my own consulting company. It was called to LA Mental Performance at the time – my last name was different. I did it for the sole purpose of building a resume so that I would have experience when the opportunity presented itself. After a year of doing that and grinding it out working; working 2:30-3:30 am shifts at Starbucks, and then working on my business afterwards. I did that for a year’s time, built up a decent clientele; nothing to brag about, but enough where I could pay my bills. Then I had an opportunity to interview with the Yankees a year later, and I got the job. I spent four years with them. But talk about a roller coaster getting there.

Brian  

You’re in California, so you grew up, born and raised in California, went to school in California, and then the Yankee opportunity, that was the East Coast, the other side of the country. How did that come about?

Lauren  

One of the things that I did – and I actually recommend anybody do this, doesn’t matter what field you’re in. Of course, I recommend it for people in my field, but any field you’re in, you can do this. I realized that, who do people recommend? People recommend people they have a relationship with. What I realized is calling people and just asking them, can I pick your brain, wasn’t enough. I actually had a friend that recommended this to me and now I continuously recommend to others. He said, put a reminder in your phone every three to four months, after you speak to somebody, and check in with them periodically throughout the year. Technically, that’s only a handful of times per year. But what it does is you are top of mind. You’re not only reaching out when you need something and you build a relationship. So that’s what I did. I was very lucky to be connected with some really incredible people who were willing to connect me with more incredible people, and those people…and it started to kind of cascade. Suddenly I had several contacts in MLB. Instead of just talking to them once, I would follow up. I would mention something we talked about on our phone call. I would let them know where I was at in my development. I would ask them something different about them. So I was always top of mind; they could tell I was listening to them. They weren’t just spewing advice I would never take. I was constantly developing and learning myself. So at the end of that year of really just networking – for lack of a better word, but really what it was was relationship building – after a year of doing that – the Yankees don’t just post job offers, at least at the time, especially in my field, they don’t post them publicly, it only went to other internal people in the MLB – I had developed such good relationships that I had several people send me this job opportunity. And that’s really how I got my foot in the door to be recognized by them.

Brian  

That’s fantastic. Then the other part of that, Lauren, is because of those relationships that you’ve developed, and the way you found out about the opportunity, you really come into the organization as a warm prospect, as opposed to somebody coming in out of the blue. Which is how, if people happen to hear about the opportunity, most people have no relationship with somebody close to the position. So that’s great insight. I didn’t expect that we’d be talking much about networking or relationship building but that advice is a great golden nugget; that idea of just touching base with somebody once every three months, four months, putting it in your calendar to make it easier to do that. The other part of that, like you said, you’re not looking for anything, you just touch base, but the other thing that I like to do is see if there’s some way that I can help, and depending on the timing, either there’s an opportunity that gets presented or maybe it’s an opportunity to add value to the person you’re contacting, in either way that’s great, right? (Lauren:  Yeah, absolutely.) Professional baseball is obviously big business so I can see why teams want to do everything they can to get an edge. Share more about the Yankee organization’s commitment to mental performance. Tell us about the specific work you did with players to help them maximize success in the field. Because again, I think, if you said you were a physical trainer, a weight conditioning coach, something like that, I think even people outside of sports could understand that, but mental performance coaching is very different so help us to understand what that looked like during those four years.

Lauren  

The Yankees are one of the early adopters of mental performance. My director, Chad Bohling and Chris Passarella, my associate director, they’ve been there for years, way before it was, I guess, “accepted.” A lot of people had this stigma that like, oh, you must have a problem if you’re talking to the mental performance coach, where I was super lucky, I walked into a very well-oiled system, where people were like, oh, how did you get buy-in? I didn’t have to do a lot of that legwork because it was already done for me. The culture was so good when I got there, that [the] players it was normal. The way that we operated – this is no surprise, everybody does this, I think, to some degree – but when we’re talking to the players, we’re not just talking about mental performance all the time, we are building relationships. Relationships are so important. If you don’t have that, if you don’t have a degree of trust, my job is obsolete. So when I got there, my actual first three to four weeks being there, I wasn’t even allowed to present. And being somebody who’s new, I’m like, put me in coach, I want to prove my worth, I want to prove that I belong here, I know what I’m talking about. And they were like, no, we just want you to develop relationships, we actually don’t care if you have one mental performance conversation at all. We just want you to develop relationships. So the cool thing about that was by the time I did get to present, I knew a lot of the players, I had relationships with the players, maybe not like really deep ones, but enough where they were curious now what I had to say. They were like, well, why isn’t she presenting? I want to see what she has to say. It really set up an environment to help me succeed in the way of building relationships first, and then let them come to me, let baseball come to me. So I just really leaned into that advice. I remember after my first week, mind you, I already had players asking to meet with me and I hadn’t spoken one thing about mental performance yet, but it was I will just let it come to me. It actually came a lot sooner than I was imagining. So number one is the Yankees are very, very committed to the mental performance side, all the sides of performance, I should say, but definitely in our field, very big on that; incredible leadership there. Then I would say that every team person is different. We treat them like individuals, make sure there are systems in place, there’s all of that which I won’t go into, but in terms of how we viewed mental performance, just that every person is an individual, and we have to treat them as such. We did our best to really customize the approach.

Brian  

Do all baseball teams today or all professional teams today – whether it’s baseball, football, basketball, hockey – have a mental performance staff, or is it still a little earlier in the evolution? I know you said the Yankees were sort of pioneers, it sounds like, in that area; they may not have been the only team but they were certainly on the forefront of that. How does that, what does that look like today universally?

Lauren  

Oh, it’s much bigger, especially in MLB. I can’t speak for many other sports just because I’m not ingrained in that. I do know other sports have them but to the degree that baseball has them, I don’t know if I can speak very well to that. A lot of teams now have a team of mental performance coaches, which is what we had at the Yankees. There was a team of us, where there’s a lot of teams still that have only one and you have a system of 200 plus guys. One person is not going to be enough for those kinds of numbers, that’s why we had a team. And like I said, it’s much more common nowadays for baseball teams to have a team, a mental performance staff. But there are still some out there that either don’t have anybody at all or they only have one person for the whole organization, which usually means that they’re only working with a major league team. It really just depends on the team. But it has grown a ton even since I’ve been there.

Brian  

So you mentioned 200 people in the organization. So that wasn’t just the Yankees, it was really the entire farm system that you were supporting?

Lauren  

Yes, and by the way, when I was there, we had closer to 300, it was even bigger, because a lot of people don’t know this, but we actually have teams in the Dominican Republic. We have teams in the DR all the way up to the major league. Now they’re trying to create – the Major League Baseball – is trying to create more of a systematic process across all teams. The Yankees, we had a lot of teams, some teams didn’t have as many as we did. Now they’re trying to create a more uniform approach to that. I know that has changed as well. However, there are still a lot of players and we’re also working with staff. We’re not just working with players, we’re also working with the staff that supports them. On top of that, part of my role was also to work in our amateur scouting department. They would send me to who we believed were the best potential draft picks in the amateur draft. I would interview them and give my feedback on where I thought they were from a mental performance standpoint. While that was only a small sliver to the pie, when we would consider drafting somebody, it still was a piece of it. They really took that into account.

Brian  

That’s fascinating. I had no idea it was that widespread in terms of the number of people in the organization that you serviced and even getting into staff and non-player personnel. I mean, I guess that makes sense. I just didn’t really think of that.

Lauren  

I have to say that the Yankees do such a good job with the crossover. Because I would go and sit in some of the athletic training meetings and I would go and sit in our educational meetings. We would often go across different departments just to learn because we all had the same goal and that was to help our players win at a very high level. And so it certainly helped me when I could understand what our stats department was doing versus what our education department was doing versus what our athletic trainers and our trainers [were doing] and all of that. When we understood each other’s role as a whole, it helped us be better support not only for the players, but for the staff as well, because we’re all a team. We treated each other like that and I think that was something really special that we had.

Brian  

That totally makes sense. In terms of delivery of support, what did that look like? You’ve sort of alluded to presentations. I know teams have meetings regularly, so probably standing in front of the room and presenting information was part of it. What were some of the other functions that you had?

Lauren  

It really depends on the team and the managers and the individuals. But we did both group and individual meetings with players. It wasn’t always like, come in my office, sit on the couch and we’ll talk. It’s not like that. Some of my best one on one meetings with players were like shagging balls during BP. It’s very casual. We’re hanging out behind the cage, we are in the dugout, we are in the bullpen, it’s really casual. But that’s honestly where some of the best stuff comes from. It’s not this pre-meditated, prepared thing. Now, sometimes that is as well, but it just depends on the player, the person and the context. So we just made ourselves available. I think that that’s a much more realistic approach when you’re working with a professional athletics team that is performing; their time is being taken by every department where everybody wants their time. We were trying to see okay, how can we make an impact with taking less time? How can we integrate ourselves into what they’re already doing in a way that didn’t take away from what they were doing, but added to it. That’s really the approach that we took. But it really just depends; it came in all sorts of forms, from group sessions to one-on-one, to all those kind of things – it just ranged depending on the person.

Brian  

Lauren, without revealing any confidential information can you share a story of a significant mental break through with one of your current or past athletic clients has achieved?

Lauren  

It’s funny because whenever I get asked this question, I think people are expecting, like, oh, well, this happened and then he became an MVP, and all that. There are certainly stories like that to be had but one of my favorites actually happened really, really early on in this player’s career. He was just drafted and he had never really experienced failure before, which I mean, I think is pretty common, especially if you’re drafted out of high school, but even sometimes college. He was in the lineup to start; he’s a pitcher. And he was up against some single A, double A hitters who are very, very good. Here’s a red eye, fresh out of high school, a pitcher that has never seen this kind of talent before and he just was getting wrecked, completely wrecked. And he gets taken out of the game. He comes back to my office after the game and he’s in panic mode. He’s never experienced failure. He doesn’t know how to handle this. He’s like, wait, did I suddenly just like suck overnight, what the hell happened? He does not know how to make sense of this. So the first question I asked him, well, what happened? Walk me through each inning. He couldn’t. He’s like, Lauren, I don’t remember. I told him that it’s actually not that uncommon. All it tells me is that he’s lacking a degree of self-awareness, which was really common for his age and his experience. So I was like, okay, then this is what I want you to do. I gave him some exercises, some journal exercises, some really self-reflection exercises. So after each outing, he could take some notes to help develop some self-awareness. So we’ll start after the game and what you can recall and we’ll start bringing it closer to the moment. He’s like, great, alright, I’ll work on this. So next day goes by and I’m in the cafeteria, I’m towards the front – and by the way, this is spring training so everybody’s here, like every single player in our system’s here, so it’s packed – I’m at the front of the line with a couple of our triple A players. And he screams from the back of the line. He’s like, hey, Lauren – the whole cafeteria turns around, everybody’s paying attention – I’m like, what’s up? I did my journal exercises. And I was like, cool man, sweet. And then he goes, just kidding. And everybody went quiet. They were waiting to see what I was going to do. I just turned around and continued with getting my food. After I was done eating my lunch, I went back to my office, and I texted him. I said, don’t worry about the journal exercises and within two minutes, he was at my door. He was like, what do you mean? I said, I don’t think you understand. I’m not your mom. I am not your sister. I’m not your friend. I’m not your teacher. I said, I am not here to give you assignments to make sure you do them and check them off. I’m here to make you better and nobody can make you better but you. So whether or not you choose to do your journal exercises does not make me sleep any different. I go to bed the same, I wake up the same. I said, if you would like to be better, you have to do it for you. He was like, okay, fine, fine. I’ll do the journal exercises. I said, no, see, you’re still not getting it. Don’t do them if you’re doing them for me; only do them if you’re doing them for you. Because your growth is no one’s responsibility but yours. And he had this moment; I think it was like an epiphany for him. He said, okay, and he walked away. That evening, I got a photo of the journal that he completed and I got it every single outing after that. He became one of the most early adopters of mental performance I’ve ever seen. And to this day, is so fantastic, and will still call me during spring training – hey, I got a question for you – but I certainly don’t blame him for feeling the way that he felt. I certainly may have felt that way out of high school. But he had never failed before and so I think that when he realized, oh, I’m not going to get in trouble for not doing these things. It’s my responsibility if I want to get better and mine alone, and that doing this stuff is only going to help me, not going to help anybody else, I think it clicked in his mind that I’ve got to take responsibility and if I want it, I’ve got to go get it.

Brian  

That’s a powerful message. We’ve all heard stories of professional athletes. I was actually going to ask you earlier about skepticism, and I didn’t want to be negative about it, but we know it exists because you have the full gamut of professionals and you have people who think they know everything. You have people who are learners and even though they know a lot, they come in with a child-like desire to learn and grow and do everything they can, get all the input they can, whether it’s from a mental performance coach, or a weight trainer, or a coach, or anybody that will help them to be their best. But because of age, because of status sometimes – so you have somebody who’s making $30 million a year – and you come in and have something that you say will help them and some people receive that really well. Some people don’t receive that well. I love that approach, though. I think just from my limited knowledge of professional athletes, the ones who really desire to get better, seek that input, and are at least open to trying things and seeing the impact; if it works, they do it more and if it doesn’t work, then they try something else. But they’re eager to…you look on the sideline – to skip sports into football, into the NFL – and you see the quarterback on the sidelines when his defense is out on the field, he’s looking at it an iPad or a Microsoft Surface, I guess, the NFL uses, but they’re studying the plays. They’re very, very committed to doing whatever it takes to be their best and ultimately to win football games or win baseball games and win a Super Bowl or win a World Series.

Lauren  

I think it’s really important to mention this, that the worst thing we can do in our position is force anything. You know what it’s like if you have a dog and you try to yank your dog, what does he do? He digs in his heels. That’s exactly the same response we get for humans; you can’t yank people along because you think you know better. The thing is, you may have all the best intentions and you may be right, this may be the very thing that they need. But if they’re not willing to adopt it, it doesn’t matter what you think. I will never forget, I actually had a player too…we had these intake forms we would have them fill out and it was just to get to know the player. We would bring them in and we talk to them and it’d be our first meeting with them getting to know them. He came in and I started to go over it with him and he goes, can I be honest with you? I was like, yeah, please. And he said, I filled that out of courtesy. I said, oh, alright, so do we want to go over this? And he’s like, no. So I just ripped it up and I threw it in the trash. I said, alright, you got me for the next 20 minutes, what do you want to talk about? You know what I learned? I learned that his dad was fighting stage four cancer. I learned that he was a couple months away from proposing to his girlfriend. I learned that he was struggling being away from his family. I learned that he had a really bad experience in mental performance. I could have contributed to that bad experience if I didn’t stop and listen. If I just continued to force what I thought was right in that moment, again, [he is] one of the players I’m still in touch with today. I never forced it on him. I just told him, hey, I’m here if you’ve got questions. I will never make you do anything you don’t want to do. Every year at spring training, he got more and more curious, like tell me about this book you’ve been talking about? Like, somebody’s coming around, don’t get too crazy, we’re not there yet, but what it did is, again, he saw that I cared more about him as a person than I cared about being right or about teaching him something. I think that’s just so important. So when you said that, yes, I totally agree with you. I also think that it’s our job to pay attention and not to force things, but to look at the human first and meet them where they are.

Brian  

That’s a great point. That’s a great lesson for anybody who’s trying to communicate. Trying to add value to somebody is not trying to force it down their throats because that doesn’t work with anybody. But it was… who was it…Covey that said, seek first to understand and then be understood. That’s exactly what you did with that person. What a great impact you ended up having on him because of your approach; you’re obviously trained in that. We’re not all psychology or mental performance professionals but that’s a great take-away you offer that I think we can think about and use in all of our conversations. (Lauren:  I agree.) Lauren, we’ve talked a lot about sports but the reality is you don’t have to be an athlete to benefit from improving mental performance. While executives, entrepreneurs, and business owners don’t typically have the same physical demands as athletes, they certainly have other challenges, right? Outside of sports, what kinds of clients do you work with?

Lauren  

Oh, it’s so funny. I never thought I would work in business originally, because I was so hell bent on sports, that then I started to make this transition, especially as I was choosing to move on from baseball solely. I now get to work with Fortune 500 companies, CEOs, executives, entrepreneurs, I mean, you name it, and I feel so fortunate to do it. What I’ve learned is that they are just corporate athletes. A lot of the principles are similar, they’re the same; how we translate them and how we apply them is what’s different. But you can use sports analogies in business, you can use business analogies in sports. It’s so interesting how they kind of crossover. There’s a lot of similarities. I absolutely love to get to work with businesses, because to me, they’re still teams, there’s still a lot of the struggles and competition and mental and emotional demands and challenges that you experience in a business the same way that you do in sports.

Brian  

Tell us about your coaching approach. When a client comes to you, do they know what it is that they want to work on? I guess I’m talking more do you have a certain structure? You did in the Yankees and you mentioned that you plugged into an existing structure. But let’s say in your corporate work, when somebody comes to you, CEO of an organization, do they know what it is that they want to work on? Or is that something that you uncover through evaluation?

Lauren  

So I’d say yes and no. Most of the time they’re coming to me because they know of something that they need to improve. While you’ll always hear me say – and I did not come up with this, Trevor Moawad did – he said, you don’t have to be sick to get better. So I truly, strongly believe in that. But the truth is, most people don’t come to you until they feel there’s some bit of sickness, and so a lot of people come to me with an idea of what they need to work on, or what they need to be seeing from a performance side from their team. What they come to me for is not always the issue. So I would say it doesn’t mean that they’re wrong but sometimes the issue is a little bit more underlying than what they had originally imagined. For instance, I’ll have a CEO that comes to me because he wants to be more confident in the boardroom. Well, it turns out, it’s not as much a confidence issue as it is an issue with their relationship with discomfort. That discomfort that they’re feeling is very similar to the discomfort they feel in other areas of their life. For some, they come to me with an issue with discomfort and their issue really is misalignment in what really matters in their life. So you’d be surprised how we think it’s one thing and I often say this, the problem is rarely the problem, the problem is often our relationship to the problem. So I really want to first understand what are your pain points, because when I can understand where some of the struggles lie; I don’t need the solution. I just need to know where are these struggles are lying, then we can really break down where those relationships lie, what things we need to upgrade, what systems we need to change, and then we can really move forward there. But if your problem is misaligned with your end goal, that is a problem in itself. So a lot of times it’s a deep dive discovery and while what they come to me for is a really good direction, we don’t always end up in the direction that we began.

Brian  

That makes sense. Are there commonalities in what you work on with clients or is it just totally one off, every situation is unique? I mean, I understand every person is unique, every personality is unique, but are there say, two or three common areas that you tend to work on more than anything else with clients?

Lauren  

With one-on-one clients, I tend to work a lot on fulfillment outside of work. A lot of the performers that come to me are very high performing. They have a lot of success, these are people that have bought and sold companies for millions, billions sometimes, and they’re struggling and they don’t know why. Oftentimes, it’s as simple as disregarding their core values. I would say that a lot – for a handful of my CEOs – that is one of the things that I do see, is a misalignment with what really matters in fulfillment. At this point, they’ve had a ton of success and while they still want that success, there’s something missing, and they don’t always know how to put words to it. I would say [another] is confidence. Confidence is a funny thing. It’s a funny thing across the board, because it’s not I didn’t see that in business, but I see it a lot in sports. When people ask me like, oh, what are major leaguers like, what do major leaguers have to struggle with, and I’m like, all the same things, stakes are just different and one of them being confidence. Where that comes from is the lack of sustainability in their results. What ends up happening is that when we lack sustainability, we end up giving up our process, or abandoning our process and what we’ve built that we know works, just to get short term results and short term success but we know that’s not sustainable in the long run. Because it’s one thing to have success, it’s another thing to repeat it. If you look at any system that is successful consistently, you’ll find that there’s a model in place. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t evolve and change, as well, with the times. But there is a system in place that allows that to be. A lot of times we’ll look at that as well. Like you said, you said it very well, it depends on the client, there are definitely similarities across the board with them, some of them have to do with personal stuff, some of them have to do with more team systematic approaches. And some of them has to do with…one team I’m working with right now, it’s all about developing a competitive mindset in the climate that they’re in; they have more competitors than they’ve ever had. To be able to stay on top they’ve got to be really good in a competitive atmosphere and not everybody loves competition; [I] totally get it. Not everybody’s flipping the Monopoly board at home during family game night. It’s not inherent in all of us and that’s okay. You can still be a good competitor and not be that obnoxious person at a family dinner. It’s being able to help develop some of those mental skills that allow us to perform at our best, even when we’re under difficult circumstances.

Brian  

Because you’re talking about confidence, I was thinking about imposter syndrome. How does that fit into what you’re talking about?

Lauren  

A lot of people feel it, especially high performers. Impostor syndrome, an easy thing, because it really stems from that Dunning Kruger effect, where at the very beginning – the Dunning Kruger effect states – at the very beginning, when you’re a novice, sometimes we overestimate our skills, we overestimate how good we are. Then as we get into it, we start to realize – they call it the valley of doubt, where it dips, and it goes like, I don’t know what the heck I’m doing, I’m terrible, what am I doing, I know nothing. Then it kind of goes up a little bit. And it’s, I am good at this but I have limitations. That’s the best place to be in, understanding your circle of knowledge but understanding that even circles have their limits and that we can expand our circle of knowledge but we all have limitations to it. That’s a really healthy place to exist in. A lot of times we get stuck in the all or nothing phase, where we’re either like, oh my gosh, we’re amazing and we’re getting these incredible results, or we don’t have the results we want; I suck, I’m terrible, what am I even doing? We question everything. It’s a very common position to be in. I think where sustainability really lies – and not just in results themselves, but even from a mental perspective and how we view our own results – is understanding that there’s always going to be a limit to them. There’s always going to be a limit to our knowledge; that yes, you can be an expert in whatever you do but there’s always something more to know. You’re never in a position where you can’t improve. I think the best performers know that and know that there is a healthy balance between the two.

Brian  

Say more about that; how do you manage the tension between cutting yourself some slack and not letting off the gas pedal too much? Still continuing to move forward, whatever that means whether it’s continue to be driven, continue to be innovative.

Lauren  

That’s where systems come into play. Because again, a lot of times, we can fall into this trap of resulting. Resulting is a trap where we qualify the decision we make based on the results they produce; aka, if I have a hitter, and he hits a homerun, oh, well, it must be because he did something right. But isn’t it true that you can do everything wrong at the plate and still get a good result? Well, the opposite is true as well, you could totally strike out. A lot of people in the resulting phase would say, oh, well, I suck, I did something wrong. That could be true but you also could have done everything right in your power and it just didn’t work out the way that you wanted. So we have to understand and distinguish the difference between results and decisions; you could have bad results all the while making good decisions, and you can make bad decisions and have good results. So we have to understand where those two things lie. There are a lot of things that are within our control, and a lot of things that are outside of it. When it comes to results, we need to be able to filter through the results in a way that helps us to decide did we make a good decision or not? And we still may not be right. Because the fact is, a lot of times, that’s your own opinion. It’s your own opinion based on the result that you got. However, when we can filter through, we can ask ourselves those tough questions; was this a good decision or just a good result? Were there things within my control, were there things outside of it? Where might my ego be getting in the way of my evaluation? When we start to ask these tough questions, we start to create less of a bias between our own evaluation and the results that we got on the other end. What that does is it takes some of the emotion out of it, where results can be very emotional; when you work really hard and you don’t get the results you want it is difficult, it is a really difficult thing to experience. Also when you work so hard and you do get the result you want, that is an amazing, euphoric feeling that can also blind us from improvement. I think that everything comes in the balance; it’s hard to say what is the perfect balance. I think that comes with each personality and what works best for them which is why I love this field of mental performance, because it’s not a cookie cutter approach, everybody’s puzzle is going to look slightly different. But we can take some things that we know work well with our psychology and our biology and our neurology and we could put them into place, all the while adjusting them and tweaking them for each individual to help them perform at their highest.

Brian  

I think that’s where that external support comes in. That’s where you come in. Because it’s difficult sometimes when you’re in the thick of it to do all those things that you talked about. If you can step away from it and look at it from say, 10,000 feet, and do the evaluation that you just talked about, then that’s great. But we do have ego, we have emotion, we have all kinds of stuff packed into it that sometimes get in the way of us objectively evaluating that. So the service that you provide, or any external support structure, just weighing in and saying, hey, you know what about this, or here’s what I see; that all seems very helpful.

Lauren  

I agree, I totally agree, it’s easy to get sucked into it when you’re so close to it, which is one of the skills that I teach is being able to take a zoomed out approach as well, also knowing when to zoom in, and when to zoom out, when to be in the thick of it, when we need to focus and be really in it, then when we should really take a step back and really evaluate where we’re at before we take our next step. So there is a process of skills that we put in place and systems that help us to determine what our next best step is. Again, it won’t guarantee success but the whole goal is to put us in the best position for it.

Brian  

That’s great. Thanks for sharing that, Lauren. I’d like to ask you about language. How we talk is so important, as you know; the words we use, how we talk to others and to ourselves and the stories we tell ourselves, all have such a tremendous impact on performance. Share your thoughts about this, if you would, and the kinds of things we can do to prepare our minds for peak performance.

Lauren  

You know, you touch on such an important piece; you are the most important person you speak to on a daily basis and your relationship with you matters so much. I was working with this athlete, I was actually working with his team, and I was in the dugout. I had previously spoken to this player before but for whatever reason this day, he wanted nothing to do with me. I’m smart enough to know that I am not for everyone and that’s totally okay. But I had never had this interaction with him before where I would ask him a question and he would provide a one word answer. So I thought it was odd. At first I think okay, well maybe I just haven’t developed a good enough relationship with him or least like not as much as I thought I did. So I was like, I’m going to spend some more time with this player. No matter what I did, he legitimately wanted nothing to do with me. It was very clear. So then I thought, okay, well, that’s okay, totally respect that. But, man, I just hope I haven’t said anything that shifted this. Because like I said, this was the first time I remembered experiencing this with him. I am like, he’s like avoiding me like the plague. I’m trying to get to a one-on-one where I don’t have to say it in front of everybody. So then one day, it’s before a game, I show up to the batting cages early, and I kid you not, he’s there by himself warming up. And I’m like, oh, my god, this poor player probably sees me and is like, I can’t get away from her. I walk up and I tell him, hey, can I ask you a question? And he’s like, sure, what do you got? I said, have I said anything to offend you, I’m not aware of it and this is why I asked. I said, I just don’t remember having this experience with you before where you’re really short with me; if you don’t want to talk to me, man, I respect that and I promise I will give you your space. I just wanted to make sure I didn’t say something to upset you and just wasn’t aware of it. And he goes, oh, no, that’s not it. I was like, great, can you elaborate? And he’s like, yeah, I’m not very good at speaking. And I was like, what do you mean, you’re not good at speaking? He’s like, I am not very good at speaking, especially to authority, so I try to keep it as short as possible. It was before a game so it wasn’t an appropriate time to dissect this so I said, can we talk about this later? He’s like, yeah. So he comes to my office later and I said, can you tell me the first time you ever heard that? He’s like, heard what? I said, that you’re not good at speaking? Either you told yourself that or somebody else told you. It took him a while and then he finally goes, yeah, I remember. It was in elementary school. I used to really struggle reading out loud and whenever the teacher would ask me to read, I would stutter. I would get made fun of by all my classmates, and one day, a teacher even told me, it’s okay, honey, you’re just not very good at speaking. My heart just broke and I asked him, okay, who’s telling you that now? He stopped and he goes, I am. Back then somebody else handed you this belief. Somebody else handed this to you and who’s carrying it? And he’s like, I am. I said, is that who you want to be? And almost relieved, he’s like, no, that’s not who I want to be. I want to be somebody who can raise my hand during your meetings, Lauren. I want to be somebody who could confidently go up to their coach and have a discussion about areas that need to improve. I said, well, that’s great. So I gave him this formula. And the formula is, our identity equals our belief plus actions. His belief was that I’m not very good at speaking. So every time he acted in support of that belief system, he reaffirmed this identity that I am not good at speaking. So I said, well, lucky for you, we can move this formula around, so let’s change it. Your belief equals identity plus actions, so that we have to decide who you want to become. He said, I want to become the type of person who can raise their hand in a group meeting. I want to become the type of person who can approach their coach and ask them questions. Great, now what actions do we need to support that? And he was like, uh oh. I’m like, you can’t just say [inaudible] we got to put this into play now because here’s the thing; you can’t just adopt a belief, we have to provide our brain evidence. The evidence we have to provide is an action. So what we did – he and I did this and to this day, nobody knows we did this – he would come to my office early and I would tell him what I was going to ask and I would help prep his answer. So that when I was ready to ask a question he was ready with his hand raised. We did that every time before I would come to a meeting with his team until he no longer needed to show up and get prepped, because his belief caught up with his actions. And so for anybody listening here, I have to say that yes, the story you tell yourself is so important, because you will never outperform your own belief about you. For him, once he began to upgrade that belief, and he started to act in support of it, his identity began to follow.

Brian  

Lauren, that’s so incredibly powerful. Thank you for sharing that. It’s amazing the words we use, the language we use, the stories we tell ourselves, the story somebody told us when we were five years old, that we’re still telling ourselves 20, 30, 40 years later. As you’ve demonstrated, if we just change the formula, if we change the story, and then start telling a different story, it can make all the difference in our lives. So thanks for sharing that. Lauren, what do you love most about the work you get to do with your clients? 

Lauren  

There’s no greater feeling than watching people become the best versions of them. What I mean by that is that it’s going to look different for everybody. I’m not talking about like winning gold medals or winning World Series; don’t get me wrong, that is awesome, too. But I’m talking about people that overcome the story that has held them back for so long. I’m talking about people that take that step to bet on themselves in their own lives. Talk about people who write that book that they’ve wanted to write for the last ten years, but were too afraid to take the chance. There’s nothing greater than watching people perform at a high level and their high level based on the support of mental performance. So I have to say that watching people succeed at any level is really fun to watch. It fulfills me in so many different ways even if it’s at home, just with being present with their kids. That is a huge win to many. And so those wins, no matter how big or how small, to me all of them there’s nothing greater or more fulfilling for me than that.

Brian  

That’s awesome. Lauren, thank you so much for the value that you add to your clients and thank you for being on the show today. I’ve really enjoyed getting to know you. I’m so grateful for the information that you shared today. Thank you.

Lauren  

Thank you so much for having me. This is so much fun to be a part of.

Brian  

It’s been wonderful. Thanks for tuning into Life Excellence. Please support the show by subscribing, sharing it with others, posting about today’s show with mental performance coach Lauren Johnson, and leaving a rating and review. You can also learn more about me at BrianBartes.com. Until next time, dream big dreams and make each day your masterpiece.