Show Notes

• Current state of mental health in the U.S.
• Mental health in professional sports
• The impact of COVID as a stressor
• Key components to optimal mental health
• We can see a physical injury, but mental health issues are invisible
• The business of sports, and its impact on mental health
• Imagery versus visualization
• Perfectionism versus excellence
• Techniques to achieve peak performance
• Kids and sports

Connect With Lisa Bonta Sumii, LCSW, CSW

Website – https://athmindset.io/
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/lisabontasumii/
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-bonta-sumii-lcsw-csw-5317b31b5/
Twitter – https://twitter.com/BontaLisa
Podcast – https://sportsepreneur.com/se-podcast/

Summary

Lisa Bonta Sumii, LCSW, CSW is a therapist and the CEO and Founder of AthMindset, LLC. She supports elite athletes to achieve optimal mental health and peak mental sport performance. Lisa discusses the general state of mental health in our country, and specific techniques we can all use to achieve peak performance.

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.

Lisa Bonta Sumii is a therapist with over 21 years of clinical experience licensed in both California and Nevada. She’s a private practice clinician and the CEO and founder of AthMindset, LLC. Lisa supports elite athletes to achieve optimal mental health and peak mental sports performance. She works with collegiate student athletes, Olympians and Olympic hopefuls, as well as professional athletes and teams. Lisa has been interviewed and quoted in publications, including Time Magazine and Teen Vogue. She’s appeared on BBC World News. Thanks for joining us, Lisa. It’s great to have you on the show today.

Lisa:

Thanks Brian. Thanks for that very generous introduction. I’m excited to be here.

Brian:

Well, I’m excited to have you. Lisa, before we delve into sports specifically, let’s talk about the general state of mental health in our country. We’re still in the thick of a global pandemic, which obviously has wreaked havoc, not only on the physical health of many people, but also on the way we work, socialize and live. What’s your take on the current state of mental health in the US and how do you see things playing out over the next, say, 12 to 18 months?

Lisa:

In my field with my colleagues, we talk about the mental health crisis is the pandemic after the pandemic. It is the outcome of what COVID has caused. If we even look before COVID, mental health is still very stigmatized, people don’t want to talk about it, don’t understand it, feel like mental health and mental illness are synonymous. So the ongoing conversations like today are very important to break down that stigma to really give proper and accurate information about what mental health is and isn’t. I think there’s a lot of cultural barriers too, about what it means to seek help—what does it mean I’m sick or I am weak. So that was in play way before COVID.

Then we have COVID, the isolation that causes depression, anxiety, the lack of ability to connect with loved ones, one another. We need social contact to survive. When we don’t have that for a long period of time, our mental health will decline. And so we are still dealing with that. There’s even supposed to be another strain coming through of COVID. There’s so much going on, so much that we don’t know, and how we cope, how the support systems we have, the things that we think about, our emotions, are all impacted.

And so in the next 12 to 18 months, I feel like insurance companies, larger stakeholders of mental health services, need to step up and make it more accessible and available to others. And they need to make sure that the therapists who are providing the service are adequately and fairly compensated for their services. Right now, my colleagues and I are all full. That can change, day to day, week to week, but our systems are over impacted. And so we need to be able to meet this need—it’s dire and essential.

Brian:

Do you feel like the need’s greater because of the pandemic? So, it seems like there are new issues. There are people challenged in a way that they weren’t challenged before. And also, like you said, mental health challenges didn’t start with COVID. But do you feel like…so certainly there’s more of an awareness, but it seems like there’s also a greater need. Is that fair to say?

Lisa:

I think so. I think so. I mean, COVID is a major stressor. So the more stressors that impact the human, the more we have to rise to that occasion to cope. And so it’s not just a health stressor, it’s a social stressor, it’s an overall level of anxiety about, am I going to get it, are my kids going to get it, are my friends, family going to get it? Am I going to get it? Or I’ve had a parent or loved one die from it. So it’s a major, major stressor. And a lot of us don’t know how to deal with it, because it’s something that I think repeats in history. It’s been centuries since we’ve had to deal with something like this. And so it adds to it. It doesn’t then re-ignite a non-existing mental health issue, it just exacerbates it.

Brian:

So is there any historical context for how you treat that or how professionals in the mental health area treat it? I know we’re looking back to like the Spanish flu in the early 1900s for some context and maybe some hope in getting through this. Is there material that helps mental health professionals navigate through this?

Lisa:

I think there’s always…the CDC data about like where it’s been hit the hardest. For me since I’m licensed in California and Nevada, the athletes that I see here, it’s just like any other way I would deal with a major stressor. It’s learning how that athlete deals with it from their perspective, how they view it, how they see it, how they’ve been impacted. So it’s still a very rigorous, intentional assessment process. And we consider COVID as another, as I’m saying, a stressor, and what that means to that particular athlete. I can line up ten athletes and it can mean something different to each of those people. And so I treat them for where they’re at.

Brian:

I know in my own circle, I’ve noticed that some people are thriving—you sort of alluded to this—some people are thriving despite everything that’s going on, because like you said, it’s another stressor, just like maybe a death in the family that comes through heart attack or cancer or something like that, while other people are struggling tremendously. What advice are you giving your clients and even your friends and family about how to navigate through the current environment and cope with all the uncertainty that’s going on right now?

Lisa:

I think that the key components to optimal mental health are how we think, how we feel, and how we behave. So being able to positively impact our own thoughts, being able to exercise tools and strategies to impact our emotions into the desired place we want to be. And then, because those two things together impact how we behave, choosing the most healthy behaviors as possible. There’s lots of ways people are coping right now that aren’t healthy—drugs, alcohol, isolation, other addictive behaviors that then manifest and exacerbate depression and anxiety. So we want to keep those manageable and at bay as much as possible. So knowing what is self-care for you and what you need to do to take care of your mental health. I want to make sure that everybody’s going outside at least once a day. I want to make sure that people are having eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, if possible, that they’re eating healthfully, not dipping into disordered eating—anything like that—that they are able to connect with a loved one at least every day, and that they’re able to feel like they can impact their negative thoughts with positive ones. By simply—the one technique I use is thought stopping—the minute someone has a negative thought, literally just say, stop, and like move to the positive counter of that and stay there, as soon as possible. Because the more you dip down into that black hole, as they say, it’s harder to recover. And to express your emotions, whether that’s with a professional, or a loved one, a friend—express the truth of them. If you keep your emotions down, they’re just going to feed anxiety and feed depression and make that less manageable. So not to judge what your feelings are, just name them. You don’t have to act on them, because then if you’re able to do that, you’re less likely to do behaviors that are undesired or that aren’t healthy for you.

Brian:

It seems like there’s an internal component, so how we’re thinking, how we’re feeling, how we’re reacting to things, but then there are a lot of external factors as well, like the media, even talking with other people and having their feelings and emotions and opinions expressed. And then there’s social media. Can you address the external forces and how that plays into this?

Lisa:

I think that they are stressors just like COVID, but just in a different degree. With media, social media, there’s not death in play, or the fear of death or sickness from a physical standpoint, but I feel like there’s threat of a mental health decline if we don’t know how to manage the media or social media. I think that a lot of my athletes who—and all of them are mostly, depending on age—have a social media account, it’s about managing expectations of what social media is and what it isn’t. So many athletes can make it personal, that how someone likes or comments on my posts determines how they feel about me as a human. And so having conversations about that. You are a full multi-dimensional human that exists regardless of the external factors, but some have more grit are able to handle that and some aren’t. So we bring in the skills:  boundaries, the time that you look at your accounts, the time that you don’t—so having a time limit there, seeing it as one perspective, not the perspective, considering the source—is it someone you know or someone who you don’t know, and how does that land? I think managing the media—if it’s not social as well, like in Naomi Osaka’s case just recently—being able to practice boundaries, have a support system, someone who supports you in navigating these external stressors, and being able to say what works for you, what doesn’t, [all of] which is now happening more and more. I think [all of this] is really important, but with both of them [media and social media] I think the key things are having boundaries, having a limit, and a time to be in it, but then a time to really be out of it, and make sure it doesn’t take over your life too much.

Brian:

That’s all really terrific advice. I wish that everybody could hear what you just said over the last couple of minutes, because I think that would change tremendously. It wouldn’t fix everything, but it would certainly help, wouldn’t it? Lisa, in your practice, and you’ve talked about this already, you work with elite athletes and there’s always been pressure on athletes to compete, to perform, to win. And yet we’re witnessing things that we’ve never seen before in professional and Olympic sports, and you mentioned one of them, tennis player, Naomi Osaka announcing earlier this year that she’d no longer meet with the media after matches. And then, of course, she withdrew from the French Open and then from Wimbledon, and then saying that she planned to take a break from the sport altogether after losing an early round match at the US Open. And then in the Tokyo Olympics, we had a couple of very high profile incidents occurring in very close proximity. In the Tokyo Olympics, gymnast, Simone Biles, withdrew from the women’s gymnastics team finals saying she had to focus on her mental health and not jeopardize either her health or well-being. I don’t recall mental health ever being at the forefront of sports the way it has been this year. What’s going on?

Lisa:

Those are a great timeline, mentioning both Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka. I think that it’s been a gradual progression. I don’t think it’s just been all of a sudden, right now. Like if we look back, Michael Phelps, The Weight Of Gold, he co-produced that movie, it’s been coming…it was less mainstream and then more and more gradually becoming more mainstream. And I think the more that athletes of influence and athletes at the forefront can speak about the honest experience of mental health, I think it’s really great for everyone. It’s really great for [the idea of] I want to normalize it, to be able to see that even the GOAT, like Simone Biles, can be able to say that I was struggling. She was going through multiple stressors at that time as well. When that first came out, they just said Simone Biles was having some troubles or some issues—they didn’t really say. I remember wondering, is it physical or is it mental? That’s the way my mind thinks. And if it’s mental, are they going to say so? It came out that she wasn’t able to perform. She thought maybe she’d hurt herself gravely if she did perform. And that same week when she pulled out, her aunt who raised her had passed away. And so she’s dealing with the grief of that being all the way in Tokyo, not being near her—getting this news is going to exacerbate the ability to stay focused and perform when there’s that huge stress on her heart and her own mental health in general.

So I think it’s been a progression. I don’t think it’s been an all of a sudden like, oh, lets everybody talk about it. I think when one talks about it, the next one does, it just becomes more and more a conversation and something I think that the athletes don’t usually think about or have because of the implications around “you’re weak or you’re sick” if you say this. So it’s an opportunity for us to educate and provide accurate information about what mental health is.

Brian:

Do you think there’s historically been a negative stigma around the admission of, say, mental health struggles? I mean, I don’t want to call them issues, but you mentioned Michael Phelps and The Weight Of Gold documentary, and it’s no secret that he’s struggled with mental health issues. Alison Schmidt is another swimmer, actually from here in Michigan, so I’m aware of her, not everybody might be aware of her situation—same situation where there were struggles. Why is it now that it’s coming out more, that it’s being more accepted? Is it again, not to bring COVID back into it, but is it a convergence, sort of the perfect storm, of lots of things happening at the same time that result in this awareness, the increased awareness, around mental health issues, but also more of an acceptance in sports?

Lisa:

I wonder, because not everyone accepts it. Each one of these people that we’ve mentioned, Simone Biles, Naomi Osaka, Michael Phelps—there’s been also the other side of the coin—people who are saying that they are weak, they’re saying that you’ve done this all your life, you should be able to perform, why can’t you? So it’s not fully accepted and I think that’s troublesome, but not everyone can get around to it, hopefully more so. But they’ve had to deal with a lot of backlash, all of them, from different entities and stakeholders, about it. I think that this generation is more open to inclusivity as a whole, including mental health. So there’s just more language around like even gender identification, sexual orientation, there’s pronouns, there’s much more openness and inclusivity in general, in our conversations, in ways that that were not around when I was a kid. So I think there’s a progression there that amplifies the ability for us to have conversations about mental health in a more non-stigmatized way.

Brian:

So for those people on the other side of the coin, to use your phrase, what’s still missing? I remember when Naomi withdrew from the French Open, and one of the thoughts that people expressed, and you alluded to it, but this is saying it a little different way—look, she’s earning millions of dollars playing tennis, she’s paid and is gladly accepting huge sums of money for sponsorships. That’s a choice. And the pressure of being put under the spotlight and all that goes with fame and fortune is the cost of playing at that level. It’s the choice that a professional athlete, an elite athlete, an Olympic athlete makes. What are the critics who are saying things like that, not fully appreciating?

Lisa:

They’re not fully appreciating what mental health is, and what impacts mental health. Like I said earlier, these athletes are human too. They’re not just robots for our entertainment. They’re not just slabs of meat to jump when we say jump. They’re lacking compassion, empathy, and the recognition that these are human beings. I think there’s still that mistake that mental health is the same as mental illness, and it’s not. So if someone…and I’m going to break that down, if you don’t mind, Brian, I think that there’s a continuum. Everyone has mental health, just like we all have physical health—everyone. So that’s the first statement that people are like, what? Oh, okay, never thought about it like that. So there are stressors that can happen to the body to have physical decline, like a strain or a break or a pull, a lighter stressor. Just like with mental health, we can have a lighter stressor and it can cause us to have a bad day, then we go down the continuum:  larger, more intense stressors impact more. But the thing is, just like with physical health, we have tools and strategies that we can use to mitigate the impact. So for physical health, I’m going to make sure I stretch and hydrate and get a good night’s sleep and eat well so when I go compete, it’s going to help me protect myself from injury. The same thing with mental health, there are certain things that we can do just like what we talked about earlier in our talk:  to be outside, eat, hydrate, do the things that we can to mitigate that as well as the boundaries, self-care tools, positive thinking, positive behaviors, all of those things can help impact it. So I want people to more and more see it as the holistic human [who] has financial health, spiritual health, physical, mental health—it’s all health. And there are things that can come in to have it decline. So I think there’s a misunderstanding for that other side of folks who don’t get that and don’t appreciate it.

Brian:

Well, and I think even athletes struggle with that, don’t they? Part of what must be challenging for them is that so much of sports is about overcoming adversity, continuing to push even when things aren’t going well. So how do you reconcile that with your clients and with athletes, even those who aren’t your clients? How do you reconcile that with the need for mental and physical well-being? What is an athlete supposed to do to balance those seemingly conflicting dynamics?

Lisa:

Each athlete’s different. I have athletes who have played through physical injury the entire season—I don’t have a chance to heal, I got to play through, because this is what I want to do, this is my choice for my body. I’m going to play through, I’m going to get treatment. I’m going to do what I can to mitigate severe injury, but I want to be out there with my team. I want to play. Some are like, I need extra treatment and this amount of weeks before I go back, because I know I’m more than just a player in my life. I’m a father, I’m a husband. So it depends on their context and their environment about how they make choices for their own bodies. They’re going to get certain amount of direction from their coach, the athletic trainer, the goal-keeper coach if they’re a goal-keeper in specific, or whoever, but in the end, these guys want to play and they’ll do anything to play.

Sometimes they don’t want to recognize that there’s a mental health stressor. I’ve a couple of guys who were super anxious, but that’s just who they are—they take it out on the field. When they play it’s actually an escape and safe space for a lot of them, away from life’s troubles, to be out there and just be free and not think about it. They’re actually more mentally healthy when they’re out there than when they’re outside [the field]. Again, they’re all human beings, individual and unique. So it depends on who you’re talking to about how they deal with it. But in my field, I can offer strategies, perspectives, tools, skills, to help them with how they perform in their life and on the field, if they’re open to it and want it. It’s training too, you can’t just say, okay, here’s a skill, you’re good, bye—you have to train on the mental skills just like you do the physical skills. It’s not just a one-off thing.

Brian:

I like the way you describe…the physical part, we understand, so a physical injury, for example, and saying that mental health is just another part of it. So we have our physical body, we have our brain and the mental part of our body, and both are important. It seems like we—for whatever reason—understand the physical part of it much more than we do the mental part of it.

Lisa:

Brian, we can see it, the physical injury, we can see it. It’s concrete. Oh, there. Even if you’re not a doctor, you can see them limping or a bruise or swelling or a way that they’re not performing like they used to. So, oh, I can see it, it’s confirmed. Mental health issues are invisible and the onset and progression of them are not seen by the naked eye. Some people say that people are lying when they say they have a struggle, or to manipulate a situation or something. So I think it’s harder because there’s just not enough talk about it. It’s invisible. We can’t confirm it [inaudible] trained professional.

Brian:

That’s a great one, that’s a great point. Lisa, do you think, as a society, we are prioritizing winning over mental health still, and if we are, what can we do to improve that going forward?

Lisa:

The answer is yes. Our country is—I want to say a better word—but, money-driven, [laughter]. What’s the word for that, Brian, I’m want to think of a fancy word.

Brian:

Greed. [Laughter]

Lisa:

That’s one. When money’s involved, especially at the high level sports, professional sports, money is what it takes to run their business. Sports teams are business, and athletes who play professional sports are often commodified and paid for what they can produce, what they can do with their bodies. So, until that is adjusted and that’s gosh, been with us for generations, and like the owners, it’s been with them for generations. When we can value a person’s mental health, just as much as we can the money they make off of their brains and their bodies then maybe we have something, but we’ve got to be patient, it’s a slow churn. That’s what I wanted to say. We live in a capitalistic society, so not a mental health aware or interested society. And so money’s always going to win because we are rewarded for that. We’re not really rewarded for saying I have a positive mental health, or great mental health. We’re not rewarded for that. And so…

Brian:

Right. And excuse me, just to clarify that, so it’s not really about a capitalist society, it’s about a money-driven society, right? Because when you look at what’s going on in China or what’s going on in Russia or North Korea, the same dynamic exists. So it’s not…capitalism is an economic system, but it really is money driven, it’s power driven. It is a business. And even when the government is the head of the business, or the head of the Olympic team, there is stature and bragging rights and notoriety and all of those things that come along with it, isn’t there?

Lisa:

Oh, so I was right the first time—money-driven. [Laughter]

Brian:

Absolutely. It’s a business though, you said it’s a business, and that’s absolutely correct. Lisa, let’s switch gears so we can learn more about the work you’re doing in your practice with elite athletes. What are some of the specific techniques you use to help athletes achieve peak performance?

Lisa:

Well, the key for any athlete, no matter what age or sport, is for them to be able to access their zone, their optimal area for them. And so in depth, really curated, individualized assessment, because some people do very, very well and can reach their zone when there’s a lot of anxiety. Some can’t do it when there’s a lot of anxiety. So I need to learn—the athlete in front of me—about what moves them, what helps them stay in that zone whether it is calming down or invigorating up. So once I know, then I can put in tools. But I want to hear their full story as a human, their story as an athlete, injuries, other stressors, things like that so I can get the full picture. Then we implement tools, strategies from there. It’s athlete centered, so whatever they want to work on first is where we’ll go.

So let’s say an athlete wants to work on, let’s say a soccer player or a footballer—depending on where you are in this world—wants to decrease anxiety at penalty kicks. So I try to understand what goes on for them physiologically, psychologically, cognitively. And then I put in some tools. So in this case, if they’re feeling too anxious, we want to make sure that their walk-up routine is the same every time. So the routine is a stabilizing thing that they’re in control of. They can’t control the fans, they can’t control who kicked before them, who kicked after them, what the score is right now—it’s the routine that stabilizes them. So that walk up routine needs to be the same every time. And if they don’t have one, we can create one together. And then the approach to the ball needs to be the same every time:  some stutter, some go right at it, some go angle, some of those straight, like, what is yours? And then you pick where you want the ball to go—this corner up right, up left, down, wherever you want to go. No matter what is there, you’re in control of your approach and your strategy.

So making sure that they know that and find power in that. That actually calms the brain, calms a physiological response to stress and it’s in their control. And then we go. Then you go execute and see where it lands. That routine, the breathing is included in there, what you’re thinking about is included in all of that, to make sure you’re in that place where it is automatic, you walk up and it’s automated. That’s what we want to get. When it’s automated, then you’re in the zone. You feel great, everything’s going right.

And so there are also things we can do away from the actual PK (penalty kick) to rep to get ready for it one day when you might be doing this imagery. So imagery involves all senses, not just vision, like a visualization. So it’s what we feel, what we hear, what we taste, what we see, and we create an image of how we want it to go. And then we rehearse that over and over and over again. So the brain does not know the difference between whether you’re rehearsing it mentally or practicing it physically. It’s also great to use when you’re injured or off-season or can’t practice outside because it’s snowing or something, that you can mentally rehearse how you want that particular experience to be. So those are just some tools and skills that I use.

Brian:

And so talk a little bit more, if you would, about imagery in terms of frequency. I’m familiar with visualization, and so I really appreciate how you described imagery as being all the senses, rather than say, just closing your eyes and visualizing that PK going into the net. But how does that work practically speaking? So is that something that you have athletes do every day or multiple times a day, what does that look like?

Lisa:

It depends on the demand of that athlete’s life and the time of season that we’re in. So we train differently depending if we’re pre-season, in-season, or post-season, what those weeks look like, what your obligations as a human are. But if you did that, if you created your imagery script, so you have it, you could either record your own voice or some voice that you like—a family member or coach—and listen to it while you’re doing your chores, while you’re on a run, while you’re cleaning your car or whatever. Or you can just read it out loud to yourself in the mirror. It depends. We try it and then we mix it up. A lot of athletes now are so dedicated and determined. They’re probably going to do it every day, that’s just how they work. And I say, you don’t have to, we can try every other day. But when they vibe with it, they want to keep doing it. And there’s no harm in that. There’s no risk for injury if you mentally rehearse, so it’s good and you don’t need to really be fed or be hydrated. You can do it for just a few minutes and there’s impact just in that. But the more we rehearse, the more it gets embedded in our brain. So whatever’s realistic for that athlete, I’ll just say that.

Brian:

And I’m guessing with your background in training, you probably know the clients who are going to do it more frequently than others.

Lisa:

And then I have to assess, is this perfectionism, is this overachieving, what is this? And so we have a conversation about that. I try to understand that with them, what’s going on here. Like, it’s not required, but if you want to do it this way, tell me more about how come you want to do it this way? And so then I learn more about them—it’s a win-win.

Brian:

Can you tease that out a little bit? So I’m glad you brought that up, the distinction between, let’s say, perfectionism and excellence. Why is one really good and the other is potentially harmful? And how do you work with clients in making sure that they’re pursuing excellence, but not perfectionism?

Lisa:

I think the key between perfectionism and excellence is process and performance goals over outcome goals. So perfectionism is always about, I want to achieve that outcome. I want to be that, do that, have those points, score those goals, whatever, and that people can do things that are harmful to themselves to get there. And they can have a lot of anxiety around whether they can get there or not. And a lot of self doubt, a lot of negative beliefs, just lack of confidence can come when they don’t meet those outcome goals. And then it goes back to what we’re talking about, social media. Then they see themselves as a bad person if they’re not perfect there.

Excellence can be as determined by the athlete themselves, self-defined internal definition, not an outcome, external definition, but around process. If I want to run a marathon I am going to start—even that elite athlete—slowly, so I prevent injury. So I make my process goals:  this week, I’m going to run ten miles, next week I’m gonna run 20, whatever my coach and I decide. It’s performance. Then we know we’re going to get there. So we’re putting our best effort, we’re being positive, we’re being excellent, we’re performing in excellence to get, and then that outcome will come as we continue to strive. Write them down—the process and the performance, the technique, the tactics—are all documented. That’s really important because then you get that feedback that, okay, I’m making progress, even though the outcome is way over there, there’s still progress. And every time we get a reward and we see that progress and then our brains get happy and our mood is happy. So every time we can reward that, it helps us stay motivated to the end.

Brian:

So just to make sure I understand it clearly, the outcome goal, isn’t inherently bad. It’s how we go about pursuing it, is that fair to say?

Lisa:

If we focus on the outcome too much, it can be bad. Because then we don’t appreciate the process along the way. I mean, the end, we have a long-term goal—I want to win or I want to get to play-offs. So it’s there, it’s aiming there. What are the ways that I want to get there and how do I feel about myself on the road to get there? I think perfectionism can get damaging when we feel bad about ourselves if we don’t get there, our impatience, that type of thing.

Brian:

Right, I completely understand that. But for an Olympic athlete, the outcome goal is the gold medal. So I’m sure you’re not suggesting that it’s bad to have that as the desired outcome.

Lisa:

No, not at all.

Brian:

It’s the goal of being in the Olympics, but I do appreciate that depending on what the process goals look like, what performance looks like along the way, I think that’s when, maybe there’s a fork in the road and if you go left, then that can turn into perfectionism. And if you go right and focus on the process and focus on the performance outcomes, then that’s excellence versus perfectionism?

Lisa:

It’s not so linear, but yes. I think to only have an outcome goal, as work gets tough, it’s not as healthy. Then again, it goes back to if I don’t get the gold medal and I was saying I was going to do that. Then—I’m not saying this lightly—but then I go into a deep depression because I didn’t, or down the road of wanting to do something dire to myself because now I’m nothing. So we don’t want that. We don’t want it attached to who you are as a human, but we want to be able to focus on the process, knowing that if you take your process, you will meet your goal.

Brian:

That totally makes sense. Lisa, we’re talking about Olympic athletes and elite athletes and professional athletes, and yet most of our listeners and viewers are not professional or Olympic athletes. And yet I know that the tools and strategies used in sports psychology, some of the things that we’ve been talking about, that you’ve described, can also be applied to other vocations and even in our personal lives. How can we apply what you’ve shared to improve performance in our own lives, whether we’re talking about in our workplace, in our professions or in other areas of our personal lives?

Lisa:

Absolutely. I think the beauty of these sport performance mental skills are they’re life skills. They just have different words in the athletic world and the sport world. So I can see anyone using imagery. Imagery if they have a zoom presentation they need to do, imagery around a student needing to take an exam coming up—imagining what that experience is going to be, doing a big talk in front of the boss or a big speaking engagement. Anything where there’s performance imagery can help, even like a wedding, which is kind of a performance too. But anytime that you don’t feel a hundred percent steady in it, you can imagine what you want it to be, and bring in all your senses. That can definitely be used. I think, process goals, for sure. Like I want to be the VP one day. Okay. So what do we want to do today and every day to stay true to our process? Write them down and meet them, be rewarded and keep going until you get to be VP.

As a parent, I think it’s super important to also make sure that we are speaking positively to ourselves—the negative thinking and the doubt come in a lot. We’re not born with a parenting handbook. It’s not given to us when we get our baby, like here’s what you do. There are so many ways we second guess ourselves and wonder if we did this right, or are they okay? We have to say, we do our best, we’re human. We do our best to give them the tools of life and then be encouraging, nonjudgmental and just super compassionate while still pushing them towards what they want to fight for. So I think that these all can be used in all the different identities that we have as humans, in different roles that we play, for sure.

Brian:

Sure. Now you played sports when you were younger and you have a daughter, I believe, who’s also in sports. Can you tell us about how it’s different for your daughter growing up, and I’m not sure how old she is, but how it’s different her playing in sports in today’s world with social media, with the pressure, everything that we’ve been talking about, externally and internally. How that’s different from when you were her age, and maybe share professionally some things that if you could wave a magic wand and make sports in our younger people a certain way, what would that look like? It’s a different world today, as you know and were talking about parenting, and I thought you were going to start to talk about children, but you’re really talking about the parenting side of it. And the reality is, as you know, it’s very different. Not only is there competitive pressure from coaches and from teammates internally, but it seems like there’s more parental pressure than ever before. In spite of the very limited number of children who will get to ever be in the Olympics or play professional sports, or even compete at an elite level in athletic competition, it seems like just about every parent thinks that his or her daughter or his or her son is going to be one of those people. And of course that brings a tremendous amount of pressure and interesting dynamics, and all kinds of videos on social media around parents who take that too far.

Lisa:

Totally. I think there’s a lot in play with this. When I was a kid playing, anyone, from any background—it was soccer—could play, this is a universal global sport. You need something you can kick, it could be a can, a wad of paper—everywhere in the world there’s something that you can kick and then shoot it into a certain goal, however you created or design it. It was fun. There wasn’t a lot of pressure, there wasn’t a lot of hope that I would play beyond high school or even college. We didn’t have the organized semi-pro, pro leagues that the women have now. So…

Brian:

Probably—excuse me—there probably wasn’t even the thought that that would be a possibility, right? That’s not where our heads were at, at the time. We were enjoying the sport, having fun, playing with our friends.

Lisa:

I did play organized and I did play competitively. I was able to travel. But back then, when we traveled, we’d stay with host families. You, and a couple of players, would stay with a player and their family. And then when they came to your town to compete, you reciprocated. Now that my girl’s 14—she’s been playing competitively since she was nine—we have to pay a lot of money to just play:  for the team, travel, expense, the hotels, her professional lessons which she has a lot of on the defense, on the offense. She has her own sports psychologist. It’s all this stuff. I’m like, as long as she’s having fun, she better keep having fun or else we’re not doing it. Because a lot of times it ain’t fun for me. I mean, I love it. I love sports. I love watching her play, but there’s a grind to it. All our family vacations are around her tournaments and things like that. I wouldn’t have it any other way, but if she were not the first one up before us for a 6:00 AM tournament, I would question it. She’s always up. She’s waking us up. She’s doing her laundry. She’s making sure her uniform is done. She’s looking on TeamSnap to make sure she has the right location so she knows, she’s not depending on us. So if she didn’t have that way about it, taking control, accountability, being the one in charge, having fun still, enjoying her teammates, looking forward to the next opportunity to contribute, then I’d be like, we’re not going to do this. But she’s young, she’s only 14. There could be a day when she says, I don’t want to do this anymore. And that’s okay, you can do whatever you want. If you want to do it, we’ll make it happen. As long as we still see it’s healthy for you, we’ll make it happen.

But I didn’t have to think about all this stuff. I didn’t even have these conversations with my parents growing up in the sport. It’s, again, there’s a monetization to it now. People are like, oh, if you play this sport, you get a scholarship to college, we don’t have to pay for it, et cetera, et cetera. But then again, you have to pay to play, I mean, softball has a lot of equipment, right? What happens to those kids who want to play who don’t have the money to support all of that gear and to play at a level that maybe they could athletically or in their heart desire to be but they just can’t because there’s no access? It’s just the monetization of it is the biggest difference, I think, right now.

Brian:

Sure. So what advice do you have for parents who have children who are playing in sports and what advice do you have for kids?

Lisa:

The advice is the same—have fun. For both sides, have fun, have fun. Nothing is that serious. And parents don’t put that pressure on your kid to be the one to finance their own college. I don’t know if I’m going to be popular in saying this, but that’s the parent’s responsibility to put your kids through college. Don’t put that on them and say, oh, you can’t go because we don’t have enough money. Or this is where we plan for you to go so we need to talk about you accepting that. So I think that’s important. I think parents should not live their unrealized sport dreams on their kids, and have a self-awareness about where is this urgency coming from to be this, or do that? What is it about you that you might be projecting onto your kid inadvertently, like, take a close look at that.

And I think kids, if something goes awry on the playing field and the dugout or somewhere, tell someone. Keep having fun, be empowered—just because they’re an adult does not mean that they always have your best interest—be aware of that. And know to trust other adults until they give you a reason not to, you’re being raised by coaches too, not just your parents, depending on what level you’re playing, you’re around a lot of adults. And so ask for help, ask for understanding. I guess those would be the things.

Brian:

That’s all great advice and I really appreciate that. Lisa, how can our listeners and viewers learn more about you?

Lisa:

Thanks for asking. I have a website, AthMindset.io. I also actually just started my own podcast series, so that’s pretty cool, under my production company, which is sportse.io. I’m also on Instagram, at Lisa Bonta Sumii Clubhouse. I’m doing talks on there. You can find me under my name. But those would be the great ways. Instagram, I tell everyone I always return a DM. I always will. It might not be in the most timely manner, but anyone who contacts me, I will always return your message.

Brian:

Awesome. Lisa, good luck with your podcast and thanks so much for joining us today. You’re doing great work and I really appreciate the valuable information that you’ve provided today. Thanks for being on the show.

Lisa:

Thanks so much, Brian. I really had a great time and thank you so much for having me.

Brian:

Happy to have you.

Thanks for tuning into Life Excellence. Please support the show by subscribing, sharing it with others, posting on social media about today’s show with sports psychologist, Lisa Bonta Sumii, 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.