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“BEEP BEEP BEEP,”

Your alarm goes off yet again. You’re feeling exhausted, unable to open your eyes. Rolling over your fingers hit the snooze button instantly, it’s a reflex by now.

As you roll over and lay back down to fall asleep your inner dialogue begins the usual debate every morning you set your alarm to get up and work out.

“You need more sleep.”
“No, get up!”
“Your body could use the rest.”
“No it doesn’t, you’ve been slacking too much.”
“But my bed is so warm and cozy.”
“You know you’ll be upset with yourself if you don’t get up.”
“I could work out later.”
“You always say that, but you know you never do.”

All of this back and forth conversation is essentially wasting time where you could be getting up and forcing yourself out the door to workout OR even going back to sleep.

I know I have this inner dialogue battle with myself, especially when for my 5 am workouts. The colder and darker the mornings become, the harder it is, especially With fall approaching. If you struggle with this inner dialogue battle as well below are 4 tips and tricks to continue or start your habit of waking up to your alarm clock, getting out of bed, and hitting the gym.

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1) BE PREPARED.

~ Make sure that you are well prepared so that you do not have any reason to climb back into bed. Have your workout clothes set beside your bed ready to be thrown on, or better yet go to bed in the clothes you want to work out in! I often do this and it serves as a reminder to get my butt out of bed because otherwise if I sleep in I wake up in my workout clothes and the guilt creeps in.

~ If you are like me and need your coffee in the morning, set it to auto brew so that as soon as you wake up your coffee is fresh and hot for you to drink a cup or fill up a mug on your way out the door. This saves a lot of time and assists me in getting up knowing that I have my hot coffee waiting for me.

~ Know what workout you’re going to do beforehand. When you wake up your mind can be groggy and having to decide on a workout is hard to do. If you have it prepared and ready to go from the night before it’ll take less mental strength that you can save throughout the workout.

2) CREATE AFFIRMATIONS.

~ These powerful and positive statements will help you battle the negative self-talk. Write out affirmations such as, “You Got This!” “You Have Goals.” “Win the Day” to serve as reminders to get up and win your morning the best you can. It’ll boost your motivation and provide statements to overcome the other thoughts that are tempting you to stay in bed.

~ Memorize self-affirmations so that when the negative self-talk kicks in you can talk back to it in your mind. Repeat these statements over and over until it is powerful enough to get you up and moving.

3) CHANGE/MOVE YOUR ALARM.

~ I recently have been struggling to get up and created a bad habit of shutting off my alarm instantly without thinking. I realized that the alarm sound just wasn’t doing it for me. I listened to several other options and decided on a different alarm that is longer and starts off quietly while gradually getting louder so that I am not jolted awake in annoyance and attempt to turn it off right away. This way I wake up more slowly and relaxed to start off my day.

~ Mornings that I can’t risk sleeping in, such as when I teach a morning class, I will also set my alarm on my Fitbit tracker. I love doing this because my tracker will vibrate on my wrist, which is a for sure way to wake me up.

~ Move your alarm clock/phone across the room. This will force you to get up and move if you want to snooze your alarm and sleep in. 9 times out of 10 when this happens I end up staying up since I already am out of bed and am less likely to crawl back into bed.

4) REWARD YOURSELF.

~ I recently read the book The Power of Habit and it discusses the habit loop, which is how habits are created. First, there’s a cue that causes you to follow through with your routine then you receive your reward. If your habit is to hit the snooze button and not get out of bed, figure out what reward you are getting from that routine. Whatever the reward is you have to provide the same reward when you do your new routine in order for it to stick. Maybe the reward is more sleep or being able to have a relaxing morning. To change your habit to working out in the morning and to gain the same reward maybe you need to go to bed earlier to get more sleep, or workout early enough where you have time afterward to relax and watch the news, read, or whatever it is you want to do. Identify the reward of snoozing your alarm and make sure you reward yourself after your new routine.

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Remember to show self-compassion as well.

There will be days that you won’t get up and that you need more sleep. Recovery is important as well. Some weeks you’ll rock at getting up and working out, others may be a struggle.

Just remember that each morning is a new chance to win the day. Do your best to stick with your new routine and it’ll become a habit sooner than you know!

If you coach your child in athletics, you know from experience the added struggles and stress that go along with that dual-relationship.

There are many highlights such as being able to see your child improve, being there for them at practices and games, and seeing them interact with their peers in a way you might not otherwise be able to witness. A study by Weiss & Fretwell, 2005 concluded that in youth soccer coaching your child was found to be beneficial for the parent as well as the child.

Although there can be many added benefits to coaching your child, there are also challenges, arguments, and difficulties; especially as they get older. Poor practices and games are carried home to the dinner table, the child might become upset with the parent’s coaching style and not want to speak to them, or the parent provides either too much attention or not enough attention at practice to either be harder on the child or to not seem like they are providing an unfair amount of attention to their child for the other player’s sake.

Youth sports thrive because parents offer to coach. The problem is that some athletes put a lot of pressure on themselves to perform well for their coach, as well as their family members who support them and watch them compete. When an athletes’ parent is also their coach, the athlete adds more pressure on themselves to succeed because letting their coach down means also letting down a parent. The idea of failure becomes even scarier.

Not only does the coaching parent see the athlete as their player, but they also see their child. What parent doesn’t want their child to succeed? So, maybe as a coach you become harder on the athlete who is your child, out of love. Or out of fairness so that the other players don’t feel like you are giving your child preferential treatment. As a coaching parent it seems like the correct choice, but in reality, it may be driving a wedge in the relationship with your child.

The issue here is that the child may feel their coach/parent is treating them unfairly and is hurt by the higher expectations and feel they can never measure up. This disrupts their confidence in their abilities, jealousy and resentment towards you and their teammates for how their coach/parent is treating others, and comparison of other players (which is never healthy).

If you are a parent/coach you probably can relate to many of the above scenarios. Practice bleeds into home life and there can become a drift or a wedge between you and your child. You are trying to do what you think is best for them, and you aren’t faulted in that! There are, however, different strategies that you can implement to help your child differentiate seeing you from coach and parent.

Here are some examples:

1) Establish expectations and boundaries.

Before you decide to coach your child have a discussion about what it will look like or what will be expected. Tell your child your role as the coach and the specific boundaries that will happen so that neither you nor your child will be confused about your role as coach and how that will change the dynamic of your relationship during practices and games.

2) Have your child tell you if they need you to be their coach or parent.

Let them know that you are going to allow them to tell you if they want to be talking to you as their parent or as their coach. Do not make that decision for them. There will be times that the coach role is more appropriate (like in games and practice) and times the parent role is more appropriate (like at home or after games.) Let your child tell you if they want to process practice or a game with you instead of your choosing.

3) At home, leave the sport-talk and coaching to a bare minimum.

Instead of bringing up practice drill or critiques at the dinner table or whenever you want to discuss it, tell your child that you will try your best to not bring up discussions about practice unless your child wants to. This will provide your child a “safe place” to avoid being criticized and instead be able to unwind and discuss other topics besides practice and games.

4) Emphasize to your child what role you are coming from.

When you are discussing something with your child tell them what role you are in. Sometimes the child may not know and if you are critiquing them at practice they might see you in the parent lens and become frustrated and upset. If you pull them aside and tell them you are coming from the coach role they will more likely to listen and manage their emotions.

5) Wear or do something to assist your child in perceiving you in each role.

There will be times that you might tell the child what role you are coming from and do everything the best you can to differentiate the two different roles for your child and it still falls flat. At times it is best to wear something that will help the child visually see you different, thus seeing you in each role. For example one of my mentors wore a hat with his kid when he was the coach but took it off when he was parenting. When you are speaking from the coach role put the hat on and take it off when you are speaking from the parent role. This visual will help your child differentiate what role they are seeing you from.

6) At practice, give them some space.

Sometimes your child simply does not want to be critiqued by you at all. As a parent, this is challenging because you want the best for your child and you want them to improve. From a coaching standpoint, this is also frustrating because you want to provide feedback openly to your players. In order to preserve the relationship with your child at home, it might be best at times to allow your assistant coach to be the main coach or person to deliver feedback to your child instead of you. Or another thing you can do is tell your child, “Hey I noticed something that will help you with that drill, let me know if you want to hear it.” This way you are still being the coach and providing feedback, but you are giving your child the autonomy to choose whether or not they want to hear and apply it.

7) Remind them that you love them and you enjoy watching them play, regardless of the outcome.

There will be days after practice and games that your child might become upset with you and not want to talk to you. It happens no matter what you do at times. Your child is putting added pressure on themselves by having their parent be the coach and they feel terrible if they do not meet your expectations. This is when you need to lower the expectations and remind them that even though you are their coach, you are their parent first. This means that no matter how they play you love them just the same. Tell them that what brings you the most joy is being able to watch them play, not the outcome of the game.

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If you are still wondering whether or not you should coach your child, read more about the pros and cons here.

Weiss, M. R., & Fretwell, S. D. (2005). The parent-coach/child-athlete relationship in youth sport:
Cordial, contentious, or conundrum? Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 76 (3), 286-305.

Recently I signed up for a half marathon and was worried about training and running this one alone. After the tragedy that occurred to Mollie Tibbetts, I am infuriated that women now may be running scared. Yes, we should take precautions when heading out the door but we tend to think, just as I do, “That would never happen to me.” We may live in small and safe communities, but it saddens me that safe and secure is not guaranteed. We should be able to run in safety and run fearlessly, but that’s not the world we live in.

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As a runner myself, there are days that are extremely hot and I am more comfortable running in spandex and a sports bra. Does that give you the right to hoot and holler at me? Absolutely Not. When you see runners wearing clothing like I mentioned it is NOT because they want attention, which many tend to think, which is very ignorant. It is because they are comfortable in that. I’m sorry, I will not change what I wear during my runs to keep others and their nasty comments to themselves. I, just like any other runner, should have the right to run in whatever we are comfortable in.

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I have heard people say, “Well maybe you should wear more clothes if you don’t want to be hollered at, followed, or abducted.” This is what is wrong with our society. We take the blame off of the perpetrators and we blame the victim. We should all have the right to work out in whatever we damn well please and not be bothered. People in our society are focusing on the wrong things and we need to educate people at a young age that we need to respect others with our words and actions and not view others as a piece of meat or something that they can disrespect. Next time you see someone running in spandex and a sports bra, leggings and a tank top, sweatshirt and shorts, or whatever it may be, leave them alone. Allow them to finish their workout uninterrupted and unbothered by you and your derogatory comments and actions.

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What happened to Mollie is terrible and terrifying. This fear will not stop me though from running, neither should you let it. I will keep lacing up my shoes and pushing my limits outside. I will now run this half marathon for Mollie and mark my training runs as #MilesForMollie. I will though be more cautious during my runs and be ready to put up a fight to anyone who attempts to interrupt my passion not only for myself but for Mollie and any other runner who has been assaulted or harassed.

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Continue to run those miles! If you want more information on the #MilesForMollie movement read more here.

A few weeks ago I decided to take the Harley Davidson Riders Edge Skills course to obtain my Motorcycle license. I took the course in high school and had to pass it in order to take the permit test. Since I never obtained my license after having my temps and haven’t ridden a bike in a while I decided to take the course yet again.

Going in I already felt confident and prepared. While practicing the skills I was executing them well until the test came. WOW was I nervous! I’m not sure why and where it came from but it hit me hard. I felt my heart racing and my mind became clouded with negative thoughts of, “You can’t do this. What if I fail? Don’t mess this up.”

I was a nervous wreck. At one point I checked my Fitbit and my heart rate was well in the 100s – not good!

As a mental coach I assist athletes and performers to regulate their emotions, so you’d think that I would be able to control my own, right? That’s what I thought. I quickly used some of the skills I had in my mental toolbox such as deep breathing exercises and started to talk to myself instead of listening to the negativity storm that was brewing. I reminded myself that I have taken this test before and crushed it, it’s not a big deal, just go out and show them what you can do.

Well, my nerves got the best of me. I doubted my abilities and made several errors that I was not making earlier. With each mistake, I became more frustrated with myself. I was experiencing what many athletes and performers do when they choke during a performance. My attention shifted to overthinking even the most simple tasks and skills instead of allowing myself to simply perform them as I have before.

By the end of the test, I was emotionally worn out. I knew I blew it. I let my emotions and nerves take over and control me instead of being in control of them.

When it was my turn to check in with how I did I felt the tears coming and the emotions swelling up. I didn’t pass.

I was upset and frustrated. I was so angry with myself. Here I am, a MENTAL PERFORMANCE COACH and I can’t even keep my mentality and emotions in check for a motorcycle road test. I started to doubt my ability to be a mental coach. If I can’t apply the skills myself, how could I even teach them to others?

I held on to this failure for a couple of days and continued to feel humiliated. I didn’t tell anyone that I failed and luckily not a lot of people asked about it. I got questions such as, “How did the class go?”
I would respond with, “It was good! So much fun,” not addressing whether or not I passed. Most of my family just assumed I passed so when they asked when I was going to start riding I would say, “I’m not sure, I still have to go to the DMV and get a new license.”

I made excuses for myself over and over again. After sulking for a few days I knew I had to change my mindset, perspective, and attitude. My boyfriend Cody was great at not letting me give up. He complimented me several times about how impressed he was with my skills and that if I took it again I would definitely pass. He reminded me that I knew the skills and drills, I just wasn’t able to execute them at that moment. He encouraged and pushed me to try again.

I had the opportunity to re-do the test which would be in a one-on-one setting to really improve my skills. After about a week or two I was ready to schedule the test and try again.

I still felt embarrassed when I returned for the test but forced myself to embrace feeling uncomfortable to meet my goals. I had to continue to remind myself that passing or failing does NOT define who I am as a person, mental coach, or anything else for that matter. I needed to take the pressure off of myself and enjoy being out on the bike developing my riding skills.

When I was struggling with one of the skills the instructor came up to me and asked what I do for work. When I told her about being a mental coach for athletes she asked, “Alright then. Imagine that you’re the mental coach for an athlete who is in your position. What would you tell them?”

I thought about it. I knew exactly what I would tell them, “Get out of your own head. Focus on the skill you need to execute and follow the steps.”

“Exactly!” the instructor beamed. “Now tell yourself that and do it.”

My motivation and determination grew. I knew I could do it, I just had to break the task down, focus on what I needed to do, and get it done. I started to smile and laugh when I would mess up because I knew exactly how to correct it and focused more on the ones I was doing successfully.

Being able to laugh at yourself through mistakes is HUGE. Mistakes happen, big deal. Get over it, laugh at yourself, and move on. Learn from it and try again. I took this approach throughout the test and felt much more comfortable and confident. I realized that even if I failed, yes I would be upset with myself, but it’s not the end of the world.

I passed the second time around. I knew I could do it, I just had to prove I could do it during the test when the pressure was on.

Isn’t this how life is though? So many times throughout life we KNOW what to do and we KNOW how to do it, but when the pressure is on our emotions get the best of us and we fall hard. This doesn’t have to define us though!

Failing the test the first time was actually a humbling experience. It taught me these 7 things:

1. Learn to laugh at yourself – It’s easy to become upset and frustrated but if you continue holding onto these feelings you will not improve, you’ll only fall harder. Learn to laugh at yourself because it will relieve stress and help you to refocus.

2. Learn from mistakes/errors – Fail means First Attempt In Learning so learn from your errors and apply it your second time around. You’ll be amazed at your progress if you use mistakes as teachable moments rather than a reason to beat yourself up.

3. Get back up – If you fail at something, don’t give up! You have goals for a reason, no one said it would be easy. Overcome your mistakes by being determined to continue.

4. Focus on the task at hand – You know what to do. Instead of overthinking the task or considering worst-case scenarios, take a deep breath and break the task down simply. Your body knows what to do so instruct it to follow through and it will.

5. Take the pressure off – We are the ones who put the pressure on ourselves. We are also the ones who can take it off. Look at the bigger picture. In the grand scheme of life does this one moment really define your whole future? Chances are it doesn’t. Whether you fail or succeed you will continue living and moving forward.

6. Failure doesn’t define you – You define who you are, not others. This goes along with taking off the pressure. If we can understand that failing won’t ruin us then it takes the pressure off as well. Remind yourself of all the hard work and effort you put in. This is what defines you, not the outcome.

7. Have fun – When we put the pressure on ourselves we forget to have fun. We become tense and have clouded minds. Relax. Breathe. Remind yourself what you find fun about what you’re doing. Smile and enjoy the moment.

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This experience reminded me that even if we have all of the tools in our disposable for how to handle pressure, the pressure can still get to us and cause us to perform less than we know we can. Mental skills are not something you learn and then BOOM all your problems and stresses are gone and solved. It takes constant work and constant practice. Some days you’ll nail it, other days you won’t. It doesn’t mean we should stop trying!

Next time you engage in an activity or performance and the nerves start to bubble up, show yourself some self-love and understanding. It’s normal. Even if you KNOW what you should do and KNOW the skills to execute it can still happen to you. Even someone with a Master’s degree in Sport and Exercise Psychology can become flustered and feel pressure to the point where they can’t even pass a motorcycle test on skills that they’ve executed before.

Some days you win, some days you don’t. What matters most is how you perceive and respond to the failures. Get back up, dust yourself off, and tackle it again. Remind yourself of the 7 things that I learned during my experience and use them to make your setback a comeback!

Maybe I’ll see you on the road, I’ll be the one with the purple butterfly motorcycle helmet 😉

Thursday nights I play on a summer volleyball league; which I greatly enjoy.

However, one particular night we weren’t playing so hot and my teammates were getting really upset with themselves. When we lost they were apologizing for their missed hits and placing the blame on themselves for the loss.

It got me thinking, “Why do we do this to ourselves?”

A “team” means a group effort. If one person makes some errors, the loss isn’t on them. It’s up to the other players to encourage and lift that person up or assist them if their game is off. We need to STEP UP for them.

If you also place the blame on yourself after your team loses consider this:

If your team wins, do you say that the only reason they won is because of you? Probably not.

See in a TEAM setting it takes more than one person to win, as well as to lose. We need to shift our perception on this matter and understand that your errors are not causing the loss, just like your successes are not the sole reason your team wins.

If you’re going to continue placing the blame on yourself for a loss then you should also take all of the praise when you play well and your team wins. Sounds arrogant, doesn’t it? Well, it’s also arrogant to think you have the power to cause your team to lose. That’s essentially saying that your team isn’t good enough to win without you playing well. I know you don’t mean it that way, but if you start to think about it this way you can show yourself some compassion when you do mess up and make errors.

Trust your team to be good enough to step up and assist when your game isn’t there.

Remember it takes a team to win, as well as to lose. Take the “I” out of it.