More Than Anxiety

Ep 107 - Transitioning from Athlete to Leader: Mindset, Resilience, and Empowerment with Linzie Hermsmeyer

• Megan Devito • Episode 107

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In this episode, you'll meet Linzie Hermsmeyer, a former female athlete and life coach who shares the importance of mindset and mental health as female college athletes learn to discover who they are after graduation. As multifaceted individuals, she offers practical tips and advice on how to overcome the challenges of moving on from competitive sports and embrace personal development and resilience.

Linzie and I discuss the difficulties female athletes experience when they transition from the structured environment of college sports into adulthood and the common struggle with a lack of direction and support. 

Linzie's strategies for mastering mindsets through goal setting, resilience, intentionality and tenacity are the foundations of her 90 coaching program and her own success.

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You know you're overwhelmed, burned out, sick to death of work but also trying to do everyting for everyone at home. TAKE THIS QUIZ to find out why you're so overwhelmed and what to do about it.

Megan Devito:

Welcome to the More Than Anxiety Podcast. I'm Megan Deito and I help ambitious women break out of the anxiety cycle that keeps them frustrated and stuck. Get ready for a lighthearted approach that will change what you think, how you feel and what you believe about yourself. This podcast is full of simple steps, a lot of truth talk and inspiration to take action. So you walk away feeling confident, calm and inspiration to take action. So you walk away feeling confident, calm and ready to live. Let's get to it.

Megan Devito:

Welcome to episode 107 of the More Than Anxiety podcast. My name is Megan and I'm super excited today to be able to introduce you to Lindsa Hermsmeyer. Lindsay helps ambitious former female athletes in their 30s become purposeful leaders and thriving entrepreneurs, excelling both professionally and personally. She's a dynamic entrepreneur, a fun interview and a former college athlete with a background in basketball and rodeo. This is going to be such a fun episode. I don't want to take up too much of your time, but Lindsay can definitely tell you more about all of the great work she does with athletes and entrepreneurs. You're going to love this one. I could talk sports and coaching all day long, so this is a treat for me and for you as well. Enjoy. Welcome to episode 107 of the More Than Anxiety podcast. I promised you this was going to be a really fun interview and I get to introduce you to Lindsay. Lindsay, tell them I made a little introduction. Go ahead and introduce yourself so everybody knows what you do.

Linzie Hermsmeyer:

Yeah, for sure. First of all, thanks for having me on. I've been so pumped ever since you mentioned it, so I'm glad to be here. Yeah, so I'm Linzie Hermsmeyer and I am a coach for former female athletes in their 30s and I help them excel personally and professionally so we can become thriving leaders, whether at home or at work. And then so my husband and I live here in Nebraska, so it gets real cold, but thankfully, you know, the weather is great right now, so that's really fun. So, yeah, we get to do life together and I'm again just excited to be here.

Megan Devito:

Okay, , so athletes, how athletes, why athletes? What made - this This is such a fun niche and I was just Linzie Lindsay that I used to be a swim coach. My kids were all swimmers, so I can talk swimming and kind of football forever, but I want to know what. What led you to coach athletes?

Linzie Hermsmeyer:

So I am a former athlete myself. I played a couple of years of college basketball and then transferred to compete in college rodeo, so just kind of different aspects of sports. Really, man, I'm just so passionate about it. I just obviously enjoy doing it, but then just what comes out of playing sports is just amazing. What comes out of playing sports is just amazing.

Linzie Hermsmeyer:

And so, um, you know, I was actually a life coach for women before and, um, honing in working with ambitious former female athletes has been a blast. Um, it's something I'm passionate about. There's such a it can be such a hard transition from you know competing to then real life. You know you're in your career, you're, you know building a family, whatever it looks like. And there's, there's not this level of community or accountability that you know these women once had, or this coach who is helping them, directing them, giving them a clear path, and now they don't have that anymore. So, um, that's one of the reasons. Uh, I just love giving direction and just, yeah, diving into how they can be intentional with, with their life right now.

Megan Devito:

I think you're in such a sweet spot right now too, because you're getting so much famous backup. I mean, I think we started, you know, several years ago when Michael Phelps kind of like he retired, he came out of retirement. But now we've got Simone Biles, we've got Noah Lyles and all of these Olympians, these athletes, professional athletes, who are talking about look, I am more than you know, I am more than a swimmer, I am more than a gymnast, or a track star, or a basketball player, or a football player, and it is. There's so much structure involved in sport and being competitive at your sport, but who you are when you leave your sport, when you retire or when you're not on the field or on the court.

Megan Devito:

I think we forget sometimes that there's a lot going on in people's lives that maybe we don't see it when they're competing, but they've just got such a great narrative going on right now that you get to feed into. And I've seen this, you know, even with my kids who are not going to the Olympics and who my youngest just turned 16 the other day and I was like what do you think? Like, do you think you want to swim in college? And she's like no. And I'm like, okay, okay, no, that's fine. I mean, it really is. It's such a huge commitment but knowing how to take care of themselves. So when you say, like, what do you wish that more athletes knew, or how did those athletes turn into ambitious women? Because I think we know about taking care of our mental health, but how about, like, when you think about taking care of your mental health, how does that improve performance?

Linzie Hermsmeyer:

So good Initially. I think mindset and I might have to explain this a little more too, but I think for me, when I was in college, my mindset at times was terrible. My thoughts, would you know. I mean, you get it, you coach and help people with anxiety, but my thoughts would lead to, you know just places that I couldn't compete as well, and it was just and, and my mental health wasn't as good as it could have been, and that you know, you know, it just trickles into every area of our life. Um, so I think you know, with mindset is a huge thing. Um, I think that would be so helpful for athletes to have more of that. Um, instead of here, take on all of this responsibility.

Linzie Hermsmeyer:

Performance, like all of the things, and, and performance makes me also think of identity.

Linzie Hermsmeyer:

I think when we put our identity in something that could be taken away so easily, um, that could be taken away so easily, our mental health, I mean, it can go down the drain, right, because that's where we, if we put our value and our worth in how we're performing you know how we did in college or when we were an athlete and it can translate into real life now too, if we're still putting.

Linzie Hermsmeyer:

You know our, our worth in our success or how well we're doing at work. Um, you know where our relationships or friendships are at. You know all of those things um can, I think can really really impact our mental health. And so just keeping our identity, you know, in Christ I'm a Christian and so I just really he is the firm foundation and so you know, keeping our identity in that, in him.

Megan Devito:

Yeah, I think it's very easy to typecast people too. And we see it, I mean from a very young age, when you have a kid who's maybe talented at t-ball and suddenly you're like this is going to be the greatest kid and suddenly this kid wrapped up in t-ball

Megan Devito:

.

Megan Devito:

And I mean especially with, maybe, younger kids. But I think even as adults, we change and yeah, you, yeah, you have your sport, you have this and you have so many other things. And I love that you talk about your faith and your identity and who you are to your core, which is so important, and just realizing that we're a whole person and not just this thing or this thing. So you know, um, like with working with these female athletes, what, like when you talk about, um, how their lives are shaped by their sport and what comes after their sport I don't think you talk a lot about grit, so tell me how it's coming to play. Like, how does all of this come together?

Linzie Hermsmeyer:

Yeah, so I talk a lot about grit and that's actually what I named my 90 day program, because it means courage and resolve and strength of character.

Linzie Hermsmeyer:

And so, you know, as we, as we go into the workforce, as we um, you know, I'm also big on self-leadership. I, you know, I used to talk about, or hear people talk about, leadership, you know, and I was like, well, yeah, I'm not, I'm not like a CEO of this big corporation or, you know, I'm not, um, you know, leading a church in different senses, and so it was just like, well, that's not really for me, which is so, so false. Um, we are leading ourselves every day and, you know, by the small decisions that we make, in those moments of discipline, and and it takes grit to do the right thing, it takes courage to, yeah, stay disciplined in what we need to do. So, yeah, that word it was as I was naming my program, I was just it kept coming up and as I learned more about it, it was just like, yep, that's where we're going to, we're going to camp out on that word.

Linzie Hermsmeyer:

So, yeah.

Megan Devito:

I t's such a good one. And, Linzie, I love that you touched on the like, the idea of ambition and kind of saying, well, I'm not really a leader. I just the other day finished a podcast that I talked about. Um, I was on the phone with a client and they said, well, I mean my goals are kind of silly. I mean, I, I'm not, I mean it's just my, their Their goal was really to spend more time with their family, to be present to, you know, set a good example. And I was like, wow, hey, why do you think that's silly?

Megan Devito:

And I think when we use words like ambitious and grit, we get this idea of, like, I'm supposed to be a CEO, I'm supposed to be out there trying to conquer the world, and I just I think it's so important for people to say, hey, if you have anything that you want to accomplish, it takes a lot of ambition to be a working parent.

Megan Devito:

It takes a lot of ambition Some days just to get up and decide to work out or to clean your house. I mean ambition isn't reserved for people like I don't know I might even want to think of here. You know, it's not reserved for people like Kamala Harris. Yeah, for sure she's got ambition, go her. And if you are like working out of your kitchen, you've got ambition, because there are dirty dishes in the sink and they're screaming at you too, and sometimes ambition just looks different for everybody. So when you talk about personal ambition, tell me a little bit more what that looks like for people, because I do think that we throw. I mean, when we say ambition, some people are like oh yeah, I'm not that person.

Linzie Hermsmeyer:

Yeah, yeah. So I really liked that, because when I break the word grit down, I talked about growth, and so that's one of those things that, like we can be doing every day. That like, like you're saying, I think Let me take it back to this, so when I think of ambition, like sometimes I would think about those people who are like accomplishing these ginormous goals, and I was like intimidated. It's like wait a minute, how am I, even each day, towards those goals or towards, you know, becoming that person that we want to be, um, becoming like taking on that identity of I am an ambitious person. And, like you're saying, it's, it's a small daily habits, it's those small things that it does take ambition to get it done. And then, you know, resilience is R in grit Again, just building up like the capacity I hear women talk about that like I don't have the capacity, and I think, you know, I was in college when I heard Craig Groeschel talking about expanding your capacity and I think we can always, always, strive for that, because when we do that, we are more able to be ambitious in the areas that we want to be.

Linzie Hermsmeyer:

And then the I is intentionality. So, like you're saying, sometimes we can feel like those goals of you know, like I want to be present or I want to be more of this or that. It can like when they said it was silly. It's like no way. You're being so intentional and and I love how you say that it's like you're encouraging your client, Like this is a great goal, Um and so. And then the T tenacity, you know, determination, um, and which you know again, it's not easy to do that every day but we are growing towards that and we are continually practicing. So you know it's not about perfection. Perfection, I always say, is like impossible and boring. So we're not about that. We're about growth and, you know, moving in the direction that that we want to go.

Megan Devito:

I think that perfection is a funny thing and it comes up so often with people. I just want it to be perfect. I'm like, well, you tell me what your perfect is and I'll tell you what my perfect is, and then you can decide which perfect you're going for, because perfect is like saying it's too cold out. Yeah, to who. Your cold and my cold are not the same thing, you know it's, it's very ambiguous. And, um, I think that we do get stuck in this place where we're like this is what I think it's supposed to look like.

Megan Devito:

I used to call this Martha Stewart syndrome, where I would look at a catalog or I would look at the magazine and be like, yeah, never going to get there. It was so overwhelming to me. It's such a silly thing to be overwhelmed about. But at that point my kids were little and I would look around and think, no, it's impossible, it's impossible. And, um, I remember thinking, okay, wait, wait, a minute. Remember, this is a staged magazine, like a photo shoot. This was probably, this was probably before Instagram and everything where I'm like that's what it's supposed to look like. I am in so much trouble.

Megan Devito:

Um, but yeah, I think that that idea of perfectionism, but I also want to touch briefly on the idea of resilience. Um, I don't know if you're seeing this with the people that you help, but I feel like there's this idea that everything should be easy and should go together seamlessly, like we're in this place in time where it's like, yeah, that sounds rough, and I think that with the idea of expanding your resilience and your capacity for more, it also shrinks very quickly, because when we don't get out there and we don't start pushing ourselves to do things that are hard or uncomfortable or different, that resilience and that capacity shrinks and it's like a balloon that you almost, like, suck the air out of, so that it's inside of itself. What do you, how do you do, like, how do you handle that resilience with your clients?

Linzie Hermsmeyer:

Ooh, so good, so good. Uh, you know, the other day I was man, I had to push myself to get something accomplished that I did not want to do and, um, it just came to me. It was like, man, okay, this is what it feels like to get reps in, to like continually practice and continually get better. And so it's like you know, in sports, we practice for however long a day, we're getting those reps in, we're building that resilience, that capacity to be able to accomplish more on the court, or you know, you know swimming, and so it's just like why do we think now? You know, now that we are in our careers or you know leading in our home, that it can? It just comes naturally. And it's like, no, we do need to still get the reps in, we still need to practice and, and yeah, continue to expand our capacity rather than staying stuck like you're talking about. So, yeah, I really like that.

Linzie Hermsmeyer:

You brought that up and I know, in one of my masterminds, one of my clients mentioned man, it just feels like after school, I just quit growing and I think that can happen for so so many of us. It's like we had these teachers in place, we had these coaches in place. We had these people that we were doing hard things with side by side almost every day, and now it's like we don't have that as adults sometimes and we have to seek it out and be intentional about that. So, yeah, I like that you bring that up because it is it's such a big intentionality piece to it.

Megan Devito:

There's such a weird space between when you graduate from college and it's like suddenly you just get dropped into this foreign place where your life has been structured especially for athletes, when it's like, no, there's practice, there's school, there's sleep, there's practice, school, sleep. But for anybody who comes out of that experience where, okay, we go to school from the time we're five years old until at least 18. And then if you go to college, you know sometimes it's 22, 23, 24, however old you are, and then it's like nothing and your structure's gone, your friend group is gone, everything that you know, you have to pay your own bills. You're doing all of these things that, um, I have a kid in this place right now, where he's.

Megan Devito:

He's coming out the other side. He's been out of college for almost two years now, but he's like I don't know what to do with myself. I don't know what to do. I don't know where my I don't have any friends. I don't know. And I was like I don't know, you've got friends, you've got it. You just have moved from this little kind of pre-made ecosystem of school into figure it out.

Linzie Hermsmeyer:

Absolutely, yeah, that's a hundred percent.

Megan Devito:

It yeah, and we are. We're just left dangling there in this place to figure it out, and that's a really big thing, I think, for people to do, and we're always. It's so important to think that you know when we look at different phases of life and where we are. We're all just figuring it out. I think people look at athletes or they look at CEOs, or they look at a mom who has teenagers versus a mom who has babies, like little you know, newborns. None of us know what we're doing. Right, right, yeah. So what do you do when somebody comes to you and they're like what's the right way or what's like how do you do it? Like, how do you handle things like that?

Linzie Hermsmeyer:

Yeah, woo, such a good question. I, you know there's this quote again Craig Groeschel just highly recommend Um, he talks about our lives are moving in the direction of our strongest thoughts. Do we like the direction our lives are going in? So, um, I do like to start out with what is your thought life looking like? Because that is something that you know impacted me so much as an athlete.

Linzie Hermsmeyer:

After always, all through life, we're going to experience these, um, these narratives that we have going on, these limiting, limiting beliefs, like a lot of these things we've heard about.

Linzie Hermsmeyer:

But, um, when I get to work with somebody and dig into what are you actually thinking?

Linzie Hermsmeyer:

And I've had a view before, you know, we, we started a session before and she was like, no, I don't, I don't think I have any, you know, and I was like I, I loved it. I was like, okay, we're digging a little bit more here because, like you know, the way that we do life or things that, um, you know, we feel like just isn't aligning with how we want to be, um, or accomplish whatever it is is, it stems so much from our thoughts, and so, as we dug in more, it just like kind of uprooted some of those things that she didn't even know she was doing, or those thoughts that she was having, and so that is where I do like to start a lot of times is what is that looking like for you and how do we need to switch that mindset? So, yeah, again that quote. Just it impacted me big time in college and it's always just a good reminder of you know what am I thinking about, because that's where my life is headed.

Megan Devito:

First of all, that was like a total mic drop quote. I love that quote and um, but I think it is funny. We, we don't pay attention to our thoughts unless they're scaring us. If they scare us, they take all of our attention, but any other day we just let them float through Like it's the truth. I don't have any thoughts you do all day long, so many, but we just assume that we think it and it's true, or we don't pay any attention to it. But you're exactly right. I think that idea of what's your thought life, your thoughts, make your life happen. And so many people are like I don't have thoughts about that and I'm like you have so many thoughts about that. But getting to like, getting to that place where we actually stop and notice, oh, that's just a thought and not not for crying out loud, believing every single thing that floats through our brains.

Linzie Hermsmeyer:

Yes, yes, that is such a good point.

Megan Devito:

Yeah, I mean especially I don't know I I work with a lot of people who are anxious, and I know you do too that, especially when they get to the place where those anxious thoughts are driving their behaviors, and they, they just they solidify those thoughts and they get stuck because they just feel so real.

Linzie Hermsmeyer:

Yep, yeah, the more we think a thought, the more it happens, like it, yeah, like you're saying, solidifies and those neural pathways, and it's like, again, if we don't know that that's happening, if we don't know it, then it just can over over, like run our lives and and that's what was happening with me in college and it sucked. Like it was just not fun, and so I don't want that for other people and so, yeah, I just love getting to to dive into mindset and it just gets. It's so much deeper sometimes.

Megan Devito:

It's really just ultimate mindfulness, right? I think people a lot of times people say mindfulness, so that's like when I go outside and I try to feel the wind, or I do the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 method and my answer is always yes, and it's really noticing what's going on in your mind and realizing that you get to choose those things. That was a huge revelation to me that I'm like wait a minute, I can choose what. I think. That's an option, I don't know. Obviously, I think that, like if I would have stopped to think about it, it would have made sense. But I remember hearing that and it was just such a turning point in my life and how I related to myself, how I related to anxiety and everything else. But really, for anyone who has not spent any time journaling or paying attention to their thoughts, that's earth shattering stuff.

Linzie Hermsmeyer:

Absolutely, Absolutely. And I remember this time. There's such a big contrast between these two things that happened in my life and I wish I could say this was longer ago. I mean, it was a while ago, but it was like as I was building my business, I let my thoughts go, Like I wasn't being intentional about knowing what they are, what to do, you know about it. And so it led ultimately to like an anxiety attack, and it wasn't, you know, like full blown, uh to, to some extent, that some people experience.

Linzie Hermsmeyer:

But the contrast was then, you know, okay, whoa, something needs to change. You know, like, what am I thinking about? How am I living life every day? What do I need to change? And, as you know, that's just like my body was telling me something's got to be different. And then the contrast of, you know, while later it was like I was about to let my thoughts run me again, it was like, no, heck, no, we're not doing that again, you know. And it's like, okay, I got to do something. And so it really was like, I think that night I got up, I like journaled, I read a little bit, you know, replacing the ick with what is real and true and positive and and not toxic positivity, but like the actual real thing, and so just the contrast of those two things what I, what led to different outcomes, was being intentional about. Nope, we're stopping this, we're doing something different.

Megan Devito:

So good, yeah, capturing your thoughts, and really, these are the things that I wish we taught in school. Right, I wish that we could teach. These are the things that I wish we taught in school. I wish that we could teach kids. Hey, we're going to think on purpose and since we're thinking on purpose, we also have to pay attention to what we're thinking on purpose, and I think that, especially in the place where we are right now, with so many kids who are really struggling with mental health issues I mean from kindergarten all the way through college, and adults too I think that's so good, but that's really, really good stuff, and I'm so excited to be able to tell people how they can work with you. So tell them what you do, what you offer, where they can find you and, of course, I will always put all of these things in the show notes, so anyone listening to this whether it's on YouTube or wherever you listen it will be there.

Megan Devito:

Click the links and make sure that you are connecting with Lindsay. But, yeah, tell us more.

Linzie Hermsmeyer:

Yeah, so I offer GRIT. This program, it's a 90 day in-depth mastermind, um. Also, there's personalized one-on-one coaching with it. There's monthly trainings, um, and it's all curated specifically for former female athletes, and, yeah, so if someone is interested in working with me, they can book a free consultation. I'd love to get to know them, their goals and just how we can move forward in a good way and help them get unstuck, um. So, yeah, yep, book that free consultation and I'd love to visit with them.

Megan Devito:

That is fantastic all right, and you are on social media

Linzie Hermsmeyer:

Absolutely. Yep. Linzie Hermsmeyer on instagram and uh same on linked. I spend most of my time on Instagram

Linzie Hermsmeyer:

So love to connect with people there.

Megan Devito:

Perfect Lindsay, this has been so much fun. I've loved talking with you. You guys, she's got everything you need. You need to reach out, check out her program, look for grit. Tag people in this who need to hear it. Tag your athlete friends. Tag their parents or their siblings or whoever else needs this, or just really ambitious women who are out there that need some support. So thank you so much for joining me today. It has been a joy.

Linzie Hermsmeyer:

Thanks Linzie having me. I love what you're doing and I just enjoy having a conversation with you.

Megan Devito:

Thank you, it's been so so much fun.

Megan Devito:

I hope you enjoyed this episode of the More Than Anxiety podcast. Before you go, be sure to subscribe and leave a review so others can easily find this resource as well. And, of course, if you're ready to feel calm, to stop overthinking and have a lot more fun, you can go to the show notes, click the link and talk to me about coaching. I'll talk to you soon.