045: Raise Your Kids to Be Okay With People Not Liking Them with Amber Brueseke

On this week's episode, we are sharing a conversation I had on another podcast, Biceps After Babies Radio with host Amber Brueseke. Amber is a registered nurse, personal trainer, Macros Coach and mom of 4. In our conversation we discuss how we can raise children with high confidence and why that matters.

Episode Highlights

• Where confidence comes from
• How to build confidence in our kids
• Bright sides and dark sides to confidence
• 3P method for conversations 

Connect with Amber
Instagram @bicepsafterbabies

More ways to work with Fearless Fastpitch

• Learn about our proven Mental Skills Program, The Fearless Warrior Program
• Book a One on One Session for your Athlete
• Book a Mental Skills Workshop for your Team or Organization

Follow us on Social Media

• Facebook @fearlessfastpitchmentaltraining
• Instagram @fearlessfastpitch
• Twitter @CoachAB_

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the fearless warrior podcast, a place for athletes, coaches and parents who know the value of a strong mindset. I'm your host, coach AB, a mental performance coach on a mission, former softball coach, wife and mom of three. Each episode, we will dive deep into all things mental performance, mindset tools and how to rewire the brain for success. So if your goal is to gain the mental edge and learn the secrets of mental performance, mindset tools and how to rewire the brain for success, so if your goal is to gain the mental edge and learn the secrets of mental performance, you're in the right place. Let's tune in to today's episode.

Speaker 2: 0:39

I'm so excited to introduce my friend, Amanda Schaefer. Amanda, thanks for coming on the podcast.

Speaker 1: 0:44

Let's go. I'm so pumped. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2: 0:47

I am so excited. When you messaged me on Instagram about the topic we're going to start to get on, I was like, yes, this is like such a good overlap between what you're really good at and what my audience really needs, and so I just thought it was brilliant and I'm super excited about the topic. But before we dive into confidence and raising our kids to be okay with themselves, I just want to give a little background, do a little introduction who are you? What do you do?

Speaker 1: 1:11

Yeah, I am a full-time mental performance coach and that's a fancy way of saying mindset training for athletes. I work nationwide virtually with athletes anywhere from I think the youngest I've worked with is nine all the way through college. I have a couple of pros that I work with one-on-one and my whole goal is to equip athletes with the mental side that they can let their physical side shine on game day. That encompasses all sorts of skills breathing, self-talk, visualization routines, belief shifting all of the fancy things that we wish we would have had when we were athletes.

Speaker 2: 1:46

Totally, and I want to ask you a question about how you got into this. But I want to share just a little bit of my experience, because you say, like we wish we would have had this. This was one of my like defining experiences as an athlete in high school, because my coach did that. Like I learned visualization from my volley my high school volleyball coach. We would visualize before every single game, like he and he taught us how to do it, how to like go up for the set or the spike and like visualize yourself performing well and so, um, yes, I mean that was such a pivotal point for me as as just a developing young woman, um, that I just love that this is a focus of yours. But, like, how did you get into this?

Speaker 1: 2:28

Like, what was that transition like for you? Yeah, so there's a lot of points in my life where it kind of lead, led to this, and I think for me, I resisted it for a long time because I was a pitching coach softball um for years. I actually got into pitching um, coaching that side of the game in college, just to make a little bit of money on the side. And my mom and my dad would always ask me you know, how, how can you teach this? How are you this confident? And I was a very dominant athlete. I was very confident in my abilities and I remember taking and this is fast forward I started coaching, I coached travel teams, I became a head high school coach and I was really trying to make a career out of coaching softball. Well, there's not a whole lot of people that can work full-time coaching softball unless you coach at a college, and so for me it was just a side hustle, something that I didn't really take seriously. And then I took my mom to a tournament with one of the teams I was coaching and we're at the hotel in Kansas city and she brings this conversation up again of Amanda, I'm not seeing as many dominant pitchers Like what? What made you so dominant?

Speaker 1: 3:33

And a couple years later I'm going through a couple of hardships in my life and I start Googling some of these things of how do you teach confidence, what is it? I found an article on resiliency and it was kind of one of these things of how do you teach confidence, what is it? I found an article on resiliency and it was kind of one of these aha moments of well, if you can teach this, then I'm going to test this out. So I actually started teaching it to my high school athletes had about 30 athletes and we started with breathing techniques. We make it to the district tournament. One of my athletes is freaking out. We have the tying run on second, she's up to bat.

Speaker 1: 4:04

We make it to the district tournament. One of my athletes is freaking out. We have the tying run on second, she's up to bat. We have to continue on. It's single elimination. She does a box breath and in her mind she had no other choice. She had to succeed. And she comes back. She hits in the game, winning walk-off double to win the game. She ended up scoring later and it was one of those moments where even I I mean I wasn't going to admit this to her in the moment. But she comes up to me and she goes coach, it worked. Like wow, you actually did it. And so it was this slow burn. I actually sat on research for two years. I had researched all this, I hired a couple of master's students, I got certified and this is when we met. I didn't actually launch my program. We have a 12-week mental skills training program. I actually didn't launch it until two years later, in the fall of 2019.

Speaker 2: 4:56

So awesome. I mean, it's such a great story, too, of like seeing a gap, having this realization that maybe you had something that other people didn't have. And I think that's what's sometimes hard about our gifts is we don't quite value them because they just come so easily to us. It's like this came easily to you and so turning around and being like, okay, maybe I do have some natural inclination, but there probably are skills, it's a skill, right, I can teach this to somebody else. And then you ask yourself, how do I teach this? And then you test it out. And then you try it out and you get some results and then you just build on top of it and that's I mean. It's been amazing to be able to step back and watch you kind of build the thing that you've built and and see how many people you're and how many young women's lives that you're able to really impact is it's just been awesome.

Speaker 2: 5:46

Okay, so the reason that like we are here today is because I posted something on Instagram and I posted a reel and it said something like do your, do your daughters a favor and raise them to be okay with people not liking them, and that super resonated with my audience. Um, but the question that I got over and over is like okay, that's great, yeah, double tap like heart that, and how do we do that? Right? And so you messaged me and you're like, oh my gosh, I could talk on this topic for so long because it is a lot of what you do. So you know, I have my answers as to how we raise our daughters and our sons obviously as well, to be okay with themselves and not have to have other people like them. But I wonder how you would answer that question. How do we do that?

Speaker 1: 6:21

So good, and I jumped right on that because I think that's the premise. A lot of what we do is we're teaching these skills. I can teach your daughter visualization. I can teach your son you know his routine when he steps into the box. But if you don't have that sense of self, what is that athlete taking onto the field? Who is the athlete off the field?

Speaker 1: 6:43

And we just wrapped up a training called Confidence Camp, and the biggest mistake that parents and players not even just athletes but the biggest mistake that we make is what are you placing your confidence in? And so often we assume my confidence is in my ability, in my talent. Either you're talented, either you're a runner, either you're a lifter, or you're not. And we know now you can train those things. You can train the talent. You can become talented if you put in the effort. And so often we're telling our athletes go, be confident, trust the process quotation marks but they don't know what that means. So we say these things but unless we know how.

Speaker 1: 7:22

So how do I teach confidence when you ask an athlete and get really, really curious as a parent, ask them what are you placing your confidence in? Are you waiting for that starting position to feel confident. Are you waiting to hit your first home run and then you'll be confident? And so, really having that self-assessment, that first step is awareness of having that conversation. Where are you placing your confidence? Because if your confidence comes from the add a babe from your coach, or the praise of your parents, or what your teammates think of you, or if you hit the winning run in, then those things are fragile, those things will come and go, and so if your child struggles with confidence and their confidence comes and goes, they're going to be riding that confidence rollercoaster forever until they can figure out what the true definition of confidence is, which is an intense trust in oneself.

Speaker 2: 8:17

Okay, I like that. So an intense trust in oneself and I think, wrapped up in this conversation too, that I'm thinking about is like we like such a great point. It's like we use this word all the time, like just have confidence, have confidence in yourself, and you're like and how do I know when I have confidence, right? So I think most of us have some innate sense of like, I'm confident in this area and I'm less confident in that area. But how are we measuring confidence? How do we even know where we're at on a confidence scale? I mean knowing that there's room for improvement in some areas. It's just such an arbitrary, ethereal word. So I wonder if you have any answers as to you know, how do we measure confidence, if that's even a thing and like how do we know that we are building our confidence or it's getting better, it's getting stronger, it's getting less? I mean, it's just, how do we ground this into tangibles?

Speaker 1: 9:06

Yeah, I love that question. One of the things I do a lot with my one-on-one clients is profiling, so a performance profile, um is basically saying okay, we're going to take some of these physical skills, tactical skills, technical skills and your mental skills and we're going to place them on this map where you can give it a rating. So you could do A through F, you could do 1 through 10. And if you can track, let's say, a skill that you're working on, is your hand clean? Let's say, your hand clean is 1 out of 10. I suck at hand clean. Great. Well, if you commit to the process and you trust the process and you're going to work on this lift for the next three months in the gym, come what's three months from now August, july If I said, hey, come back to me in three months and let's rank this out of 10.

Speaker 1: 9:53

How confident are you in your hand clean, and then you've created that proof in your mind. I worked on it. Therefore, my confidence has increased in it. It's a technical and tactical skill. I can increase that. The same thing can be said for confidence. So you can have a performance profile with confidence in specific areas, so you could say what is your confidence level on the mental side with your hand cleans, or just in general, what's your general confidence towards lifting or towards softball, and we can kind of benchmark those and create data points so that they can look back and see a lot of my one-on-one athletes.

Speaker 1: 10:23

Until I pointed out to them they just expect that that progress should happen. But when they look back and they realize how far that they've come, the brain loves proof. And so if you're a mom and dad and you're saying, but you're amazing, you're my mom, you have to say that You're my dad. You have to say that Well, what's the proof there? Look how hard you've worked. I've watched you working in the basement. I've seen you get up early and go to the gym at 6am, even for ourselves, if you can focus on that proof, confidence comes from preparation and confidence comes from those confidence conditioning statements of. I have worked at this, I can trust my training. My confidence comes from me and my process, and that you can't compare to anyone else.

Speaker 2: 11:06

Yeah, that's good. And so how do we separate out this idea of of trusting your training right and trusting the practice that you've put in and and at the same time, have it be placed in ourselves right, like? It's like almost seems like we're still placing externally on. I guess it's something that you did, so maybe that's where the overlap is. But just can you kind of speak to that Like cause? You said confidence is placing trust in yourself. So then, when we're also placing trust in a process or our practice or effort or whatever, can you kind of speak through how those kind of coexist together?

Speaker 1: 11:39

Yeah. So if we're going to focus on the effort side of it, when we look at confidence, confidence has to be a choice. So we mistake confidence as a feeling. Yes, you are going to feel confident, but there are going to be days that you're going to show up where you don't feel confident. One of the pioneers of mental performance, the late Ken Reviza, would always say are you that bad that you have to feel confident to perform well? Interesting, and what he's. What he means by that is he's worked with some of the top performers in the world and we just assume that the Tom Brady's and the you know, travis Kelsey's and all these studs of our generation just feel confident naturally, every single day. And they don't. We're not in their minds, and so it's a daily decision.

Speaker 1: 12:21

It's do you trust the dedication of the work that you've put in? We talk about muscle memory. Do you trust your physical side? And in order to do that, I think you just recently read the Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Galloway.

Speaker 1: 12:41

It's this idea that we have two minds. We have our trusting in flow state. We're letting the body work, the mind can be quiet and the body can flow. The other side of that is when we become analytical, when we doubt ourselves, when we're in that ego and we want to place our confidence in those external validating things like the stats, the win-loss record, our PRs. And again going back to that is, if you shift to that self too and you trust your training, that intense trust in oneself, then we need to start praising those things, ourselves in the mirror, like we need to start praising our own processes and our you know, did I show up? Did I commit to this, even when I didn't want to get up during the 6 AM alarm? And then with our kids? That's great that you got a home run, that's great that you got all as, but what did you do to get those things?

Speaker 2: 13:31

Yeah, yeah. So it's like that's how we model that for our kids is it's not praising the outcome, it's praising what they did to get there, or the commitment that they had or the effort that they exerted or whatever like that process. When we focus on that as parents, then what we're teaching our kids is that's what they should focus on and that's what gives them confidence, rather than like you have confidence if you get the A, and if you don't get the A, then well, you kind of suck and I don't know. I don't know what to tell you. So we can help them to develop Cause I think that's part of our job as as parents is to help our kids develop their inner voice and and how they're speaking to each other or to themselves over their lifetime. And so when we can model that for them, it makes a lot of sense that we can help them build their confidence. Not because we tell them that they're good right, we don't want them to build their confidence on that but we can model for them what it looks like to say that to themselves and that's powerful, that's super awesome.

Speaker 2: 14:21

Okay, so I have four kids and they are all very vastly different in their just innate confidence. I have a couple of kids who, like, are so confident and I look at them and I'm like, oh my gosh, you have no idea. Like, you just think you can do anything and that's great and I'm not going to temper that at all. And then I have some other kids who it's like I really have to overly encourage them because they don't think they can do anything and they're really timid and it's just so interesting being born into. They're all born into the same family, they all have the same two parents and yet they come out so differently with just some of those innate abilities.

Speaker 2: 14:56

So is there some genetic component to like confidence? And I think we've established that it is. Even if you maybe don't have that innately, it is something you can still build. But have you seen that with your athletes? I mean, you kind of mentioned yourself that you just feel like you have a little bit more confidence. Um, so what have you seen, especially with the athletes you're working on? Is there a difference? Do some people just naturally have it? And then for people who don't have it, can we help them to know that it's okay, you can still build it?

Speaker 1: 15:22

Yes, absolutely. The first thing that comes to mind is from Gallup Strength Finder. We talk about balconies and basements or the bright side and the shadow side, and we do a lot of. I guess you could call this a profile, but we do. The true colors is a personality test that we run our athletes through in the program and this is really eyeopening for parents and coaches, because your athletes are going to kind of sway on these profiles or these personality tests. And if we look at the difference between introverts and extroverts you know, myers-briggs, any, any of the profiles if we look at these tendencies and we say, okay, not everyone is going to be extroverted, we have to really break down these beliefs that I think in our culture we see extroverts as leaders. We see extroverts as well. They're just confident, they just have it, and what people don't see is that there's also dark sides to that.

Speaker 1: 16:17

So let's focus on your kids that are confident. If you're listening to this and you're like, whoa, my kid is super confident, there's a 99% chance that I would be willing to bet that they struggle with perfectionism and comparison. Those are the two biggest things that come up. So, even though this kid may be super outwardly confident, their biggest and darkest demons that they'll be you'll be sitting with them on the end of their bed. I guarantee you those conversations are going to come up where they start to compare themselves. So if we we understand that part of it, if we look at the non-confident kids or I suppose I shouldn't say it that way, I should say more introverted, more quiet you know the workhorses, the. You know the workhorses the. You know they're the ones on the mound where they're stone-faced, they're stoics. You're like what is this kid thinking? This kid doesn't show emotions. Again, there's a dark side and a bright side to that. And if you can start to pull those out of them of, hey, you know, I noticed that you didn't get too high or too low, you just kept going at it and you never gave up.

Speaker 1: 17:16

And we start to praise those things. The mistake that we make there is we use their shyness. We use their timidness, we use their reservation as a way to kind of label them. I see this a lot with young kids, primarily a lot on Zoom. Parents will unmute for their kid on our first call we just had our first call last night and they'll say, oh well, so-and-so shy, and so you just gave them a free ticket to play into that. And so what if we just empowered our kids to look at the there's dark sides and bright sides to each of those things and evaluate well, okay, if you look at your kids that quote unquote are less outgoing. What are their superpowers and how can you praise those? How can you shine more light onto those areas?

Speaker 2: 18:03

Oh gosh, that's so good because I mean, in our society it is like confidence is good and whatever the opposite of it it's not good and what you're saying is like that's not actually true.

Speaker 2: 18:13

It's like there's really great things about confidence and a really there's a dark side and there's really great things about being more, maybe, stoic, and there's a and there's a dark side.

Speaker 2: 18:21

And I think we as a society kind of do a crappy job sometimes of we only recognize the light side of one area and the dark side of the other area, and realizing that there's light and dark in both is is so powerful. There's a book my son who is one of the kids who kind of lacks a little bit of confidence that he was reading the book Quiet, which is about introverts and extroverts and it really speaks to like how our world is really built, to like prop extroverts up as like, like you said, the leaders, like it's really great to be an extrovert, and the whole book Quiet is on like the power of introverts and how like their light side, and that's been really enlightening for him to read because as someone who struggles a little bit more with that, who is a little bit more introverted, he's reading this and being like oh, there's actually really great things about me as well. Right, it's not just that, like the confident, extroverted people are are the winners of the genetic lottery.

Speaker 1: 19:11

Right, well, actually so your sister Kara, who works for me and is on our team. She actually pointed this out to me in a recent podcast and she referenced, I'm pretty sure, the same volleyball coach Did you guys have the same volleyball coach Yep, russ Kerwin, like shout out to Russ Kerwin.

Speaker 1: 19:26

Shout out. So the cool thing that she pointed out to me and I think I forget this as a mental performance coach is she made the comment that if you can learn mental skills, then everybody has access to it. Yeah, so if a kid is naturally gifted or naturally talented in the piano or in baseball or in softball, the nice thing about mental skills is that whether you're physically talented or not, anyone can learn visualization, self-talk, confidence, conditioning techniques, that kind of. It was kind of a no brainer in my mind of like oh, the way that she worded that was incredible. So shout out to Kara. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:03

Yeah, and I think I think the actual skills or the implementation of those, again, confidence is really ethereal. Visualization is really tactile, right, like visualization is something I can teach you to do and that is going to improve your confidence, you know, as an ancillary measure, but it's like I can teach you how to visualize, I can teach you how to do affirmations, I can teach you how to show up and hit the ball and do it over and practice it over and over and over again. So I think that is such a powerful, you know, differentiator when we're talking about how, how do we do this, how do we build confidence? Um, what about this, this idea? So I think we've talked a lot about confidence in in and of itself and in in the actions and things that you're doing. What about when we turn that back onto our experience with other people or like other people's judgments of us, or other people what they think about us? Because that is a really challenging thing, for well, a lot of women Like I'm not even just talking about girls Like a lot of women still very much struggle with really caring what other people think about them, and I also want to just preface this with like there's some humanness, just to it, right?

Speaker 2: 21:09

We, as a human species, in order to stay in community with each other, which is safer for us, like, we have to care what people think on some level. But a lot of us take it to the extreme of like really basing all of our confidence on what other people perceive of us and what other people think. And so then when we double tap on Instagram that we want our daughters to be okay with people not liking them and that we're not even there ourselves, and then we can't we don't even know how to teach that to an artist, because we haven't figured that out. So what are some ways that we, as women, can? If we know that this is something we struggle with, worrying about what people think about us, how can we start to do that so then we can pass it on to our daughters and our sons?

Speaker 1: 21:46

Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the most powerful questions that you can ask is and what does that mean about me, or what am I? Making that mean about me, and what does that mean about me? Or?

Speaker 2: 21:57

what am I making that?

Speaker 1: 21:58

mean about me. That's good and that's a really powerful question that a lot of my athletes you know you can ask that question once, but I think, the most powerful sessions that I've ever had, to the point of tears. I call it the drill down method, whether this is the correct terminology for it or not. This is something that I do and you just keep asking that same question over and over again and a lot of it comes from neuro-linguistic programming of and what does that mean, and what does that mean, and what does that mean. And so if you're having a conversation with your daughter, you're having a conversation with yourself. If you just keep asking that question and you get down to the core of it, either somebody is mirroring back to you something that you're already thinking about or worried about.

Speaker 2: 22:38

They're mirroring it back to you, yeah, one of your deepest, darkest fears, and they're just saying it out loud Deepest, darkest fear, and they're saying it out loud.

Speaker 1: 22:43

Or it's just absolute. It sounds silly, it's just there's no basis to it at all and you realize, wow, I was really worried about this thing. That is now really arbitrary. And if you wouldn't ask that person for advice, then why are you taking their criticism?

Speaker 2: 22:59

Yeah, yeah, it's really good, and I think, at some level, as you know, as I've done my own work in worrying about what people think of me, you know, we both put ourselves out there on the internet and not everybody loves, loves you, um, unfortunately. Um, is that like drilling down to like it's a fear of not being enough and a fear that that makes me unlovable, right, it makes it so that I'm not worthy of love, someone's not going to and I'm going to be left alone with nobody to love me because I'm not good enough, and I think for me that that has been something I've had to work through of like again, is that really true, right? Does that really make me cause one person didn't like my life? Does that really make me unlovable?

Speaker 2: 23:40

And we were talking about this beforehand, cause, we were kind of catching up on business and I was making the point that, um, so often the loudest people are the critics. Right, the critics are super loud and the people who love you are not always just as loud. Um, sometimes they're a lot more quiet, and so it can be really easy to focus on the few that are critics rather than realizing if there's a few critics, there's a lot of people who are like the silent majority, who actually really appreciate what you do. So I don't know that that actually makes a difference, because I'm still caring about what people think.

Speaker 1: 24:12

Well, here's a different way. I know that you love analogy, so maybe we'll we'll talk about it in the form of analogy. One of the trainings that we do is buckets, and so they've done studies. There's actually four different buckets of your support system, and so there's tangible bucket, you know, like the physical. So you show up to the gym, where's my jump rope? That's tangible support. Obviously, you're going to get that from different people in your support system. Then we have informational support. So you know what's my workout? Is Amber going to give me my workout today? That's information.

Speaker 1: 24:45

We have an 8am game, whatever those information buckets are, and typically those people that provide those buckets are our teachers, our coaches, our parents, whatever fills those buckets. And then we have emotional, which is you know, I love you no matter what, I'm proud of you no matter what. And then we have a steam bucket, which is kind of typically seen as our confidence bucket. And so who are we asking to fill those buckets? And the biggest mistake that we make is we mix those two sides where we're waiting for our coach to praise us, we're waiting for everybody else on social media to praise us, and if those aren't actively in your support system, why do you want them to fill those buckets, let alone kick that bucket over?

Speaker 2: 25:23

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 25:24

We have to protect those buckets. And so if you look at your confidence bucket and your love bucket, we need those from parents. And so if you're going to give that to somebody on social media, we have to covet those buckets, you know, and we can fill those love and esteem buckets ourselves.

Speaker 2: 25:37

Yeah, yeah. Or the people who, like, really actually know us right, like my husband is appropriate to fill that bucket. People who's like opinions I really trust because they know me and we've developed a relationship, I'm going to let them fill that bucket. And this is I love. I mean, you know me. I love metaphors, I love it yeah.

Speaker 2: 25:56

I love it, yeah, I love it, um, but it really makes me think of, too, when we're when we're talking about buckets, and who are we letting to fill, fill those buckets? Um, it just makes it. It makes it so obvious that, like, why are you letting a stranger on the internet fill that bucket that, like they shouldn't have any any you know access to in the first place, right, and, yeah, I mean, I just love that. It's like, why am I basing my lovability on someone who doesn't actually know me and who I can place my lovability on is the people who actually know me and and they're the. So this, this is the aha moment.

Speaker 2: 26:30

I do think criticism is important. I do think feedback is important, right, because we can only get better. We have blind spots, we don't see it all, but I'm going to take that feedback from again, my spouse, someone who knows me, my mentor, like those people are going to give me feedback and I'm going to be like, oh, maybe I need to change that or adjust that, or maybe I'm not great in that area, but that's very different from taking feedback from a stranger on the internet who shouldn't have access to my buckets at all.

Speaker 1: 26:54

Well, and even asking the question, am I asking, let's say, we take out all the people that aren't supposed to be filling our bucket, let's say, the people that are filling those buckets, am I asking the right person to fill the right bucket? And that's a mistake. Parents, I'm going to speak to your children now, because that's part of this podcast is that sometimes your kids literally just need you to fill their love bucket. They don't need more information, they don't need you to criticize their performance, they just need a hug yeah that's really good.

Speaker 1: 27:22

What bucket are you feeling? And for ourselves, who am I asking to fill? What bucket?

Speaker 2: 27:26

yeah, yeah. And what? What bucket is my kid asking me to fill right now? Because I do think we can hop into that like support mode of like what, what do you need? What can I do? And it's like no, I just, I just need love, I just need you to be there and have you be a rock, and like, then I can go do the things that I need to do. It's so, it's so good. So, you know, for parents who are like okay, great, I have an idea of like building confidence, are there any specific practices we can get started with that can help to build our children's self-esteem so that they can go out and slay the dragons that they want to slay, whatever those are for them in their world?

Speaker 1: 28:00

Yes, yes. So I love that you're asking this question. This is something that I teach inside of my parent programs, but I've been giving this away because I think that there's a lot of myths out there of um, raise your hand If you've heard of the Oreo method. Right, the Oreo method says you got to sandwich the criticism between, like say something good, and then the praise yeah, okay.

Speaker 1: 28:23

I was like yeah, I know, yeah it just feels so cheesy to me and I don't have teens yet. I have young kids, but I work with a lot of teens. They can see it coming from a mile away.

Speaker 2: 28:35

I see through that so much, oh yeah.

Speaker 1: 28:37

Yeah. So I reworked this into what I have termed the 3P method. So the 3P method is if you want your you know, any relationship, really, you could use this with your spouse, you could use it with your children. The 3P method is we are starting with authentic praise. The first P is praise. And so again going back to the first part of this you know, interview and conversation is what can you authentically praise that? You have proof of that. You're just kind of pointing out the proof to them of the process, even when it was hard. I saw you getting up early to work out, Even when you struck out. I'm really proud up early to work out, even when you struck out. I'm really proud of you for getting back into it. Whatever that authentic praise is, it's almost coming at it from a piece of curiosity of hey, did you notice this? And then you're inviting them into a conversation because now you have their ear.

Speaker 1: 29:32

Then the second P is their perspective. We're still leaning into this curiosity. How can you phrase this in a question? And the way that you're going to ask this is well, what did you think or what did you feel out there? I genuinely want to know. I don't know the answer to this, and then, as parents, or even as spouses, we're taking that backseat of. I literally don't have the answer and I'm genuinely curious. What is your perspective? How do you think you performed what you know? How do we recap the game for you? And they'll start talking Now. It may not be immediate after an athletic event or in the heat of the moment, you might want to give this conversation some time, but that's going to open up their concerns, their thought processes, something that maybe they're proud of, and it might take the conversation in a whole new direction. And then the final P and this is the most important thing is your perspective.

Speaker 1: 30:26

And it sounds like this. Well, do you want to know what I think?

Speaker 2: 30:29

Yeah, you have to ask first.

Speaker 1: 30:31

That's so good and they have to say yes or no and it's completely flipping it, because I think the mistake that we make a lot is we just jump right in with our perspective.

Speaker 2: 30:40

We just want to give our opinion, yeah.

Speaker 1: 30:42

This is what I'm seeing. This is what you need to fix, this is what I'm proud of. And how many times have you told your son or daughter oh my gosh, you're amazing. Eye roll, scoff, ignorance. You're just saying that because you have to, and so when you praise them, ask them their perspective and then give your perspective, they don't even have to know that you're doing. You know, you're kind of just like rolling through this conversation piece. The other tip that I have is, if you can do an activity where both of your eyes are forward, think about a time where you're not making direct eye contact car rides yeah um, you know, like sitting on a couch, laying in bed right before bedtime, where both of your eyes are kind of gazing towards the ceiling.

Speaker 1: 31:23

They're gonna just open the floodgates of their hearts to you because you're on the same side that's so good.

Speaker 2: 31:30

Okay, will you help me with one of my children? Okay, will you help me with one of my children? Okay. So I have a child who, um, like, is very confident, and so if anything ever goes wrong in the game, uh, it's always somebody else's fault. Right, it's all. And like, it's the ref's fault, it's my teammates fault, it's the coach, like always somebody else's fault, um, and so it's a ref's fault, it's my teammates fault, it's the coach, like, always somebody else's fault. And so it's a really difficult experience. Is like, when he does good, it's all him baby. But when he, like, when they do bad, and even when he's not performing well, he never will. He never says anything about that, it's always. He always points fingers. So, as parents, how can we support him? He always points fingers. So, as parents, how can we support him? How can we like, I think, self, you know, again, feedback is so important in being able to grow. And it's like, if you can't see the things you're doing wrong, how the heck are you going to fix them? But he just like can't go there. I don't know if it's like psychologically unsafe for him to like go there. It cracks his confidence that maybe he's not good as he thought he was, but this is something that my husband and I have been really been struggling with this one child, so lay it on me, tell me.

Speaker 1: 32:37

Okay, I love this so much. Um, I'm sure that you've heard of this, or at least read it, but growth mindset it's not even called growth mindset, it's just called mindset by Dr.

Speaker 1: 32:46

Dweck, yeah, and so the I love going back and referencing these, but one of the quotes that I wrote down is don't prove back and referencing these, but one of the quotes that I wrote down is don't prove, improve. And so his ego is wrapped up in proving I have to prove yes to myself. And so if you think about and I know that you do all this work, but you're so close to it and so if you can think about where are those times in his life where that wasn't true, and can you challenge it, and so maybe you could ask him is it baseball?

Speaker 2: 33:15

it's basketball basketball.

Speaker 1: 33:17

Okay, you could ask him is it baseball? It's basketball, basketball. Okay, you said ref. Okay, making that connection now. So if you think about a time where, in basketball, can you work on and again using the three P method, without challenging him on those direct times where he is blaming find those moments where he is doing it right and condition him to place his confidence in those moments of when was he in a flow state, when was he taking ownership of his game, when was he not blaming. And if he's going to take credit for those moments, then when you have a future conversation, in the moment where he is blaming, you can take that conversation and you can say okay, but remember that conversation we had last week. Are those two the same situation? Because if you're going to take credit when you're successful, failure is your greatest teacher. And so let's look at this this is a safe place and let's just clear the air. Dude, I love you no matter what. Yeah, yeah, I'm proud. Do you know this? Do you know that I'm proud of you, no matter what?

Speaker 2: 34:20

Yeah, that's so good. Yeah, and I think honestly, like and I know this about myself, I'm not super great at praise my integrator and I were, like our team needs praise, like our team needs needs of these things, and my kids need praise, and like the people in my life need praise and it's not my go-to, and so I think that's absolutely an area of growth for me that I can like it's. It's. I have to like, think about it and put effort into it. But I think you're right.

Speaker 2: 34:46

I think making it safe and that continual reminder of like I love you, no matter what, this is a safe space. Yeah, like it's all, I'm always a safe ground to land on. Like I'm never. I'm not going to love you less when you lose a game and I'm not going to love you more when you win a game. Like it's, I can't love you any more or less. I think that's something I could do a lot better of of, of making that the constant thing that is in his mind. So it is more psychologically safe to not be the best, I think in his mind it probably isn't psychologically safe.

Speaker 2: 35:13

He has to be the best he has a little bit of like youngest child syndrome as well, like having to put himself when he has older siblings.

Speaker 1: 35:21

So this might surprise you, but I actually resonate with what you said about it's hard to remember to praise because we're action oriented, and so this was actually on my podcast. That I thought was really incredible. If you see it, say it, and this comes from Rhonda Ravel and one of her mentors. If you see it, say it and don't assume and that has really transformed even in my direct team is if someone crushes it, I'm going to say something. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 35:50

Yeah, that's really good. I love that and I'm working at it being more of a natural uh, a natural thing for me, because it is so important. It is so important for our psychological safety, and it's not that I don't feel that way, it's not that I don't feel like you did a great job, it's not that I don't feel like I love you, but it is that act of actually opening my mouth and communicating it. So it's not just like well, of course, you should just know that about me, it's like I actually said it out loud, right.

Speaker 1: 36:17

But in the absence of communication, yeah, people make up their own stories. 80% of the time, negativity will fill that void.

Speaker 2: 36:26

Yeah, that's. I mean oof, that's, that's so good, it's such a good reminder it hits you. Yeah, okay, I want to be better about filling that void and making it really apparent how, how I think it feel. Um, thank you for that. Thank you for that little small coaching session for me as I parent my own children.

Speaker 1: 36:43

I'm honored.

Speaker 2: 36:44

Okay, awesome, so this has been amazing. Uh, I I'm walking away with things that I'm going to work on from this conversation. So people are like, oh my gosh, this has been amazing. I have a child. I wish I was on the podcast and I got to ask a question about my child to Amanda, like Amber got to. How are they going to connect with you? How are they going to find out about your programs? How are they going to get their kid involved with what you offer?

Speaker 1: 37:04

Yeah, absolutely Well, one of the things that we have been giving away since forever, for the past five years, is our conversation guide, so I would love to give that to any of your followers. It's a. It's like 12 pages. We should really charge for it, but it's a journal prompt. You can use it as a journal prompt, but there's also sections in there where I do outline the three P method and it goes a little bit deeper. That's just a quick PDF, and then there's actual reflection questions and conversation starters that you can use with your athletes. And then there's a really cool. The last page is finding your inner warrior, so you could literally print that out and give it to your athlete to depict who is their best self. And then the second thing this is depending on when you listen to this podcast our social handles are at fearless fast pitch, and then soon, this summer, we're going to be rebranding to fearless warrior, so either one of those two will get you both those links.

Speaker 2: 37:55

Awesome and you're currently focused on fast pitch athletes. Are you expanding to like my basketball sons?

Speaker 1: 38:04

We are. You heard it here first. I recently got hired to work with a pro football team and I have a client that's entering the draft, and so it's just kind of been this like I really wanted a safe place for softball athletes and that's not going away. We will always be here for softball athletes, but I think we're going to start expanding to run groups of other sports and a lot of our athletes are currently multi-sport athletes, so it's a it's a natural transition.

Speaker 2: 38:31

Yeah, it makes sense. Okay, Well, that's awesome and we will definitely link that up in the show notes. So if you want that PDF, go to the show notes of this episode and we'll have that link for you. Thanks, amanda. Thanks for sharing so freely with my audience. Thanks for giving me a little bit of coaching for my children. I really appreciate it. And, yeah, it's just an honor to be able to call you a friend.

Speaker 1: 38:50

Amazing. I love it so much. Thanks for having me.