Locker Room Power

Good morning or good afternoon, wherever you may be in the world. This is David Sammel, with a another nugget for the week, the power of posture.

If you have your chin up and your shoulders back, and you walk at a decent pace, you're going to feel a lot more confident, you're going to believe that you can do things, you're going to have more energy. So the power of posture is incredibly important because if you slump, and you walk with your head down, and you shuffle, and you don't walk at any kind of speed, you're basically creating cortisol in your body, and saying, I'm not ready for anything, and that I actually feel down.

So, when grandparents used to tell us chin up, or if, if you were feeling down, told us to get out their chin up, get out there and go out and do something, they were actually speaking a very powerful truth. Because if you do things, you get energised. And if you stand up straight, and you keep your chin up, even if you're not feeling great, you're still going to feel better than if you actually start to act out how you feeling.

As a coach on the pro tour, and having worked with athletes in so many sports, everybody talks to me about mental toughness, and mindset. And whilst it's true, I believe it actually starts in the body. In other words, you can't be mentally tough if you slumped and walking slowly. Whereas if you're, you know, walking out decent speed and you're keeping your chin up, you have a better chance, even if you thinking negatively of a better outcome. Start to pay attention to your posture, and see how much mentally that helps you. I believe that mindset starts with actually disciplining your body to stay up with good posture, to to walk at a decent place to stand like you mean business. And that in itself is a great start. Of course, internally, you want to be thinking the right things, and this is what this podcast is all about.

But essentially, you can think all the right things you like, if you are in a negative body language place and you you're you're not taking care of your posture and standing upright and keeping your chin up, then no amount of mental toughness is going to feel right. Your body has to be congruent with your mind. And if you if you say I'm really tough, but you slouched it's very unbelievable for your mind because your body is telling it that you don't actually feel that way. So this week, whenever you find yourself slumping, you know just pick yourself up we're all human. We all do it especially when we sitting but every time you pick yourself up notice a difference in your physiology, and how much difference that makes to your days. Hope this helps and speak again next week.

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Welcome to another little nugget. It's Monday and this is David Sammel coming to you from a very wintry base in Yorkshire. Plenty of snow out there today. Anyway, today I'm going to talk to you about legacy, your daily legacy. In life, we tend to remember, people who have either treat us really badly, kind of put a fist in our face, or we remember people who have treated us very well and make us feel good.

So in life, I think it's very important to decide whether you're going to be a drain or a radiator. And somebody who's a drain basically sucks energy from from others, tends to moan a lot, and carry themselves dragging Lee and just, you know, very, very slow with the way they go about things unhappily all the time, or a radiator, somebody who's, you know, going to make you feel like it's a cheery morning that it's, you know, time to get up and go and do things and, and is always very pleasant and smiley. Now, of course, in life, it's impossible to be like that, you know, every minute of every day. But overall, your disposition if it's sunny, if your disposition is that of a radiator, I think people remember you for the right reasons. So every day when you're encountering people remember, you are creating a legacy.

This consistency over time, is what people remember that you are somebody that was generally always pleasant to be around always an uplifter, rather than somebody who drags others down. And this, this consistency is something that you train, you don't want to be like Melbourne, the city of four seasons, they call it because you can have four seasons in one day. They're basically as a person. If people don't know what they're going to get any time of the day and every day, it's different and change it changeable all the time. It's disconcerting, and also again, makes people feel unsettled. So when you encounter people today, just remember that you'd rather be a radiator because over the years, you will leave a legacy and create a legacy of not only what you accomplish, but also how people feel about you and more importantly, how you make them feel. And if people feel good around you, you're doing good things. I hope this is a nugget that resonates in some way. And good luck for the weekend. Speak to you next week.

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Good morning. Good day. Good evening. Wherever you may be. Today's Monday nugget is looking at the railway line of life, the never ending railway line with stations all along the trip. The world has been going for billions of years and mankind for, it seems like maybe millions of years, but certainly modern man for thousands of years.

I liken the train line to us being born and getting on the train at a station. And when we finally finish our journey on this earth, we're getting off at another station. When we were on this train, do we make the trip? More pleasant for other passengers or do we make it more difficult and, at some stages absolutely terrible for them. Do our actions add kindness and joy or anything positive to the trip of our fellow passengers or do our actions hurt?

So before you do something, especially something that you feel is important to you bear in mind as to whether this action builds or destroys. It's far easier in life to destroy things. If you think about it, smashing a building down is much easier if you've got a ball and chain crane that can just smash things, than actually the planning, building and nurturing of the whole growth of that building from the foundations up to the top. Destruction is easier than nurturing.

But nurturing of course builds beautiful things and on our journey of life, whilst we are on the train, do we nurture other people and help them have a better journey or do we go about making it an awful experience for everybody that we touch? This is a choice. We all live in our own minds and have to make decisions in our own minds.

And if you've got some pain within you, you have a choice. You either spread pain or you understand that it's for you personally to handle and transform into a positive experience for others. You can use it as an example to help others, or you can use it to perpetuate pain. This is always a choice. So get on the train of life, which you're on already and as you know, there is no better time to start spreading joy and happiness and kindness than the present.

I wish you a good day and let us continue on our fabulous journey.

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Good morning. Good day. Good evening wherever you are in the world!

Here has another Monday nugget. Today. I'm going to talk about breakthroughs, which happen when you least expect them. I have a saying which many of you might've heard before or read before? Do the work and good things will happen you just never know when!

So often breakthroughs happen after long periods of work, sweat and tears. So the message is to keep going until you finally push through. Remember nothing in life is permanent. Our mind can trick us into believing that pain and struggle are permanent. Now I'm not saying there are not health issues that are permanent and ongoing in life. I'm talking about in work and in sport where pain is temporary. I work with a track athlete who used to find it very difficult to hang in when the pain got really bad.

Basically so often in races, it comes down to the person who can take the most pain, the longest.

My suggestion to her was chunk it down. "So when you've got a couple of girls on your shoulder and clearly all of your struggling, just think to yourself, five more meters and run five more meters, and then five more meters, five more meters, five more meters or 10. If that's what you prefer and can handle"

The result was she was able to hang in for five more meters, then five more meters. And she began to realize that after 15, 20, sometimes 25 meters, the other girls would finally begin to fade and she started to win races that previously she had lost. She began to understand that the pain was temporary.

Often if you can just find a way mentally to hang in a few seconds longer, often that is the difference between winning and losing.

So in summary breakthroughs do happen. Mostly we just don't know when and therefore just keep pushing until things happen for you. You cannot keep working at something and not get better and as you get better, surely you're going to succeed more often.
Thanks and speak again next week.

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Hello and welcome to a another Monday nugget.

Everyone starts at the beginning. No one is an expert immediately, whatever you decide to do in life, a new hobby a new job. A new vocation, a new course, you start at the beginning and whilst you might have a fantastic aptitude for something and progress very quickly, you start at the beginning. And if you going to become an expert, it is commonly.

Talked about that we need to do about 10,000 hours of practice of anything that we do in order to become an expert. That means understanding that everybody has to go through the whole. The process of becoming an expert, how fast it happens if it happens in 8,000 hours or 12,000 hours, really doesn't matter.

The point is if you want to become an expert, become an expert and just keep going and learning until you are. And even when you're an expert, guess what the learning continues. This has been a saying that's gone around for a long time. The best time to plant a tree is 25 years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is immediately, well, if you want to do something and learn something, but you're intimidated, which I've been in the past because we're just not very good at it.

Yoga being one for me just get going. You know what slowly but surely you do get better now. Absolutely. I don't think I'm a great body type. I don't do enough of it to improve very quickly at yoga, but when I do do it fairly consistently, And this is a nemesis of mine. I just do not do it consistently enough, but in periods where I have been consistent, I have improved slowly at first and then slightly faster, but there are others who are much, much quicker than, I am and improve much faster and, you know, maybe have better coordination, all sorts of things.

it's an interesting thing. Learning whilst we all know that we can learn how often we get intimidated. If we're a beginner and the message today. Everyone's starts as a beginner. And we've been through many things in our lives where we started as beginners and became good at it. You know, as babies we learned to talk, we learned to walk.

We were beginners before this all happened at school, we learned to read, write as beginners. We couldn't do it at the start. So why is adults do we become so afraid of tackling something? Just because we have to start as beginners. Well, of course the big reason is we think that we look stupid. So self-consciousness is a huge driver to preventing us from going and taking the risk of starting something new.

But ultimately if it's something we really want to do get over that, self-consciousness just get started. And guess what? six months, one year, two years down the line, you will definitely not be a beginner. You will definitely know a hell of a lot more and be a lot better at it. And therefore be well on your way to becoming an expert.

If that's what you want to do.

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How to turn confrontation into opportunity with 3 golden words.

Confrontation is an opportunity to fact find. See it as a way of understanding the other person and if possible helping them understand you. As with all these things it’s the how that counts and this is my specialty.

So how do you turn confrontation into an opportunity to understand the other person and get to a place where you’re both working on the solution?

As an example an everyday situation where two people are trying to agree a price for work to be done. This comes down to value - each person sees a different value in the work. The key is your approach which is not to win an argument or a victory but to try understand the meaning behind their valuation. This is where the 3 magic words play their part. The words are curious, fascinated and interested.

I’m just curious as to the process you went thru to get to this figure in valuing this project?

Follow up question:
That is a fascinating process and I would be grateful if you could explain why the x thing

Or the other way - I’m interested in how you arrived at the decision that makes you think that what I’m asking is unreasonable?

Follow up questions all with a focus on fact finding.
What is it about the work that makes you feel it can be done quicker than the 5 hours quoted?

In either camp start to work towards putting the areas of agreement on paper abs the areas where you are still trying to understand each other better - think about placing the areas of difference between you and the working together to find solutions.

Rather than trying to persuade the other person to your viewpoint allow them to come to the conclusion that what is on offer is fair. This way everyone is happy with the outcome commonly known as win/win.

My view is that this happens when people feel understood and part of the solution. The key is to enter any potential confrontation with an attitude of curiosity - seeing it as a fact finding mission and this puts you in a different frame of mind to fear of the confrontation or anxiety about the discussion. See it as an opportunity to fact find rather than confront.

If you feel you want to dig deeper into this subject why not check out www.mindsetcollege.co.uk Module 7 called the 5 Styles of conflict management.

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It's Monday again, and this is David Sammel with another Golden Nugget for the week. I hope you had a great week last week and that this week is gonna be even better. I'm going to continue the theme of great questions that we can ask ourselves in difficult situations or on different topics that affect our daily lives. Today is a lovely one, which is, "what do you do if you feeling sorry for yourself?"
Here are the questions that I asked myself in this situation. Grab a pen and paper, preferably a journal, to write these down and to get on top of them because if you do this once, you will start to have a record of how you feel about certain situations, and how you progress over time.
Questions to ask when you feeling sorry for yourself?
What's the worst version of myself?
Write down all the actions, thoughts, and things you must do to be this person. Now, this can be a little bit painful, especially if you're honest with yourself but it is great to get it out there. It's like getting toxins out of your body. So, I'll repeat that, what's the worst version of yourself, write down all the actions, thoughts, and things that you must do to be this person.
Then write this down, what's the best version of yourself, write down all the actions, thoughts and things that you have to do to be this person. Once you have these on paper, take all of the current actions that you currently doing, the thoughts, the things that you're doing, that you that you're carrying out at the present time, and see which version is winning. Add them up and if you are doing more actions, and doing more of the things that make you the worst version of yourself, then that's what you're being at the moment. If you're doing more of the things that make you the best version of yourself, then you are the better version of yourself.
Now we don't have to be perfect. This gives you a good idea of what the gap is between the best version of yourself and the worst version of yourself because we all do things that are not helpful for ourselves, and things that are helpful to ourselves, and as long as there's a decent gap and hopefully a growing gap between the two versions of yourself, then this is very helpful to know and of course, then you work towards getting closer to the better version of yourself.
Now you can forward pace this and say, okay, in six months’ time or one year, two years’ time, or five years’ time, whatever you want to choose, imagine the best version of yourself that you'd like to see at that point in time?
In other words, how much would you like to see you progress over the next six months or one year or whatever. And that way, you will have the actions that you need to take to become that person and slowly but surely work towards an even better version of yourself. I hope this all makes sense. It's a short and sharp one. But again, the questions that you want to ask yourself is what's the worst version of yourself what's the best version of yourself and see which one is winning at the present time. And then you can make your choices to change towards the better version of yourself. Hope this helps. And as I said earlier, have a great week.

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And a Happy Monday to all this is Dave Sammel with a nugget of the week. Today I'm going to talk about a favourite. And this is great questions that we can ask ourselves in different situations. I'm going to cover two situations that happened to all of us and see if these questions can in some way, spark something in your mind that can help you. So, the first topic is “What questions can you ask yourself if you're feeling stuck?”
Ask yourself, what excites me?
A second good question is what drains me of energy?
What is one small thing I can do to move forward?
What can I change immediately?
If you write down a few words, or a paragraph, or even some bullet points against all these questions, there is a good chance that you will a feel a little better and have something in there that can help you move forward, even if it's just a small step. Because as we know, the journey starts with just one small step and slowly you gather momentum. Suddenly, you're moving forward again, rather than being stuck. The next topic and questions that you can ask yourself is what happens if something bad occurs? What questions can you ask yourself to overcome a bad situation? Now, I'm not gonna sit here and say that when something bad happens, it doesn't suck. Because it hurt, that happens, you know, bad things happen, and it's not pleasant. And we can't just brush over it and pretend that it doesn't hurt or is not difficult.
However at the same time, you must carry on living, and you have to find a way to deal with whatever it is that has happened. So, some questions you can ask are,
How bad is it? Really?
What meaning am I attaching to this?
Is the meaning that I'm attaching to this exaggerated?
Am I making a lot of assumptions?
It's important to distinguish the difference between fact and assumptions, and in our own minds, and that's why writing things down is so helpful. In our minds, we can quickly translate assumptions into fact.
How would I comfort a friend if this happened to them?
What are the chances of this being a blessing in disguise?
What good can I take or what action can I take from this and do or get some good out of this?
These are questions that have helped me in tough times. I'm not saying that it isn't painful and that sometimes it's very hard to see any good out of a tough situation but ultimately time moves on and things do change.
Time, to a certain extent does heal. There are many things that happen to us in our lives that are unforgettable, and you actually don't want to forget them. But at the same time, you need to continue functioning and if possible, having a productive and as good a life as you can do. And overcoming adversity is a big part of having a productive and good life. I hope this helps in a small way and speak to you again next week.

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Good day to you. This is David Sammel with another nugget of the week. Naturally, we're all free thinkers and there are plenty of people doing podcasts and blogs on all of these subjects. I'm just one extra voice in the crowd, but I hope that I can get to the crux of the matter, to the nub of the problem very quickly in a short space of time, so you can get an alternative perception that can maybe spark something in your brain to help you in a given topic.
Today's topic is based on steps to control your fear. Well, the first step when you really are thinking fearfully is to write your fear down, or your fears down. Once you write them down, because a lot of times when things are swirling in our heads, we see them as far bigger than they actually are so when you actually write them down on paper, it can immediately take the sting out of them. The second thing is to look at that fear and say, firstly, is it rational? Well, in my experience, most fears are rational. It's the chances of them happening and that idea that they could happen very easily that is irrational.
So as an example, if you're afraid of swimming in the sea, because you'll be attacked by a shark, that fear is incredibly rational. I mean, who the hell wants to be attacked by a shark. But the part that is irrational is the chances that it could happen. Now, if that's, you know, highly remote, and we know all the statistics about that so basically, you have that fear in the wrong box. It should be in the box that says, remotely happening, like getting run over on your walk to the local store.
The third way to actually help bring us under control is imagine and write down what the worst thing is, that could happen. So, the worst thing that could happen is that you could be attacked by that shark. Well, ask yourself this question. How much money would you bet on you being attacked by a shark if you were swimming in the sea? If the answer to that is you wouldn't bet on it, then that gives you an idea of how remote the chances are of that happening. I'm going to tell you a little story when I was in high school. In South Africa, in high school, we used to get caned by teachers if we forgot to do our homework. And I had homework Afrikaans homework for the next day. I was watching a TV programme and you know, just didn't get around to doing the homework. And then I said, Okay, I'm going to get up early in the morning and do the homework. And of course, the alarm went off, pressed the snooze button, didn't get up early enough to do the homework. But hey, it was the last period of the day so I would do that homework in a break time. The first break time came, and I thought, well, this is a really short break, I'll do it in the second break time. Second break time a game of football broke out and I decided Yeah, I'm going to, you know, go in and play that football. And all this time, the fear of the caning that I was going to get in the last period was just getting bigger and bigger and bigger, I was basically frozen by this fear. We got into that classroom, and it turned out that the teacher had to go home because he was ill. Therefore, all of my fears of getting caned that day didn't actually happen. Sometimes when we fear things that could definitely happen and it's rational and there's a good chance of it happening, even then there's a chance that it won't happen.
All in all the three steps are:

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Today I'm going to talk about not only resilience but the ability of human beings to solve problems. And why is it that we try to avoid problems, when naturally we're curious. Human beings are incredibly curious from, really the day that they born. And if you watch babies, how they develop and the curiosity that they have for absolutely everything, and little kids who have amazing curiosity and try to solve problems all the time. And then as we get older, we start to get scared of problems. And I think that's, that's just a mindset shift that problems actually are a wonderful thing in the way that we grow as human beings. and problem solving, is why we love sport, it's wild, why we love puzzles, sudoku, computer games, it's all about solving problems to get to the next level. And problems just never end. You know, the world is really a problem machine, and we love solving problems.
So, if we don't get problems from the outside, in our own minds, we tend to invent problems, so that we have, we still have something to solve.
So, what I've just really saying today is, you know, embrace problems. And I think that we're probably better to embracing problems to do with our work or studying than we are with emotional problems. But at the end of the day, emotional problems, also they're just to be solved. And often, to solve them, we need help. And that's why you have coaches, it's the why we have counsellors. And if the problems are deeper, then you can get to clinical psychologists, but even a clinical psychologist, just think of them as a coach.
Because when we have problems that we can't solve for ourselves immediately, often just sounding out. And speaking out loud, and sharing the problem with somebody else, helps us arrive at the solutions to our problems. And maybe it's just something that they say, a little push in one direction or another that helps us.
Have a wonderful week, and I'm signing off with a message to embrace the problems this week because they're gonna keep coming. And the better you get at solving them and enjoying the problem solving like a kid, the easier, you will view life's problems, rather than trying to wish them away. Because they're never going to go away. There's always going to be a new problem to solve. But that's the beauty of life. And you know, some of them are really, tough problems to solve. And nobody says that all of them are easy or nice. But at the end of the day, if we're alive, we need to do our best to solve problems and understand that it's just part of our growth in in anything that we're trying to accomplish. Take care and speak next week.

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