A good teammate supports their teammates. No matter their role and are happy for their teammates when they do well, even if they've lost their starting position. 

That doesn’t mean that they don't continue to work hard and try to get back the role they may have lost. The best teams I've been around accepted and embrace their roles are the ones that put themselves in the best position to max out when it matters the most.

Self-talk is a foundational building blocks for elite mindset. Most people have a negative self-talk than positive self-talk. The ratio is three to one. Let’s focus on high performing females and their positive and negative self-talk.  What I know to be true is that many high performing women are perfectionists. Being a perfectionist in a woman is also what makes so many of them great, but it also can be a barrier to high performance.

There's a power that goes along with gratitude in a team setting. One of the things it does with teams helps individuals no matter their role is, get outside of their own heads and think about what's important in this world. I’m not saying sports aren’t important, because it's a big part of what they do, but at the same time, it puts things in perspective. Especially when they're disappointed with the role they have, or they're not playing very well, or they've had a disagreement or an argument with a player on the team. Gratitude gives them an opportunity to focus on all the things good in this world. The things they are grateful for personally and a chance to think about people in their lives that they are grateful for.

Max out when it matters the most. What does that mean? In business life and sport there are challenges. What we do during the challenges is the most important part. Even if we do everything right sometimes the outcome doesn’t go our way. Dr. Larry Widman lays out the ingredients to put yourself in the best position in this short podcast.

In this podcast, I had the honor to sit down with Kirsten Bernthal Booth, Head Coach Creighton Volleyball. We explore her life from before she became a coach, to the early years at Kirkwood Community College, and her entire journey at Creighton University. We talk about what she does well and what she has learned along the way in her own evolution as a coach. She shares so many nuggets that high performers in business, sport, and life can use in their own pursuit of excellence. 

I’d also like to share the first and last paragraphs of the chapter called “The Power of Positive Coaches-Kirsten Bernthal Booth” in my upcoming book called: Max out When it Matters the Most: The 16 Powers That Will Help You in Business, Sport, And Life. 

I am just going to start off and say it. Coach Kirsten Bernthal Booth, head coach of Creighton University Women’s volleyball team, is the most well-rounded coach that I have ever been around. One of her WHY’s and my WHY’s are in complete alignment; To help empower young women and to do our part in helping them become the best versions of themselves as they transition into adulthood. Nobody does it better than Coach Booth! She has been the head coach since 2003 when she was still in her 20’s, and I met her in January 2012 after she inquired about getting some help for her team. The past eight years collaborating with her, her staff, and the team have been some of the most joyful experiences of my life. 

Her process-focused approach has translated into high-level performances year after year. Her record in the eight years I’ve known her is 213-50 with eight straight NCAA appearances, two Sweet 16, and one Elite Eight appearances. Her teams have won six straight Big East Conference Championships and five of the past six Big East Tournament Championships. She is a better person than a coach. I will leave you with this quote from Maya Angelou that gets at the heart of what makes Coach so special

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

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The goal is to help train somebody to develop an elite mindset. An elite mindset can just be the best version of your own mindset. We're not all world experts. but we can grow and develop a mindset that leads to very high performance in whatever we do. There are four core ingredients of elite mindset. There's commitment. And I simply think of being all-in on whatever we do. There's confidence, which I think is fairly straightforward, but to me, it's, it's about a belief in yourself and a way that you've earned the right to be confident based on certain things that you've done in your life to get there. There's concentration and another word I think of there is focus and refocus. There's composure, when I think of that, I think about being able to be physically mentally and emotionally at our best and have our nervous system in control when it matters the most.

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I had the please to be on my business partner at Performance Mountain CDR Jack Riggins USN (SEAL) RET. podcast "The Darkside of Elite. We talked about my childhood, growing up around horse racing, and how I became a performance psychiatrist and elite mindset coach. 

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