Mindful Warrior Radio

Maggie Steffens: Captaining Olympic Teams

On episode thirty-five of Mindful Warrior Radio, we welcome Maggie Steffens. Maggie is a professional water polo player and four-time Olympian on Team USA. Named to the Women’s National Team at 16, Maggie has continued to represent her country at every major international championship since. At 19, she was a member of the 2012 gold-winning squad at the London Olympics, where she played alongside her older sister, making them a truly dynamic duo! Not only did the Steffens sisters bring home gold, but Maggie tied the Olympic record with 21 goals and earned the title of team MVP.

Four years later, Maggie led Team USA to a second consecutive gold medal as the captain of the U.S. Women’s Water Polo team at the Rio Olympics. In 2019, she made history by leading the team to their first-ever three consecutive FINA World Championship titles. A year later, at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, she helped the team secure yet another gold medal.

Maggie won three National Championships (2014, 2015, and 2017) at Stanford University where she graduated with a degree in science, technology, and society in 2017. She also earned NCAA Tournament MVP honors, and received multiple accolades, including MPSF (Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) Player of the Year.

Maggie continued her studies at Stanford, completing a master’s degree in management, science, and engineering and then went on to play professionally in Budapest and Barcelona before returning to Long Beach, CA in the summer of 2019 to train for her third Olympic games.

On Mindful Warrior Radio, Maggie tells us that the goal of leadership as a team captain is to “trust yourself enough to let go and trust your preparation.” She explains that the advantages of doing so are being able “to be yourself, not only out of the water but also in it, whether it’s taking a risk, going for the shot, or swimming a bit faster when it matters. It’s about building trust in yourself, and in turn, trusting others—your teammates, your coaches, and the shared mission of the team. Reaching that level of trust is hard, but it’s a big part of what allows your light to shine. After all, it’s hard to let that light shine if you don’t have trust in yourself, others, and a common purpose.”

About the leadership challenges of being a team captain, she says, ‘I’m constantly thinking about the team, even as I’m going to bed. Of course, I’m focused on how I can improve, but I also ask, what does the team need? What does each player need? How can I approach each situation? Being captain has really emphasized that responsibility. I’m always thinking about the team; that’s just who I am. And it can be challenging to balance fostering team development and harmony while still putting in the effort to become the person I want to be.”

To learn more about Mindful Warrior and Mindful Warrior Radio, please follow us on Instagram @therealmindfulwarrior and check out our website at www.mindfulwarrior.com

Maude Quinn: An Introduction to Family Constellations Therapy

On episode thirty-four of Mindful Warrior Radio, we welcome Maude Quinn. Maude is a massage therapist, bodyworker, and constellations facilitator. With a background in spiritual care and chaplaincy, Maude integrates theological training from Harvard Divinity School with a range of alternative healing modalities. Her work helps clients integrate the wisdom of the body, mind, and soul to access the wellsprings of belonging in their heart, understand their wholeness, and fulfill their soulful purpose. I am honored and thrilled to tap into the insights of Maude Quinn on today’s episode of Mindful Warrior Radio.

To define systems, Maude shares the following, “One of the most basic ways that I understand a system is as a network of elements connected to one another in a constantly evolving manner. So, systems are dynamic; they're alive. They evolve!"

She introduces Family Constellations therapy as “a modality that helps us map the often unseen, invisible dynamics within a system. Every system has unconscious roles, emotional patterns, and other dynamics that we unknowingly replicate. Constellations enable us to visualize these dynamics clearly and address the issues that hinder our deepest desires, intentions, and goals in life—whether personal or professional. It helps us understand how these blocks or entanglements might trace back to older systemic patterns."

Maude describes how family systems impact our lives and relationships outside of our families. She says, "We carry learned behaviors, beliefs, and patterns from our family system into other systems we belong to—whether partnerships, work, or organizations. Unconsciously, we may recruit others to fill unmet roles or needs from our family system, or we may try to fulfill others' unmet needs, replicating learned behaviors. By becoming aware of these patterns and transforming them, we feel deeply resourced and understand authentically what we have to offer in our world."

To learn more about Mindful Warrior and Mindful Warrior Radio, please follow us on Instagram @therealmindfulwarrior and check out our website at www.mindfulwarrior.com

Jay Glazer: Relentless Healing

On episode thirty-three of Mindful Warrior Radio, we welcome Jay Glazer, NFL Insider for FOX Sports’ FOX NFL SUNDAY and part of FOX FOOTBALL THURSDAY. Jay is renowned for breaking major NFL stories year-round, prides himself on hard work, and strives to deliver accurate reporting. He also hosts Bellator MMA fights on the Paramount Network. Jay brings a unique perspective from his background in UFC hosting and analysis. A natural on Podcasts and in front of the camera, he is fun, authentic, and outgoing. Jay’s unique personality always shines through in intimate conversations as well as on the biggest of stages.

Jay initiated the first MMA training program for professional athletes which is now used by over 1,000 athletes. Recently, he and his team trained All-Pro athletes including Von Miller, Aaron Rodgers, Odell Beckham, Bobby Wagner, Andrew Whitworth, Jadeveon Clowney, Lane Johnson, Cam Jordan, and the entire New Orleans Saints team at Unbreakable, his elite performance training center in West Hollywood. Each spring, Jay directs NFL training camps to prepare players physically and psychologically for their team camps.

With all his accomplishments, Jay is most proud of launching MVP (Merging Vets & Players) in 2015, a charitable organization that supports veterans and former athletes in transitioning to civilian life. MVP hosts workouts and counseling sessions both in person and virtually across several cities. (You can learn more about MVP at vetsandplayers.org.)

On this episode of Mindful Warrior Radio, Jay talks openly about how his healing journey taught him to love himself from the inside out.

He shares this insight from a recent healing retreat:

"This monk told me, 'I need you to sit in your pain.'”

I said, “I am with my pain every day.”

He said, “No. You experience your pain every day; I need you to sit in it.”

And I was like, “I've never heard it put like that before.'"

He also unpacks the healing power of moving through pain. "A lot of times, you don't want to do it because it's painful. But to get to anything good, you've got to go through something bad. Everything I have experienced has made me unbreakable: push your breaking point, come through the other side of that tunnel, and nothing else can break or hurt you."

And ultimately, what surprised him the most from his healing journey was “how many people have been hiding this and how many have expressed gratitude.” He says, “I've had a bunch of people tell me I saved their lives. They were contemplating suicide until they read Unbreakable or heard me on my podcast. Something resonated; they felt they were not alone, and they changed their minds. That's the coolest thing."

To learn more about Mindful Warrior and Mindful Warrior Radio, please follow us on Instagram @therealmindfulwarrior and check out our website at www.mindfulwarrior.com.

On episode thirty-two of Mindful Warrior Radio, we welcome Georges Niang. Georges was selected by the Indiana Pacers as the No. 50 overall pick in the 2016 NBA Draft. Since then, he has worked his way into the league being a force both on and off the court. Georges played 23 games with the Pacers during his rookie season before signing a two-way contract with the Utah Jazz in January 2018. He appeared in 59 games for the Utah Jazz during the 2018-19 season, where he scored in double figures five times and capped off the regular season with a career-high 24 points against the LA Clippers. Georges averaged 22.0 points in 15 games with the SLC Stars and was named First Team All-NBA G League for the 2017-18 season. He signed a standard contract with the Jazz before the 2018-19 season and played with the Jazz until 2021. He currently plays for the Cleveland Cavaliers (2023–present). With the Cavaliers, Georges scored a new career-high of 33 points, making 13 of 14 shot attempts.

Known for a joyous, uplifting spirit and a great sense of humor, Georges skillfully brings teammates together, fosters healthy and playful bonds, and is a key contributor to building high trust, high performance team cultures. His strengths and gifts extend outward and into his local communities. Through camps and clinics, Georges mentors and inspires the next generation of youth basketball players.

If you’re inspired by Georges’ energy and generosity of spirit on this episode, you can continue to connect with him on The Bench Seat, his weekly podcast, or watch him do his thing on the court with the Cleveland Cavaliers.

On this episode Georges answers questions about all things culture.

When asked how he builds culture, Georges says, “Culture is something that is not easily built, but when you're starting to build culture, you need to have a foundation, core values, and a routine that you're going to do every single day.”

Reflecting on how one person can impact the broader culture, he offers sage advice: “The best ability in sports is self-awareness: know who you are, what you bring to the table, and how you can add value.”

About his own contributions to team culture, Georges says, “I know myself and I'm more happy-go-lucky and joyous. I'm trying to instill energy constantly. And that's who I am!”

When asked how he stays committed to culture, Georges explains, “The kicker of every culture is when I sit down and commit to a decision, I have to ask myself, ‘Is this decision going to help our team win or is it not going to help our team win?’ And you always have to choose the one that's going to help your team win because if you don't, you may miss greatness by .1 second.”

To learn more about Mindful Warrior and Mindful Warrior Radio please follow us on Instagram @therealmindfulwarrior and check out our website at www.mindfulwarrior.com

On episode thirty–one of Mindful Warrior Radio, we welcome Dr. Lisa Firestone. Dr. Firestone is a Clinical Psychologist and the Director of Research and Education at the Glendon Association and Senior Editor at PsychAlive.org. She is the coauthor of numerous articles and book chapters and a coauthor with her father Robert Firestone on several books including The Self Under Siege, Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice, Creating a Life of Meaning and Compassion, and Sex and Love in Intimate Relationships.

Her involvement in clinical training and research in the areas of suicide and violence resulted in the following assessments: Firestone Assessment of Self-destructive Thoughts (FAST) and (FASI) and the Firestone Assessment of Violent Thoughts (FAVT) for adults and adolescents.

A national and international trainer and presenter, Dr. Firestone speaks on topics including couple relations, parenting, and suicide and violence prevention, assessment, and treatment. She continues to serve as a clinical psychologist in private practice and a consultant on the management of high-risk clients.

Dr. Firestone joined me for an informative and insightful conversation on how the critical inner voice presents and behaves.

Here is how she describes the negative impact of the critical inner voice. “In our adult lives, the critical inner voice holds us back a lot. It encourages us to engage in behavior like self-sabotaging. It tries to talk us out of taking risks that are positive and in our own self-interest that would open our world or expand our abilities.” And she normalizes the feelings that accompany change. “There's no change without anxiety,” she tells me.

Dr. Firestone highlights the importance of identifying the critical inner voice. She says, “The biggest thing is we need to identify it. We need to understand what's our critical inner voice and what's us. And recognize when we're not on our own side because we cannot do anything to move on from it when we're still just believing it. If you're still just believing all the ways it's defining you, you're not going to make it.”

You can learn more about Dr. Lisa Firestone’s work at www.drlisafirestone.com, www.psychalive.org, and www.glendon.org.

To learn more about Mindful Warrior and Mindful Warrior Radio please follow us on Instagram @therealmindfulwarrior and check out our website at www.mindfulwarrior.com.

On episode thirty of Mindful Warrior Radio, we welcome Simon Timm. Simon is a mindfulness and meditation teacher and the author of the book An Introduction to the Self Salutation: How to Resolve Negative Emotions Through Mindfulness Meditation.

Simon spent most of his college years battling depression. Unwilling to spend the rest of his life on Prozac, he searched for another way of living with himself. What he found was meditation. After college, Simon moved into a Hindu ashram and spent sixteen years as monk.

When Simon left the monastic life in 2011, he recognized the need for a meditation practice to help resolve the negative feelings within him—rather than just help lift himself above them. This prompted Simon to explore different modalities of personal transformation and ultimately to develop the Self Salutation.

Simon has a master’s in religion from Yale. He currently lives with his spouse, Allyson, in the Washington, DC metro area.

Simon joined me for an authentic and deep conversation about meditation and the experience of nirvana.

When asking Simon what compelled him to stay throughout his early days at the ashram he says, “Sitting in meditation for a couple of hours at a time was intense. It would feel like sometimes I was going crazy. But at other times it worked. And I lifted myself up and I experienced nirvana. It was like a state of freedom from my mind and from my psyche. I experienced a place of joy and happiness, and I would come back down into myself, but that taste of the potential was enough to keep me going.”

When asked to share about his experience with meditation Simon shares, “The experiences I had in meditation are not so rare for people to have. It's not so difficult and it doesn't have to be a lot. I think a lot of people experience meditation and suddenly, it’s quiet and the mind becomes quiet. It might be just for a moment. But in that moment, you experience what that freedom can be like.”

To learn more about Mindful Warrior and Mindful Warrior Radio please follow us on Instagram @therealmindfulwarrior and check out our website at www.mindfulwarrior.com

On episode twenty-nine of Mindful Warrior Radio, we welcome Alex Krongard. Alex served in the U.S. Navy for over 30 years, primarily in joint special operations commands and the Navy SEAL Teams. He was a member of SEAL Teams 1, 2, and 7, as well as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group. Alex was the first commanding officer of SEAL Team 7, which he commanded in Iraq from the late fall of 2003 to the spring of 2004. Later he commanded Naval Special Warfare Group 1 with responsibility for the training and readiness of the four West coast SEAL Teams and associated logistics and support units.

Alex’s final military jobs were as a counterterrorism director on the National Security Council staff in Washington, D.C., deputy commander of Combined Joint Task Force—Horn of Africa in Djibouti—and Deputy Operations Officer for the U.S. Africa Command. Alex retired in September 2016, as a Rear Admiral, Lower Half.

Following retirement, Alex worked as an investment banker with DC Advisory in their San Francisco office, predominately in the cybersecurity and government security services sectors before serving as CEO to The COMMIT Foundation for two years. COMMIT assists military service members with their transitions to post-service life.

Alex grew up outside Baltimore, Maryland and graduated from Princeton University with a degree in English Literature and from the National War College with a Masters in National Security Strategy.

Alex joined me for an honest, humble, and real conversation about his time in the military. When asked about enacting change through culture, Alex shares, “The scary ones I've run into are cultures that won't change…No matter what you do, you cannot change the culture. And sometimes you're not in the right place. Or you're not in the right job to do it. Sometimes it's a type of work where the traditions are so set in stone that you cannot do anything about it. I think you must know when to say, I can't do this. For elite performers I think that's almost impossible. A lot of elite performers have not just struggled but failed and ruined their reputations because they weren't willing to say, look, I just can't do it.”

When asked how you cultivate trust within teams Alex talks about shared knowledge. “Buster Howe, a two-star Royal Marine from the UK, gave us this great talk on trust. And he said trust is adding reliability. Meaning, I can be relied on to get something done. Ability: I'm able to do it. And intimacy. Intimacy being—we can have a conversation about this and not pull any punches and divide it by the perception of self-interest. So, if someone can get nothing from something and they're going to do it for you anyway and they're reliable, capable, and they're intimate with you, that's high trust.”

To learn more about Mindful Warrior and Mindful Warrior Radio please follow us on Instagram @therealmindfulwarrior and check out our website at www.mindfulwarrior.com

On episode twenty-eight of Mindful Warrior Radio, we welcome Yuri Hauswald. Yuri is an icon of the gravel cycling world. As a professional endurance cyclist for Giant Bicycles and the Elite Athlete and Community Development Manager for GU Energy Labs, Yuri is also an innovator, storyteller, and mentor to many. He is probably best known for winning the world’s premier gravel bike racing event, Unbound, formerly Dirty Kanza, in 2015 at age 44. No stranger to adversity, Yuri talks about his mindset and motivation for facing challenges head on.

When asked what has sustained his healthy and extended athletic career Yuri tells us, “I’ve always enjoyed pushing my physical limits. If I had to put my finger on something—and I don't understand the chemistry of it—it’s the endorphins. The chemicals that are triggered in our bodies and in our brains when we go into those states…when you're pushing yourself physically…I've always found some sort of pleasure and joy from doing that.”

When asked how he finds the discipline to keep going Yuri says, “I trust my training around certain power zones. My coach and I figured that my diesel engine could run at a high efficiency for long periods of time. Not super-fast. I wasn’t fast but I had the ability to hold good power numbers for long periods of time. So, sticking to that and having the discipline to know that.”

For the rest of us, he says a simple practice to get through hard times is to “take a deep breath. Take that pause. Have the tantrum. Figure out the next steps. Keep moving forward and you're going to be super proud of yourself when you get through those conditions.”

About finding joy in challenging times Yuri says, “Sometimes things just suck. And you have to deal with that suck. You have to figure out a way through. Life is not always joyous, but I do think that when you get through that mud pit of suck—or whatever you want to call it—that the joy you do find on the other side is possibly more powerful and more meaningful because you did go through the suck. The most important thing in all of that is just continuing to move forward, whether it's baby steps or long strides. If you can find little ways to continue moving forward through that suck, you're eventually going to get through it.”

To learn more about Mindful Warrior and Mindful Warrior Radio please follow us on Instagram @therealmindfulwarrior and check out our website at www.mindfulwarrior.com

On episode twenty-eight of Mindful Warrior Radio, we welcome Yuri Hauswald. Yuri is an icon of the gravel cycling world. As a professional endurance cyclist for Scott Bikes and the Community Development Manager for GU Energy Labs, Yuri is also a promoter, pro athlete, innovator, and storyteller. He is probably best known for winning the Dirty Kanza, the world’s premier gravel bike racing event, in 2015 at age 44. No stranger to adversity, Yuri talks about his mindset and motivation for facing challenges head on.

When asked what has sustained his healthy and extended athletic career Yuri tells us, “I’ve always enjoyed pushing my physical limits. If I had to put my finger on something—and I don't understand the chemistry of it—it’s the endorphins. The chemicals that are triggered in our bodies and in our brains when we go into those states…when you're pushing yourself physically…I've always found some sort of pleasure and joy from doing that.”

When asked how he finds the discipline to keep going Yuri says, “I trust my training around certain power zones. My coach and I figured that my diesel engine could run at a high efficiency for long periods of time. Not super-fast. I wasn’t fast but I had the ability to hold good power numbers for long periods of time. So, sticking to that and having the discipline to know that.”

For the rest of us, he says a simple practice to get through hard times is to “take a deep breath. Take that pause. Have the tantrum. Figure out the next steps. Keep moving forward and you're going to be super proud of yourself when you get through those conditions.”

About finding joy in challenging times Yuri says, “Sometimes things just suck. And you have to deal with that suck. You have to figure out a way through. Life is not always joyous, but I do think that when you get through that mud pit of suck—or whatever you want to call it—that the joy you do find on the other side is possibly more powerful and more meaningful because you did go through the suck. The most important thing in all of that is just continuing to move forward, whether it's baby steps or long strides. If you can find little ways to continue moving forward through that suck, you're eventually going to get through it.”

To learn more about Mindful Warrior and Mindful Warrior Radio please follow us on Instagram @therealmindfulwarrior and check out our website at www.mindfulwarrior.com