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Speech Transcript (very little editing so not exact)

Time To Shine Today Podcast Varsity Squad. This is Scott Ferguson, and I got my good friend that was introduced to me by another awesome friend as well, Jason Holzer Larissa Mills from the Mental Game Academy. She’s just north of the border there in Canada. We were reminiscing off Mike about places that we kind of hang out and kind of do things. But you know what? She goes back, and she has a pretty lengthy detail of what she has. Her outglades are huge. Larissa and I are really big on kind of saving our future with our children and the crack that’s in their hands every day. And I’m not talking the crack you smoke. I’m talking the crack that you’re on the screen every day. And this is a very conversation that the parents out there really want to listen to. And because my friend Larissa is going to drop some serious, serious knowledge nuggets on you to help you level up, especially if your kids an athlete. Not even an athlete, but just children in general. Larissa, sorry. Thank you so much for coming on. Please introduce yourself. The time to shine today podcast varsity squad. But first, what’s your favorite color and why? I think it’s the color of a lake, the way it changes colors. I like that you got some nice lakes there where you’re at as well. Take that blue. And there’s different colors.

 Even in the ocean near Bahamas. I like, there’s just the aquas and the way they change. And I like the way the sun hits them on the water. Definitely any color to do with water. I’m down. Love it. The power. I love it. So we had a really fun, engaging conversation. We just kind of met fire. Let’s go. Yeah, let’s level up here. Let’s get to the roots of you, and then we’ll kind of pull it forward into where you’re at now. So where do we get our start? Larissa? And how did you really get into noticing that this future is kind of in debacles, and we really want to level up the children? Yeah, we’re in trouble, but I believe that there are solutions. So there’s the good news, right. I noticed as a coach, and I was a behavioral consultant in the school, so I was a teacher before. When I had my athletes in, they were, like, not as focused. And I’m like, what’s going on here? Why are you distracted? Why are you tired? Why are you on that device thing in the gym? What is that in your hand? And this is back in 2005. Now, the big thing that changed was in 2007, when phones came out, iPhones came out, right? Right then I started to see a very different athletic atmosphere in 2010. That was when I first noticed athletes. I’m like, you can’t run for five minutes. You can’t do push ups. What’s going on here? Why are we delaying, declining? And why aren’t we as happy and as focused. And then I started to do research. I got money for research. And we started to find that the more a child was on a phone, the more they were delayed in emotional, psychological. Academic and physical development. And now I have many more, many more studies that have proven that from the medical societies that back this up. Pediatric, American, Canadian, British and Australian, our kids, 89% of them are addicted to phones under 18. That’s a problem, right? I’ll just say 90%. This it’s crazy. Sure, round it up. Yeah, round that stuff up. Round it up. But that’s where we’re at. 

And we cannot hold where this pendulum is swung. Society can’t hold here. And this is one of the leading factors in education, in sports, in our homes. Sure. And it’s kind of delaying work ethic, work habit, habits. You can’t get them off their phones to do anything. So you’re going to set them up to fail at jobs and at school. That makes no sense. With that being said, where do you see, like if we were just to take a snapshot, ten years from now it’s 2033, where do you see if it was to still go on this swing? Where do you see our society right now? Yeah, I see what you’re saying. So hospitals would be full of mental health and people who can’t cope or manage or show resilience. Education would be at half the teachers would be gone. We can’t control behavior. Behaviors are naturally becoming more impulsive, so more violent, they can’t cope or reason or problem solve because they’re just going to this thing and going, yeah, hi. How do I solve this problem in their phone instead of asking their own brain to do it? That’s why we go into schools and have developed this program called Sharpening Your Pro Athletes. A twelve step program that takes athletes or student athletes, or dancers or musicians, whoever it is, it doesn’t even matter. We are not preparing kids for the real world mentally. 

So we have to go back and do that. Once we do that and we balance their tech out, I call it balancing the heck out of tech. So they can’t be on them for four or 5 hours a day, even 2 hours a day is not actually having the results that we want in our athletes. Right. That’s where we’re seeing performance. So the athletes that we’ve coached, Olympic or professional, it’s very apparent when we go on our devices. And plus that dopamine is a great fix. Right. It’s just like giving them cocaine. So of course they want it. Of course they want. And no one talks to me on my phone and bothers me. So I’m just going to stay right here on my phone. This is my happy place. Love it. Right? Do you place alternatives in place of their phones for themselves? What alternatives? Are you there? I’m saying like meditation, stuff like that. And how are you getting these children to buy in? Hold on. You getting the children to buy into them? The changes that you’re looking. Going to make we do it in two ways. So there’s two methodologies we’ve been trying. The one methodology is working and strategies better than the other. So if I want to be able to teach the athletes mental skills, I have to reduce their phone time a bit, but give them something to do in that time, right? That’s what I was asking. Correct? Right. So here before bed, there is no phones in their rooms, okay? None. The reason why is because it’s messing up the real sleep. It’s messing up their restorative sleep. And plus, phones are like, imagine if I gave you a pop can and you had it all day and you shook the pop can every time you checked your phone. And then I dare you to go open that pop can at night on your mom’s favorite rug, right? That’s your nervous system. And our brains on phones all day, like, wired. We’re restless. So in order to get the kids to calm down and look at their mental skills, so we give them self talk exercises, mantras. They have to do this work, how to stop negative self talk. And then they have to do their journal work, which I’m asking them about their feelings. Like, how dare we ask them about the F word in sport? Fun, fear, failure, and fearlessness. Right? 

No one talks about feelings in sports. The good coaches are starting to they’re starting to make these connections. But we do replace that time with work and journal work and a little bit of our own reflection work and emotional intelligence. Then they’re like, oh, I got through that night, right? They’re like, I feel better. And then it starts to become it’s a withdrawal. I love it. Yeah. I love that you said self talk, because I actually keep this book on my desktop. Hold it closer. I can’t. Shad Helmsteader. It was written 83. Yes. That’s an old way. I love it. Yeah. He’s metaphorically a god to me when it comes to self talk. It helps with the athletes that I coach as well, and I always refer to Chad quite a bit. So let me ask you, you work a lot in groups or one on ones or what? Thanks for asking that. We actually work in groups, teaching at schools or colleges or sports colleges, associations. So I could be teaching a whole hockey league. I could be teaching and then we would teach their teams. Right? Where you get the most benefit, though, is one on one, because we can talk about what your fears are, because every athlete has a fear. Every athlete fears something, and that’s usually what turns them from a nervous athlete to beast mode. They’re gone, they’re happy. As soon as we go beast mode, my job is done, right? And we have to figure out how are we going to get Johnny, who’s wonderful, and he shows so much potential in his development that he just needs a little bit more confidence. Or is that he’s been on social media for 5 hours a day and that drains. Their identity of themselves. Right. So he’s constantly comparing himself to others. So I have to fight with all these other negative forces, and then I also have to fight with parents that are really hard on their kids. Like, the car ride home for kids is horrible. Oh, my gosh, I remember those. Yeah. Okay, so I had a wonderful dad who was really supportive, and then he’d be like, I’m going to be honest with you. Honesty is the best policy with your kids aren’t perfect. So telling them what they need is actually and I have three competitive athletes, so telling them what they need to do, but in a very straightforward manner and in a way in which you make them think they think it themselves is probably your best way to go. But I don’t talk in the car about the game unless they want to. Right? Thank you. I love my father. Best friend in the world right now, but I played high level, and he’s just like, so why didn’t you hit that move on the map? And at the time, I’m like, Dude, and at the time, I didn’t have a phone to turn to, like ad, you know what I’m saying? So you had to be fully engaged with him at that time. 

With that being said, Larissa, what is some of your secret sauce, if you don’t mind sharing. When you’re maybe in a discovery period with a prospect client, and we’ll call it a client for right now to help them find that initial blind spot to help them move forward. Okay. There’s a couple of things we do. So when we meet with the athlete or student athlete, I even meet with some professionals. Right. We even meet with doctors and lawyers because they feel like they’re stuck in some way. So how do we figure out where you need to be? Well, what we do is I have a background in psychology, sociology, and then I did a master’s in how the brain learns. Right. Okay. So what we’ve developed is a mental skills assessment and a little bit of an awareness assessment. So where does this person, when they fill out those answers to me, I can tell psychologically where they’re coming from. Love it. And just by talking to them, we can figure out what they fear most as soon as we ask them that question, they’re honest because we’ve built a place of trust. And one of the things our athletes have all told us is that, well, oh, Larissa, you mean this is our last session today? Well, I want to keep going, and that’s great. That’s what I want. I have athletes calling me and going, I so did my reset in that game, and then I went out and I scored a goal. It was so awesome. And I’m like, it was priceless to hear that. I’m like, crap. I want that on record. Right. To feel good about what we’re doing? Send me a voicemail. I almost said like, damn, that was awesome. Those moments of figuring out where an athlete now it doesn’t always happen off the first bat, right? That’s why we need need there are twelve steps because it takes some athletes more time. To find their comfort zone with us and to find trust. Love it. So it depends. And we don’t push. Right? I love that it’s got to come from them. And we actually involve parents. We need parents to help us. Love it. And parents are on board, 100% on board that we work with. That’s beautiful. Is it something that you kind of require the parents to be on board, or is it something we really encourage it okay.

 We encourage them to do the healthy phone habits and routines at home and help us with self talk and how to stop your child’s negative self talk. But part of that is you can’t criticize them. Right. You can’t just keep yelling at them. You’ve got to work with them. What we call is you’ve got to be your kids landing mat. You can’t be their spitting mat. Right. You’ve got to keep that dialogue open all the time. I am not perfect. I make mistakes. I will lose it once in a while. I’m human being. I do apologize. Or I try and say, okay, I was out of line there. Right. Or I’m very reasonable, because then they’re like, okay, this is how we resolve conflict in a human world. I have to teach my kids also how to apologize. Yeah. They do need to know that. Right. We can resolve it. Yeah. When you’re maybe meeting with either the parents or the kids and you’re kind of in the discovery period still, is there any good question that you wish they would ask you but never do? Yeah, well, sometimes they do, but they’re fearful, right? They’re fearful of a parent making the mistake. Well, I can tell you I have probably made every one of the mistakes you’re going to ask me about, either as a coach or as a parent. And there is I’m improving myself as a parent. I’m always growing. I’m always learning. I’m always learning because my kids are going through different stages at any given time. I’m growing. I’m learning still. And I think the moment we say we’re done learning and I’m an expert, that’s wrong. I am never an expert. Love that. Yeah. People that are elite like yourself, the top of one mountain to bottom of another, you got to always evolve with that. And Larissa, as we move along, let me ask you something. Have you seen the movie Back to the Future? Yes. Right? So you and I are basically the same age, but you don’t look it, that’s for sure. But let’s go back in that DeLorean with Marty McFly. Let’s go back to the there’s a DeLorean down the road from us on a cottage and the kids take pictures. I love it. Let’s get that DeLorean with Marty McFly. Let’s go back to double deuce. The 22 year old Larissa, what kind of knowledge nuggets might you drop on her? 

Not so much to change anything, but to maybe help her shorten the learning curve level up or blast through. Maybe just a little bit quicker. There’s three things. You are always developing. Always. You’re always growing. It doesn’t stop. The second thing is stick to your routines and phone habits. Good, healthy phone habits. Because we now know that there are definite links to mental health statistics and suicide and all those awful things the more a person is on their phone. So let’s decrease your time and balance your phone time out with a routine, not just randomly going on it. Stick to your time. Third thing is learn your mental skills. Take a course. Take a leadership, take a community, take our course. Take whatever courses around you. I don’t care where you’re learning, but keep growing and keep learning about how you learn. Because your brain learns differently than my brain may not click with me, but something may click with you. Would she have listened? I hope so. Okay. Very good. So, Larissa, how do you want your dash remembered? That little line in between your incarnation date and your expiration date, your life date and death date. Hopefully it’s years down the line. But how does Larissa want her to ask? Remember, I want to be remembered that I’m trying to change the culture of sports. Love it. What do you think people might misunderstand the most about you? Some people think that I’m really strong willed, but I think that’s a good quality. Absolutely. It’s huge. Especially if you’re taking on kids and the parents at the same time. You better be. That’s beautiful. Anything keep you up at night? No, not really. I know that people with that superpower, man, that’s a super done my job. If I have done everything that I can for my kids, myself and my kids, I’m good. Sleep. That’s awesome. That’s fantastic. So let’s take out this equation, like family, food, anything like that. Sunlight, water. What are three things that Larissa can’t live without? Water. I said we have to take that stuff out. Okay. Water. Three things I can’t live without. Chocolate. Right there with you. My sister from another mister. Yeah. I can’t live without kindness. I can’t live without peace. Calmness. Thank you. Can’t live without that illness. Right. That’s where the mental really? 

I don’t think I could live without sports. I know, right? Me too. I love it. I don’t know. That’s beautiful. Does that sum me up? Absolutely. You come from the heart. That’s what’s beautiful. And, Larissa, what is your definition of a life well lived? Being a productive human being. OOH. And wanting to instill that into our younger generation, that this is a new generation of the digital age. And whether we wanted it or not, it’s here. We don’t have to accept it, but we do have to learn how to balance it out or we are going to run into some harder times. Beautiful and Squad, we’re going to take my good friend Larissa Mills through our leveling up lightning round just as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors and affiliate. It’s time to shine today podcast. Varsity squad. We are back. And Larissa, hopefully we’ll hook up one day. I’m sure we will, because we kind of run in the same circles and we’ll talk about some of these questions an hour or so each, but you have 5 seconds with no explanations and they all can answer that way. You ready to level up? Maybe. Come on, get that mental stuff. Here we go. Let’s go. Larissa, what is the best leveling up advice you’ve ever received? Listen well. Love it. Share one of your personal habits to contribute to your success. That would be my perseverance. Love it. So you see me kind of walking down the street or maybe an event, or you just see me, you’re like Man Fergie’s in his doldrums. What book might you hand me? Oh, the power of one. Yeah. Beautiful. Your most commonly used emoji when you text? I don’t think I use emojis. Maybe smiley face. Sure. Awesome nicknames growing up. Risky Milsie new chess. Checkers. Or Monopoly. Checkers. Love it. Superpower or talent that you have that really no one knows about. Oh, my goodness. Superpower that no one knows about. I’m really good at braiding horses. There you go. Awesome. Gooch ice cream flavor brownies or chocolate chip brownie? No, anything with chocolate. Love it. So you have your sandwich? Favorite sandwich. Build that sandwich for me. Oh, that’s easy. Bacon, lettuce, tomato, mayo. We’re hanging out. Ham, turkey. Yeah, something like that. You had some man candy on there. That’s beautiful. That baked. There you go. That’s beautiful. Yes. Favorite charity and or organization. Like to give your time or money to breast cancer. Because my mom died of breast cancer. Mine did too. Thank you so much. And you can answer this with a little bit more explanation, but what’s the best decade of music? Sixty s. Seventy s. Eighty s or ninety s? Ninety s love it. I’m an 80s guy myself, but ninety s. Ninety s is fun. I was in Iraq during the whole time of the 90s. I’d come back to the United States just before the Internet and stuff and be like, what’s that song by the Spin Doctors, like, who say you had a lot of catching up to do. It was like, oh, this is awesome.

So, Larissa, how can we find you love? You can go to thementalgameacademy CA. You can find us on Instagram at the Mental Game Academy. You can find me on LinkedIn under Larissa Mills, under the Mental Game Academy. Start there. Speaking of LinkedIn, you have to accept our connection so we can market. We do a lot on LinkedIn for people. So I think I just did it this morning. My team did. So I’m looking at it right now. We’re waiting on you. But no. There we go. I was in a podcast before. Yeah. You were with Manchester United. I know. It was awesome. I love it. I’m sorry, football. Yeah. He was like, you know to call it football. I’m like, well, my husband’s Scottish. We’re from England. My family’s in England. Football. I love it. So do me a favor and leave us with one last knowledge nugget that the varsity squad can take with us internalize and take action on. Let’s change how coaches and athletes connect. And we’re going to have to start to practice more mental skills because they’re 80% of the game. Yeah. Even what’s his name? Bobby Jones is famous golfer from back in the day. And he’s yeah. Most important part of your body is that four inches between your temples, man, that’s awesome. And squad, we just had a high energy, fantastic master class with my good friend Larissa Mills. She reminds us that we are in trouble, but she believes that we do have solutions. We’re delaying, especially the kids. They are delaying, declining, and attention span majorly is declining. The phone that is in their kids hands, they delay so many developments in them psychologically and physiologically. She wants to sharpen the athletes in your life or even the kids in your life, especially through what she call balance the heck out of tech. I love that. And she can get this, whether we get those five F words or four F words back into practice, back into sports of fun, fear, of failure and fearlessness, and most of the benefits we have is when we uncover the fear. And to do that, we can’t compare. 

She reminded us that comparison kills. We want to collaborate, not so much compete. We want to get together. And she wants the parents out there to be your kids landing mat, not their spitting mat. So please, please, this has come from personal experience. If they want to talk about it, great. Encourage them to talk, but don’t shove it down their throat. Trust me, it works. She wants to be remembered as someone that really changed, helped change the culture of sports by being a productive human being. I mean, Larissa is planting trees that she’s never going to sit in the shade of. And that’s the kind of people that vibe with my tribe. This is just freaking awesome. She wants to change. How coaches and athletes connect, have better communication, less of that crack I e phone in their hands and really open up to the world. Because the world needs this. And, Larissa, you level up your health, you level up your wealth. You’re beautiful, you’re humble, yet you’re hungry. Thank you so much for coming on. I absolutely love your guts. Thank you. That’s nice to hear all that. The kids are like, Mom, I put my socks on the tree. I’m still a mom. But yeah. Thank you so much for having me. And if we can help any teams in any way, we’re here. Love it. We’ll chat soon. Bye.

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