Tag: attitude

Road to Beijing 2022: An Athlete’s Story – Attitude

Attitude

The Blame Game 

What is the cause of the results you get in life? 

That’s a great question, isn’t it? Many of us try to rationalize or make excuses to justify certain outcomes, especially the negative ones😏 … I myself have pointed the finger at others and made excuses when I didn’t get the results I wanted or needed. Throughout my life and career as a professional ski racer, I always thought others were the cause of many mistakes and poor performances, blaming friends and even family members for negativity. 

Attitude – Arguably one of the hardest sections of the course, but also the most rewarding and enlightening. Learning about your attitude and our perception of it is very interesting. Our attitudes have great impacts on all of our experiences, and although you may think other’s attitudes affect yours, they don’t. We are free to think and decide our own thoughts. Those thoughts create feelings, feelings manifest into action – our attitudes.

During my career, there have been many times I struggled to stay positive and have a good attitude. Always being ridiculed for everything day in and day out. This of course created so much confusion, doubt and anger towards the world. My effort was there, I want to feel better and be happier but I can’t… everyone and things are against me. Little did I know it was my attitude creating this negativity and I was letting other’s attitudes affect my own… Spiralling.

Completing the attitude course gave me the tools and the understanding of how to use our biggest asset, our minds. Learning how the mind works, putting it to use and benefiting from it. Applying some small changes I instantly felt the weight and tightness lift from my shoulders. All of a sudden I had a smile on my face. For years many have tried to help me and I just wouldn’t listen or open my mind to see the destruction I was causing. 

We all have misfortunes in life, and they can cause a lot of pain or anger. I myself have a few trigger words or subjects when brought up in conversation my attitude changes, and not for the better. 

“Now why would they bring that up?!” 

Then the blame game… “I missed my par putt because…” 

Out comes the poor attitude, down in the dumps because so ‘n so said something that made me angry, causing me to miss my 3 footer for par, resulting in a three putt Bogey and losing the match. Grumpy, with a bad attitude, sucking the fun out of the great time we were all having. #funsponge 

Well, I chose to be angry about the comment which started it all. Taking my focus away from what I was doing, resulting in a poor performance. Of course, I don’t want to admit I have control over this so I blame the missed putt on someone else. Since it was someone else’s fault, now I’m angry with them and give them a bad attitude. This is your fault I’m in a bad mood.  

This time I’ll try it another way… 

Example – slow drivers 

Driving used to be so stressful for me, but since I started thinking differently I’m enjoying my road trips and don’t get nearly as tired or stressed. 

“Why are you going so slow!?” 

Usually, I would let myself get worked up, tailgate and speed past them dangerously. As if they are purposely trying to inconvenience me. Instead, I try thinking from their perspective. This is the speed I feel comfortable and safe at. No problem, I’ll keep that safe distance and pass when it’s safe if I even pass at all. The end result of arrival time might be the difference of seconds, but the change in attitude and happiness is huge. 

Give it a try – next time you feel yourself getting angry, or upset with something take a moment and think why? 

The Transition Game: Week 6

Welcome back!

What’s new this week? Well, I completed the new Attitude online section, have been way more consistent with my gratitude practice, am feeling better with my workouts and mixing in some new things like collecting road rash while rollerblading. Another plus is I have been much more productive during the week allowing me more free time on the weekends to recharge. The online section of Attitude gave me some of my favourite tools and perspectives yet.

The first thing that impacted me was journaling my daily attitude changes for a week, they went like this:

  1. Training/Workouts – I’m too tired, I don’t have time -> I will make time, it will give me more energy and help me sleep, plus I love it.
  2. Chores – Stupid, annoying, never-ending, better things to do -> Put on some music, have fun with it, get it done and reduce stress in the process.
  3. On day 3 I realized what would have the biggest impact on my life was changing my attitude about myself and doing some positive self-talk in the process, like Muhamad Ali and his poetic trash talking, it wasn’t to talk trash, it was to instill in his mind he was the greatest and so he was. I started with this. I am a fitness junkie, I will stick to my routines and let them drive my success.
  4. I am a smart and capable marketer
  5. The more I learn the more I earn $$$
  6. I am a social person with a good heart which makes for a great salesman
  7. A side hustle I’m passionate about and enjoy would be amazing, no need to worry about the hours it takes, just enjoy it and live!

Not a bad start, I’m sure my facilitator will have some ideas on how to tweak these further and what to focus on next but I’m feeling a lot better about myself and life in general already. The next strategy and the one that has impacted me most was finding three powerful positive words to say in my head when I feel my attitude shift negatively. The words have to create very clear pictures in your mind of times where you had an excellent attitude that created positive emotions and results. It took me some time to work it out and find the pictures in my mind that could snap me out of these negative attitude shifts. I ended up with gains, goals, and gratitude. 

Yes, you can laugh at me for picking gains as my number one, I laugh at myself for being “that guy” all the time but I couldn’t discard it because of the picture it creates in my mind. I’m at the gym, it’s a beautiful summer day, I’m working my ass off to the point my training partners are starting to wonder if I’m a psychopath, my trainer is grinning at the monster he has created. I’m building myself up, I’m ten feet tall and bulletproof, but I’m not just training my body, I’m learning to harness the power of my mind, building mental resilience and discipline. My confidence is unwavering and everyone around me feels my energy when I walk into the room.

Goals, it’s a beautiful summer day again. I’m outside with friends or in my Jeep with the windows down and music blasting, I know exactly where I want to go and how to get there. Everything is coming together in my life and I bring a smile with me everywhere I go. I’m constantly given positive feedback for being so driven and disciplined. “Everyone wants to be like Esty”, I can hear my old trainer say it clear as day as the younger athletes watch me train. My direction and path are clear and in front of me, I visualize my dream with ease and know in my heart I will make it come true.

Gratitude, yeah it’s a beautiful summer day again. I love the sun and I loved the offseason just as much as I loved being in season and playing the game. If I’m being honest, during my five-year college career I loved the offseason training far more than I loved the game. When I think of gratitude I flash to being on my couch after a long training day, 1.5 hours of weights and an hour of cardio in the books plus a solid hour on the ice. Lots of stretching, rolling, and refuelling in between. I can relax now, I’m happy with what I did, I feel great even though I’m sore head to toe and I know I’ll need a forklift to get out of bed the next day and do it all over again. I put on an action movie as the sun starts to go down and I’m completely content, at peace, and happy. I am grateful to be able to live this lifestyle and to have the support and admiration of my friends and family. LIFE IS GOOD!

After doing that exercise I started using the strategy that day and it works. Very well, I’ve used it in various situations now and it snaps me out of my bad attitude very quickly. I highly recommend everyone finds their three powerful positive words and just repeat them over and over and over again. I promise your shitty attitude won’t stand a chance.

Write you next week!

Esty

The Transition Game: Week 5

Welcome back!

Since I last wrote I have had another facilitator meeting, finished “Attitude Determines your Altitude” in my workbook and began some of the homework that comes with the lesson. I have been procrastinating less but still have a long way to go, I’m working out more consistently and have worked my gratitude practice into my warm-ups which puts me in an even better headspace than training alone already did. Using my scheduler remains to be a huge challenge, I always have a plan in my mind and I need to just prioritize putting it down on paper when I first sit down to start my workday. I know it will benefit me and I have to remind myself of that each morning to get it done.

As always, this most recent lesson has been an opportunity to look myself in the mirror, analyze my past, and help shape my future. In my workbook, the first thing that struck me was I was asked to indicate whether my thoughts were positive or negative when it came to school, my sport, myself, and home life. It was hard to have to circle negative on each, but a needed wake-up call. Especially once realizing that the results I am getting or have gotten in those areas are not the results I want. Immediately I flashback to my hockey career and remember the years I had the most success, I would have circled positive for all but school (I don’t think there has ever been a time in my life where I would circle positive for school). I was very fortunate to have some great coaches when I first entered the elite levels of hockey, one coach made it mandatory for us to send him positive self-talk emails on game days, if you didn’t, you did not play. Many guys thought this was just plain stupid, they refused and were punished, or they didn’t commit and never saw the full benefits. With a nudge from my parents backed by the fact that the coach had a very successful professional hockey career himself, I committed to it. The impact it had on my on-ice performance and overall confidence blew my 13-year-old mind.

I tried to find the old emails but had no luck. From what I remember they went something like this:

“I am a physically dominant shut down defenseman, I am a solid skater and excellent positional player. I am a leader and will not allow my teammates to be intimated or taken advantage of.” We then would set goals for that specific game, mine were usually something like this. “I will have 20 hits with impact, 5 hard shots on net with potential for tips or rebounds, 5 blocked shots, and will be a +2 with 1 assist”. I was amazed to see that when I consistently did this, I not only truly began to believe it, but I reached those goals more times than not and it took me from barely making the team to being a sought after defenseman every year that routinely wore a letter on my jersey.

Somewhere along the line, I forgot about all of this, and by the time I achieved my dream of earning a hockey scholarship I had allowed it to be completely washed away thanks to my ego. I did not have the success in college I had dreamt of for the previous 8 years and thanks to my hindsight 20-20 vision I realize that was largely due to an unchecked negative shift in my attitude.

For my homework, I have to journal my daily changes in attitude for 1 week. Thus far I have gone from “I’m too tired to train today, I don’t have time” to “I will make time, working out will increase my overall energy and help improve my sleep”. Today I added “chores are stupid, annoying, never-ending, I have better things to do” and changed it to “Put on some music, have some fun with it, get it done and reduce my overall stress in the process”.

Thanks to everyone who has been keeping up with this blog, I’m truly enjoying writing it and It’s helping me more than you know!

Write you next week,

Esty