Ep. 65: Why Does Winning Matter

What role does winning play in your life? Are you consumed by the need to be #1, or do you find joy in simply participating and growing from the experience? Join us in this episode of The Mindful Sport Performance Podcast, where we disentangle the intertwined concepts of winning, success, motivation, balance, and life satisfaction.

Winning - it's a concept that's often synonymous with success, recognition, and opportunities. But is it the only measure of success? Not necessarily, as we discover in our chat with our AI friend, Chat GPT. We tackle the complex relationship between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, explaining how a healthy appetite for competition can be inspiring, and how finishing last in a grand finale can sometimes be more rewarding than winning a lesser final. We probe into the potential downsides of being overly competitive, reflecting on personal experiences and perspectives including Kobe Bryant's view on the necessity of winning.

As we wrap up this conversation, we place a magnifying glass over the impact of winning and the potential imbalance it can create in our lives. Can we truly achieve success without compromising our personal wellbeing? What happens when we don't win? Do new doors open? We dissect these questions and more, leaving you with fresh insights to ponder about the concept of winning and success in sports, and life in general. This dialogue is sure to challenge your mindset and redefine your perception of victory.

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Mindful Sport Performance Enhancement

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Very much appreciated, 

Keith, Tim, and Taylor 

Transcript

Keith: 0:11

Welcome back to the Mindful Sport Performance podcast. I'm Dr Keith Kaufman. I'm Dr Tim.

Tim: 0:17

Pinot and I'm Taylor Brown.

Keith: 0:21

And the three of us are here today to discuss what we hope is a very interesting and lively topic, which is about winning and specifically the question of why does it matter? Does it matter, how important is it? We, as mindfulness experts, claim to be process focused, but of course sports, in many cases, are very heavily focused on winning, so kind of peeling that apart a little bit and talking about how important really do we think it is. But before we get into that discussion, as we like to do on these episodes, we're just going to start with a very brief practice and, tim, you were kind enough to lead us off today, so I will turn it over to you. Thank you.

Taylor: 1:04

Yeah, I think well, such a common recommendation that I make that athletes I work with the clients is to be mindful around transitions. You know to choose to be where you are, and so I just want us to take a minute For those of you listening, if it is available to you. Just let yourself come to stillness standing, sitting, lying down, however it feels good If you can just let your eyes close.

Taylor: 1:37

Tune in to your breathing and, as you exhale, feel yourself letting go. Maybe you can feel your shoulders drop. Maybe you can feel the muscles in your face become a little looser. Internally, mentally, let go of whatever came before this, set an intention to be present here now with this conversation, without thought of outcome or what comes next. Instead, invite in curiosity about what could emerge by simply paying full attention, make one or two more breaths resting in that intention and, when you feel ready, open your eyes. Let's chat.

Keith: 3:17

Thanks Tim.

Tim: 3:19

That was great, tim. Thanks, appreciate that.

Keith: 3:24

So yeah, go ahead, taylor.

Tim: 3:26

I was going to say I just needed to practice right now. Practice I love our listeners, know, but my wife just had a baby 10 days ago, so my sleep has been little and my stress has been lots.

Keith: 3:41

Taylor, you look good man, you look good. Can't tell. I know that our listeners probably can't see your face right now, but I never would have known. You're probably going on about an hour of sleep.

Tim: 3:49

Yeah, it's weird. I'd love to have like an evolutionary biologist on the show, because I feel like this I'm both exhausted and completely full of energy. I'm wired but I'm exhausted, and I think it's my cognitively I'm going, but my body's just, like you know, running on empty, but yeah.

Keith: 4:17

Well, so this season, of course, we're playing with a slightly different format on our Mindful Sport Performance podcast. We still will have guests and still look forward to interviewing folks and getting some other perspectives. But we also kind of recognized now this is season five, crazy enough of our podcast that we kind of have a lot of fun talking to each other too, and so we thought we would do a bit of a pivot this season and be a little more topic driven and maybe just the three of us have some conversations. So obviously, tim and I have been doing the interview part together for a long time, but some of our favorite episodes have been when we brought Taylor aboard too and gotten to pick his brain including Taylor was a guest at one point. So we're going to do more of these episodes this season of the three of us and hope that this gives an interesting new wrinkle for listeners. And we certainly want to hear from you too If you want to weigh in on debates, if you like this new feature.

Keith: 5:15

If you don't, you know we certainly welcome all feedback and we'll talk at the end about ways to connect with us and engage with us on social media. So but hope you like this, and so we're trying to think about what would be interesting, provocative and relevant topics, and the one, as I mentioned at the outset here that we're going to talk about today is something that's pretty important to sports and pretty important in life, I suppose, and that's winning, and and how important really is winning. And I thought, guys I actually sent this to you a little bit earlier today because I was thinking about a really fun way to get started with this discussion and I figured who better to ask than chat GPT, right, who better to ask than to weigh in a little bit with some AI and see what AI thinks about this whole idea? So I just simply put in the query why is winning important to chat GPT? And I just want to share with you real quick what what chat GPT had to say.

Keith: 6:10

So the response was winning can be important for several reasons. Well, make sense. To me, it often signifies achievement and success, providing a sense of accomplishment and validation for one's efforts and skills. Winning can also bring recognition and praise from others, boosting confidence and self esteem. Additionally, in competitive settings, winning may come with rewards or opportunities for further growth and advancement. However, it's essential to remember that winning isn't the only measure of success, as learning from failures and enjoying the journey are equally valuable aspects of life. So I thought this was an interesting and relatively nuanced response from from our friend chat GPT. What do you guys think Curious? What? What your responses are than this?

Taylor: 7:00

I love that chat GPT included some process orientation. I love at least highlighting that like, yeah, winning is, isn't everything. And of course it can't be right, because you can't have winning without losing. They don't make sense without each other. And so I think to approach any endeavor takes sport right. So like I only want to win is in some ways it's kind of nonsensical right, because then you're only experiencing half of what it means to be a competitive athlete.

Keith: 7:39

Well, Tim, are you saying it's okay to lose? Of course it's okay to lose.

Taylor: 7:44

And actually no, I was talking to a buddy recently Actually I think I shared this with you guys, but, like he, he's got two, two girls, and we were talking about how we named how many names for your kids, you know, and he's like I really wanted to choose a name for my kids that would like fit in the cadence of you know and next up, you know, and he was. We were talking about sport, we were talking about winning, you know, and he had read this interview with Pat Summit, the basketball coach, and the interviewer had asked her about winning and I think, particularly like the you know, is the goal always a perfect season? And she said no, I never want a perfect season, ideally like, if we're gonna have, we're really gonna choose what we want. Here she's like I want a season with two losses.

Taylor: 8:44

One loss your athletes might be able to kind of brush it off and not really pay much attention to it kind of an anomaly but two losses it forces you to look at where the growth edges are right. It gives you a perspective about how to train and where to put your energy. That you actually can't get if you have a perfect season, because even if you end up with that the perfect season and you win the championship. Did you grow at all? Did your athletes change at all? And like I loved that, that perspective, because to me it says like the ultimate is actually not winning that championship, the ultimate is that your athletes themselves grow and learn through the process of competing right. It contributes to them as whole human beings. No, I don't truly don't know if that was really where she was coming from, but like that is I don't know. That's kind of the interpretation I put on it and I just I loved hearing a coach who said like, yes, I welcome some losses, it's really important for us.

Tim: 9:50

My reaction to the chat GP. I think it hit a lot of the elements of it, but in the way I was thinking about this it really for me. I reflected back on my time rowing in college and I think I do that a lot because that's my experience. What were the motivational factors for me? Just on our last mindful take episode, we talked a lot about intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. Think intrinsic would be doing, you know, rowing and training for the intrinsic satisfaction you get, for the fun, the enjoyment, the kind of internal things that motivate you to do that. Extrinsic would be some kind of reward, some kind of winning trophy title. That's the general gist of it. I know there's more nuance to it than that. But and I was thinking really about, like in the depths of winter training, you know we would spend six weeks on the ergs and I mean there would be days where I absolutely dreaded walking down to the Boathouse and got on those ergs and after the first piece, after you know, we would do three by 20 minutes. I mean flat out, and it was just. You know I'll have to put explicit on this episode, I guess, but it was just hell. It was like actual hell and there were times where I got off after one piece and I was like I don't know if I can do that again. I really have to dig down into the like the depths of my soul to get back on this erg and do this again, because I am so beat and this is just like not fun. I'm not enjoying this. This is very, very painful.

Tim: 11:36

And I was thinking of like in that moment what is motivating me to get back down on that machine and go for another 20 minutes or go for another 40 minutes. And I think it really was that I knew that we would be competing and I knew if I wanted to win, I had to do something that somebody else is not willing to do. And that was like a big motivating factor for me, and especially after my junior year, when we lost a lot. We just got our butts kicked a lot junior year.

Tim: 12:10

I came back senior year not wanting to feel that feeling again and wanting to kind of be back on top. Would I have gone as hard? Or would we have gone as hard if winning wasn't an option? And I think I witnessed this when I worked with the Brown crew team through COVID, when we didn't know if we're going to compete and motivation was a huge issue for these guys. It was like why do I even want to sit down on the machine if we're not going to compete and I don't have a chance to win, to go out there and prove myself? So I think I'm going to take the side of the debate that winning is. I would say intrinsic motivation is necessary for performance but not sufficient, and I would say winning and extrinsic motivation is an important aspect of performance.

Keith: 13:08

Well, in a way too, I guess winning is interesting because you could kind of frame it as an aspect of intrinsic motivation too. I think and you could hear that in some of what Chad GBT was saying right that there is a level of satisfaction that can come from it that, if you ascribe to the idea of self-actualization, reaching your potential, winning can be an example of that. It can be a part of that. I think there are ways that winning is essential to the fabric of sport and competition, and any of my family members who are listening to this probably know I'm an extremely competitive person. I'm competitive about everything. That's probably why, in large part, I am a sports psychologist, because I just love competition. I will turn everything into a competition.

Keith: 13:57

It's fun, it's rewarding, I think, where we run into a problem. It reminds me a little bit, taylor, when you were talking. It reminds me a little bit of how we think about perfectionism, right, that sometimes and this comes a lot with athlete clients that I'm working with perfectionism by itself isn't bad. Perfectionism actually can be very motivating and can be inspiring and can be very healthy. It's when it becomes overly rigid, it's when it becomes too limiting and actually starts to work against us, that it becomes maybe what we'd call maladaptive perfectionism or unhelpful or unhealthy perfectionism, and I kind of think about that as winning too. If we think about winning, as I am nothing unless I win the only criteria by which I define myself or the only criteria that can make me feel like a success, given what Tim was saying at the beginning that only one person or one team can win in any competition that guarantees that somebody is going to feel like a failure or like a loser.

Tim: 14:58

That to me.

Keith: 14:59

Doesn't feel super helpful, and I don't think that's exactly the kind of motivation you were talking about, taylor. Right, you were talking about something that winning is truly inspiring. Right, that we need to have a sense of purpose, and I think that's something we talk about all the time in mindfulness, right, when we use the phrase set an intention, right, almost every time. Well, set an intention, okay, like as an athlete, maybe one of my intentions, excuse me, is I want to win. Okay, I would just say that shouldn't be your only intention if you're going to have a healthy relationship to it. So maybe I'm straddling the line, maybe I'm kind of taking both sides on this debate. You guys can call me out on it if that's what I'm doing, but I guess I look at it in a pretty nuanced way.

Tim: 15:49

I'll let you chime in here in a second Tim. I know you're chopping in the bit there. Yeah, I agree with that. I really like that idea of competition as an intrinsic motivator, because I too am a very competitive person, so much so that as a kid growing up I knew how competitive I was. So actually I really had to dial back my level of competitiveness in order to get along with people well. And now in adulthood I think I'm less competitive. My default is to just be. I'm not so attached to competition because I know if I get involved in that competition it takes me over.

Tim: 16:31

But yeah, this idea that winning can even be intrinsically satisfying. Why does it become extrinsically satisfying? And maybe it's what you were just saying about being so rigid and so attached and like I'm nothing without it. But on that note, when you just said that I had done a little research on, I always go to the greats when I think about these questions, and it's because I oftentimes you've probably heard me say before that I don't think the goats are the best role models, whereas, like a lot of people look up to them. I actually don't always look up to them. And one Kobe Bryant quote is my brain. It cannot process failure. It will not process failure because if I sit there and have to face myself and tell myself you're a failure, I think that's almost worse than death. And so to me that's like almost like what you just said, keith, of like you know, kind of an all or nothing, like if I don't succeed, then I am a failure, or I like that's worse than death.

Taylor: 17:39

Yeah right, that doesn't strike me as a helpful or healthy outlook, especially given the inevitability of failure. We need to call it failure Of not always being expectations, not always being the winner. Okay, thanks, thanks, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye. Yeah, what you were saying, I mean, I was a rower too, and so you were really bringing me back In high school, my freshman and sophomore year. I don't think we won anything, we were just outmatched by the crews we were racing against. And then our junior year, we had a new coach and he was like you guys are all lightweight, that's real lightweight. So we had one guy in our boat who was heavyweight, and so we swapped him out for a lighter guy. We started rowing lightweight and we started winning a lot and it felt good, it was motivating, and I remember yeah my junior year we played second at our state championship and we were like we're gonna get first next year.

Taylor: 18:46

I mean that drove us. I mean we were doing extra practice, I mean we as a team. But I mean I really felt myself so motivated. But like we were talking about I don't recall it being like, oh, I want I mean I did want to win next year the state championship, but it at least the way I'm remembering it now it really felt like that is just a metric of my own growth, that like that will be the proof that we have as a like I have as an athlete or we have as a crew kind of continue to grow. So it did feel it was kind of like, yeah, bridging that like extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, and I think one like one data point that really makes me think like, yeah, this really did feel more intrinsic was so we did. So.

Taylor: 19:41

We got second place my junior year and we won state championships my senior year and that felt great. But both placing second and placing first got us an invitation to nationals. And my junior year we went to nationals and we didn't make it to the grand final, we made it to the petite final and we won the petite final. The next year we made it into the grand final and got last place in the grand final. Last place in the grand final felt way better than winning the petite final. Now I granted in the grand scheme like that's still placing better, but like one is a clear way. I mean we crossed the line first but that did not feel nearly as good as the line last In the grand final because there's a we group we like moved up a notch. So there was something, at least for me, that I felt like much more focused on that intrinsic piece.

Taylor: 20:38

But the other thing I'm gonna pivot here like the other thing I found myself thinking was like I'm wondering if there's an unexamined assumption kind of underlying what we're talking about, that there is something inherently good about pushing yourself to some extreme, about making yourself do the thing that no one else would wanna do, about crushing your legs on the erg for 60 minutes.

Taylor: 21:02

Because when I think about that assumption or when I think about like you're talking about Taylor, like what's the attitude of the goats? Right, like to be able to achieve some of those like really just kind of phenomenal sometimes seemingly insane physical feats, it requires you to throw your life out of balance. The amount of hours and time and attention that it takes to be able to win the Boston Marathon, like that's time you're taken away from your job, from your family, from other hobbies, and if that's someone's passion, if they find joy in that, great. But I do think from this, like really mindful, from this Buddhist perspective, when we're talking about kind of the fundamental wisdom of the middle way, like is it just good to push yourself to that extreme or is there something we might wanna question about how that could throw the rest of your life out of balance?

Taylor: 22:00

even if it does give you this, this like really fulfilling achievement.

Keith: 22:08

That's interesting, I mean I don't know well.

Keith: 22:11

Two things, cause I mean you did pivot there and I had like a reaction to each thing that you said Just real quick.

Keith: 22:16

Something that stood out to me about the previous thread is like you gave that example of saying I think we can win next year, and how motivating that was and how different that would be than if your coach said to you you guys have to win next year. If you felt those pressures to win coming from the outside, if you felt like you had to live up to someone else's expectation, right. And that's where we could look at how often is winning tied to job security, how often is winning tied to getting a scholarship, how often is winning tied to money in general, and how we can start to feel controlled by winning. You know, if we think about like self-determination theory, anything that makes us feel controlled is gonna undermine our intrinsic motivation. I think maybe that's one way we could think about this right, that if you're desirous of winning yourself or inspired to winning yourself again not exclusively, but that is something that you're passionate about I could see how that would be very rewarding, versus if you feel it's an external expectation being imposed on you.

Taylor: 23:24

And, for whatever reason, this was not on my mind when I was sharing it and what you just said made me think about it and I wanna include the context. So I said we got a new coach junior year. Well, we had a different coach my senior year and we as a team thought that that coach was not pushing us hard enough. Like we did extra workouts because we felt like you don't want this as bad as we do, like we wanna make this happen, like we're gonna go to the gym in the morning without you, like we're gonna do extra erging after practice because we don't feel like you're actually like giving us the kind of workouts that we need to do in order to like improve. It was really interesting. It was so internally driven.

Keith: 24:07

Well, and that's interesting too, because that point also kind of bridges the pivot that you made into this idea. I mean, what you're really talking about, right, Is effort and this sort of assumption. You said this unexamined assumption, but I feel like it does come up all the time in the work that I do with my individual clients. This sort of it's almost in the water of our culture. The way out is to work harder. That's the answer to everything is to work harder, and you're right. I mean, I think for a lot of folks it feels like the way to be successful is to live a life out of balance, and at some point when does that become a barrier to your own success? Does that serve being the best?

Taylor: 24:50

Yeah, and I do wonder if, like I mean, given kind of the parameters we set for how you sport as an example, right how sport works.

Taylor: 24:59

I think the answer to that is yes.

Taylor: 25:01

Like because of the way it's constructed, you do, an athlete does have to throw their life out of balance in order to win.

Taylor: 25:10

And so right to think like, even if someone finds great joy and great happiness in the process of pushing themselves that hard and then achieving the win, like all things that are out of balance, it's not sustainable. Eventually you fall off that cliff. And so you've lived this life out of balance and you get to the point where your body can no longer pushes hard, where you just can't kind of achieve, just because of the natural impacts of aging and sickness, you know. So it's like, yeah, maybe you get the happiness or the satisfaction of the win, but then what are you left with when it's over, having spent so much time so thoroughly out of balance? So maybe part of what I'm saying is like, yeah, are really taking the stands of like winning is for our overall wellbeing, for our sustainable contentment, Like winning is not just not important. Winning is kind of a really a red herring that like pulls us further away from happiness, even though we think we are seeking happiness.

Keith: 26:15

Okay.

Tim: 26:15

I'm packed that a tiny bit more.

Keith: 26:17

So because I think it's an interesting thought. But so you're saying, like, what do you mean by a red hair? Like, are you just dissect that a little bit more for us?

Taylor: 26:25

Yeah and I think red hair is probably the wrong phrase or idiom, but like that it's that. Yeah, like by myself. In high school, I was like I want to train this way because I really I'm going to be so, so happy, like if we win states, you know like, and in the short term I was right. You know like we want states, and that really did make me happy. I also ended up injuring my back and it is an injury that I still contend with now.

Taylor: 27:00

I had a bulging disc in my lower spine that, to this day, continues to require a lot, of, a lot of time and attention on my part. You know, I pushed my body to achieve this thing and I did it, but I but then that part of my life ended, you know. And so let's say, I mean, that was I was only in high school, right, but let's say I was a professional athlete, right, and I want to win, you know, the Super Bowl or something like that. Okay, so like, maybe that's a longer timeline, but there's still an end to that, right. So you think like.

Taylor: 27:34

I thought like, oh, I am seeking happiness, but what I didn't realize was I was actually creating more suffering that I was just going to have to deal with later because I was living a life so out of balance. So not only is the thing that was making me happy no longer available to me, but because I'm so out of balance right, I didn't have other things and I know a lot of athletes have this experience but you know, I was a competitive rower through high school, through college, and then I was coaching for a couple of years and eventually, because things were so out of balance, I had to stop coaching while I was in graduate school. And that first year where I wasn't coaching I got really depressed and it was the first time in 12 or 13 years where crew wasn't the central focus of my life. And it took me a while to figure out how to regain balance, like. So, like, yeah, I spent a long time really trying to fulfill myself and I set myself up for a lot of suffering because things were so out of balance.

Tim: 28:33

And that was my question too.

Tim: 28:35

Exactly, yeah, like rephrasing it, I guess, if we look at athletes at very high levels, you know, you guys have worked with tons of athletes and they, you know they devolved everything to you because you are there, you know you're there, you're there and I think that's the thing that I think is really important is that you have to be able to do it Because you are there. Therapists, psychologists excuse me, are there any athletes who have achieved at high levels who, at some time or another, are not saying you know, or are not indicating that their lives are out of balance? Just a question.

Keith: 29:28

I mean, I think what we're pulling at here, the string, is kind of the fabric of our entire system of achievement. Yes, and in our society. Right, and sports is a prime example of that. It's not the only example of it, right, we could talk about this in academics. We could talk about this in so many other areas.

Keith: 29:46

I guess what I think of immediately, taylor, when you say that is I don't know anybody who doesn't throw their lives out of balance to try to go for it, whatever that means. I'm not convinced that and I think this is Tim's point that the additional suffering or the additional barriers that that throwing out of whack creates is ultimately in their best interest, not only for when they retire, but even when they're competing to some extent. But I think there is so much fear about not doing that and so much resistance the idea, because the belief is, if you don't do that, there's no way you can be serious, there's no way you can be elite in what you do that it's almost unthinkable to even raise this as a prospect. But a classic example of this to me is like when someone gets sick, like I'm thinking about a swimmer that I worked with, who was an elite high school swimmer, just a wildly successful career, but kind of plateaued a little bit. And then the lead up to a very important national race got sick and couldn't train for a couple of weeks and so she kind of went into the race being like all right, you know, like this, my training plan got blown up. I basically don't expect anything of myself here.

Keith: 31:07

She lit that race on fire, she set a PR, she won, she way outperformed, I think, what she expected to, even before she got sick, because she had kind of a forced recovery, because she had a force she got to got put into balance a little bit. Now I'm not saying the answer here is not to work hard, right. I mean nobody's saying that. We're not saying like eh, you know, hey, just show up and it's all good. But I think there is a decided lack of nuance that so many of us bring to this process, and I mean I have this conversation all the time I had a conversation with a pro soccer player this week about this that it is so easy to get thrown out of balance and that has profound effects on performance, profound effects even if you're doing it in service of your sport.

Taylor: 32:06

And to your point about like, I think we're pulling on the thread of a broader systemic thing, a cultural thing, not just in sport, like this comes up so much, so often with the clients that I work with, like non-athlete clients, you know the lawyers, the doctors, you know like, and so I don't think the question is like, can you maintain balance in your life and win?

Taylor: 32:31

I mean, there's an important unspoken caveat, like can you maintain balance in your life and win within the parameters of this particular system? Right, and because of the rules that get set up, I think a lot of systems make it nearly impossible to quote unquote, win or achieve the highest level of success without being entirely out of balance. And we see, you know, like the Elon Musk, like we gotta go hardcore, we gotta sleep in the office, and I mean that sounds terrible to me. And yet I also recognize like, if you're gonna try to construct something like Twitter or reconstruct something like Twitter, or break barriers with electric vehicles, it probably does require a tremendous amount of work and time and effort. You know, for a lawyer, right, if you wanna be a partner at a law firm, like you're not gonna have a balanced life. That's just not gonna be an option for you. But that's not like inherently true. It's just true because of the way the system is set up.

Keith: 33:33

Well, like to your example about. I mean, you know, none of us work for Elon Musk, but you know, if you're trying to rebuild Twitter or design electric cars, are we saying that you know sleeping in the office, you know working 16 hour days, seven days a week, that's gonna give your best performance? That's like, couldn't we? I guess part of what I'm getting at I don't know if this is what Taylor was getting at is, you know, in pursuing winning or pursuing success. If somebody worked five days a week for nine hours but was rested and had other things going on, could you argue that person that Twitter could still be revamped, that the electric car could still be designed? Right, that this sort of throwing your life out of balance and just sort of like bootstrapping yourself and throwing yourself into this sort of crazy, you know, kind of driving yourself into the ground process, is that the way, not only down the line, like Tim you were saying about your back, but even in the moment? Is that the best way to perform?

Taylor: 34:39

And I would say no, not at all. That's not gonna get our best performance, but because of the parameters that exist and this is like talking about, like Twitter or Tesla examples like we're talking about capitalism, right, like, yeah, they could work nine hours a day, five days a week, but they're not gonna make money quick enough to be successful enough to sustain the business. Right Like we live in a culture that requires us because we've made up money and we've made it central to like how everything and everyone needs to operate, that like, yeah, you kind of do have to do this. Extreme, suboptimal, I agree. Right, like kind of performance because there's all this urgency, because, yeah, if you don't make these you know, first quarter projections, you're not gonna have investors. You don't have investors, you have to shutter your business and then you're not gonna get to work any hours, you know. So it's like, yeah, we're trying to explain to people balance really is key, but sometimes, like people have to work in systems that don't allow for balance.

Keith: 35:38

Well, isn't that what we're all about, right? We're trying to change those systems.

Tim: 35:41

We're trying to raise the awareness right.

Keith: 35:43

That's a good idea, right.

Tim: 35:46

I would add in here you know just coaching Tim, you've coached coaching university team. I mean, these guys are trying to perform at the highest levels of the sport and they're also going to school, you know, full time, right. And so one thing I just wrote down here is is it really a matter of balance or is it a matter of trying to balance too much? If you are just a Olympic hopeful athlete and you're training for Paris and that's all you're doing, you're training and you're eating and you're sleeping and that's your goal to go win a gold medal at Paris.

Tim: 36:34

In fact I know athletes who are doing that right now. They're not really doing much else in their life. They have their social outlet, which is the other teammates on their team. They get out every once in a while to go to dinner, you know, see a movie. They might have a part-time job, but a lot of them don't at this point for Paris, you know we're in the year before, not a lot of time for that other stuff. So is it a matter of balance or is it a matter of how much we're trying to balance?

Taylor: 37:07

Well, I mean kind of going back to something I named before, like Okay, but what happens after pairs? Right, like, maybe that's all they want to do, maybe right now, in this moment, like that is their true desire and their one goal. And then they go to pairs and they compete and they get gold. And then what? Right Like, they still have to then reckon with the aftermath of like, ooh, I spent a lot of time really out of balance, because life isn't just eating and sleeping and working Like there is more to life than that, I think.

Tim: 37:45

Yeah.

Keith: 37:46

Well and it's interesting to think about it the other way, and I've worked with clients where this has happened you know you're giving up years of your life and then you don't win, or you get injured in warmups and can't even compete. What then? And so do we feel like this was all a waste? Do we adjust? Do the ends justify the means? Right? I mean, these are things that I think, because of the way things are set up, people have to reckon with.

Tim: 38:15

I would say that, just reflecting on my career and having, you know, reflected, having listened to other athletes reflect on their careers and their wins, because of the wins I had in college, particularly, I think and this goes back to the chat the GP definition gave Keith Because of the wins I had in college, I do believe doors were open for me in my career where they otherwise would not have been. And it goes like this I apply to a job or yeah, let's just keep it simple I apply to a job and the person hiring me sees that I won these various championships and doesn't just see that I rode at Brown. They see that I actually was very successful really at Brown, and that is like that stands out to them Versus if I had not won any of those things, and they just see that I rode at Brown. I think they appraise those two things differently, especially if you're applying for, like, a coaching job.

Tim: 39:27

And you know, I was talking to an Olympian a while ago who was in the 88 Olympics and he won gold in the 88 Olympics and he said I think if I hadn't have won gold, my life would be incredibly different than it is now. And so I do think there's a you know. Just to your question, tim, like what about afterwards? Yeah, I think people have to rebuild their lives and they have to do. They do have to get into balance, but I also think they reap the benefits of having won much more than just having worked really hard.

Taylor: 40:02

Well, but again, kind of an unexamined assumption, right, cause you say, yeah, his life would have been very different, implying worse. But how do we know that? I don't want to put this in like absolute terms, that like. So I think a lot of it has to do with internally, like the mindset and the attitude. I think one probably could say, like you know what?

Taylor: 40:23

I'm going to train for Paris, I'm going to intentionally put my life out of balance, being aware that when this is over, I'm going to shift and regain some balance, kind of like what Keith was talking about before. It's like, if you have that like I need to win, I should win, if I don't win, everything's terrible, like that rigidity, then you fall off the cliff. But if you're like, yeah, I'm going to go to Paris and I hope it's going to be an amazing experience, and then, when it's over, I'm going to see what comes next and then I'm going to, you know, like I think you know, if you look at life as a whole, you can say, oh, it was, it is balanced, or you can make it balanced even if there are periods of imbalance. But that requires, I think, like a lot of intention, a lot of mindfulness right and an incredible capacity for acceptance.

Keith: 41:07

Well, I think I love that this came up and I know we're running a little short on time, I'll try to keep this really brief. But what you're both bringing up, I think, hits at what is so provocative about this topic and also what's so difficult about doing some of the work that we're doing and trying to change the paradigm a little bit to hopefully make healthier people. Because, tim, you literally just said I don't want to make this. You know all or nothing, I don't, but that's what winning is, that's what winning does. It makes everything absolute, it makes everything all or nothing.

Keith: 41:39

Any conversation like this, that's what's right there. And to have the perspective that you just shared, which I think is decidedly a much healthier perspective, and that person, that athlete post-Paris, that fictional athlete you just said, is probably going to have a healthier post-Olympic adjustment. But it requires to not be overly attached to winning. It requires that, okay, I'm gonna enjoy the journey, I'm gonna enjoy the ride, and when Paris is over, I recalibrate win, lose or whatever, right. Whereas and you know, to tailor to your point, you know an implicit message that I heard in that example from that gentleman you were speaking to from the 88 Olympics is I had to win or else right.

Keith: 42:28

Like there is this sort of implied it's gold or I don't have the life that I want, and think about what that does to people.

Taylor: 42:39

Well, right, it goes back to that idea of like the systems that we're in and tailor your point that, like they're gonna look at your resume differently if there's a win on it, or like you know, this actual success versus, oh, I was a rower and that just speaks to like, essentially, the requirement of being out of balance Because like, oh, I want to be a coach at a university and that's my, like, long-term goal, right, I know I can't be a competitive rower forever and so that feels like a more sustainable thing. Okay, that sounds nice. Except to get that job, I have to win, and to win I have to be out of balance, right? So it requires us to harm ourselves and to increase our suffering to get this thing. That, again, we think we want, we think we'll make us happy, but I think, unintentionally, along the way we end up potentially, you know, creating a lot of our own suffering.

Keith: 43:29

See, that's the only thing I'll push back on you about, and I think this is where and we'll have to do a whole nother episode on this at some point, because I think an unexamined thing that you're suggesting, tim, is that you that is required to win, and I guess I still I'm not sold on that. I think that's what we're told, I think that's what we're taught, I think that's what we believe and I think that's what we follow, kind of like Lemmings off the cliff, that that's what we all do. I'm not so sure that that's actually in our best interest and actually what leads to the best athletic performance over time. Now, I guess it depends on the sport, right, I mean yes, I was gonna say I think it depends on the sport.

Keith: 44:08

Are we talking about a team that needs to perform over the course of a season or repeated seasons? Right, we're looking for consistency. Are we talking about an Olympic athlete who is basically selling out to get to one moment in time? And, right, I mean, it is a very different process. So we can't paint what you brought of a, and by selling out you know what I mean. I'm saying like sort of giving it all and throwing it all in. I'm not saying calling them a sellout or something like that, but that I think what we can all agree on is that that approach is not sustainable and does not mean for a healthy individual.

Keith: 44:44

And I think part of what's so interesting to me, and maybe a question I'll sort of like wrap us up with, is you know, we talk about mindfulness this is the Mindful Sport Performance podcast as a different way, a process-oriented way, where winning it's not that we say winning is an important, but we say winning is the outcome. And where we wanna put our attention is on the journey itself. We let the outcome be the outcome. We focus just on that. Do we think that it's possible that if we did that, that if we tried to maximize the journey itself and, in other words, did not make ourselves suffer in the way that you're suggesting, Tim, that we can still be successful, Cause I think we're saying that. I think that that's like with MSPE we're trying to teach people a different way to actually live in balance, even while they're training, even while they're competing.

Taylor: 45:43

Yeah and yes, but and to your point and I appreciate the opportunity to like bring more nuance to it Like I think the context matters. I think there are probably are some sports, some industries, some facets of society right, that probably do essentially require being out of balance in order to be quote unquote successful. But I think there are probably sports and contexts where that's not true and actually like kind of trying to let go of that fear, right and needing to control and like allowing for more balance really will increase, you know, the performance and different facets of performance that really could lead to even greater success. But yeah, the context matters so much.

Tim: 46:28

I think being attached to perform it or being attached to winning in order to push yourself hard enough you need to get to the very highest level. The hope of being successful, the hope that you can win, has to be there, or I guess the hope of what would be a success in your mind has to be there. What would be a win in your mind? Right, cause athletes go to the Olympics all the time knowing that they're not probably going to go get the gold medal, but they have defined what would success be in their mind. For example, a javelin thrower I worked with in 2020, 2021 Tokyo. She went in 2016. I think she didn't even make the finals and then in 2021, she kind of knew that success in her mind would be like top three, it would be a medal, and so, yeah, it's not like winning, but it's the hope, the belief that you are going to achieve success, I think is required to get you to that point where you're pushing yourself out of balance, if that makes sense.

Taylor: 47:46

It reminds me of that research that found that bronze medalists are happier than silver medalists. They're like I'm walking away with a medal. I feel great about that versus silver is like, oh, I should have gotten gold. But I think what we're saying in some ways is like there's nothing inherently problematic. There's nothing inherent to winning at all. Winning is a construct that we created. What matters is our relationship to winning right, how we hold it in our mind, how we react to it, how we approach it. So it's like it's all internal right.

Keith: 48:20

Yeah and yeah, taylor, I agree with what you were saying. I think there's gotta be purpose, there's gotta be something that is motivating you to put in the work that is required to hone your craft, and whether that's to reach your potential physically, mentally, tactically, whatever. I totally agree. I guess maybe where I'm coming down through this discussion circles back to something I said earlier that maybe just it shouldn't or it's not the healthiest thing for it to exclusively be winning or exclusively have a narrow definition of winning what it has to be that a little bit of flexibility or bringing something to the table besides. I just need to win gold and that's. It is probably healthy, but I think there's a lot here to chew on.

Keith: 49:17

I'd be really curious to hear, kind of what our listeners think. I think we wanna pick topics like this that don't have a clear quote, unquote, right, answer, right. These are just our thoughts and hopefully you get a sense. We're trying to kind of bounce some of the traditional ideas that we have off of more of our mindful way of looking at things, and this is something that comes up a ton in the work that we do, because I think we do trainings and mindfulness and it's not uncommon for someone to say like wait, are you saying that I shouldn't wanna win? We talk about something like non-striving. Like wait, what Are you saying? We shouldn't wanna win? And I think there's a lot of space here to marry these ideas of a process orientation to the importance of winning. So, as a fair, am I summing up accurately and saying, yes, we all agree, winning is important. However, maybe it shouldn't be the only important thing that somebody has going for them.

Taylor: 50:13

Yeah, that feels I will go as far as they're like. Winning has a potentially positive role to play, but it really depends on our attitude and mindset and our capacity for acceptance.

Tim: 50:28

Yeah, I'll agree, I think winning is a piece of the puzzle. I wouldn't say it's everything, but I think it's a necessary piece of the puzzle. But to what degree that is is probably you can kind of balance that out a little bit, but I do think it's a necessary. I guess not winning itself, but the belief that you can succeed, I think is a driving force for people, because if you don't believe that you can succeed, then why are you doing what you're doing? Yeah, yeah, I guess.

Keith: 51:06

Well, yeah, then it's learn helplessness, right, and then that's yeah.

Keith: 51:10

Yeah, well, we do need to leave it there, but this was awesome, guys. Thank you. As always, I appreciate your thoughts and I always learn a lot and have a lot of fun, and I feel like there's like I'm like, oh, I wanna make more points, but we do need to wrap it up. So, again, wanna, thank you guys for this and thank everyone who listened and invite you. If you do wanna connect with us, our MSB Institute, we have a website, mindfulsportperformanceorg. We are also on social media.

Keith: 51:40

Our podcast, the Mindful Support Performance Podcast, has a Instagram page, and Dr Keith Kaufman have an Instagram page and a Twitter, both at MindfulSportdoc. So if you wanna continue the discussion, we're certainly open to that and welcome you to be in touch. We also strongly urge you to rate and review our podcast, as well as our book, which is still out there MindfulSport Performance Enhancement Mental Training for Athletes and Coaches. We wanna just take a moment to and thank our colleague, dr Carol Glass, for all of her support of our podcast behind the scenes, and one added feature that we have this year as well is if you are a regular listener and wanna help us be able to continue to fund the podcast, we do very much appreciate any support. There are links to be able to support our podcast in our show notes, so if that's something that you are interested in or able to help us out, we are incredibly grateful for that. Before we sign off, taylor, anything that you are promoting or you wanna direct folks to, I don't think so.

Tim: 52:53

I will keep that in mind for the next episode.

Keith: 52:57

I put you on the spot there. I apologize, so, all right. Well, thank you, guys, and thanks to everyone who listened, and we'll see you next time. Let's say goodbye, bye.