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The Dose Transcript for June 13, 2024

Host: Brian Goldman

BRIAN GOLDMAN: Hi, I'm Doctor Brian Goldman. Welcome to The Dose. This week, we're doing something we've never done before. As most of you know, the Edmonton Oilers are in the 2024 Stanley Cup Finals. The series heads back to Edmonton with the Oilers down two games to none. If they're going to get back into this series, they need everything going for them, physical and mental. One way to get focussed to give it your best is through mindfulness. It can be a helpful mental tool for those who have to stretch themselves to perform in stressful situations. Not just elite athletes like the Oilers, but all of us. So this week, we're asking, how can mindfulness help athletes? Hi, George, welcome to The Dose.

GEORGE MUMFORD: Thank you. I'm glad to be here.

BRIAN GOLDMAN: I'm glad that you're here too. What sort of mindfulness do you practice to motivate you?

GEORGE MUMFORD: It's interesting. So you said what kind of mindfulness do I practice to motivate me? It's interesting because I just practice mindfulness. And the mindfulness is going to help me understand or notice the best way for me to motivate myself. So it's a little nuanced there, but sometimes, I refer to mindfulness as mirror mind. It just reflects right in front of you. But one of the things that mindfulness does that helps us self-regulate and be self-aware is that it creates space between stimulus and response so that you have a longer time to actually let whatever you're observing speak to you in its own language instead of you embellishing it. You expand that time where you actually get to see what's really going on.

BRIAN GOLDMAN: George, can you give us a hi, my name is? Tell us what you do and where you do it.

GEORGE MUMFORD: Hi, my name is George Mumford, and I'm known like in this context of working with sports teams like the Edmonton Oilers. People are more comfortable with my hand over sports psychology consultant or performance expert, even performance whisperer. So my thing is I help people be in a moment more effectively and efficiently, but also in the context of having an intention and being able to execute that intention in a way that you feel good about it.

BRIAN GOLDMAN: We have to begin with the Oilers. I know you can't divulge their specific issues, but, you know, thinking about the predicament they face being down two games to none and coming back home for a pivotal game, how might feeling like you're in a deep hole like that negatively affect your performance?

GEORGE MUMFORD: Well, first thing, you don't look at it that way. You look at it as, you know, what it is. Something happens and then we interpret what it means. And how we interpret things has everything to do with how we perform. So if you think about it, what really happened? We played the Panthers and they held home ice. They won their two games on their ice. Now it's our turn to win our two games one game at a time. So that's the only thing that's happened. But we interpret it in ways where, oh, we're in a lot of stress, or, you know, we're down or whatever, and that puts us on the defensive. That puts us in survival mode instead of looking at it for what it is, which is it’s an opportunity for us to get even.

BRIAN GOLDMAN: George, how much of this mindfulness awareness is individual personal mindfulness and how much is team mindfulness?

GEORGE MUMFORD: Well, each organization, each team begins with the individual self. You know, it's as strong as the weak link or the one of the individuals that's not being mindful. So you want to not just have one person be mindful. You want the whole team to be mindful. So you want to have the individual and the group energy being everybody locked in and everybody having or being on the same page.

BRIAN GOLDMAN: So does Connor McDavid benefit from mindfulness? Is he already an expert in mindfulness?

GEORGE MUMFORD: Well, here's the interesting thing. You're talking like mindfulness has to be acquired. Mindfulness is a birthright. It’s there. It's just that we have to train ourselves to be mindful. But the capacity to be mindful is there. And to the degree that we're able to compete at a high level, that has everything to do with being able to be mindful, being able to be in a moment and being able to what I would call having self-awareness and the ability to self-regulate, even if it's in terms of reframing your experience or being able to see what you're getting and make adjustments or adaptations in real time so that you stay on track. The mindfulness is part of it. But in my book, The Mindful Athlete: Secrets to Pure Performance, I talk about the five superpowers. I talk about mindfulness, but I also talk about right effort and right concentration. I also talk about trust or having faith and wisdom. So you need all five of those, those factors to be mindful. You need all five of those factors to be concentrated. But you also have to have a goal and have an intention and then be able to get feedback and adapt to that feedback so that you stay on track. So mindfulness is just mirror mind. It's helpful. It's in the centre. If you look at it, it’s the hub of the wheel. But you need all those folks working together.

BRIAN GOLDMAN: You know, when I think of the current Stanley Cup Finals, this is a very physical series and players are getting hit hard. And I'm thinking, you know, we learn from indicators and stimuli. So if it hurts to go into what they call the dirty areas like close to the goal, then I'm not going to go there. So but if the Edmonton Oilers don't go to the dirty areas around the net, they're not going to score goals. So what can you help remind them of that can get them to put aside their fear of pain and do what they need to do to win?

GEORGE MUMFORD: Let me talk about it this way. Yogi Berra, the Great Hall of Fame baseball player that played for the New York Yankees, he said 90% of baseball is mental. The other half is physical, which means 10%, okay? So if you take each round of the playoffs and you're going into finals, now, it's a different sport, but this is my ninth finals, as you get to the finals, you take that 90%, and that 10%, you multiply it by ten. So it's 900, right, to 100. So it's all mental. So and this part of the game is very physical, but you have to get comfortable being uncomfortable. You have to be able to tolerate the discomfort that make the place. And so it's going to be physical. So you have to embrace that, say yes to it and then move through it. So you have fear. There's nothing wrong with having fear, but that's where courage comes in. You got to fear it and do it anyway. You have to be able to tolerate the discomfort. If you're going to be an elite performer, if you're going to perform consistently at an elite level, you have to get comfortable being uncomfortable. You have to embrace your fear, embrace the uncertainty, the anxiety, say yes to it and do what you're supposed to do. Make the next play.

BRIAN GOLDMAN: How do you do that?

GEORGE MUMFORD: By training, practicing, saying yes to whatever comes up. Saying yes, I don't like this, but I have to accept it. So I have this process. I call them four As. So the first A is awareness or mirror my okay, yeah, when I go in, I get hit. So when I go in there, I gotta expect to get hit and be ready for it, but be able to embrace it and still do what I need to do. So you have to have an awareness of it. So what you just talked about is the second A, which is acceptance, which is when you don't accept it or when you hide from it or you try to avoid it or deny it, you can't be in a moment and you can't execute. The acceptance is really challenging because why? Because it's unpleasant. It hurts. But it's only by saying yes to it, embracing it that you can get to the third A, which is, you know, compassionate action. Then you can get to the fourth one, which is assessment. What worked, what didn't work, and what you need to do to make what didn't work work. It’s really that simple. But the acceptance part is challenging because that's like going through a death experience, dying of your old self and being reborn in your new self where you're going through those stages of grief, you're going through denial, bargaining, anger, depression and acceptance. And so once, you know, give you an example. I'm coming up on 40 years of sobriety next month.

BRIAN GOLDMAN: Congratulations.

GEORGE MUMFORD: Thanks. The only way I was able to survive is the four As. Yeah, I got a problem. My life is unmanageable. But once I accept it, which is a challenging thing because of the blame and denial, once I accept it, then I can do something about it. And then when I do something about it, is using my self-awareness and my self-regulation to keep doing what I need to do so I stay on track of what I'm trying to do. I'm staying sober, clean and sober. So I have to be able to tolerate the discomfort of changing a behaviour or habit which all of us engage in. Anytime we change a habit, we mobilize anxieties. Mental toughness requires that you have to physically do what you mentally commit to. It doesn't matter how you feel. What matters is you do what you say you're going to do. And then when you do that, you actually get desensitized to the anxiety and the fear. You actually embrace it and it makes you stronger. But we all experience anxiety. That's the secret. You know, the hidden secret is anything you do, especially if you're performing at a high level on a high stage, the fear of loss, the fear of getting hurt, the fear of all of that stuff, the anxiety is one side of the coin. You go back to 1846. Søren Kierkegaard, he called it the alarming possibility of being able. One side of the coin is freedom potential, the other side is anxiety, uncertainty, because the reality is we don't know what's going to happen from moment to moment. But if you embrace that unpredictability, it’s actually a flow trigger.

BRIAN GOLDMAN: I struggle with a reluctance to run every morning. And that does not compare to what you've just been talking about, sobriety for 40 years. And I'm in awe of you for that. Most mornings when I get up early for a run, my body says go back to bed. It's too cold. It's too hot. I've got aches and pains. I've got uncomfortable bodily sensations like intestinal cramps. What can I do to kind of put that aside? I guess most mornings, I still run. And I say I know I'm going to feel better if I run.

GEORGE MUMFORD: Yes. So that is, well, you say it’s your body telling you that, but I suspect it's the mindset that you're in. You're not in a growth mindset. You're in a fixed mindset. You're in a mindset that says if you do this, this is what's going to happen. So you're talking yourself out of it instead of realizing you have no idea. You're just speculating. So you go out there and you just run a little bit and see what happens. When you love something, you labour for it. And when it's challenging, that's how you get to this point by embracing that discomfort. That's what's coming up with the narrative, it’s based on you perceiving it is going to be unpleasant or uncomfortable. And you realize sometimes, your body might be telling you, yeah, you're tired, you need to sleep. But even if you go out and say, well, I'm just going to do a little bit and see what happens. And then if I get tired, I'll just stop. So it's always to say yes to it, embrace it and then see what you can do, because there's so much capacity we have that we don't access because of these self-limiting beliefs that actually stop us or they override what we say we're going to do. If you do it, you develop more confidence, more ability to tolerate discomfort.

BRIAN GOLDMAN: You know, George, you know, we've only known each other for a few minutes, but I have to tell you, you've nailed it. That's exactly it. I've gotten out of the growth mindset. When I was younger, I had, you know, I'll run more, I'll run more, I'll run more, I’ll do another few blocks. And I can see that it's fear, that I've developed some fear about extending myself. Maybe it's because I'm a bit older, but again, that's a belief.

GEORGE MUMFORD: It has nothing to do with age. It's part of our human experience. Welcome to the club. We all have fear. Even Connor McDavid, myself, all folks, we have fear. We have anxiety. We have one of the best, the most successful basketball players in the NBA history, Bill Russell, who played 13 seasons, won 11 championships, and he had anxiety every time before a game to the point he would throw up.

BRIAN GOLDMAN: Wow.

GEORGE MUMFORD: But it's not the anxiety. It’s the fear. It’s our relationship to it. That's where the mindfulness comes in and creates space between stimulus and response and you feel what the fear is. You feel in your body the anxiety. And you say, I don't have time for this. I still got to make the next play. I still have to do the next thing. Just like when you're fatigued and you push through, and you probably know this from running, you get a second win. But you got to not listen to your mind saying, we should stop. I can't do it. I can't move anymore. And if you take one more step and then another step and another step, you get a second win where you actually have access to more energy. And William James, the psychologist, American psychologist, said that there can be as many as 13 second wins. So you keep pushing through. And I've had this experience where I don't sleep at all. I go and I have to go teach. And when I go in and when I focus on the moment and just make the next play, the energy is there. It’s what Emerson said, do the thing and you will have the power. So we have way more capacity than we can ever imagine because we're only using, they say maybe 10% of our capacity. It's because we have these self-limiting beliefs or we override, we don't even attempt to try. We don't even attempt to do what we say we're going to do and realize that when you do it, you will have the power. Effort creates energy.

BRIAN GOLDMAN: The Oilers are coming home to play in their own barn. How does having people cheering you on affect your performance?

GEORGE MUMFORD: It depends on whether you let it in or not. But if you can accept it, it can have a huge impact. Anytime you can get support and get positive energy, it's huge. We know this from experiments we've had with students, with children. If you give a class to a teacher and say that's the F students, that's what they'll get. If you give teachers a class and say they're A students, even if they are F students, they become A students. Why? Because you believe in them, and then you unconsciously do all the things you need to do to help them achieve that goal. And so think about that. So every thought has an impact. It has energy.

BRIAN GOLDMAN: But I'm wondering, is there an exception there? Could you build up a fear that you're going to disappoint the fans?

GEORGE MUMFORD: Oh yeah. Yes. Well, see, you said the magic word. This is where self-regulation comes in, because here's how strange this stuff is. If you don't consent to something being true, it’s not true. Even if it is true, you got to accept it. Remember what I talked about? Awareness, acceptance. You got to accept that is true. And if you don't think you're lovable, even though people love you, you won't consent to it being true. Even though people are helping you, you got to accept it and embrace it and then make the effort. Even though we want them to win and we love them and we root for them, they have to still consent to it being true and then behave accordingly.

BRIAN GOLDMAN: But there must be some degree of self-doubt. I'm guessing even Connor McDavid has self-doubt.

GEORGE MUMFORD: Well, listen, we all have doubt. Doubt is the proximate cause for wisdom. So that's where the growth mindset is. You have doubt, that’s telling you you got to get more information. You got to do more research so that you can understand. Yeah, we all have doubt, but it's how you relate to it. Just like the anxiety. It’s not what happens to us, it’s whether we react or we respond to it. And you respond to it by asking, what is this? What's the lesson? That's a growth mindset. What do I need to learn and practice so I can do this?

BRIAN GOLDMAN: I want to ask you a question about self-discipline. The Stanley Cup Finals are always an emotional affair, and the 2024 Stanley Cup Finals are no exception. You know, there was a moment in game two, in the third period when Leon Draisaitl delivered a high hit to Alexander Barkov. And a lot of observers say he's fortunate he didn't get suspended. How can emotions affect your performance? And what do you do about that?

GEORGE MUMFORD: Well, it's challenging in this case when it's so physical because we saw what he did. We didn't see what the other guy did before that. And so sometimes, you react to it, but sometimes, it's just frustration. It could be a lot of things, but I wouldn't want to speculate because I'm not in his head. But I will say this. If I saw things the way that he saw things, I’d do what he did. And so that's why part of it is you have to keep your composure. But sometimes, you got to let somebody know you're there. Now, I would say that that happens all the time, but there's a lot of hitting and whatnot going on. And so to separate that particular incident and say that should have been a suspension when there's all kinds of other things. There was a play where Connor McDavid was going towards the goal. He got hit on his wrist and the guy put the stick between his legs and was, you know, hitting upwards. You know, got tripped and not calling everything. And the things they call, people look at it and say, well, that should be this. But it's in the heat of battle, the banging, and they're not calling a lot of stuff. And if they call stuff all the time, they probably wouldn't be able to play the game. So you can look at it any way you want, but I interpret it as stuff happens. You lose your stuff. It only means what you make it mean. It was just a moment that just happened. And then hopefully, you get beyond that and, you know, you don't make it a problem. But just to focus on one thing, like at the end of the game, they say, well, that play cost him the game. Well, there were a lot of opportunities before that play that if you execute, the game wouldn't be in jeopardy at the end of the game because you might be up three goals or whatever. And I can share with you. The research says that 90% of our long term happiness is predicated on how our brain and nervous system interprets experience. Not 10%. 90%. So it's a glass half empty, half full. That's a choice. I say choose the ways of interpreting things that give you access to more power.

BRIAN GOLDMAN: Last question I want to ask you. At this stage, with the stakes so high, how much can your words actually make a difference at this point in time? Is it really up to the players to kind of figure it out for themselves?

GEORGE MUMFORD: Yes, it's up to the players, but words matter. Are you saying words that create more space between stimulus and response? Or are you saying words that take away so you're reacting instead of responding where there’s no access to you aligning yourself with your goal? It's both. You got to be able to accept it, but, you know, what are you doing? It always comes down to if the person is receptive to what is being offered. And so even the interpretation that we're in a hole, that's one way of looking at it. The other way of looking at it is you lost two games. You don't have to make it any more than that. That creates more pressure when you interpret it in ways that put you in survival mode, where you're just reacting instead of realizing, no, all you have to do is make the next play, win the next game and it totally changes everything.

BRIAN GOLDMAN: George Mumford, I'm going to remember your words, and I'm going to say go Oilers.

GEORGE MUMFORD: Yeah, and see if, you know, you don't have to believe what I say. Just check it out and see if it's true. Once you have a direct experience of it, it won't be something that you believe in. It'll be a conviction because you know that that's the way it is.

BRIAN GOLDMAN: Well, I want to thank you for speaking with us on The Dose.

GEORGE MUMFORD: Well, thank you, Doctor B. You mind if I call you Doctor B?

BRIAN GOLDMAN: Please do.

GEORGE MUMFORD: All right, B, appreciate you.

BRIAN GOLDMAN: I enjoyed speaking with you. Have a great day.

GEORGE MUMFORD: Yeah, you too.

BRIAN GOLDMAN: George Mumford is a mindfulness coach, author and speaker who's working this season with the Edmonton Oilers. He's worked with some of the NBA's greatest athletes, including Michael Jordan, Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant. His latest book, Unlocked: Embrace Your Greatness, Find the Flow, Discover Success, was published in 2023. Here's your dose of smart advice. Mindfulness means living in the present moment. It means being more aware and awake in each moment and being fully engaged in what is happening in your surroundings and accepting it without judging it. It also means not thinking about things that didn't go your way in the past and concentrating on the now. There are many ways to practice mindfulness, but here are the general principles. First, take time to pay attention with all of your senses to what's going on inside of you and around you. Second, live in the moment while paying attention to what you feel without judging it. Third, accept yourself unconditionally. Treat yourself the way you would treat a good friend. Fourth, when you have negative thoughts, close your eyes and focus on your breathing. Doing that even briefly can help centre you. Mindfulness has been shown to help elite as well as recreational athletes to improve focus, manage stress, boost performance, enhance self-awareness and emotional self-regulation. It also helps athletes recover from injuries. In everyday life, mindfulness helps deal with stress, anxiety, depression, pain, insomnia, high blood pressure and diabetes. Practicing mindfulness may not be right for everyone. For instance, it may not be helpful for those who have severe anxiety, hard to treat depression, PTSD and current substance use or addiction. You may want to ask your health care provider if you have any questions or concerns. If you have topics you'd like discussed or questions answered, our email address is thedose@cbc.ca. If you liked this episode, please give us a rating and review wherever you listen. This edition of The Dose was produced by Isabelle Gallant. Our senior producer is Colleen Ross. The Dose wants you to be better informed about your health. If you're looking for medical advice, see your health care provider. I'm Doctor Brian Goldman. Until your next dose.

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How can mindfulness help athletes? - Transcript

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