How mental preparation elevates performance | Kaplan Mobray | TEDxASU

0:00 Thank you so much.

0:01 [applause] When you walk into a room, when you look outside the window,

0:14 or when you walk outside and you see the color green,

0:19 you're not just seeing a memorable color, you're also witnessing growth.

0:26 See, green is everywhere.

0:27 It it it it signals life and vitality

0:30 and strength and forward movement and progress and go.

0:36 But what happens when life doesn't feel so green?

0:43 You know, life is kind of like doing push-ups.

0:50 You're on your stride.

0:52 You're on your journey.

0:54 It's comfortable.

0:56 Everything's going okay [clears throat] and then life gets hard.

1:06 Life happens.

1:09 You get that dreaded phone call that you hope you never receive.

1:15 You lose that job that you spent years

1:18 of time and devotion and sacrifice to and loyalty to.

1:21 [snorts] That relationship that you thought would

1:25 be forever suddenly ends and you get

1:33 that unexpected health diagnosis that now shapes

1:39 how you view time and your future.

1:46 Life happens.

1:49 And in that very moment, it's not just the pressure that you feel.

1:55 For many of us, we become stuck.

2:00 Now, when you think about it, we don't talk enough about mental health.

2:05 But the reality is everyone, especially in these times,

2:08 are facing a mental health challenge.

2:10 One in five adults have indicated that they

2:13 face a critical mental health challenge each year.

2:16 76% of adults globally say that they

2:18 are dealing with intense levels of exhaustion

2:20 and burnout and depression and anxiety account

2:26 for a trillion dollars of lost productivity.

2:32 The real issue is we're not in a mental health crisis alone.

2:39 We're in a mental preparation crisis because think about life.

2:47 Life gives us all these automatic reflexes, a physical reflex.

2:51 So when you stub your toe, what do you say?

2:53 Ouch.

2:56 When you touch a hot stove, you immediately your hand pulls back.

3:00 When you're walking and you trip,

3:02 all of a sudden your hands reach out to brace your fall.

3:07 We have these physical responses,

3:10 these automatic responses because your life and your body

3:17 is wired to protect you without asking for permission.

3:23 And then we have these conditional responses, these conditional reflexes.

3:29 When I say thank you, you say what?

3:31 You're welcome.

3:34 When I toss you a ball, you catch it.

3:40 [panting] And think about these reflexes.

3:44 When you walk into a dark room,

3:46 automatically you are [snorts] looking for the light.

3:50 These aren't things that we learned.

3:53 These are things that we were trained to do and know.

3:58 And then we have these social responses.

4:00 Turn to someone right now and smile.

4:02 Turn to someone right now and smile.

4:05 Turn to someone right now and smile.

4:07 When you see a smile, you get a smile, you smile.

4:09 Now turn to someone and laugh.

4:12 [laughter] When you hear a laugh, you laugh.

4:18 And when someone cries, you become emotional.

4:24 And then we have these survival instincts.

4:27 When you feel threatened, automatically you go into fight or flight or freeze.

4:34 When you feel fear, adrenaline suddenly kicks up.

4:41 And what you realize is your body and your mind,

4:46 they don't wait for instructions.

4:48 They move to survive.

4:51 So when you think about mental health and high performance,

4:56 the powerful conversation is we go through life

5:00 with this automatic connection and response and reflex to physical

5:07 response to stimulus to conditional response to stimulus

5:10 to social respond to stimulus to survival response to stimulus.

5:15 But when life hits you hard,

5:19 when you lose that job, when you lose that loved one,

5:27 when that relationship suddenly ends and now you

5:31 don't know what to do with your future.

5:34 When you lose that financial backing of what

5:37 you thought would help you be more secure.

5:41 And when that health diagnosis comes in, the question

5:45 I have for you, what's your reflex?

5:52 This is not a crisis of mental health as a crisis.

5:57 It's a crisis of mental preparation.

6:02 So that's where I started to ask myself the question,

6:04 what if there was a way to not just

6:07 survive adversity or to get resilient after something happens.

6:11 What if there was a way to embrace a reflex in your mind, in your soul,

6:15 in your being that allow you to move forward and thrive

6:18 regardless of the intense pressure that life throws your way.

6:23 And that's where the green method was born.

6:27 You see, when something happens to you, the first G is gratitude.

6:34 Gratitude.

6:36 You know, we're on our phones and we're so busy going

6:40 through life and we're so busy on our phones, we're so busy.

6:44 And when life hits us, all of a sudden, we're we're we're like,

6:48 "What do we do?" And we get stuck because we're in the what do we do?

6:53 We're focused on what happened to us.

6:57 But the first flex, the first reflex when you're dealing

6:59 with mental health and high performance is to embrace gratitude.

7:04 And gratitude isn't denial.

7:07 It's perspective.

7:09 And what that means is when something happens to you, you have to first say,

7:16 "What am I grateful for?" It's a hard thing to do in the midst of pain,

7:21 but you have to say,

7:21 "What am I grateful for?" There are three levels of gratitude.

7:25 existence gratitude, which simply says this.

7:29 Take a deep breath, let it out.

7:31 [sighs] If you were lucky enough, grateful enough to take that breath,

7:38 then you know that regardless of what you're going through,

7:42 regardless of what you're suffering from, somebody did not wake up today

7:46 and someone wasn't able to take that breath today, but you have it.

7:53 Persistence.

7:53 Gratitude says whatever happened to me,

7:56 [sighs] I'm gonna embrace and look for the opportunity

7:59 that it's going to come with it.

8:02 What is the opportunity that's going to come from adversity that I'm facing?

8:05 What is the opportunity?

8:05 I'm going to look for the opportunity and embrace it.

8:09 I'm going to persist.

8:13 And resilience gratitude says, you know,

8:16 whatever I'm going through right now, it's supposed to teach me something.

8:21 It's supposed to give me something.

8:22 New learning, new perspective.

8:24 That health scare that I had, now I'm going to reemerge better.

8:27 I'm going to reemerge more healthy.

8:31 The loved one that I lost makes me realize that I

8:34 need to be more loving to loved ones that I have.

8:37 I'm going to reemerge better.

8:40 Resilience.

8:40 Gratitude.

8:43 Gratitude directly impacts your well-being.

8:47 So the immediate flex when you go through something is to embrace gratitude.

8:51 The R in green is for reach.

8:55 When something pulls you down, you got to reach for something to pull you up.

8:59 You got to reach for it.

9:00 A reach is an extension, an intention, a stretch outside your comfort zone.

9:06 You got to reach for new community.

9:07 Reach for new opportunity.

9:08 Reach for new skill.

9:09 But you got to reach otherwise you get stuck.

9:14 The E is for energy.

9:16 It's hard to have high performance if you have low energy.

9:23 So what that means is sleep, [panting] movement, nutrition.

9:30 You have to power your body to fuel it for the battles of life.

9:36 Energy is a key component.

9:37 You have to have an energy reflex

9:39 when you're going through life's hardest seasons.

9:44 E the next E is for excellence.

9:46 You have to hold yourself to a high standard because

9:49 excellence is not something you turn off like a light switch.

9:52 Excellence is a choice, a decision.

9:55 It's who you become.

9:56 It's a standard.

9:57 You have to hold yourself to a high

9:59 standard of excellence regardless of what's happening to you.

10:02 Because guess what?

10:03 You are not the adversity that you face.

10:05 You are the standard that you bring.

10:08 The sin that you are, the excellence that you are.

10:11 [gasps] And then and have a non-negotiable.

10:14 If you call your mom on Fridays, call your mom on Fridays.

10:18 If you go to Pilates class on Tuesday, go to Pilates class on Tuesday.

10:24 If you like to take your dog for a walk at 400 p.m.

10:26 every day, take your dog for a walk at 4 p.m.

10:28 every day.

10:28 But hold on to a non-negotiable because when you are going through something,

10:32 you need to be anchored in something that gives you stable joy.

10:38 Especially when you are facing unstable life.

10:43 So when I put this all together, it's what I call the green method,

10:48 the automatic flex that we can step

10:51 into when life throws us our hardest seasons.

10:54 Because again, the mental health crisis is not just a crisis of mental health.

10:59 It's a crisis of mental preparation.

11:02 And if we can embrace a solid way to be more prepared,

11:07 we can embrace a way to move forward.

11:11 So in closing, when life throws you the pressure, the pain, the trauma,

11:18 the grief, the loss, the setback, the adversity, just take a deep breath.

11:25 [sighs] What am I grateful for?

11:28 What will I reach for?

11:30 How will I protect my energy?

11:32 How will I hold myself to a high standard of excellence?

11:35 And what's my non-negotiable?

11:37 And when you have that as your flex in any season of your life,

11:43 even the hardest seasons of your life,

11:45 you can always find a way to move forward.

11:48 You can always find a way to be green.

11:52 Thank you so much.

11:54 Thank you so much.

11:55 Thank you so much.

11:56 [applause] Thank you so much.