Transcript

Win the Game of Life with Sport Psychology | Jonathan Fader | TEDxRutgers

[Applause] thank you thank you so much for having me here today so it's a little strange up here you're unlike on the spot literally and it's really natural in that moment on the spot to feel your heart race to have your thoughts go wild it's really natural to feel that pressure the pressure to deliver an idea where it's spreading so natural but I've got a confession to make I'm actually that nervous I'm gonna tell you a secret about why you see I'm a sport and performance psychologist I should be able to do this in fact I've spent the past 15 years my basically my whole career working with high professional high level athletes in the NFL in MLB with the fire department in New York City but today I have a really special opportunity I have the chance to share these techniques ones that helped me with you here today but first just a little bit about what it's like to be a sports psychologist working in the NFL working with MLB you know it's been in a just an amazing pleasure and it's been just so fascinating an honor to work with these high-performance athletes but it's also been really humbling and it's also been stressful we stress out about things like for example when I went with the New York Mets to the 2015 World Series should be yeah come on give me yeah give it up a little bit I can remember sitting there on the sidelines really feeling like I should just be there in the moment but I was distracted I was worrying what's gonna come next are we gonna win are we gonna move on are we gonna advance what's gonna happen the players that I care about here we all worry we get in our heads in a lot right if you worry about things relationships as a climate the political state your life if you worry let me hear you say I do it's natural to be human but there's things that you can do to get better at dealing those thoughts in our heads and I'm going to teach you how athletes do it today but first we have one task and that's really to understand the nature of being human all here together so in order to do that I need to go on a little ride with you guys if you're ready let me hear you say I'm ready alright everybody stand up yeah you're in the right place ready here we go if you're ready to feel what it's like to be a human I want you to hear I want to hear you say dance [Music] [Music] [Music] okay okay okay yeah you want to continue I love it all right I ready just give me a second everybody you can take your seats it's hard to see with the lights but I was able to see three well-known dances here they are the full commitment you guys are ready for Saturday night but then there was this other dance it was like the UH does this count does this channel and there's a third dance the most famous dance of all the one we're doing all day long every day everyone in here is doing it it's this how am I being judged right now who's watching me am I good enough I'm in my head right now natural it's natural to be that way as humans our central nervous system develop to be that way as we were evolving over 600,000 years we had to notice one thing the predator the tiger the lion that's how we had to notice the negative thing we had to notice it or we wouldn't survive we wouldn't evolve but as a high-performance athlete and yes you and me up here on this red Ted dot we have to learn ways of dealing with the fact that we're always in our heads always worried about what's gonna come always worried about what's to be and I'm gonna teach you some of those ways we're gonna talk about it together but first how do athletes condition themselves well we know about how they condition themselves they do things like jump rope right physical conditioning they lift weights certainly they do that but over the past 15 to 20 years is a new field that's developing mental conditioning this is squats but it's for your soul these are curls but it's for your brain so the things that we do with athletes are things like mental rehearsal imagery to rehearse what you're going to do before you get there in your mind super effective research that show also we help people to get in touch with their internal privation there why and to remind themselves of that we help athletes to talk to themselves in an adaptive way self-talk and we also focus on our breath and on breathing but you can't go to the gym to do this kind of work in fact there's no weight that you can actually pick up to do this kind of work in fact there's one weight you must put down to really do this work well it's this one you've got to put it down this is actually my phone and to remind myself to get into the moment to be in the moment I have this word on my phone because I need a reminder I'm human too I forget I get caught up and worry caught up in thoughts about what's gonna happen with this talk what's going to happen in my life in my relationships and most of us in this room can certainly relate to that feeling so it's about paying attention to the moment so how do you do that how do you pay attention to the moment I want to tell you a story about how I learned it the first time I paid too much attention to the moment these right here are my hippie parents yeah give it up for my hippie parents I love them so much and one time but think about hippie parents see see is if they're not that great at locking their bedroom door so I go over to the bedroom door I'm like seven ray right and I open the bedroom door and I walk in on them they're they're they're breathing they're meditating and it starred me I mean I wanted to put that away my parents were weird right they're so weird they're doing this thing this mindfulness meditation it's so strange I don't want to tell anyone about it no one I want to hide it away hide it away never tell anyone until about 15 years later I'm going to the University of Washington to get my doctorate in psychology and I get there and I meet these luminaries these professors in the field of psychology and I go to this faculty meeting as a graduate student and I go and I opened the door seeking to see the people that are gonna teach me everything about performance about managing stress about psychology and I opened the door and they're meditating I was shocked what and I had to confront at that one moment the thing that none of us in this room none of us should ever have to confront that my parents were right all along you might say fader okay you do this meditation yourself you do with NFL athletes you do with MLB athletes you do with firefighters but you know maybe that's just for your hippie parents it's not for me mindfulness meditation is that really what an elite athletes gonna do when the game is on the line someone whose are the best they're filled are they really gonna do that I wonder you don't have to wonder it's the last time out he has played the entire game he would have played the entire game in Game six if it wasn't a blowout so what is LeBron James arguably the most talented active basketball player of our time what is he doing in that moment he's now here's another question for you is this the first time that LeBron James has done this no he is doing mental conditioning he's working on his mindset all the time so when he gets to the moment that counts he's gonna be ready just like we can we can work on our mindset we can train our brain using performance psychology and sports psychology techniques to be ready for that moment when it comes in your life your big date some of you the way you're dancing look I gets tonight your interview your test your meeting this is one of the ways to get there but you might say you listen fader he's an athlete my life's not a game right my life is I got things on the line here I have real life problems you know it's not real life I say tell it to these guys these are my colleagues at the FDNY and it's been a tremendous honor to work with them to help to develop the mental performance initiative where we teach firefighters in the eleven thousand four-person firefighting service of FDNY how to use these techniques to be in the moment more and that's Jason Bresler on the left that's me in the middle and chief Ginty to the right and really what we work on is helping them to learn those techniques self-talk breathing so they said fader listen you want to come work with us you got to come you think you're mr. mental toughness come work with us so they call me and they just call me up they said we need you to come today to the rock I'm like the rock how do I get to Arai do I swim like ha ha has his work turns out the rock is a training center in Randall's Island in the middle of the East River in New York and they light buildings on fire and they actually have real purposeful practice to train firefighters so they bring me in they have they put on the bunker gear here and I went in I was really prepared but when I got into this burning building the thing I wasn't prepared for was the thing that's most lethal in a fire smoke I got in there and the smoke hit me I couldn't see anything it was really frightening and I had my oxygen on they told me like you don't want to just rip that oxygen mask off it's an instinct and I was like not it's not gonna happen of course it did all of a sudden I got in my head started thinking it started my heart started racing but I had two things in my head from the work I do with athletes to help get me back into the moment one was breathing and I'm gonna teach you how I did it right now if you're ready to learn it say I am so what we do to keep our breathing and control is we breathe for seconds in four seconds out and a two second pause inhale for four exhale for four two second pause we'll start on the count of three if you're ready let me hear you say I'm ready one two three inhale two one thousand three one thousand four exhale to one thousand three one thousand four pause inhale two one thousand three one thousand four exhale two one thousand three one thousand four now you have something to go to in those moments in those fires in your life tough discussion can go to your breath tough meeting can go to your breath test you can go to your breath game you can go to your breath TED talk that breathing that self-talk helps me in all different areas of my life what I said when I was in that fire the way I was talking to myself was I was just saying here and now to help guide myself back to the present moment here and now in any moment that you're in and you know working with NFL players it's funny because you know they'll just grab you in the locker room so an NFL player grabs you it's kind of like you're like one of those stuffed animals in a crane you know when the in the super in the amusement park in skirts they come up and grab a fader yeah fader that's breathing technique that you hope that you show me is really helpful and here I'm like wow actually I'm good at my job I'm like wait I'm trying to go back in the plays that he was involved in what is he talking about which one did I help him in yellow Freder see I was with my wife and I was about to get in an argument and I use your breathing technique and it helped calm me down so once I got over there the little ego blow that it wasn't about football I realized one of the most powerful things that I'm talking you guys about these techniques are for all of us we can all use the same techniques that athletes use in their life to be the best in the field in all of the different situations where we experience stress and pressure my belief really is that life as a sport in the sense that we're playing a sport or where we're giving a performance when we're playing chess when we're playing violin all these beautiful moments that we have we don't endure it we don't try to get through it we play it we're really there and the techniques of mental conditioning of sport and performance psychology breath meditation and mindfulness self-talk mental rehearsal can really help you they're the ones I wrote about in my book life as sport in which I tell people you all and try to share with you what's really been helpful for me to be on all the red dots that I have in my life both personal and professional but the word I used was play to be playful and I want to just come back to that for just one minute what I do is I bring something to every team talk I do when I work with an NFL team or an MLB team or any corporate event or whoever I'm talking to in academia with doctors I bring this bingo ball except I call it the ball of death and what I say and what I do is I say this has all your jersey numbers in it and I'm gonna pick someone at random and that person can come up on stage with me and freestyle rap in front of everyone can you imagine or come up and tell a joke in front of everyone I mean that dot moves from six feet to being throughout everyone here but I don't want to talk about it I actually decided that we're gonna pick someone here at random to come up here in freestyle rap with me up stage you just come up here we're gonna we're gonna we put seat numbers here those doors are locked can we lock those doors we're gonna we're gonna pick someone here random to come up and rap on stage with me so three lucky people your numbers are on your seat just let's make sure you check your number right now I'm just I'm just kidding guys oh my god right oh my god oh my god not me no I don't want to touch that die there's a predator there's a lion get it away get it away right that is stress and the more you use these techniques for every moment not just freestyle rapping not just you know when you're on the field of play but it's all a field of play life is a sport I feel bad that was mean does that mean who said oh my god that was mean right okay you know what you know what I think I owe it to you guys to freestyle rap what do you think right like I mean I I I actually I I really put you on the spot terrible right and I owe it back to you guys so in in the last kind of minute here I just want to give you guys something which has to be playful so I just need from the front rows here fruit okay raise your hand yes mango okay [Music] baby goodfeel let's take the mango peel and eat that fruit take the loot oh my god it's not a mute this is happening right now come on now I'm talking about breathing exercise if you do it then you'll feel why oh yeah maybe a surprise so let's do it together everybody if you're in it all kinds of weather oh my god it's time to stop imaginary Mike drop guys this is the sign of New York Giants locker room let's stay in the moment and let's do it together I invite you to begin to live life like a sport thank you you