Winning is in Your Head | DFS 418

Welcome to Destined for Success. I'm your

host Jennifer Takagi, and I have a new amazing guest, Tom Rohrer.

And today we're going to talk about winning in your head. Our

winning is in your head because it all starts with the mindset.

Tom, thanks so much for being here today,

thank you, Jennifer. Thank you for having me.

So, how did you get into this, and what do we do

to be better winners? I love to win. I hate to

win. Well, I suspect you have witnessed or been aware

of a talented performer who is struggling to deliver their top

performance. Very common thing, and so that's what I assist.

What I refer to as public performers, which literally

could be anybody, but it's consistently athletes, it's

public speakers, it's actors, dancers, people like that. When

they get on stage, they just they lose it, and so that's main

main issue and main focus. and And specifically focusing on

blocks, slumps, commonly in some sports, they call it the yips,

the twisties in gymnastics, and so that's the main focus. And

then I also help people actually learn to connect with their

primarily inner resources, mental, emotional resources, and

how to expand that in ways in which they can use the idea that

what's called self spotting comes out of a tool called brain

spotting, and I'll go into that in a minute. I want to when I

say that I got started in this because when I was in high

school and on junior junior varsity basketball, I started

having double troubles, double dribbling when I got in the

game. I knew how to dribble; it was a pretty easy thing to do.

And when that started happening, of course, the coach doesn't

leave you in long when you basically hand the ball to the

other team, you know, every other time down the court. So

that was my last year playing basketball because I didn't know

what was going on, and it's only in recent years have I figured

out the depths of that and have done some resolving of that for

myself because I don't play basketball competitively

anymore, unfortunately. So that's how I got started, and

when I finally, after doing psychotherapy and such for

years, started getting more involved in helping athletes, I

began to really understand and found ways of being able to help

people through two tools primarily, not only the standard

cognitive behavioral kinds of things, but we'll call brain

spotting, which has to do with where you look determines how

you feel, and if you or your audience has ever noticed

themselves or someone else staring in one spot and probably

in a monolog about something, that's the most basic structure

of brain spotting, and when you catch yourself doing that, if

you just keep doing it, just keep holding that that visual,

hold that spot in your visual field, your eyes are located,

focusing, focusing. Also, your where the strongest body

sensations are in your inside in your body, and just hold that

and keep talking about it. Your brain and body, and in my

opinion, spirit. But brain and body will will literally process

that issue for you, and over a period of time, it'll feel less

intense. Right. That's the neutralizing and evolving of a

negative issue, and then there is the phase two of the work

that I do. Okay, so

wait one second. Wait one second.

Sure.

So if I keep focusing on that one thing, it

will get better.

Yes.

Okay.

Where that visual field, the the point in your

visual field is, is not it's it's unique to you and that

situation, right? You may come up with another situation which

may have to do with a similar issue, but the brain spot may be

what's called brain spot. It may be someplace else. So if you

notice yourself thinking, talking about any issue at all,

and that can be something that's positive, also. But you're

thinking about, you know, this difficult, this issue that came

up between you and a friend, or issue at work, and you notice

that when you look there, you know. Wherever there is your

visual field, it feels more connected, more intense. Hold

that gaze, and just keep thinking or talking about that.

Now, that may take a while, and you may want to come back to it

and keep coming back to it. But that's called self-spotting. So

that's it's a it's a small, simple piece of what I do when I

use brain spotting with clients, but you can do it on your own,

and it can be effective. It is more effective with the trained

person, of course, but you can also do that at home and for

free, which is nice. So just hold that and just keep thinking

about it. Just keep, you know, the more you can connect to it

or re-experience it, the better. So you're remembering the

re-experiencing, excuse me, the emotions, the visual, the visual

images, the feelings, the body sensations, etc. Maybe even

taste and smell, and hold that gaze. Additionally, notice where

in your body you're holding the feeling the strongest

sensations. Commonly upper body, commonly upper in the upper

chest area, but it could be any, literally anywhere. Usually

stays in the same spot, but can move, and you just sit with

that, right? And sit there and look wherever there is, and

think about that. Excuse me, and it will process. So even if it's

a bad thing,

I just keep focusing on the bad thing until

it allow

kind of a similar meditation, and you just allow

your brain and body to process that for you. Okay.

Okay, and then the next, the phase two is identifying mental

emotional resources such as assertiveness, or courage, or

relaxation. Really know the brain spot for that, and then

introduce that into whenever you're right when you're about

to go dance and dance floor at the wedding or give your

presentation or whatever, you let yourself here and there as

you can just kind of go, yeah, right. You hook us over in that

spot, and it can be up down. Usually, people find that fairly

easily, right? If you're connecting to something,

re-experiencing something, and you notice where you're looking,

that's probably it. If not, you can do kind of a matrix thing.

You really connect with that issue, and you kind of go, okay,

it's more intense over here, here, here, here, here, and

eventually you go. No, it's about there. It might be an

exact spot. It could be a general area, and then finally

you go into that experience of commonly known in the being in

the zone in athletics. But the term flow is the more common

term for it when you're just there and everything's going

well and and notice where you're looking find that brain spot for

flow and then you can introduce that at any point in time

especially or any other right any other resources valuable but

flow state can be introduced people say that you don't you

can't learn flow state. Yeah, you can, because we all have

gone into it from time to time. The question is how how

consistently can you go into it? That's kind of three phases of

what I work with a lot of people. Obviously, there's often

a lot more details, so we have to kind of go over here and do

this. But that neutralize the negative, embrace the mental

emotional resource states, and expand or transform the ability

to perform the best of your ability when you're on the

court, on the dance floor, wherever it is. And so, people,

even the average person that just gets freaked out at the

idea of having to do anything publicly, usually there's some

kind of past unresolved experience.

Yeah, like you went to first grade and they

laughed at you at show and tell because your pants were

unzipped. You know, it had nothing to do with you having

your little car at show and tell, right?

Well,

and yeah, and the thing is, it could be something totally

different, right? It could be based on actually, you know, the

breakup of the first law. I mean, it could be anything.

Things get wired in our brain in ways in which we when we finally

figure it out. It's like really, those two things are linked

together.

That was the thing.

Yeah, exactly. So I love

this. So as we like as we process through this,

then does that help us in a new situation that like was.

Unexpected or just a completely new experience?

Well, the answer is likely yes. Whether that comes

has to do with triggering off the old situation, which is

extremely common. But for sure, if you're in a new situation,

and let's say you know you've done well with the public

speaking or dancing at a wedding, but something happens

on a new situation. You're meeting somebody. One of the

ones has been for me, and I've I've pretty I think I've pretty

much gotten over at this point is meeting somebody who is like

really famous, but somebody I respect is famous. I mean,

literally, how many of us have kind of gone? I

call it being the quip, like

yeah, and even if we practice it ahead, Thompson. So

yeah, it's like so. What would it be helpful in that situation?

Relaxation, being grounded. I don't know any number of things,

but nine times out of 10, the client will can come up with

that. I often offer them a list of mental, emotional resources.

That's I also be glad to make that available to your your

listeners if they're interested, and so they can kind of get on

the list and go, yeah, if I was more assertive or courageous or

whatever might be calm, and they can find that brain spot for

that, which is again usually not too difficult, and then they

just know that's what it is. And so as they get ready to know

they're going to, or even if they do it, even if they just do

it spontaneously, you know they didn't know this person was

going to be at this party. They can just do a quick breathing in

quickly out a long deep breath is probably the best way to

relax that there is right breathing in activates,

breathing out relaxes. There's a lot of versions of that, you

know, breathe in four seconds. I think it's better at two

seconds. Hold on for seven seconds. Breathe out for eight

seconds. I'm not convinced anybody knows who ain't done the

level of research. You know, this exactly this. But

basically, if you want to relax breathing quickly, maybe hold

your breath for a few seconds if you want to, and then breathe

out very slowly. Most people, if they have some kind of lung

condition, can do eight seconds. That's that means breathing

really small amount of air at a time, but six for sure. And that

will metabolically relax. And the other that we may not have

time to go into too much detail comes from is called polyvagal

theory, and there's all kinds of stuff on YouTube on it.

Basically, it's stimulating the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve, I

think, is the longest nerve in the body. Starts in the brain,

goes on all the organs, stomachs, whatever. And so, if

you stimulate it, and that can be done from something as simple

as a long, deep hum, or maybe some kind of music that you

really enjoy for some reason resonates with you. Excuse me,

but also out of OM, which is something that transcendental

meditation teaches, the sound ah, which is commonly called the

God sound, or for a Christian person Yahweh, any number of

specific terms that person could use, but just doing slow deep

breathing and have it attempt to resonate in some way. So, for

instance, if you have a song that you just every time you

hear it, you just love, just you know, hum that song as you're

breathing out, and it resonates, it will help relax. But that's

stimulating the the vagus nerve, and this is the more common

versions where you stimulate the vagus nerve. Vagus nerve that

runs both sides of your down your through your ears and down

into your body organs, and so is a big, a big heavy muscle

running the back just to the right and left of your spine.

Stimulating that with like some fingers for 30 seconds. I'm

going to take that long. Then switch it 30 seconds or longer

on the other side will cause the vagus nerve to be stimulated,

which by definition is causes the body to relapse.

Oh, I love that. That felt pretty good.

I've been on the computer all day today, so yeah, of course,

stretching,

standing up, there's all kinds of things. Can again,

the quickest way to change your your body and mentally emotional

state is to change your body state and your breathing, and

it's instantaneous. Now, I'm not going to say that it changes it

a huge. Out immediately, but if it's 5% that's pretty nice to do

in you know 10 seconds when you only have a couple of moments.

And that brain spot and vagus nerve can change your mental

emotional state fairly quickly. Actually,

well, and people think that everything

takes a long time. Like I have to meditate for hours, or I'm

not going to get a benefit, or I need to do breath work for

hours, or there's not going to be a benefit. And I'm of the

belief system that a little bit can go a long way.

Well, a little bit is always better than nothing

for sure, right? If all you got is 30 seconds, one of the keys

is that you've practiced such such long enough, and I've been

a meditator for many many years and have taught it. the The big

issue is doing it long enough that you can you know how to go

into that deep. I think it's the biofeedback people call theta

state where you're going to that where you have REMs if you were

if you were sleeping, and you are once you know how to do

that, I can do that in five or 10 seconds, just be in that. Now

there's once in a while it's like I can't get into that state

no matter how long I try, but the other 9095 times out of 100,

I can go into it very quickly. I can do it at a stoplight, at a

red light, and once you're there, that tends to stay for a

while, right? And the same goes for visualization, etc. Is doing

it at all is better than not doing it. Almost every

meditation style I've ever studied will suggest 20 minutes

twice a day. Five minutes once a day is dramatically better than

not doing it at all. I love

that, and you know I don't I don't I guess

because my cat keeps walking in here brushing against my legs.

But as a kid, I thought I've always had a cat, and I thought

the coolest thing was you pet a cat for one or two strokes, like

not even minutes, and they will purr for the longest time. And

so it's almost like that same thing that you get into the

state and you can stay there for.

You can. It's so much of this is so much of life

is about allowing, right? Allowing yourself to be in

state, allowing yourself to connect, allowing yourself to to

listen to whether it's your psychological model and to be to

listen to your unconscious spiritual model to be listen to

God. But it's listening. It's so much of those. We have so many

answers. Most people have most their answers most time, but

they don't listen. They don't pay attention, and they go,

"Well, you know, that's going to be too hard. Or such a mentor of

mine came up with a concept called structural tension, and

it's basically it's that space between what you want and where

you where you're at and where what you want, right? And people

call that the your comfort zone. It's really your uncomfort zone,

in my opinion. Because then we get closer and closer to our

goal. We go, oh, I'm too tall, I'm too short, I'm too old, it's

too hard. I hit there last night. All these concepts, which

can get in your way, if you can just take all those concepts out

and say, "I don't care, I ate there last night. I'm going to

choose not to. You can you can buy the concept, but if it's

like I got plenty of money, I can eat there again, or yeah,

I'm only you know I'm only this height, but Spider Spider Webb

played basketball at five foot two, etc. etc. etc. Right, or

just say, you know, I don't care. I'm here. I want to be

here, and that will pull you into that future. You're looking

at you think, God, I'm really hungry, and you notice your

favorite restaurant is a block away. How long do you stand

there and say, "I'm really hungry. My favorite restaurant

is right there. I'm really no, unless you go into I ate there

last night. It's very expensive and not dressed right. Then you

get those concepts in the way. I'm psychological. Creative arts

actually version is a it's a musician Version of what's

called he calls structural tension, and that'll just if you

stay with that, I'm here, I want to be there, and just sit with

that, you get more motivated to go do it because it's

uncomfortable. Yeah, people will hang into that stuff literally.

I've seen cases where people were decades holding on to

unresolved trauma, or or their team when Boston finally won the

World Series some years ago. Was a guy being interviewed, and he

said ever since they won the World Series, has been

depressed. He was already depressed. He was so caught up

in structural tension for last almost life, and they finally

won. Oh, they won! I get to feel the depression because I was

pride there the whole time. Oh my gosh, this has

been such an interesting conversation, Tom. If someone

wants to get hold of you. How are they going to do that?

My website is tomroer.com.

R O H R E R e.com. Right. Oh, that's great.

This has been awesome, and I'll have it in the show notes so you

can just open your phone and tap on it in the show notes and get

to Tom. As we wrap this up, this has been a great conversation.

Do you have any final words for the audience?

You have so much more potential than you think

you do. It's ridiculous. When I was taking an abnormal psych

last years ago, I had to force to read a book by a Down

syndrome young man. I was 17 years old, and he was parents

were told to put him in institution and let him go. He

could read, write, and type by the time he was 10 years old,

and he wrote his own autobiography. No help. Every

page, or there was more, one or more typos, but you understood

what he was saying. If he had that much potential, what do the

rest of us have? We have, you know, 10 times more brain power

than he did.

Oh my gosh, this is such a conversation!

Thanks for being here, Tom. I look forward to connecting with

you.

Thank you for having me.

I'm Jennifer Takagi with Destined for

Success.