Over the years I have worked with many young hockey players who have aspired to make the NHL. Today I am honored to work with players and help them achieve what I couldn’t accomplish through my lack of identity and commitment as a person and player. I too was a young hockey player dreaming of making it to the NHL.

I grew up in a family that valued hard work, perseverance, and integrity. My parents instilled the importance of working hard but never really understood identity and how to separate “who I am ” from “what I do”. This was a lesson I carried with me throughout my hockey career.

As I grew older, and faced many challenges on my NHL journey, I struggled with injuries, setbacks, poor self-image, hate, lack of confidence, and an overall poor identity.

As best I could, I  remained committed to my values and my dream. I worked tirelessly to improve my skills, I didn’t seek guidance from coaches or mentors. I  lost sight of my broader sense of self.

Honestly, I didn’t like the man I had become. I eventually was emotionally left on the curb in a city I have never lived in or visited. I was lost. 

Through the grace of God, I somehow drew strength from a mustard seed of faith. I saw myself not only as a hockey player but as someone who wanted something great from life, I valued success more than I appreciated my next breath of air.

For whatever reason, I found inspiration and guidance in the Bible and mentors who came to my rescue. They invested in me and I reciprocated with the only attribute I knew… effort.

I  used my mustard seed of faith as a guide to live a life with purpose and meaning.

Despite the obstacles I faced, I somehow through the grace of God found a commitment to my shaky values, faith, and a dream to become better than my current version of myself. Almost 25 years later,  I  remain persistent, dedicated, accountable, and diligent in my efforts to improve and succeed.

As best I know how, I remain grounded in my values and faith, and continue to inspire others to pursue their dreams through a healthy identity. Through the grace of God, I am inspired to leave a legacy as a former broken hockey player and as a person who was defined not only by what I  did on the ice but by who I am as a child of God.

Sports can be a powerful metaphor for life, and athletes often learn valuable lessons that can be applied beyond the hockey rink. One such lesson is the importance of separating “who you are” from “what you do.” This concept is essential for developing a healthy identity that can withstand the emotional rollercoaster of the season.

A healthy identity is built upon a foundation of core values and beliefs. These values and beliefs help shape a person’s character and guide their actions. Attributes of a healthy identity include:

• Being committed
• Persistent
• Dedicated
• Having integrity
• Being accountable
• Diligent
• Striving for excellence
• Being confident. 

When athletes separate “who they are” from “what they do“, they are more likely to embody these attributes.

They are not defined solely by their sport but have a broader sense of self that includes their values, beliefs, and relationships with others.

For many athletes, their identity is closely tied to their faith. They see themselves not only as athletes but as followers of Jesus Christ.

The Bible speaks to the importance of identity in several passages, including Genesis 1:27, which speaks to the inherent value and dignity of every human being, and in Jeremiah 1:5, which speaks to the idea that each person has a unique purpose and calling.

When athletes see themselves as created in the image of God and set apart for a specific purpose, they can find strength and confidence in their identity. They can use their sport as a way to glorify God and serve others.

Peak performance requires a mindset that supports flow and clutch states. Flow is a description of feeling and is what many people refer to as being “in the zone.”

Clutch performance describes what performers are actually doing to achieve high levels of performance, such as putting in greater levels of effort and focus and understanding the situational demands and their level of importance. To cultivate a mindset that supports both flow and clutch states, athletes need to focus on mental strategies such as mindfulness, stress management/activation, and outcome goals.

Mindfulness is a state of non-judgmental awareness of the present moment. It addresses all of the factors associated with flow, such as effortless attention, absence of critical/negative thoughts, complete and deliberate focus, heightened awareness, and absorption.

Stress management/activation is the ability to manage your body’s level of energy, which is an essential skill for peak performance. Outcome goals are specific and have a clear outcome in mind, providing a clear target for athletes to aim for.

In conclusion, cultivating a healthy identity requires mental strategies that support both flow and clutch states.

By separating “who you are“ from “what you do“ and focusing on values, beliefs, and relationships, athletes can develop a mindset that supports peak performance.

Mindfulness, stress management/activation, and outcome goals are essential for achieving flow and clutch states and reaching one’s full potential as an athlete and as a person.

Mental toughness is key to success in any field. In order to be successful, you need to be able to withstand the pressure and keep going no matter what. But how do you develop mental toughness? One way is by creating a psychologically safe environment. So as coaches, let’s look at a few things that could help us create a safe space for our players to grow and thrive.
There are 6 attributes that we are going to examine for creating a psychologically safe space and they are as followed:

1. Providing athletes with choices
2. Providing rationale for tasks
3. Acknowledge our athletes feelings (super important)
4. Give players the opportunity to do independent work
5. Provide non-controlling competence feedback
6. Prevent ego-involvement in athletes vs. task involvement

Team psychological safety is defined as a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking. For the most part, this belief tends to be tacit – taken for granted and not given direct attention either by individuals or by the team as a whole. Although tacit beliefs about interpersonal norms are sometimes explicitly discussed in a team, their being made explicit does not alter the essence of team psychological safety.
Now, let’s examine the attributes of creating a space that is psychologically safe for our team.

Giving our players the opportunities to have a choice is essential. We need to remember that our players are individuals with their own set of experiences, values, and beliefs. Consequently, they will have their own way of seeing the game and approaching competition. It is our job as coaches to provide them with the resources and support they need to be successful in their chosen approach.

When we provide our players with the rationale for the tasks they are being asked to do, it allows them to understand the “why” behind what they are doing. It also allows them to see how their individual role fits into the bigger picture of the team’s success. If we can create an environment where our players feel like they have a ral purpose or role on the team , it goes a long way towards creating a psychologically safe environment.

Acknowledging our athletes is not only important but in fact, it is essential. Our players should know that, on and off the playing ground, we have their backs and will stand in any fight for them. When we take the time to listen to our athletes and understand how they are feeling, in turn, it builds a relationship of trust and respect. Sometimes, as coaches, we can be so focused on getting our athletes to perform at their highest level that we forget to acknowledge how they might be feeling and if that could be affecting their performance. Acknowledging and validating an athlete’s feelings are key components of creating a psychologically safe environment.

Giving our athletes independent work goes a long way. It shows that we trust them to be able to work on their own and that we have faith in their abilities. It also allows them to take ownership of their training and performance. This is a key attribute in creating psychological safety because it gives athletes a sense of control and empowerment.

CONTROL YOUR MOUTH…in simplest terms. When we provide feedback, it is so important that we do so in a way that does not make the athlete feel controlled. We want our athletes to feel like they are in control of their training and their performance. One way to do this is to provide what is called “non-controlling competence feedback.” This type of feedback is when we give the criticism in a way that does not make the athlete feel like we are making decisions for them. That can easily push players to feel insecure in how they operate in performance. Use “I” statements when providing feedback. For example, instead of saying “You need to work on your mental toughness,” we could say “I noticed that you seemed to get frustrated. How can we fix this and move past it in an effective way?” This approach allows the athlete to take accountability but also feel like we are in this together. Creating an “us” instead of a “them and us” is the objective.

In other words, make sure the athlete is focused on the task and not their self-image. This can look like making sure your body language is open and you are engaged with what they are saying. Perhaps avoid crossed arms or looking at your phone while they are speaking. In all actuality it really comes down to showing our players respect. Ego involvement creates an environment where athletes feel like they have to prove themselves which puts unnecessary pressure on them and a strain on their performance.

Yes, I know. That was A LOT!

Creating a psychologically safe environment and creating the right team only helps to push our players past the limits of what they believe are possible, and that’s a huge win because a lot of our limitations are self-imposed. Something important to keep in mind is that FEAR helps explain WHY. Most of our players, in fear, would rather risk underperforming than to ask a question in fear of being judged. So as coaches, it is our duty to create spaces that groom physical fitness, mental strength and the readiness to tackle anything that stands against our teams.

If you try these 6 attributes, I promise you will begin to see so much growth in your team, physically, mentally, emotionally and even spiritually.

Today I welcome you to give being the best effective coach, on and off the game floor, a chance by challenging yourself to give these practices a try. Once you start to see results, reach out and let me know how your team transformed! I would love to hear your story.

For more on creating a psychologically safe environment feel free to read the journal article below.

Psychological Safe Journal

No matter who you are, change is a constant in life. You can’t avoid it, and you can’t run from it. The only thing you can do is learn how to embrace change and master it.
When it comes to identifying change, it takes a lot of courage and honesty with oneself.
Over the course of my journey, I have read and researched many different areas that surround the field of sports psychology. In all of my research conducted, I’ve come to the terms with five simple guidelines for mastering any change in your life. I wish I could take the credit for these five guiding principles but I can’t. These came from Mastery by George Leonard.

1. Be aware of how homeostasis works
2. Be willing to negotiate with your resistance to change
3. Develop a support system
4. Follow a regular practice
5. Dedicate yourself to lifelong learning

Leonard describes homeostasis as the ability to expect resistance and backlash and that it’s the tendency to resist change in order to maintain a stable, relatively constant internal environment. Homeostasis typically involves negative feedback loops that counteract changes of various properties from their target values, known as set points. So change, by definition, is something that our bodies are wired to resist.

The key here is to become aware of the fact that you have a resistance to change and be willing to negotiate with it. What are you resisting? Why? Is there a way to work with your resistance instead of subjecting yourself to the hiccups they bring? Break change into manageable chunks:The change doesn’t have to be all or nothing. In fact, it’s often easier to make small changes that you can build on over time. Growing up I have always heard the saying “you’ll go nowhere too fast” and this is exactly what we are doing when we rush the process it takes to achieve.

When you’re trying to make a change, it’s important to have a supportive network. This could be friends, family, co-workers or even an online community. These people will help you stay accountable and motivated. A lot of time we think we can do everything on our own with no support system, but let’s be honest, every now and then, everyone needs a cheerleader just to hear those “you got this” or “keep pushing” words of encouragement. As much as we don’t like to admit it, we do sometimes seek assurance from others to remind us that our reward is all worth fighting for in the process.

As we all know and as previously stated, change can be difficult, but if you break it down into small pieces, it becomes more manageable. Change is a learning process and like any skill, the more you practice, the better you become at it. Set realistic goals: change can be daunting and if your goal is too big, you’re likely to get discouraged and give up. so look to set goals that are small and achievable. Change your mindset: this is probably the most important one of all. if you change the way you think about change, it becomes less daunting and more exciting. View it as an opportunity to learn and grow rather than a threat. take baby steps: just like setting realistic goals, taking small steps will help you get through.
And lastly,

Change is a never-ending journey. In Mark 9:23 Jesus said “ if you can believe, all things are possible to them that believe. There will always be something new to learn. If you can commit to learning and growing, change will become much easier for you. It’s easy to say you want to learn, but positioning yourself in the environments that will open up those opportunities requires a great level of being teachable. so be teachable in all things!

I hope these five tips help you next time you’re facing change. Remember, it’s not as scary as it seems! Change can be a good thing and an opening for great opportunities. I’m a huge fan of change myself, but that doesn’t mean it’s always easy.  Just take it one step at a time, and be patient with the learning process. Change can be scary but if you face it head-on, you’ll come out the other side a better person for having gone through it.

Let’s master change together starting today!

Super Dave

In our lifetime how many times a day do we think how can I have more. More time, more money, more food, more energy….etc. Very seldom do we take the time to evaluate where we are and what we have in the NOW. It’s hard for us to simply give thanks or show gratitude because the world tells us, there is always more.

Social media seems to condition us for more, under our friends’ guise of happiness and acceptance. We desire to have the things we don’t possess leaving us riddled with dissatisfaction high in debt, doubt and insecurity, and then we ask ourselves why we can never feel full or satisfied. All of these things come down to one thing, and that is simply the fact that we are not truly HAPPY.

But wait…there is a solution!

Positive Psychology suggests that we build from our current strengths not fixating on our bad behavior or focusing on what we need to fix. Positive Psychology suggests we become appreciative and grateful in the now, that’s where we find true happiness. When we are operating from a space of happiness, we are building from our strengths. Building from strengths and fully operating from a lens of positivity, allows us to produce excellence. Taking it a step further, not only do we produce excellence, but we capitalize to our full potential and find ourselves at our peak in the realms of performance.

Positive Psychology and being “grateful in the now” improves our thoroughness, efficiency, and flexibility of complex decision making and influences one’s sense of standards to evaluate your progress against a set of standards. Also, it facilitates the quality and quantity of pathways of thought and seems to boost an aspect of execution function, which is the ability to adjust efficiently to new information and undertake new problem solving efforts in congruence with the new information.

Think about it, when we get a new house, new car or bigger boat we automatically assume we will be happy but the opposite really happens. We tend to forget that wanting more, when we actually get it, means that more is required of us, therefore….that new boat didn’t really seal the deal on happiness because now, there’s just a new problem(s) waiting. This new problem has another level of new responsibility. When we appreciate everything around us and are grateful for what we have we are more creative, relaxed and happy and it is in those moments where the other things we desire but don’t always pursue come as a result.

So what now?

Be grateful in the now, build on your strengths. Learning to be happy starts with being grateful and thankful. Life isn’t always easy, but it is about decisions. Making a decision today to be thankful by controlling your attitude and actions is doable. If you really want to learn more about gratefulness being the key for happiness feel free to check out this article:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10W7M8ADyTY72i8tiIJ5HcdGIa-tqwWKs/view?usp=sharing

Over the years, like you,  I have always noticed a decline in some of the players and their performance and skills. We always looked for something new or tried different motivational techniques to cultivate the chemistry and performance habits for them. After a while, we go back to the status quo, because things don’t work or it takes too much effort. 

So how do we go from having 2 of your best players all of a sudden taking steps backwards.  In fact, we just did some mental toughness training on peaks and valleys in our season, games, and shifts. After studying and reading through my doctoral program, I was introduced to something I don’t think most coaches use as a training tactic or a validated sports psychology assessment(s). More specifically, the ASCI-28 Assessment. The ASCI-28 assessment, better known as the Athletic Coping Skills Inventory-28 assessment, opened my eyes to a whole world of things I never considered when it comes to helping players become the best version of themselves.

The ASCI-28 assessment is designed to differentiate a player’s psychological skills from their physical skills. This idea was a defining moment for me because it drove home the idea that these are two different skill types and they are relatively independent of each other. Sometimes we as coaches are so zoned in the performance piece to our players, that we fail to empathize and take notation of when a decline in performance may result from a bigger mental issue.

Assessments, while they may not always be welcomed, sure teach a lot about the truth of where the players on the team stand. Specific questions I found interesting in the ASCI-28 assessment were ones like: 

• On a daily or weekly basis, I set very specific goals for myself that guise what I do
• I get the most out of my talent and skills
• I remain positive and enthusiastic during competitions, no matter how bad things are going
• I worry quite a bit about what others think of my performance 
• I feel confident that I will play well

When I read through some of  these questions and saw the way some of the team members answered and how they really felt about where they stood on these things, I must admit I was shocked. Though I was shocked, it brought about a sense of empathy I didn’t know my team needed from me. 

If you were like me and looking for new opportunities for performance excellence in your coaching then I want to encourage you to take some time to research assessments that can better shape and serve you and your team on AND off the ice. Perhaps the ASCI-28 might help.

This new method added to the team’s structure excites me on many levels and might help swiftly change the negative shift that once hovered over the team.

I think from a big picture perspective what this  assessment does for me and perhaps for you is  support performance excellence in our roles as sport and performance coaches. This helps me with empathy and understanding each athlete individually. Accounting for unknown considerations when administering measures and assessments allow me to be empathic but also mindful of the situation and circumstance of each player and their physical and psychological status.

For more on ASCI-28, take a look at this sports journal article.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nSlS_rb5nDH9i9wrX9sP5d87V_WExZa5/view?usp=sharing 

Doubt, fear, stress and dare I say…. Anxiety are at an ultimate high. 

There is no doubt COVID-19 has played a big role in driving these emotions, but is it really COVID-19? Or is it the people around us telling us what we can and can’t do, where we can and can’t go?  Everyone is different in how they react to situations, I get that… but I also get it’s also how we react to those emotions that determines if we are allowing these negative emotions to drive unproductive behaviors and allowing them to harm us, or if we are using them as productive behaviors, becoming a master over  emotions and allow them to help and promote our ability to succeed. 

So this begs the question. In this current culture, how do we play consistently at the upper ranges of our ability under pressure in the biggest moments?

This story is a great example of letting negative emotions control your life and shows how much anxiety, stress and fear can influence you for many years. 

“A forty year old man was mauled by a dog when he was young. In the incident, he lost part of his left ear and sustained deep wounds to his arms and chest. As a result, throughout his youth, he naturally avoided dogs.  

As a young father, he dreaded the day his children would ask for a dog. Once that day arrived, he decided it was time to go to therapy, but what could be done? 

Every time he saw a dog, his heart would pound. He would start to sweat profusely, clutch his chest and feel a sense of doom. This panic was once treated with medication that worked for a time, but excessively sedated him, making it hard for him to function on a day-to-day basis. 

The original accident happened when he was only two years old. His age hindered him from being able to logically explain to himself that it was a rare situation. He didn’t have the emotional intellect and as a result, he lived in constant fear of a dog attacking him again. 

When he was hurt, the part of his brain responsible for retaining that information made a mental note to equate dogs with emotional, mental and physical pain. If he was able to pinpoint this issue and deal with it when it occurred, he would be far less likely to be anxious at the site of a dog. Instead, the fear festered and continued to grow and influence his life. 

One day almost 3 decades later…

His children asked for a dog, the man learned to acknowledge the relevance of his past trauma and how it still influences him today. Ignoring the anxiety, stress and fear only harms the mental state more, weighing it down with illogical ideas and making it nearly impossible to “just deal with it” like this man wanted. He chose to acknowledge his anxiety and fear, and get a game plan so he decided to  speak logically to himself before or during interactions with the root of his anxiety (dogs). Over the next several months he worked on increasing his exposure to dogs, to the point where he could disassociate fear with dogs. Learning to be honest about his personal anxiety, stress and fear is the key to overcoming sensitivity to the situation. Once the root issue is identified, work on creating a new association or speaking positivity, rather than negative self talk. 

As the world continues to function with the new societal standards from COVID-19, anxiety, stress and fear will continue to rise. 

This father didn’t allow his anxiety to control his ability to provide a dog for his children. 

As an athlete, success is not found by letting anxiety, stress and fear affect the game. If anxiety is limiting us from reaching the upper ranges of our ability, we’re far less likely to help a team succeed or even find personal success. 

However, if we learn to engage our thoughts and energy into positive associations, we can play at the upper ranges of our ability consistently, even under pressure in the biggest moments.

Here are four coping strategies to help you play through your anxiety, stress, and fear:

#1. Be Aware of Your Anxiety

• Don’t be distracted by your anxiety 

#2. Be Connected to Your Anxiety 

• Speak positivity over it, don’t allow negative self talk 

#3. Find Insight into Your Anxiety

• If you recognize where your anxiety is coming from, you can find your purpose 

#4. Understand Your Purpose and How Your Anxiety Affects It 

• Don’t be in isolation and have a loss of purpose