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Heart First Leadership
Welcome to Heart First Leadership, the podcast that explores a revolutionary approach to leadership. In a world that often prioritizes success above all else, it's easy to find ourselves leading from a space of fear, doubt, and unworthiness. There is a new way!
Join me, your host Ryan Sawyer, and my co-host and wife, Heidi Sawyer, on a transformative journey as we seek to inspire and guide leaders, parents, and athletes to unlock the secrets to a truly fulfilling life—one that resonates from the heart. In Heart First, we challenge the conventional norms and embark on a voyage together, where heart-driven leadership becomes the compass for a life well lived.
Are you ready to redefine where you lead from? Let's dive into meaningful conversations, insights, and practical tips that will empower you to embrace a new paradigm of leadership.
Heart First Leadership
Mental Health and the Competitive Spirit
Have you ever felt the crushing weight of expectations on the playing field or in your daily grind? I know I have, and that's why this episode is close to my heart as we tackle the silent opponent many athletes face in mental health. We're peeling back the layers of the harsh realities of depression and anxiety that are all too common among competitors, especially the young and collegiate. The conversation goes deep as we challenge the old-school belief that discipline alone can ward off mental strife.
In the arena of competition, whether you're a seasoned athlete or a weekend warrior, the rules of engagement have changed. This episode isn't just about the scoreboard; it's about rewriting our relationship with competition and transforming it into a source of strength and well-being. We explore how excessive screen time and battling our own minds can deplete our energies, and how cooperation rather than resistance can unlock a powerful competitive spirit. We invite you to join this pivotal dialogue and discover how to harmonize your drive to win with the pursuit of mental health and resilience.
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Welcome back to the show. Thank you for your time. I know your time is viable and there's a million different places that you can find content and explore, but we're having a different conversation here, and so I appreciate you being here and listening with me. I really wanna encourage you to engage with what I'm talking about here in a way that starts conversation. Let me begin to explore Whether you reach out to me or you talk with others. I think it's time for us to really clearly evaluate ourselves from a different place than we ever had before.
Speaker 1:There's a problem in our culture that we're not addressing as much as we should be, and there's currently something that we're doing that is obviously not working and if we don't address it, it's going to continue to increase. It's already at scary levels. I'm talking about mental health. I'm talking about how we are obviously currently orient in ourselves to the world, to sports, to competition, then to life itself, because the reason why I bring at it from competition to sports like this is who I am. This is where I grew up in, this is how I spent the majority of my life. Earning money was in competitive environments, and I love competition, I love sports and but yet I have found myself questioning whether or not we are making it as a healthy as an environment as it possibly can be for people, and the numbers don't lie. The anxiety and depression numbers don't lie. The suicide rates don't lie. Mental health in itself is something. If we continue to avoid and deny that it's becoming a problem and an issue, then it's going to continue to increase. We got to learn to address it in a new and different way. We got to have some different way of looking at our mental health and approaching life in general, approaching our individual lives, approaching sports in a new and different way.
Speaker 1:It's 2024 and there's certain things that are outdated. There's certain ways that we view ourselves in the world or maybe even competition that are outdated. They're clearly not working. So I'm not I want to make sure you understand I'm not villainizing sports or competition. Competition is primal. It's absolutely necessary. I love sports, I work in sports, I work with athletes, I work with teams, and I want to have a conversation to explore how we can do it different, how we can get better at what we're currently doing and not just continuously think that what we have always done is working, because it's clearly not, and it's not about more grit or more discipline. It's just a different age.
Speaker 1:So here's the reality of what's being experienced that there is at least a 10% increase in diagnosed depression in the last eight years. To me, that number, I think, is skewed because that's what's being reported, that's what's being evaluated and diagnosed. How many people are battling with depression and hide? That's the number one thing that people do when they're battling depression, and I know this because of my own story, which I'll share with you in just a moment. In 2021, there was a study done that 73% have 33,000 participants of college students reported feeling moderate to severe psychological stress. Now, again, I'm not saying that this is not real, like there's going to be stress.
Speaker 1:I'm a firm believer in doing hard things to make a more adaptable, more resilient, mentally tough system. I'm the first one to promote that. You should start your day with something hard to make the rest of the day easy, but when it comes to mental and emotional being of my children or the people I work with then to be able to navigate that, we're currently failing. At 2020 mental health study from Cornell University and Ivy League school found that 40% of students said there was a they're a non-functional for at least a week of the year due to depression, stress or anxiety. Non-functional to be not it's one thing. To be frustrated it's one thing to be irritated, it's one thing to feel down or blue. We have to be able to work through those things Clearly, as part of life is always not going to be sunshine or rainbows, but to be non-functional. At the age of 18 to 22, at school and going through college, 40% nearly half were non-functional for a week. Woo, that's a lot that hits home. Another study conducted in 2022, 88% of students so basically, not add 10 students believe there is a mental health crisis on college campuses across the United States.
Speaker 1:So there's a cry for help. There's an unheard cry for help. So what are we doing? That's different. The main thing that, the main thing that I want to just introduce here and we're going to have this exploring, evolving conversation, this podcast I'm going to keep showing up and just sharing thoughts and what I find and what's working and what's not working and ways that I believe are have helped me.
Speaker 1:But fundamentally, it comes from this idea that we are currently fighting. We're in a battle. We're fighting against our mind. We haven't been educated on how the mind really works and how to learn how to work with our minds. Our minds are so incredibly powerful, so freaking powerful, but yet and what's being sold to us right now and again I'm not saying it's right or wrong, I'm just saying it's not working is that we need more discipline, we need more grit. Well, based upon what I've seen and what I've heard and what I witness, our collective consciousness of our youth, especially who I'm focusing on, let's say the average 15 to 18 year old their nervous system is not in a place where making it harder and adding more to their plate is necessarily the answer that maybe a level of simplification needs to take place, but to learn how to work with your mind and not fight against it they're not resisted. There is resistance is absolutely necessary for growth and, yes, we have to learn how to train our systems to be able to be okay with being bored in one moment and do something hard in the next, and to learn how to traverse those ends of the spectrum.
Speaker 1:What I'm saying is that I'm looking to have a new conversation with youth. I'm looking to have a new conversation with leaders. I'm looking to have a new conversation with coaches and parents and athletes. I'm looking to have a new conversation that is exploring how can we work with our mind rather than fighting or resisting against it. And it's a conversation that has to happen because if we don't continue, if we don't change what we're doing we continue to do what we're currently doing.
Speaker 1:Those numbers will continue to increase. The numbers of suicide rates will continue to increase if we don't address mental health from a new and different way. And the age is also decreasing, which means that the people who are in a spot where they feel no other way out are getting younger, which I don't know about you, but it absolutely breaks my heart as somebody who spent a good portion of their life at least 20 years of my life in a depressed, anxious state, rioting those roller coasters, and everything that I've learned in the last decade after I left my college coaching career has completely transformed my experience of life and liberated me from that mental and emotional struggle. I remember it starting when I was right around 13 years old 13, 14 years old. It intensified at about 16 and it hit a peak at about 17, 18 years old, and then I rode that peak in Valley until my early 30s to mid 30s. I didn't fully understand the gravity of it even in the moment.
Speaker 1:And the reality is, when you hear stories of athletes or people who do clearly are struggling, it's always a surprise to people like, oh geez, I didn't think that they would be struggling. And there's the same true thing for me. If you would have known me at that age, you probably didn't know. My wife didn't even know for the first handful of years of our marriage that I was in a dog fight with my mind fighting and resisting against it. And I was disciplined. I was tough, I worked hard. I earned everything that I was given. I did all the things that we hear motivational people telling us we need to do. I did them all. I chose to work out on Friday afternoon when all my friends were going to the lake. I worked out on weekends when everybody else was resting. I trained, I pushed and yet I still struggled. So clearly it didn't work for me and it's not working for our current society, our youth.
Speaker 1:And I'm not saying again. I'm going to tell you I'm a firm believer in doing hard things. I wake up in the morning, I do something hard every single day, right, I teach this to my children, but the main thing we have to understand is learning how to work with our mind in a way that we are no longer fighting against it. We learn to cooperate with ourselves. And the reality is the outcome of this becomes one where we are able to compete at a much higher level because we're using the power of our mind. We're using our mental faculties and I'll do episodes in the future about mental faculties, about imagination, intuition, reason, perception, memory, willpower Kind of goes along with what I said in the last podcast.
Speaker 1:People talk about how there's a motivation problem and I'm saying no, there's a willpower problem. But when you are in a place where you feel completely overwhelmed and your nervous system is already taxed and there's a high and low information and stimulation, that's already taxing and drawing your attention away from your system, creating a depletion to think that you're also going to be motivated, then to overcome that is just a very uphill battle. So what's causing this? What is the cause to all this? I don't. We can sit here and say it's screen time and it's social media, and I think that's absolutely important. Social media and I think that's absolutely, without a doubt plays a part, but I didn't even have a cell phone until I was in my early 20s. Right, I didn't spend a lot of time in front of screens. I was raised on a farm, so I spent a lot of time outside working. I did all the things that we say, oh, that's the answer, and so that is part of the answer.
Speaker 1:As part of the problem, I should say, is the screen time and the amount of time that we spend in, the amount of information that's coming into our system and the amount of social terrains that we have to cross. I'll discuss more of this in the future, but we are in a spot where our mental, emotional well-being is a concern and what we're doing is currently not working in, and it's the definition of insanity to continue to do the same thing and expect a different result. So all I'm doing here is poking you, poking me as a coach, as a parent, as a leader, as a former athlete, to say we have to explore a different way at looking at our individual lives and looking at competition and coming to it to create a much healthier relationship with it by learning how to work with our mind rather than fight against it, which will create a will to compete that is even greater. When we learn to work with our mind, we're no longer trying to overcome and fight against our mind, creating more resistance and more struggle and more suffering. When we work with our mind, we begin to cooperate with ourselves and those around us. We're able to have more energy to create value for ourselves and for others. We're able to push ourselves even harder because we have a reserve of energy that's available for us to use and to give and to share with our environment, with our life, with our people that are we in influence and impact. So, if you want to have this conversation with me, I really would love to explore this further with anybody who's open to either feeling like I'm wrong or that want to engage in this conversation. We need to begin to look and to explore that there has to be a different way, and that's learn how to work with the mind. So just stay tuned.
Speaker 1:Stay tuned into the conversations that I'm going to continue to hop on.
Speaker 1:I'm going to continue to share my thoughts, what I find, but this is my mission in life.
Speaker 1:My mission in life is to create an environment for people that they learn how to work with their mind rather than fight against.
Speaker 1:They learn how to cooperate with themselves and with each other rather than compete against themselves and each other, creating a healthy relationship with competition. Competition is primal, it's not going anywhere, but we can create a relationship with it that helps to support our individual self-concept and those around us, that unlocks a will to compete that is unmatched, that is uncommon, unmatched and uncommon. So this is the journey that I'm on and this is what we're going to explore on this podcast, and I'm going to have people on to talk about it and I'm just going to have, you know, do interviews with people to find out what makes them tick and just to learn, and so I'm excited to be on this journey with you. Again, reach out if you want to be a part of this conversation about finding a new and different way to address the mental and emotional well-being of our youth and our society, of you and me, to become stronger, more resilient, more adaptable systems, because isn't that the point? Thank you for your time.
