It was a true pleasure to discover the work and passion of Sonya Looney, a professional athlete, mountain bike champion, podcast host, health and mental performance coach. Her enthusiasm, laughter, and insights are contagious!

There are many golden nuggets in this conversation: how to skillfully manage comparison thoughts, rumination, self-doubt, shame, values-based strategies, and much more.

Key Takeaways

• The mindset of an athlete
• The upsides and downsides of over-preparing and over-working
• How to skillfully manage unpredictability
• Acceptance of emotions
• How to deal with a strong attachment to goals or winning
• Defusion: thought – labeling
• Goodhart’s law
• How to manage physical fatigue using acceptance & defusion skills
• How to go back to your values when your mind gets noisy
• How to manage comparison thoughts
• ABC of resilience

About Sonya Looney

Sonya Looney is a professional athlete, podcast host, health and mental performance coach. As a professional mountain biker, she’s raced in over 25 countries, been World Champion, 4x USA National Champion, and amassed 20+ career wins in endurance mountain biking.

Her work encompasses the intersection of performance, health, and well-being. Her dynamic experience racing around the world, paired with a graduate education in Electrical/Biomedical Engineering, her Health Coaching Certification, and extended personal studies in Neuroscience, Positive Psychology, and Plant-Based Nutrition, have been a powerful way to connect and understand herself and others.

Sonya is passionate about the integration of high performance and well-being through psychology, contemplative practices, and sport.

In her work, she explores topics like grit, mindset, self-worth, purpose, success, happiness, and healthy striving.

Key Takeaways

This is part 2 of my conversation with Dr. Matthew McKay, Ph.D. In part 1, we discussed the foundations of how Dr. McKay thinks of process-based therapy. Today, we discuss, in particular, different mechanisms of actions:

• What is attentional training
• How to look at your values when getting stressed
• How to practice acceptance 
• How to handle uncertainty
• How reassurance seeking shows up in our day-to-day life

About Matthew

Dr. Matthew McKay, Ph.D., cofounder of New Harbinger Publications, joins us to talk about evidence-based resources and the ever-changing landscape of therapy. Matthew is a professor at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, CA. He has authored and co-authored numerous books, including The Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook, The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook, Self-Esteem, and Couple Skills, which have sold more than four million copies combined. He received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology and specializes in the cognitive behavioral treatment of anxiety and depression.

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“The waves in the ocean seem different today,” I think,  as I walk along the beach shore, noticing the size of the waves and hearing them crashing down on the sand. 

“Would the ferry be on time? Would I make it on time to the airport?”

I keep walking towards the small local beach coffee shop that has 8 white tables.

“I’m ready to sip a cold green juice in this hot weather,” I think, after seeing that the temperature was 91F at that moment.

A waitress, wearing black shorts and a white t-shirt takes my order and listens to my question: “Do you think the ferry is on time today?” 

He looks at the ocean, trying to read the impact of the waves on the ferry schedule, and says, “I don’t know.”

I softly smiled, “I see.”

He smiles back and goes to prepare my green juice.

As I’m staring at the ocean, I hear a voice that says, “The ferry is on time, there are no rains or storms …. the waves are different right now, but just on the shore. Nothing to worry about.”

I look in the direction that the voice comes from, and then see three gentleman, wearing beach suits and sitting around a table while having their meal.

– I heard you asking the waitress about the ferry.
– Do you think the ferry will be on time?
– The water is calm in the ocean, it’s just the shore.
– Where are you from?
– We are from Australia and come here every year to visit our family.
– Oh wow, which part of Australia?
– Do you want to join us?

For the next three hours, as the waitress brought burgers, french fries, cold iced lemonade with no sugar, and cold beer, the conversation unfolded about childhood friends, politics, managerial problems, cultural roots, trust, religion, architecture, relationships, love, construction, workouts, health, and traveling.  

That afternoon, these three gentlemen taught me a new word “parea”

I have always been fond of rich conversations, the ones that unfold into the many areas of our lives, the ones that capture the tapestry of our lives, the ones that make us forget the time passing by.

What does Parea have to do with playing-it-safe?

When we play-it-safe, we are quickly in our heads.

We doubt, anticipate, dwell on the past, and rely on 10 – thinking strategies that while necessary and useful at times, they can also be the beginning path of stuckness in our head and narrowness in our behavior.

Those playing-it-safe moves, as I usually refer to safety-seeking behaviors, can also take us away from exploring the world, connecting with others, facing the unknown and adapting to day-to-day situations as they happen.

So today, I want to remind you of a psychological principle:

Curiosity

• Why do you go to the bathroom?
• Why is it yellow?
• How many friends do you have?
• Are you blue?
• Why do we sleep?

Kids have fascinating inquisitive minds. They keep asking and asking for no other reason except that they just want to learn about the world around them. Researchers tried to figure out how often kids ask questions. Turns out, they ask on average 107 questions per hour.

“Episodes of curiosity,” as psychologist Susan Engel calls them,  decrease as kids grow. For example, asking direct questions, manipulating objects, or direct gazing occurs 2.36 in a period of hours in kindergarten, and then only 0.48 in fifth grade. 

Curiosity has been described as the “wick in the candle of learning,” but what about adults? Well, as we get older somehow, we get less curious. Some studies suggest that a decrease in curiosity in adults could be caused by our increase in knowledge. It’s like the more we know, the less curious we are .. oh boy!!! 

 Interesting benefits of curious behaviors

• Curiosity keeps you mentally young: nourishing a sense of wonder throughout life as well as novelty-seeking behaviors. 
• Curiosity helps you to make better decisions:  when acting curiously, you’re less likely to have a fixed-mindset or fall prey to confirmation bias (looking for information that supports your beliefs rather than exploring other data that suggests your beliefs are not the absolute truth).You’re more likely to consider more options when facing a dilemma than looking at things as black and white.
• Curiosity helps you learn: curious behaviors and openness to the new help you better remember new information.The more curious you’re about a topic, the more likely you’re going to remember it.
• Curiosity helps you to have better relationships because curious and genuine questions about others’ passions, hurts, struggles, work, and so on, help you to really get to know someone. The more curious you’re about the person in front of you, the more meaningful relationships you have.

How to practice curiosity in your day-to-day life

What are your go-to playing-it-safe moves?

Do you play-it-safe by:

• Criticizing and negatively judging yourself?

• Taking your mind too seriously?

• Disengaging and using safety crutches?
• Anticipating doom and gloom in future scenarios and rumination?
• Discounting and ignoring what’s important to you?
• Postponing, delaying, and procrastinating things?
• Searching for reassurance and certainty?
• Assuming over-responsibility for others’ well-being and important matters?
• Second-guessing and believing negative stories about yourself?
• Doing things right and perfectly?

When noticing this urge to play-it-safe, try this:

• Ask yourself, what’s my mind trying to protect me right now?
• What’s so hard about this situation, that my mind wants me to play-it-safe sooo badly?
• What do I need to experience, if I don’t go along with that playing-it-safe move?

Do you want to get unstuck from wrestling with worries, fears, anxieties, obsessions, and ineffective playing-it-safe actions?

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