Learn From People Who Lived it

Youth Sports: What we have done wrong and how to fix it with Luis Fernando Llosa

Youth Sports: What we have done wrong and how to fix it with Luis Fernando Llosa
Luis Fernando Llosa is a Peruvian-Ukrainian-American writer, editor, speaker, investigative reporter, youth sports consultant, and full-time father-coach of his five kids. He started his journalism career at Fortune Magazine in 1995, then moved to Money Magazine in 1996. After three years there, he found he was always looking for the people in the stories and realized the best opportunities for the long-form writing he wanted to pursue were in sports. As a reporter for Sports Illustrated, he had his big breakthrough working on the Danny Almonte Little League baseball age scandal. That was his introduction to “youth sports gone awry." He went on to investigate supplement and steroid use in major league baseball, world champion boxing, the Olympics, and wrestling. When he began talking to the parents of children who had committed suicide while cycling off of steroids, Luis became passionate about the influence of coaches, parents, and professional players on youth athletes.
In this episode, Mathew and Luis discuss the good, bad, and dangerous aspects of youth sports. A child's relationship with sports will shape the rest of their lives. Luis tells us about the importance of being mindful of the sports environments we put children in, the red and green flags to look out for, and the importance of understanding your own sports biography. He also outlines new-school vs. old-school coaching techniques and ways to improve children's relationships with sports while improving their skills holistically and sustainably.
Each person has their own sports biography. Whether you were a star athlete, perpetually on the bench, or avoided organized events like the plague, each parent and coach brings their baggage to the game. Luis stresses that adults must make peace with their history before entering youth sports with their children to avoid projections of expectations, successes, or mistakes. Ego-driven coaching leads youth coaches to be in it to win it at all costs, but there is a new wave of coaches who are reflecting on their roles in kids' lives.
A Good coach utilizes creativity for themselves and their players. Luis says a coach must work on themselves and understand that failure to connect with an athlete does not indicate something is wrong with the kid, but rather that the coach needs to figure out new ways to do their job to get through to them. Coaches have to develop social-emotional intelligence to be able to coach kids with ADHD, social anxiety, hyperaggression, or other neurodivergent tendencies.
Before considering who the coach is, parents must decide when to enter organized sports and how to pursue age-appropriate development. It is counterintuitive, but putting kids in command-oriented organized sports too early can choke off their potential for the creativity that makes a great athlete. Specialization is limiting. If a child is athletic, they will develop better by playing multiple sports. The greats like Wayne Gretzky and Pelé learned on the streets. Luis tells us he has seen the harmful long-term effects of pushing young athletes and implores parents and coaches to hold off on hard training until an appropriate age. He says two ways to improve physical longevity for young athletes are signing them up for a complementary sport during at least one off-season a year and taking time to rest each day and week.
Children need freedom to learn, and amazing things can happen in chaos. However, ego-driven coaches and parents often hesitate to give up control regarding young athletes' training. A coach's role changes throughout different age ranges, but they need to bring general structure, balance, and safety. Luis tells us that free play is essential for ages 3 to 12, as it teaches flexibility, adaptability, and how to deal with other kids socially. These skills stay with kids throughout their entire lives and make them better adults, no matter what path they choose to pursue. Luis says organized sports shouldn't happen until age 11, and even then, it's not the typical league structure with uniforms and championships. For this age, coaching is about demonstrating movement, teaching game skills, creating dynamic practice structures, and providing technical advice. At any age, all coaches need to practice positivity. When pointing out one thing done wrong, make sure to point out three things done right and leave the other issues for the next day.
Luis ends the show with three things parents can be mindful of to help their young athletes:
Take a good look at the coach: Are they ego-driven? Do they coach through negativity or use anger as a tool? Are you afraid of them?
Analyze your own sports biography and mindset: Are you coaching your kids for the right reasons? Why did you put them in sports? Are you too hands-off or living vicariously?
Evaluate the social climate of the team: How do the kids treat each other? How do the parents treat each other and the other kids? Do other coaches or parents organize social activities and include everyone?
You can hear more from Luis through his work with Whole Child Sports or by checking out his books: Beyond Winning: Smart Parenting in a Toxic Sports Environment and Emotionally Resilient Tweens and Teens
In this episode, you'll hear:
What is wrong with youth sports today, and what can be done about it?
Free play and creativity are more beneficial than training and organized sports.
Institutional changes that could improve youth sports and coaching practices 
Follow the podcast: 
Listen on Apple Podcasts (link: https://apple.co/3s1YH7h) 
Listen on iHeart (link: https://ihr.fm/3MEY7FM) 
Listen on Spotify (Link: https://spoti.fi/3yMmQCE) 
 
Resources:
Whole Child Sports
LuisFernandoLlosa.com
Books
 
Connect with Mathew Blades: 
Twitter - twitter.com/MathewBlades
Instagram - instagram.com/MathewBladesmedia/ 
Facebook - facebook.com/mathewbladesmedia/ 
Website - learnfrompeoplewholivedit.com/
 
Additional Credits:
LFPWLI is managed by Sam Robertson

How to be Happy with Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar

How to be Happy with Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar
In this episode, you'll hear:
The elements of happiness and how to be happier
The role that rest plays in reducing stress and the importance of exercise as medicine
“Perfect” vs. “good enough” and why the ego is stopping us from being happy
The impact of the pandemic and social media Teenagers and Advice for when comparison makes you unhappy
Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar joins us from his home in New Jersey, where he recently launched the world's first fully accredited master’s degree program in happiness at Centenary University. Tal is an expert in the field, having received his BA in Philosophy and Psychology and Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Harvard. He tells us that, as a young man, his squash training informed his understanding of what it takes to become an expert and excel throughout his life. Tal's dedication to the sport led him to play squash professionally and, eventually, to win the Israeli National Squash Championships. After being injured during his time in the Israeli Army, he left professional sports but was soon recruited to play at the amateur level for Harvard. There, he won the U.S. intercollegiate squash championships and eventually returned to his alma mater to become a lecturer.
Tal first began thinking about the nature of happiness when he found that success in Squash was not bringing him happiness. Years later, the same realization came to him again when he found that success academically and socially in college was not causing him to feel happy either. This situation made Tal do the unthinkable… leave his computer science program and move to philosophy and psychology. He had to figure out, “Why aren't I happy? And how can I become happier?" This move kicked off what would become an incredible career and a lifelong dedication to studying the science of happiness. 
Dr. Tal has become an accomplished writer, with his books on positive psychology and leadership being translated into more than thirty languages and appearing on best-seller lists around the world. In addition to what Tal has achieved at Harvard, he has also taught happiness studies at Columbia University, consulted and lectured for companies like Microsoft, Intel, and Google, and given expert interviews on programs like NPR and Armchair Expert.
 Throughout his career, one thing Tal has found to be true is that success has nothing to do with happiness. Rather, happiness will lead to success. One way we can see this happening is with the “flow state." When you are in the "flow,” you are having “peak experience” and “peak performance." Flowing can make us feel happy, but before we can know if we are happy, Tal tells us it’s important to define happiness. 
Most people equate happiness with pleasure, but it is so much more than that. Pleasure is one element of happiness, but there are others as well: spiritual well-being (meaning and purpose), physical well-being (exercise, nutrition, and rest), intellectual well-being (curiosity and lifelong learning), relational well-being (time spent with others and impact on our community), and emotional well-being. Emotional well-being is the element that encompasses pleasure but also requires being able to deal with painful emotions. Dr. Tal says, “The first step to happiness is allowing in unhappiness.”.
Many of us are missing one or more of these elements. There are billions of people worldwide experiencing burnout, and Dr. Tal tells us this is not due to their being more stressed, but rather that there is not enough rest time to take care of all of these aspects. Oftentimes, people just feel like busyness is just a fact of life. Still, by evaluating what we really want in life and understanding that perfection is not realistic but good enough is good enough, you can change your expectations and, in turn, shift your perspective. There is a time for the highs and a time for the lows, but most of the time, we just need to be neutral. Tal calls embracing and accepting that most of life is neutral, with spikes in the highs and dips into the lows, emotional flexibility. He tells us to “surrender to the emotion." Embrace it.
The pandemic is another factor that impacted our happiness. However, one especially alarming trend that Tal has been giving voice to is rising depression rates among teenagers. These recent unprecedented increases are mainly attributed to their widespread use of smartphones. Tal notes that the technology itself isn't the issue, but the lack of boundaries around smartphones is. Technology is radically impacting the self-esteem of men and women, but, to a greater degree, teenage boys and, most radically, teenage girls. Fortunately, Tal has advice on how to do a reality check for our children (and ourselves) when we start comparing our bodies and lives to the ones we see online. Practicing gratitude daily develops an appreciative mindset that will serve us much more than the depreciative mindset so many of us have developed as a result of impossible comparisons. But keep in mind that it's not so much what you say to your children; it's about how you model behavior for them. 
This kind of practical and insightful perspective is what Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar’s Happiness Studies Academy is all about. The goal is to help individuals become happier themselves and empower them to help others do the same. With a year-long certificate program and a two-year, fully accredited master's degree program, Tal is giving future leaders in the field a way to learn about happiness from multiple perspectives. To learn more about these programs, visit happinessstudies.academy/cihs/ 
In this episode, you'll hear:
The elements of happiness and how to be happier
The role that rest plays in reducing stress and the importance of exercise as medicine
“Perfect” vs. “good enough” and why the ego is stopping us from being happy
The impact of the pandemic and social media Teenagers and Advice for when comparison makes you unhappy
Follow the podcast: 
Listen on Apple Podcasts (link: https://apple.co/3s1YH7h) 
Listen on iHeart (link: https://ihr.fm/3MEY7FM) 
Listen on Spotify (Link: https://spoti.fi/3yMmQCE) 
 
Resources:
TalBenShahar.com
Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar on Instagram
Jean Twenge 
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on Flow
Ellen Langer on Mindfulness
“The Good Enough Mother" by D. W. Winnicott 
 
Connect with Mathew Blades: 
Twitter - twitter.com/MathewBlades
Instagram - instagram.com/MathewBladesmedia/ 
Facebook - facebook.com/mathewbladesmedia/ 
Website - learnfrompeoplewholivedit.com/
 
Additional Credits:
LFPWLI is managed by Sam Robertson
 
In this episode, you'll hear:
The elements of happiness and how to be happier
The role that rest plays in reducing stress and the importance of exercise as medicine
“Perfect” vs. “good enough” and why the ego is stopping us from being happy
The impact of the pandemic and social media Teenagers and Advice for when comparison makes you unhappy

Walking around my house on Christmas Day

No frills no fancy equipment just me walking around my house talking to you about some of my favorite podcast from 2023. ☮️💟

Marriage and Mental Health: Surviving a Spousal Suicide Attempt

Marriage and Mental Health: Surviving a Spousal Suicide Attempt 
In this episode, you'll hear:
Taking care of yourself is the best way you can take care of everyone else.
The complicated grief of a suicide attempt and reconnecting with your spouse after a traumatic event
Cari’s journey with psychedelics and how they have changed her relationship with herself and her husband 
Cari Mclean is a wife, mother, daughter, and advocate. She is here to share how her spouse's mental health journey propelled her into her mental health journey and the role resilience, love, and hope play in her story.
In this episode, Mathew, Dr. Frank, and Cari discuss how the worst night possible propelled her and her family to the best place possible. About three and a half years ago, Cari stopped her husband, Chad, from attempting suicide. It was a wake-up call for Chad and started a long healing journey for him through inpatient care, SSRIs, and all sorts of self-help methods. Unfortunately, none of it was working. Eventually, Chad started ketamine treatment, and it changed his life. One day, Chad looked at Cari and said “What about you?”. Cari realized she had been spending all of her time and mental energy managing the house, caring for their two young boys, and keeping her job. She found that she didn't have the energy for him, let alone herself. Cari says in times of stress when mom’s focus is diverted, dads often get the short end of the stick, and husbands end up missing their wives.
Her whole life, Cari says she was a “stuffer”: the strong one, the one who jumped into action when anything went wrong, all at the demise of her emotional well-being. She tried all the common paths to "self-help," but nothing clicked until her first psilocybin session. Cari notes that it’s important to understand that psychedelics won't solve your problems, but they will change the way you see your problems and show you where you need to look to find the light. For her, one big revelation was about setting boundaries around her family of origin, her parents, for her family of choice, Chad and their sons. Of course, this was easier said than done because she had always been the peacekeeper, but eventually, she was able to find a balance.
After Chad's suicide attempt, Cari wanted to forgive and forget, but there was still a distance between them that she couldn't shake. He had unknowingly and unintentionally taken away her safe space. They were trying to communicate, but they weren't speaking the same language. After some trial and error, they found healing through MDMA couples therapy. It has allowed them to finally process the events of that night and move past them. Cari says she can now see Chad in a more real way, and they are leaning into each other again. As horrible as some of the years were, their relationship is now the best thing she could have ever imagined, and she knows they would not be where they are now if they had not been where they were. It took a lot of hard work and intentional effort to come back from the depths and reemerge in a good place again.
Now, Chad and Cari are in a better place together than ever, and they are sharing their message of hope and healing through their nonprofit, Mental Joe, which helps first responders and veterans access alternative healing like yoga, TRE, and psychedelics. Psychedelics are not for everyone, and Cari tells us they were completely out of her comfort zone before. She felt like she didn't have the type of PTSD that is often talked about with psychedelic therapy, but all trauma is trauma, and healing should be accessible to all. Now, she is passionate about defying the stigmas of psychedelics and mental health.
At the end of the day, it’s all about reliance, love, and hope. You can bounce back, but being strong isn't always the same as being healthy. You have to ask for help. Love means putting in the work every day. There is hope out there, and healing is possible.
In this episode, you'll hear:
Taking care of yourself is the best way you can take care of everyone else.
The complicated grief of a suicide attempt and reconnecting with your spouse after a traumatic event
Cari’s journey with psychedelics and how they have changed her relationship with herself and her husband 
Follow the podcast: 
Listen on Apple Podcasts (link: https://apple.co/3s1YH7h) 
Listen on iHeart (link: https://ihr.fm/3MEY7FM) 
Listen on Spotify (Link: https://spoti.fi/3yMmQCE) 
 
Resources:
MentalJoe.com
Dr. Frank Bevacqua
Connect with Mathew Blades: 
Twitter - twitter.com/MathewBlades
Instagram - instagram.com/MathewBladesmedia/ 
Facebook - facebook.com/mathewbladesmedia/ 
Website - learnfrompeoplewholivedit.com/
 
Additional Credits:
LFPWLI is managed by Sam Robertson