Grant Parr from GameFace Performance. Grant is one of the top mental skills coaches for athletes in the game right now.
Check out his book:
The Next One Up Mindset: How To Prepare For The Unknown
https://amzn.to/2GmF2qQ
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Transcript
Santiago Leon
Hello, hello. And this is the sleon productions podcast where we interview entrepreneurs, authors and business owners throughout the world. And today, we have a guest. His name is Grant Parr from GameFace performance. He is one of the top coaches when it comes to mental mindset. And, and he coaches a lot of athletes and other people in the industry. And we have grant in the line welcome grant to the slam productions
Grant Parr
podcast. Leon Thank you, man. I’m really interested and excited to talk with you today.
Santiago Leon
So grandkid tell us a little bit about yourself.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, well, I’m a I’m a mental performance coach. So I work with, you know, athletes, teams and coaches and also executives on the mental game. So I work with perfect National Olympians collegian high school youth athletes. And I also work with all different kinds of corporations cells, corporations on not only mental skills training, but also leadership training.
Santiago Leon
Can you tell us your journey of how’d you get into this mindset?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, man, it’s a it’s a long story, but I’ll keep it fairly short. I’ve actually been doing this for the past five years, but uh, what led me to this profession is I played quarterback for 13 years and played all the way through college and had a career ending injury to my hip. And so I spent two decades of my life just in pain and went through a lot of identity issues, depression, it was just wasn’t fun. However, I had to deal with two hip replacements to the same hip. So before I was 14, so after I got through all of that and went to my second Hip replacement. I was like, man, I need to I need to really just reinvigorate myself, redesign myself and and get this inner athlete this competitor, I need them back. So I reinvented myself. And as I was doing that and going through that process, I went back to school to get my masters in sports psychology. And that was about five years ago and ever since then, man I’ve been I’ve been thriving and loving what I’m doing and, and found my passion.
Santiago Leon
How was life before you learn about mindset? And now afterwards? What have you learned before and after?
Unknown Speaker
Well, it’s a great question because when I was growing up, my dad was awesome. And he was super involved with my brother and myself through all of our sports and, and he was teaching us back in the 80s and the 90s about breath and visualization and self talk and be Before we even knew that was a thing, so my mindset back in the day, man, it was already being trained now after I left or actually got pushed out of my sport with my injury. That’s when I started to abandon all of that all the self talk, the breath, visualizing my success, all that stuff went away. And for many reasons, but then, as I actually started to get back to who I was, and not only about who I was, but to reinvent myself, that’s when I started to not only bring back the mindset, but also adding all the stuff that I’m learning and all this stuff that I was, you know, not only teaching now, but when I was going through my education, I was like, ah, I remember this, I remember this I was, I was getting the mindset and all those strategies back into my life.
Santiago Leon
How important is mindset when it comes to sports.
Unknown Speaker
It’s important in anything, anytime, anytime you perform anything, whether it’s sports, whether it fits in the workplace. Whether if it’s, you know your doctor, I don’t even care if you’re a house mom, if you’re performing a role, mindset is huge.
Santiago Leon
Can you tell us a time where you failed and when you failed and struggled?
Grant Parr
Yeah, in a lot, man, it’s, but I love I love the fact that I did fail. I would say when I think about what comes up for me initially in sport, at least, man when I was in college, and I was playing at Sonoma State University, and I actually had my worst game in my entire life. Like, when you look back my whole work of, you know, my breath of work, from my youth all the way up to college. I have my worst game. And it’s because I did have a mental game, even though I was sick, which, you know, back then is why I thought I actually had a bad game and we failed, but it was because I didn’t actually Take care of what I did have the energy I did have I didn’t take care of myself talk I didn’t visualize my success. I was so worried about all the energy I didn’t have. I was so worried about failing because I was so sick. And I ended up throwing four interceptions and two of them for pick six. believe they got sacked about six times it was just a bad game and cried a lot cried a lot with my dad wanted to give up literally on the sport because it was so embarrassing. And then I came back the following game and had a pretty good game. So man, it’s just failing is informative failings part of success, and in hindsight, that that that actually made me realize that like, you know, if you’re going to compete, you’re gonna win, you’re going to lose but when you actually fail or lose, you got to get the feedback and get the lesson from it.
Santiago Leon
Can every quarterback know professionally that you’ve seen that maybe have gone behind in the game, but you could tell that he had the right mindset to get back in The game that he’s able to overcome a Can you name a few examples, or maybe just one quarterback that you really see a lot that has come back?
Unknown Speaker
Well, yeah, I mean, and I’m going to say this because I’m a Buffalo Bills fan, which is I’m kind of an anomaly being in here in the West and the bay area on the West Coast here. Everyone’s a Niner fan here. But when you think about what was it in the 90s, when the bills were playing the Oilers in the in the championship game before the Super Bowl, and when Jim Kelly got hurt, and he was right before the third, fourth quarter, Frank Wright was a backup quarterback, they didn’t have a lot of playing time. And I believe the score was 31 to three or 33 to three. And so there was just a quarter left and and Frank Reich came back who is now the head coach with the Colts. He came back and basically put the team on his back and beat the Oilers and then went to the Super Bowl. So you talk about the next one up, you know, the next man up to sitting there all season long playing against, you know, playing behind the franchise quarterback Jim Kelly hardly getting any reps. And that guy steps into a one of his biggest games and access if he’s been playing all season long.
Santiago Leon
Yeah, that’s something that I really do see in sports, you know, where you have the right mindset, even though it feels like it’s the end of the world, you know, you’re down 38 to nothing, and but there’s a possibility that you could come back and overcome it and win the game. It could be a biophysical, or by a touchdown. That’s something that I definitely look at quarterbacks, in your book you mentioned about your system, MVP. Can you tell the audience a little bit about that?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, MVP stands for doing your daily MVP. It’s meditation, visualization and powerful self talk. And basically what this strategy does, it’s a good strategy to connect the mind in the body. So before you’re going into practice, before You go into any kind of performance or competition, what you’re truly doing is you’re getting your mind and your body connected. And you’re what you’re doing is you’re you’re getting your breath, you’re getting into your breath, you’re getting to where your feet are, and you’re getting into a very meditative state. And you’re starting to as you lock in your energy, you work your energy all the way down your body, with your breath, then you start to visualize whatever you want, you know, whatever that you’re going to, that you want to perform are succeeding. And then you’re going to end that whole breathing, meditative state with talking like saying words that are going to get you motivated, inspired. And that’s going to take you into a positive direction. And so when you go through that whole MVP process, man, you’re, you’re going to be your own VP, who doesn’t want to be their most valuable player, right? So when you actually do that meditation, the visualization and the power for self talk, man, you’re putting everything back into your control and you’re connecting your mind and your body.
Santiago Leon
Of course, you have You know, clients are athletes and also former athletes. And a career for an athlete, you know, could be, you know, 10 to 20 years sometimes, like way less, you know, what do you teach athletes when they transition into a private citizen? I guess you can say,
Unknown Speaker
yeah, it’s huge, I think transition at any level. It’s, it’s a real thing. There’s a lot of times where people put everything into their identity, and they don’t go on beyond high school. And so how do they deal with that transition? And to be honest with you, I work a lot with athletes, you know, on their craft on their mental game, but I do work on an element of knowing they need to know who they are, who are you outside of sport. And so if I can get you to do that while you’re in sport, because what you like playing football is what you do. It’s not who you are. And so we explore a lot of different areas of how we actually can identify who we are. Because when we play sport, sometimes most of the time, we let go of who we are We can actually commit ourselves to this role, this this athlete, and then we have to go commit ourselves back to who we are. So the more that we have that good relationship that when it’s time to leave the sport, we’ve already we’ve already gone through that whole process of knowing who we are. Now the fun thing is getting these athletes excited you like you get to trance transition out of sport. Like I know you like half Do you are you feel like you’re getting pushed out or, or your your you know, Your time’s expired, whatever it is or your injury. But you have to look at a transition as I get to do this.
Santiago Leon
What do you think is going on? in the mind of Tom Brady right now? Do you think he’s in that, like on the ropes of like, he might retire or do you think he’s athletes? Like No, I’m looking beyond I am going to play it on 45 what do you think is going on in his mind right now?
Grant Parr
Personally, I think he’s there’s a lot of talk about him right now. And I think he will. He’s, he’s, he’s embracing all this. He’s embracing. He wants He’s gonna play whether if it’s going to be another year to two years if he plays more than that, awesome. Good for him. Right. But, um, I think he wants to prove the world that he still got it. And he does. He does. I mean, whether if he’s gonna perform like he has five years ago, we don’t know. He hasn’t had the best weapons around him. But again, I think he’s, he’s loving this. He wants to prove everybody that he still got it.
Santiago Leon
Of course, at the time of this recording, Eli Manning has announced his retirement. What would you tell Eli Manning, if you spoke to him right now.
Unknown Speaker
A man if I spoke to him right now, I’d be like giving him a high five and a big hug. I’d be like, it mean, up. He’s, he’s done a lot of great things. And I think this is where you reflect. I mean, there’s a lot of things that as an athlete, you need to reflect on your performances, practices and games, so you can get better. I call that a work on building on That whole process, but when you’re actually transitioning out, this is where you actually look back, reflect, and really embrace all the love the joy, everything that you’ve done. And if you need to go back and reflect on some, you know, bad games and negativity, so you can get lessons didn’t do that. But if not reflect on it, rejoice in it and then get ready for a new life. And he said, He’s got so many things he’s going to get into, but I would just give him a big hug and congratulate him because he did some incredible things. I mean, he should be proud of himself
Santiago Leon
after athletes transition to work. How do you help athletes to have a good mindset at work?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, so it’s all about intention. For me at least I spent 17 years in corporate America and I, I fell into this trap and I saw a lot of people they just kind of show up and they just kind of wait for direction like that. This is what I needed to do today or this what we need to do this month or this quarter. And if I’m going to work with an executive or what I call a corporate athlete, is set your intention in the morning, like, what do you want to do? And then once you realize what that is, I want you to understand what does it look like? And what does it feel like. And I want you to connect it with your breath. I literally want you to get into your body for 30 seconds, up to two minutes. Get into your breath, boom, you’re locked in, you’ve already got your you’re already know what your intention is, you’re going to be intentional. You already have your purpose. Now you’re ready to walk through those doors. Now. What you need to do with that intention is at lunchtime, revisit it because there’s gonna be so many different distractions within the workplace, revisit your intention, live it out, make sure that you’re living out your intention and at the end of the day, reflect on it. Because if you did live out your intention, guess what, you had a mindset throughout the whole day?
Santiago Leon
Yeah, there’s something that I really think about or you know, I heard people talking about You know, for an athlete and like that, you know, like the career is so short lived, and then boom, you’re like, you’re no longer going to practice, you’re no longer going to play that game on Sunday, or they game that night, it feels like it’s like a big turnaround, you know, mindset wise and you explain it, you just got to go through these steps in order just to get back and just, you know, not be competitive at work or anything, but you know, just get back in and just enjoy life and thrive it. What is the most common problems that you encounter with athletes when it comes to mindset?
Unknown Speaker
I think what comes up a lot is just the fear of failure. Right? It’s, you know, there’s this paradigm of the need to look good versus the fear of looking bad. And so we the athletes get stuck in that we all want to look good, right? We all want to be successful. And man, like I don’t want to actually be exposed on social media when I fail or I don’t want to get I don’t want to fail and they get demoted to second string. There’s all these things and come up So I think the fear of failure is something that that comes up a lot and and i think it’s it’s, it’s okay that it does we just have to have a different relationship with failure and and know that failure is a part of the process of being successful.
Santiago Leon
Yeah, you know, sometimes you got to fail 100 times to get that one win. Or to get that one success. I know Thomas Edison had 10,000 tries until he got his light bulb invented in and of course, other people as well. You mentioned a lot about Michael Jordan and your book can tell us your favorite Michael Jordan story.
Unknown Speaker
Wow. You know, I don’t know if I put this one in this in this in the book but this one I love it because it I use this a lot when I’m working with teams because it’s it’s good for buying process to get people they get connected and and to know that elite athletes like Michael Jordan, why They actually got connected to this work. So years ago, when phil jackson brought in the whole idea of mindfulness training he brought in. George Mumford, who is back in still is but back then he’s kind of like the pioneer of actually introducing mindfulness and mental performance training within the NBA. And so, you know, as George was working with Phil, he brought George into the bulls organization started working with the whole team and started working with Michael as well. Michael is actually like loving this. He’s loving meditation, he feels more in control. He feels more balanced. He just loves it. And he goes up to George. And Michael says, Hey, George, are you working with any other teams within the NBA? George’s like, no. Just you and he’s like, why? And, and Michael goes, because I don’t want you to work with anybody. Because this gives me the edge. Right? So then, yeah, and so which is in to jump to another great basketball player, Kobe, Kobe Brian, which I’m reading his Book a Mamba mentality, which is awesome. George Mumford start, you know follows phil jackson over the Lakers starts working with a team. He starts working with Kobe, Kobe. Same thing is like loving this. But Coby has a different reaction says, How can you teach me what you do? Because when you’re not around, I want to be you to the team. So I want to I want to like be the person that’s going to walk the team into meditation, there’s a lot of pictures on the Internet of showing Coby walking his team into meditation, doing breathing, work, all that kind of stuff. So when I, when I tell these stories, I want to highlight like there’s the best of the best are doing this. Right. So to me, that’s, that’s one of my favorites. Especially with Michael Jordan.
Santiago Leon
Yeah. I mean, I’m a huge fan of Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant because their careers kind of correlate kind of parallel in similar ways. And and I think phil jackson at the time might have been the only coach that dealt with mindset they able to, you know, have you ever heard of any coaches or players that use these type of systems?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, you know that that’s the thing about mental performance. Now, in today’s society, I think it’s, it’s, it’s not where we need to be. But it’s definitely there’s a lot. I mean, there’s a it’s getting there. I think, when you think of, I can, I can tell you a tons of them. But when you think about Major League Baseball, I would say at this point, maybe there’s four to six teams that just don’t have a mental performance coordinator or coach or director on staff pretty much almost every team does. I don’t know the NBA but I want to say there’s almost half of the teams have people like myself working for them. I think the football I think NFL is they have sports psychologist, like maybe one for each team, but not almost not every team. So I think we’re We’re getting there. And there’s a lot of colleges that are investing a lot of time and money into resources like myself. So um, yeah, I mean, and there’s just colleges that I’m working with that at the division one level and Division Two level. So it’s there’s a lot out there. We just got to keep on fighting the good fight and just keep on making this more of a standard within our society.
Santiago Leon
Yeah, I was hearing a interview with Andre Iguodala. And I think the NBA supplies all the players have free subscription of this meditation app, which I forgot what it’s called. And yeah, they just you know, some players use it. Some players don’t. But the NBA is kind of pushing for that. A little bit more. And I’ve heard more in the NBA. I haven’t heard much in football, but I guess it’s only growing. Yeah. What is your? And yeah, so we spoke about your book, which is called How to prepare for the unexpected key. Tell us a little bit about it. And what’s all about?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it’s called the next one up mindset how to prepare for the unknown. And basically, I’m fascinated by watching people get ready for the moment and getting ready for when their numbers called and when they don’t even know when their numbers coming called, but they step into the arena whether it is, you know, the pool, the football field, the boardroom, and they, they excel, I love that. And so. And, for me, at least when I coach go back to myself, I was the man a long time ago, and when I played quarterback, man, I was the man. And then I wasn’t the man because of my injury. And I wasn’t the man for about two decades. And then I had to reinvent myself, like I said earlier, and now I’m the man I got my life back. So part of this book is to kind of highlight people that have actually got prepared for the unknown, to share a little bit about my story, because I want to give people strategies and antidotes in The moment so that they can actually access tools and understand different stories. So they don’t have to wait two decades to actually deal with the unknown because it took me two decades to deal with my unknown. So that was one of the reasons why I wrote the book is is to tailor to athletes, teams and coaches but also really dive into my experience as a workplace warrior, if you will. And, and, and teach people how to actually deal with the unknown, the unknown, the unexpected, on a daily basis, and use the strategies and skills that I actually put in the book.
Santiago Leon
And you can find Grant’s book on amazon.com. You could go into the show notes and we’ll have a link to the book itself. And the book is not just for athletes. It’s for everyone. Yep, there you have it. Who is your favorite entrepreneur? Hmm.
Grant Parr
Favorite entrepreneur. Man, this is a I know everyone’s probably like waiting to hear someone that’s a big name. To me, she’s a big name. It’s my wife. My wife works for bbdo, which is like the fifth largest auditing tax firm in the world. What she does on a day to day basis got a huge role runs, you know, the western part of the United States sales team and the thing she does like the way she leads the tenacity and the way she finesse things, the way she’s organized the way she articulates her arguments, man because we work from home so I hear a lot of this stuff. I just I’m in an all how of an entrepreneur she is and the things she does. She’s on all these different boards. And so, to me, I just get I get motivated just by seeing my wife do her thing. So as an entrepreneur, I, she’s she’s first on my list,
Santiago Leon
and who is your favorite athlete of all time?
Grant Parr
Of all time, my favorite actor athlete is Michael Jordan. But I will say this my favorite quarterback though is Jim Kelly.
Santiago Leon
Jim Kelly. He’s he he was the man back in the bills Too bad they couldn’t win the Super Bowl that was missing. But they got there. They got there. Yeah. Which is tough itself. Right. Ready first some random questions. Yeah. Which will we you can see forever. I mean, again and again.
Grant Parr
Again and again. I could see I could watch Rocky. I can watch any of those Rockies over and over again.
Santiago Leon
If you could would you live in a hotel? Yeah. Which sport is more boring? golf or tennis?
Grant Parr
golf.
Santiago Leon
What is your favorite mustard?
Grant Parr
Yellow plain baby.
Santiago Leon
Are you What would you tell your 15 year old self
Unknown Speaker
To be more intrinsically motivated and not to be so extrinsically charged and motivated
Santiago Leon
What is your favorite Starbucks coffee?
Grant Parr
venti Americano.
Santiago Leon
Are you scared of fine? Nope. Do you like your passport picture? Nope. Do you prefer dogs or cats?
Grant Parr
dogs
Santiago Leon
There you have it and what is the worst pet to have?
Unknown Speaker
Oh man, the worst one. I’m not going to be liked out there. For me at least. I like cats but not not to have them as pets.
Santiago Leon
Well, there you have a grant grant, what is the best way for people to reach you?
Unknown Speaker
Thank you, I can be reached. You can go to my website, which is game face performance. com you can find my podcast there. On 90% mental or you can find it on any podcast for platform out there. You can see all my content, you can buy my book there. And like you said earlier, you can buy my book on Amazon. And if you want to follow me on social media on it and Twitter, it’s the same handle and it’s g f p mindset. And if you want to follow me on LinkedIn, it’s grant par. And if you want to follow me on Facebook, it’s game face performance.
Santiago Leon
And can you tell the audience what is your podcast about?
Unknown Speaker
My, my podcast is actually it’s about bringing awareness around mental performance by bringing on these athletes like former and current athletes and coaches, sports psychologist, authors, and sporting executives to talk about their stories with mental game in and also sports psychology topics. So it’s, I’ve had a range of all different types of people in sports and back And it’s just been a beautiful experience. And, and if you’re interested in really understanding the mental game and people’s stories, how they got prepared how they dealt with failures, man, this is it’s a great show
Santiago Leon
and off the air, we’re talking about your other podcast. Can you preview that or you can? Yeah. Okay.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, thank you for that. Actually it is. It’s a series within my show 90% mental. And actually, I’m starting next month, a podcast series with Jake Plummer, Jake, the snake plumber, who is a former NFL quarterback and him and I are actually going to put a series together called in and out of the pocket with Jake and grant and we’re going to be just interviewing former and current quarterbacks, quarterback coaches, offensive coordinators, head coaches within football just to talk about the mental game from an offensive perspective.
Santiago Leon
There you have it, check out make sure you check out grandpa’s book. The next One up, mindset how to prepare for the unknown. And you can look at our show notes as an Amazon link and make sure you get it. Grant Any closing words.
Unknown Speaker
Man, I say this a lot on most of the podcasts that I go on and to your listener. I don’t care if you’re thriving. If you’re not thriving, just know that you can play a big game. understand where you want to go be vulnerable with your process and just play a big game because we’re not here on this earth that long. So play a big game and enjoy the whole process.
Santiago Leon
There have a grant I appreciate you coming on to the snap productions podcast.
Grant Parr
Thanks, man. Appreciate
Transcribed by https://otter.ai