WEBVTT
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Hi. I'm Lisa from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and I play
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at Airport National Golf Course.
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Welcome to golf Smiter.
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Hi. This is Mark Mason from Wahawa, South Carolina. I
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played my golf at o'conny Country Club and this is
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Golf Smarter Episode one twenty two.
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Here's the extra little bit of bonus to those of
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us that are athletes. Grateful athletes perform better, so we're
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actually seeing gratitude as a performance enhandser that gets us
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closer to success. So if you have two golfers who
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are similar in levels of ability, but one of them
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walks through last with a lens of gratitude and says,
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isn't it wonderful that I get to play on this course?
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How fortunate am I? People often say me, why do
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you think gratitude is performance and hancster and I think
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one of the reasons is you cannot be grateful and
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complain at the same time, Like those two things do
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not go hand in hand, getting on what I call
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the complaint train. My shots are terrible today and I
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can't believe that it's cloudy and it's a bit hotter
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than I thought, and people in front are too slow,
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and there's people going too quickly behind us, and all
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that sort of stuff that already sounds like the sort
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of person I don't really want to spend a couple
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of hours with. But it also doesn't put you in
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a mindset that sets you up to being open and
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created and curious, which we know of those things that
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go help us in terms of performance. When we are grateful,
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it's almost like an internal little sigh where we relax.
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Complaining and winging is tense. Gratitude is an absolute winner
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for us in terms of performance enhancement.
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The practices of elite athletes that will help all amateur golfers.
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With doctor Joe Lucas, this is golf s Murder, sharing stories,
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tips and insights from great golf minds to help you
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lower your score and raise your golf IQ.
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Here's your host, Fred Green.
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Welcome to the Golf Murder Podcast.
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Joe Ah, Hi, Fred, good to be with you.
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It's great to be with you. We've had doctor Joe
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on many times in this show, but it was doctor
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Joe parent It's great. It's great to have doctor Joe.
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Luken's on. A woman who has a really good book
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called The elite think like an athlete, succeed like a champion.
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I am fascinated and I want to go real deep
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with this. I think it's a great topic, especially for
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the golf Smarter audience.
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Yeah, thank you, Fred, looking forward to the conversation.
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So, you know, elite athletes have this routine. I guess
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that it would be called that would be prepare, train, compete, Prepare, train, compete,
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and it just goes on. And that is the cycle
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that they're in, right, And how did you get to
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that point under stid where you're going.
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With the book? Yeah, So the book's come of about
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after a number of years of working in the area.
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Like you said, it's that Prepare, Train, compete. And then
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the extra element that I like to put in with
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that is part of that preparation is to learn from
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the competition, you know. So my two favorite reminders for athletes, coaches, teams,
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you know, whomever I might be working with, is to
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always remember that success leaves clues. So when we have
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been successful in our performance, as successful in our practice,
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you know that hasn't come about by accident. So there's
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the little clues that sit in behind that. So understanding
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the clues so we can rinse and repeat them, and then,
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of course, when things don't quite great, a plan, which
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is also part of what it is in golf and
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in other sports as well. It's understanding that there's always
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a lesson on offers, so if we're wise, we'll stop, plause,
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learn the lesson, and then hopefully we can we can
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improve from that. So I guess Elite was the first
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book that I wrote, and it really was design. I
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guess it was a bit of a reflection piece for
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me in some ways. You know, it's what if I
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learned from working with the elite athletes and performers that
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I've worked in throughout my career, because I work in
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a brained domains and sports in my country, and so
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it's really been about what have I learned, and then
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what are those lessons that we can translate for anyone,
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whatever their discipline might be. And you know, even for
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the non athletes out there. You know, I know that
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you don't need to be an elite athlete to think
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like one, So we can translate some of those lessons
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and that's certainly some of the things I get to
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do in the work that I do.
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Well. I'm glad that you said, you don't have to
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be the elite athlete to think like one, And I
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think that's part of what golf smurder has always been about,
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is how to fine tune our mental approach to the
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game and our emotional approach to the game so that
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we don't have to just focus on our mechanics.
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Yeah. I would agree with that because I think that,
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you know, when we approach our sport in a way
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that is curious and we're open to learning, you know,
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it really sets us up. I mean, I think it's essentially,
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you know, there's probably a lot of goals that we
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set for ourselves, and particularly within golf, there's lots of
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things that people would be working on and wanting to
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achieve and to attain. But if you can walk away
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from it feeling like you've had some success in particular areas,
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it's just very satisfying. And I guess that's what Keys is.
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Going back to play again.
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Tell me your background on how you got to this
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and what made you study athletes in this way.
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Yeah, so you would think that being a high performance
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psychology expert, that was all part of a cunning plan,
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but it turns out that it wasn't it. Actually I
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got here by accident. To be honest, I as a
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young high school student, I thought I was joining the
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police force. So you might have picked up the audience
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might have picked up for my accent that I'm Australian,
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Australian based and as a young high see I don't
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think my accident accent is that pronounced, but anyway, I'm
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sure it is.
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It is.
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It is, okay, I'll try not to be too strine
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with it then, so we no, No, it's okay. It
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can be a little harsh with our sounds sometimes the Aussies.
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So I started, I thought I was going to join
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the police force, and so my parents used to take
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me to the information nights down at the police Academy
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near where I grew up. I if, for those who
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are familiar with Australia, if you look sort of top
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right hand corner, that's where I'm located there, just off
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the barrier reef, which is a nice part of the
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world to be living. And so yes, Mum and I
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would go down to the police Academy would get information
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on how I was going to join the police force.
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When I finally finished high school and in my grade
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twelve year, my final year of high school. As I
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was walking across the campus a police officer was walking
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in the opposite direction and he just stopped me mid
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stride and he said to me, what are you doing here?
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And I said, I'm coming to join the police force.
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And he looked at me and he said, well, what
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degree are you going to do? And in Australia you
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don't need a degree to join the police force, and
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you certainly didn't back in the nineteen eighties. I was
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looking to do it and I said, oh, I didn't
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know that I need to. What do I need to do?
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And he said, we'll just do something to do with people,
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and I said okay. And so, being a good child
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of the eighties, I went back to my school. I
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went back to the guidance officer and said, you know,
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I need to do a degree. It's got to be
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something to do with people. He said, what about psychology.
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I said that sounds good, and so I went and
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did a psychology degree. And I think probably for the
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good people of Queensland where I live. I don't know
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what sort of police officer I would have been, but
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I studied psychology. By the end of my fourth year,
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I'd found my love of sports psychology particularly and Australia,
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you know, like it is in the US, is very
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much a sports loving country, so there's lots of opportunity.
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There's national teams within the region that I live in.
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And now that I've spent sort of over three decades
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working in sports psychology, you know, I travel a lot
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around Australia. I have athletes from all different kinds of sports,
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teen sports, individual sports, and so forth. So that's where
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that all came about. And then about twenty five, twenty
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seven years deep into my work, I thought, you know what,
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and someone once said to me, if there's advice you're
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continually giving out, then think about putting it into a book,
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because that's a way to reach more people. So that's
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how The Elite came about. And I did a little
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bit of research into how to write a book and
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how to get that out there. Turns out that's a
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whole other adventure, and so The Elite was written and
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I'm continuing to refine that process. So I'm actually just
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about to release book number five.
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So wow.
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But the Elite is it's the one that I talk
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about the most. It's the one that has the broaders readership.
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And in addition to my work in sport, I also
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work in the Australian Defense Force. So many of our
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incredible defense members in Australia have have read The Elite
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and we include that as part of the education pieces
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that I deliver into the Defense Force as well.
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Fabulous fascinating background and what bright took you from police
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work and training and you know, getting that psychology, how
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did you get to sports? So I will opened those doors.
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Yeah, So there was my super In our fourth year
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of our degree, we I was given the opportunity to
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do an honors program and in that you need to
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do a set body of work and some set research.
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And it was actually my supervisor who I went to.
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She was someone who taught me through my degree. I
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really gravitated to her. I liked the way she thinked,
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I liked the way she challenged me. And her particular
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area of interest was child psychology. And so whilst I
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didn't specifically want to go into child psychology per se,
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we were talking one day and she said, you know,
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you could always do it in an area that interests you,
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that involves children. So my very first research was with
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It was probably the bravest research I've done in my
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career because I worked with eight year olds and ten
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year olds. So every one who's ever spent time with
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eight year olds and ten year olds, I've raised two
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of them. But you know, I love children of that
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age because they really don't have the filter that many
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of us learn as adults. So I looked at I
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compared children's levels of self esteem, and depending upon their
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self esteem, whether their self esteem was higher or lower,
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whether that had an influence then on how they would
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explain their relative successes and disappointments in sport. And it's
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probably no surprise to the audience listening that those children
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who had higher levels of self esteem would tend to
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attribute their successes in a more complimentary way to themselves.
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They'd think it was because of their ability. They'd see
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it because of their effort, whereas children with lower self
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esteem would say, you know, well, I was just lucky
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that day and competition wasn't very hard, and those sorts
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of things. So I was really curious about how children
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explain the world. I've always been interested in those levels
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of attributions, and that's always been an area of interest
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for me, and then that developed further from there and that.
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Took you to professional athletes.
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It did.
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So I live in the re of Australia, as I said,
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sort of top right hand corner of Australia, and at
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that point in time, not long after I graduated, I'm
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a big fan of I don't know if you remember Fred.
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In nineteen ninety six, Gwyneth Paltrow was in a movie
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it was Sliding Doors, and the Sliding Doors movie was
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all about I think in that movie it was whether
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or not she took a subway, you know, she got
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the subway or she missed the subway. In the movie
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sort of split down the middle and it showed her life.
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And the Sliding Doors moment for me, apart from the
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police officer stopping me. You know, six or seven years earlier,
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was that a new football team came to our region
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and they didn't have a sports psychologist there. There wasn't
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actually anyone working in sports psychology in our town. And
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with all the bravado and gusto that you might have
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at the age of I think I was about twenty
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five at the time, of course, I thought I could
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do it, so I I you know, fortune favors the Brave,
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I guess, and so I ended up speaking with the
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head coach there and was appointed and stayed with that
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team for twenty six years.