Everybody with Angela Williamson is made possible by fire heart pictures and viewers like you.

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How intentional are you and your growth and pursuit of excellence in order to achieve both personal and professional growth?

It's essential that we take the initiative to make it happen.

Tonight, we meet an author and sports psychologist who helps teens get their mental edge.

I'm so happy you are joining us.

From Los Angeles.

This is KLCS PBS.

Welcome to Everybody with Angela Williamson, an Innovation, Arts, Education and Public Affairs program.

Everybody with Angela Williamson is made possible by viewers like you.

Thank you.

And now your host, Dr. Angela Williamson.

Ken is our guest.

Ken, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you for having me, Angela.

My pleasure.

This book is much needed not just for young people, but for parents as well.

And we are going to get into this book in the second segment.

But before we get there, I want our audience to get to know about Ken.

So tell us a little bit about yourself.

Angela.

I started doing mentor coaching back in 1983.

My first student was a high school basketball player that let confidence was afraid.

Long story short, the techniques I taught her, she went on to become the all time leading scorer at Creighton University, had a great career, and that was the beginning of my career.

Since then, I've worked with hundreds of thousands of athletes all over the world.

I've worked with over 100 Olympic national and world champions and most athletes from every major sport you can think of in minor sports.

So that was how I started.

How I started was my best friend committed suicide in high school.

Our senior year blew his brains out in the school parking lot.

I dropped him off on a Sunday night.

Monday morning he came looking for me for third period.

I was in the air because I was late and he shot himself in the school parking lot.

That began my journey on why people do things and what makes the brain tick.

And that's how this all started.

And so in your life, whenever you start something that you want to make sure that people get their mental edge, you go back to those defining moments of your life.

And so how do those defining moments in our lives impact what we try to do and our futures?

You know, those impacts, it's kind of like getting burned on a hot stove.

You know, immediately you react.

We have big impacts like that.

There's a reaction.

Sometimes it's positive, sometimes it's negative.

Sometimes people take a death of a parent and they go inward and they become suicidal and they become drug users and alcohol use or others go, you know what?

I'm going to live a legacy so I can honor my my, my dead mother.

Dead father.

Right.

So we react differently.

And so what I try to do is help people react by design, not by emotions.

Emotions aren't facts.

They're not.

And so let's kind of redesign how we think.

Take control over emotions and start making good choices for the right reasons.

And, you know, good choices for the right reasons.

And that's really important because I want to go back to that defining moment.

Did you ever find out why your friend felt that he just could not live the next day or the next hour for you to come and talk to you?

I mean, because young minds, they are so different.

Yes.

It to this day, it's mind boggling.

I understand we went camping that weekend for the first time and everyone camping.

We had a great time at Herky Creek up by Idlewild.

We got home at 1135 Sunday night, dropped him off, shook hands.

But it was awesome.

Next day, he had a little tiff with his girlfriend and got his father's service revolver, the U.S. marshal, and took it to school and shot himself.

Why?

I don't really know.

He left a goodbye note and he listed six people that were important to him.

I was one of them.

Anyway.

That's how it happened.

And he said, You know what?

This is going to define me.

I, I grew up in a family of of alcoholics, drug addicts, suicides.

I five of my seven male cousins were dead by the age of 37.

So I was not going to let this throw me in that direction.

And I made up my mind, I'm going to do something positive with the mental side of life.

And that's what I did.

And now you're living this legacy.

And in taking what you've learned and what you've turned around and to helping others, you think that's what helps people get through situations like that, because it doesn't matter how many years it's past, it still impacts us as if it was happening in that moment.

Angela That's so true.

And I wrote this book because of that instance.

When COVID hit and all the shut downs and the learning and all that change in kids depression and suicidal tendencies and drug use and I mean, kids were losing their senior years of sports.

They were losing college scholarships.

It was brutal.

I said, I'm gonna do something about that.

I'm going to write this book.

And I wrote this book because I care and it's passion.

This is my life right now.

And so that's why this book exists, because kids have pressure in school sports, life in, you know, real relationships.

It's just so much and the expectations are so high that they're overwhelmed.

And right now, today, the most alarming thing I see is how many kids are just stuck in ruts, depressive rot, and they keep doing the same thing over and over and over again.

They create their own chaos.

They wonder why they can't get out of it.

Well, they they go to bed at the same time they get up at the same time.

They have the same habits and nothing changes.

Nothing changes.

If nothing changes.

This book changes things.

I wanted to wait to the second segment, but you're saying so much that was in this book and in basically what I love about this book is that you can apply the theory and move forward.

And how important do you believe that it is for this generation to be able just to apply theory in a practical sense, that they can continue to move forward and out of the chaos, which is in this book, is I mean, it surrounds us.

So we're moving forward.

Yes.

The theory here works across all kinds of all different planes of life.

When you think in advance of what you want from a relationship, how you interact with your spouse or boyfriend or girlfriend, if you have a conflict and you think of your outcome first, what I want changes the whole dialog.

When you go to a class and you're just showing up to go to class to get an A.

That's okay.

But what are you really going there for?

What's your outcome?

You go to a fine university to be really good at math.

The more reasons we have for a positive outcome, the more we have that opportunity.

Okay, So, so theory in this book is fact.

It works every single time.

There is nothing that won't get better.

When you apply the mental edge, when you when you're mentally right for you.

Yes.

Sky's the limit.

Mentally right for you.

So this book gives us the opportunity to frame what's right for us so that we can have that positive outcome.

But it also, too, at the same time, it changes our thinking because we just go and do things and we never set our intentions.

But basically you're telling us to do that, right?

Absolutely.

Great story.

Jim Edmonds and Darren Hurst had played for the California Angels.

Graduated.

Oh, same high school.

Jim Edmonds.

Yes.

Yes.

So, Irshad, was this fiery guy beat up the water cooler or if he'd strike out or lose a game, throw his glove just intense, fiery guy.

Edmonds Like, hey, we'll get him tomorrow.

We'll get him next game, right?

The Angels traded Edmonds because they said we can't win a title with him.

He went to the St Louis Cardinals the next year, had a monster year, probably as best year ever, and they won the World Series.

Now, Earth, that took a couple of years longer, but they won it with him as well.

The point is they were mentally right for themselves.

If you try to make gear in earnest at Edmonds, it's not going to work.

If you make Edmonds Earth dead, not going to work, it's going to mess up their game.

So we all have this sweet spot where we're mentally, right?

And that's what I hope people find.

Okay, so now you know, I can't let you move forward until we talk about this sweet spot, because when you look at how life runs in anything that you do, they always have just one set plan that they apply to everybody.

But we don't all interpret those plans the same way.

So is that what you mean by our sweet spot, or am I wrong?

Well, couple of things here, Andrew.

Yes.

Number one, we all have a sweet spot that something we're good at.

Yeah, we have that that where we just kind of flow.

And the other sweet spot is we have a way of thinking that works for us.

To give you an idea.

Positive.

Paul Sunshine.

Sally Oh, you got to be positive and happy all the time.

Oh, I.

Love those people.

I wonder how they do it exactly.

Does it work?

For some people?

It'll shut them down.

They'll think, Oh my God, I can't live this way.

How do you do that?

So where's that level of positivity and negativity that works?

Sometimes negative thoughts are valuable when they're used properly.

There's this saying that's gone around in the self-help world for years.

Don't motivate yourself with a negative thought.

Well, that's absolutely ridiculous.

Sometimes you should motivate yourself with a negative thought because if I get this f, I can't play basketball and I'm not going to get an F that happened to me in basketball.

That's what I'm saying.

All right, this is personal.

So sometimes the negative will get you motivated or the positive won't.

So you find a sweet spot what works for you.

And so what works for us is because I think that's really interesting, because I love the self-help world.

We couldn't live without them.

I mean, it helps everybody get from where they're feeling and their chaos to the next level.

But then you also it brings that amount of guilt with it as well when it tells you you can't have any negative feelings because that's.

So how do we retrain our minds to say as long it's okay to have that negative feeling, as long as it turns into where we want it to get?

How do we train ourselves out of that?

Great question.

Thank you.

The first thing I say is think about neutral as opposed to negative or positive neutral.

We just do what needs to be done whether we want to or not.

And we do it in the most positive way we can for ourselves.

Example A good friend of mine grew up working in a junkyard.

His good fortune.

When the guy retired, he gave him the junkyard.

He took it over, turned into a multimillion dollar operation.

Junkyard, multimillion dollar, beautiful, 11 personal vintage Porsches, lives on a on a on a cliff in Laguna Beach and a beautiful house that happened.

He has all these beautiful things.

From a junkyard.

From a.

Junkyard.

From a junkyard.

Yeah.

What he did was this.

He's a Ken.

I was never the guy happy to get to work and can't wait to be there and happy and smiley.

I just knew that needed to be there before anybody else got there.

I knew I need to be the last one to leave.

I knew I needed to get the job done, so I got the job done sometime.

I was really happy.

Sometimes I'm doing math and I've got to get this done right.

So But he has a great life.

And he's never been this guy.

He's always been this guy neutral with moments of this and very few of this.

But he's been consistent.

Am I.

Consistently good.

In our society?

Sometimes doesn't tell you that being consistently good is a good thing.

Exactly.

Art.

More and more and more nonsense.

There are some people that have just amazing lives.

They're just a carpenter.

They're just a secretary there.

There is nothing wrong with living a good quality life and having a skill or a trade or a job that you're just consistently good at.

You don't have to have billions of dollars to be successful.

You don't that millions successful people live their lives in accord with their own terms.

And that success where you can live your life on your terms without hurting other people.

Now you're a successful person.

You know, this is the perfect way to end this segment, because when we come back, we're going to talk about more of what you put in for the mental edge for teens.

But our entire audience is going to love to hear what you have to say.

So that's perfect ending.

Hold on.

All right.

Come back to hear more of my conversation with Ken.

I never graduated from high school.

I realized I wanted to go back to school because I didn't want to work these backbreaking jobs the rest of my life with the help of my father and having my son.

That was all the motivation that I needed to come back to school.

I thought accomplished.

It made me feel that I could take on whatever challenges life throws at you.

Find free adult education classes near you at finish your diploma, talk.

This piece that I want explaining to her that.

Again bomb and this is a motivation Monday.

Today's topic is Life is a mind game.

You make the rules.

A little boy is playing baseball in the backyard.

It's the ninth inning of the seventh game of the World Series.

Two outs and he's up to bat.

He takes the ball.

He throws it up in the air and he swings as hard as he can and he misses Strike one and he grits his teeth and he stands back up.

He takes the ball.

He tosses it in the air and he swings again.

Strike two.

He kind of shakes his head.

He grits his teeth.

He picks the ball up.

He tosses it one more time.

He swings with everything he's got and he misses completely.

And a big smile crosses his face and he says, I didn't even know I could pitch that.

Good.

Life is a mind game.

We make the rules strive for cold feet.

A cold just the way I am or I have the power to change.

I'm just big boned or I'm fat.

I'm going to stop this right now.

We make rules.

We make choices.

Make choices that empower you.

Make rules to live by that give you the opportunity to live the life you want to live on your terms.

I remember vividly when I was 12 years old, I made a point I would never, ever use drugs.

I made the rule.

I stuck to that rule.

I've never used drugs in my life.

Are life is up to us.

We can say, well, this is my family history.

This is the way we are.

All we can say No.

The buck stops here.

I'm changing this now.

My family history is real.

But you know what?

I've got power to change.

I can educate myself.

I go back to school.

I could read books.

Life is a mind game.

You make the rules.

I get home from work and I'm tired.

I don't really want to work.

And I don't have enough energy.

Or.

You know what?

I get more energy from working out after work, and I'm going.

Have a great evening.

Life is a mind game.

You make the rules.

You know, they've got a different job than me.

They can eat better because they've got a different job.

My job doesn't afford this.

I the fast food, junk food.

Life is a mind game.

You make the rules.

Choose wisely, my friends.

Have a great Monday in a great week.

Welcome back.

You just watch.

Life is a mind game.

You make the rules from Ken's YouTube channel.

Now let's talk more about his book, The Mental Edge for Teens.

In the first segment, we talked a little bit about creating our own chaos.

But I want to get in depth and talk a lot more about it.

So in your book, you talk about creating our own chaos.

What does that actually mean and how do we do that to make it part of our lives?

Excellent question.

We generate chaos by worry in advance.

We take things that might happen and get all stressed out about it.

What if I strike out?

What if I miss the shot?

What if I don't pass this test?

What if she says no to me and asking for a date?

And we hear all these scenarios in her mind and her body responds accordingly.

It doesn't put us on a winning track.

It puts us on a losing track.

We create our own chaos.

We create our own chaos by doing the same things over and over again that don't work.

I got to tell you this, Joy.

This is awesome.

Illustrate the point.

Okay.

My sister's about 18 years old, having a boyfriend problem.

And my aunt says, Tonya, you got to listen to me.

I know, man.

She's been married eight times.

She just gets.

No, probably not.

The advice that is.

That my sister looks at her like Pat.

You've been married eight times, right?

And so what was funny is she would always meet a guy and then turn out to be an alcoholic and a heavy drinker.

She always met him at bars.

Oh, she can do the same behaviors.

You're going to get the same results.

You got to change something.

Go meet him at a tennis club.

Go meet him.

You go someplace else.

You don't meet him at the bar.

So the idea is we get up at the same time and don't do our homework.

Yeah.

Nothing changes if nothing changes.

We go to bed at night after playing games till 2:00 in the morning.

We create our own chaos.

We wonder why we're tired or we're moody, why we're lethargic.

We did it to ourself.

And so what we're doing is we're realizing we have the power to move ourselves to where we want to be.

But we have to redo our our habits, right?

Absolutely.

We create new habits by by looking at new outcomes.

What are and what are intentions like?

What do we want?

Look at the outcome.

Then create the intentions to get there.

So you want to climb Mount Everest.

You don't just say, Well, I'd like to climb Mount Everest.

Nothing's going to happen.

You've got to do the work.

You set the goal.

You set the intention, and now you do the work to get there.

And most people aren't doing that.

They've been told you can do anything and be anything you want to be.

That's the great lie.

Okay.

Yes.

And how did you know I was going to ask?

You knew?

I knew you were.

I knew that.

You hear that a lot.

And sometimes that leads people to being depressed because they don't get there.

Like, well, I want to be this, you know, and I would love to be a Grammy Award winning artist.

But you can't you.

Can't.

You just look at American Idol sometimes and the people that How do you know who told them they were good?

I look at it this way.

Shaquille O'Neal, amazing physical specimen, seven feet one, 300 and some pounds in his prime.

Just a beast.

Well, if his goal if his dream was to be a horse jockey, it would've never happened.

He didn't have the genetic potential to be a horse jockey.

Even a Clydesdale would have crushed under the weight of shock because.

Wasn't he really tall by the time he was five or six or something?

Yeah, he was.

He was huge.

So.

So genetic potential is real.

Mentally and physically, you can't play center in the NBA if you're only five feet seven.

It's not going to happen.

I don't care what somebody fills your head with.

It's just not going to happen.

If you don't have the intelligence to be a Nassau astronaut, put your dream on something else.

There's nothing wrong with that.

See, that's the thing.

There's nothing wrong.

You don't have to be the president of the United States.

Like everybody's totally right.

You can be president someday.

Well, guess what?

Most people can't be.

They don't have the capacity for that.

But many people could be.

So we're going to keep the dreams big.

Yes, but base them on some kind of reality.

Dream big, work hard.

Good things happen.

Dream big, work hard.

Good things happen.

And it may be that you're not going to be an Air Force fighter pilot, but you'll be an Air Force cargo pilot.

What's wrong with that?

Nothing.

You're still fulfilling your dream?

Absolutely.

So I wanted to be a tenured professor.

And because I never actually ended up being a tenured professor, I thought I was not accomplishing my dream.

But then I realized, well, this is like what I'm doing here is like education.

So is that using my own personal.

Is that what happens to a lot of us?

And the reason why we, you know, create our own chaos and depression and things like that, because you don't realize we're actually doing it.

But sometimes we have to do it a different way.

Absolutely.

When we when we understand that it is what it is and at what rate we can live with that, you can't change things by regret.

You can't change things by by worry.

You change things by acceptance, awareness and correction.

Say that again.

I don't know if I can accept that.

Acceptance.

Yeah.

Awareness and correction.

That's how we change things.

Not by worry, not by remorse.

That my.

Oh, my God.

What do I do that for?

It's over.

Move on.

Now is the now.

That's all that matters.

Well, and so I want to transition a little bit into these desire statements, because now that you have brought the reality of what we can do and that we all have a potential to do something you may not be in what's in our head or mine, but we do have that potential.

So how do we follow that up?

Okay.

Desire statements are incredibly powerful, linking them to values that you're unstoppable.

I have so many stories will make your head spin.

I'll tell you a couple really quick.

Mika Bird, an open water swimmer.

Terrible.

Which you started.

Couldn't get a coach.

She wanted to do this.

Made up her mind.

She's going to do this.

I'm going to be an Olympian.

That's what I'm going to be.

She wrote it down.

She read my book.

The mental edge called me up.

Can can you work with me?

I said, Sure.

I don't have much money.

I said, Well, whatever you have will make it happen.

If you want to come from Santa Ana to San Clemente three times a week will make it happen.

She did.

Long story short, she went from losing races by 4 to 7 minutes to winning the national title in less than one year.

Being a member of the US national swim team, becoming a fitness model, and her life changed forever because she wrote down a desire, then did the work to get there illegally.

Mcfarlin World Title May for Bellator same thing.

I work with her on her desire statement.

This is what I want to have happen.

This is what I see for me.

Guess what?

About two years ago, we're sitting in her living room of her new house.

She was Can.

This is the last thing I wrote down.

Everything I wrote down with you has come true.

Oh, well, believe it or not, our time is almost done.

But I don't want our conversation to end.

And you see this audience.

What's going on here?

I had a bunch of questions, but you answered so much of them and gave us so much advice.

But what I really want to talk about before we end our conversation is you not only give us this book that we can share with all the teens that we love, and even as educators share this with our students.

But you add another component that online component.

So can we finish our conversation tonight talking about that online component and how that complements this book?

Excellent.

In the book, there's exercises that change people.

What's not just talk, this is actual exercises.

So they're challenging you to do by yourself.

So I put them all online for free.

You go online, go through these exercises, my voice, I walk you through them.

And the changes are much more drastic and rapid.

Oh, wow.

And for example, not only do you put the desire statements on there, but there's other different ways they're actionable items that we can do.

So before we leave, let's talk about another actionable item.

One of the things I do is I teach people how to control their posture and their breathing posture.

Upright, positive, Right.

But breathing.

Most people breathe and they're stressed here.

Upper thoracic breathing.

I want them down here.

Belly, diaphragmatic or belly doesn't breathe, right?

Of course not.

But our diaphragm, when it when our bellies relax, our diaphragm drops, expanding our lung capacity.

As we do that, we get calmer.

When you're in traffic.

Drop your breath.

Drop your breath.

I've got a free walk through exercise.

I had a calm yourself.

And instead they call the air Instant relaxation technique.

It'll teach you how to drop that breath.

Belly relaxes, lungs expand.

You feel better?

Yeah.

That's what this is all about.

To give people actionable skills that change lives.

Oh, Ken, Thank you.

That was a perfect way to end our conversation.

But we will make sure our audience knows how to get to that website and how to get your book.

Everything.

Thank you.

My pleasure.

Thank you for everything that you're doing, not only just to help the next generation, but you're making them proactive in all the skills and techniques that you're giving to them as well.

Thank you so much.

From the bottom of our hearts as educators and as parents.

Thank you so much.

Teens are our future and they're my passion.

Thank you.

Perfect way to end.

And thank you for joining us on everybody with Angela Williamson.

Viewers like you make this show possible, join us on social media to continue this conversation.

Good night and stay well and hi, I'm Angela Williamson, host of Everybody With Angela Williamson.

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