♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ female announcer: Welcome to "Becoming Your Personal Best: Life Lessons from Olympians and Paralympians, a Resilient Future for Youth."

This series is about what families, teachers, coaches, youth leaders, mentors, spiritual leaders, entire communities need to know about building resiliency for today's youth.

This series brings you experts in education and psychology, linked with inspiring Olympians and Paralympians.

Importantly, this series talks to young people, to hear what they have to say.

This series is practical and uplifting, and it is for all of us, not just those who aspire to the Olympics or Paralympics.

Our host is Hunter Kemper, four-time Olympian in the sport of Triathlon, and at one time ranked number one in the world.

Hunter not only exemplifies personal and professional resiliency, but he cares deeply about helping youth become their personal best.

Hunter Kemper: We're at the US Olympic and Paralympic Museum.

Today, I am taking some young people with me to join a session in our Resiliency series to learn about spiritual resilience.

Dr. Roberta Kraus is leading our session.

She is an internationally-known sports psychologist who has worked with literally hundreds of Olympians and Paralympians.

Roberta worked with the 2016 Gold Medal winning men's and women's wheelchair basketball teams in Rio.

She is going to give us practical advice on how spiritual resilience enables purpose, wholeness, and well-being.

Let's join the session.

Dr. Roberta Kraus: I would like to use the metaphor of a button to talk about spiritual resiliency.

We think about a button, usually they have four holes, and each of those holes, for me, represents physical, mental, emotional, and social resiliency.

But it's the thread that we use to tie the button on that is the most powerful, which is spiritual resiliency.

You know, we've all been around when we've had a thread sticking out of a button, and you say to yourself, "Ooh, if I pull this thread, am I gonna lose the button?"

Or we try to wrap it around.

And when we tap into our spiritual resiliency, you're tapping into trying to understand your purpose, your wholeness, and your well-being.

I want to make three points about spirituality that I say in the form of BFOs.

BFO stands for Blinding Flashes of the Obvious.

They just kind of hit you right here.

So, the first BFO is this: spirituality is the deepest source of power you can tap into.

It requires that you really take a look at who you are, who you stand for, what are your core values?

And at times, you have to know that you have to reach for a greater power to deal with some of life hardships.

For a lot of people, spiritual resiliency is their religion.

It's their religious practices, but it can also be meditation.

It could be taking a walk in the mountains, sitting by a stream, being on top of a mountainside, or just sitting still in one place.

What all those have in common is you are taking time to pause on the button of life, reflect, and see what is working in your life and where you need extra help.

It really is where we go when we're at the end of our rope.

The second BFO is this: adult development tells us that by the time we hit our 30s or 40s, if we haven't already, we'll be facing some pretty serious life challenges, whether it be the loss of a loved one, find out you have a terminal illness.

And we have to have that source of power we go to, to get the energy to deal with our life challenges.

The third BFO is this: folks in the medical field say that people that have spiritual resiliency tend to be less depressed, they have more energy, they have less bad moods, and they seem to have a bounce in their step to welcome life challenges.

Let me give you that to an example.

I'd like you to look at Apollo Ohno.

Apollo Ohno is one of the fastest speed skaters on ice.

Apollo lived with his father in Washington state.

At age 14, he went to Lake Placid, New York, to train and be part of the National Men's Speedskating Team.

While he was there, he decided to eat more pizza than do the training.

They thought he was gonna be a shoo-in for the '98 Olympics and had a very disappointing performance.

He went back to Washington state, and his father, who was raising him, took him out to a cabin and left him there for a week and said, "You need to contemplate, to pray, to process, and decide who you want to be."

After a week of this spiritual journey, he came back and said he wanted to train harder, be more focused, and be that Olympic champion.

He went on to be the most decorated Winter Olympic athlete with eight medals from the 2002, 2006, and 2010 Olympics.

At the Olympics and Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, the International Olympic Committee decide to build a center called the Interreligious Center, where athletes could go to just find some solitude during this high pressure performance environment.

What they believed is that athletes needed a combination of athletics, spirituality, to be able to perform their best under pressure.

You could go into this Interreligious Center at any time of the day.

You could sit, you could be by yourself, and you could also go to a religious service, and it was available for folks 24/7.

There are several different techniques you can use to develop or maintain spiritual resiliency.

The first one is gratitude journaling and "Wayfinding."

Gratitude journaling is the concept of writing down three to five things each day that you are grateful for in your life.

When we do this with athletes, we have them do it either in the morning or at the end of the day, and they just record three or five things in their life.

When you do gratitude journaling, it changes what your brain pays attention to.

'Cause here's the challenge: too many times we tap our spiritual resiliency only when we've hit the end of the line.

And we usually try to make a deal with the powers that be, something like this: "Please, if this test comes back negative, I promise I will start to do this."

And yet the reality is doing gratitude journaling on a daily basis helps boost our psychological immune system, which is how we handle hardships.

And so gratitude journaling allows you to focus on something different than what is going wrong in your life.

Let me give you to an example.

I'd like you to meet Matt.

So, I met Matt at one of the selection camps for wheelchair basketball.

Prior to this, he was a standout football athlete at his high school in Kansas.

He was a recruited athlete going to Ottawa University to be a freshman offensive player.

And he was so excited to take his team to the national championship.

He was in the gym with his teammates doing weight training; and in a bench press, his upper body went one way, and his lower body went the other way, and he severed his spine.

After five, into the sixth hour of the surgery, to fuse his spine back together, he was sent to the Craig Medical Institution, and there he learned to have gratitude just for being alive.

He was taught how to live his life without the use of his legs.

But he also worked side by side with people that had no limbs that were available to them.

And so he walked away with incredible gratitude about just being alive.

And here's what Matt says about gratitude.

He says, "I'm a better person than before the injury.

The injury has opened my eyes to what is still available to me.

My gratitude drives all my decisions of how I want to live my life.

I'd gone from being a recruited star athlete to something even more important.

It's great in a weird sort of way.

My eyes are still open to everything, and I get recharged every day I'm alive."

'Cause what happens is if we'd only use spirituality to get powers to deal with hard things in our life, it's like a cell phone.

The battery goes dead, and we have to recharge it with the gratitude statements.

You might find of interest to find out what happens in the brain when you do gratitude journaling.

So, I'd like you to meet BOB.

This is BOB.

BOB stands for Biology of the Brain.

Now, inside your brain, you have about a hundred billion neurons.

These are electric currents that kick off hormones and chemicals that gets the brain and body to work together.

You've got about 80% of that in the back of your brain.

This is where action takes place.

You've got in the middle where you have emotions and the front of your brain where you think.

The piece I'm gonna talk about here is called the hippocampus.

Anybody know what hippocampus does?

This is what stores memories, and every memory you store gets stronger and stronger when you bring it up.

So, for example, I have a son who chose to go to college in Omaha, Nebraska.

I went to high school in Omaha.

I could not believe, of all the colleges we looked at, he chooses my town I went to high school.

So, what do I say to my son?

I go, "Oh, my God, I cannot wait to show you where I lived, and we had this tree in the backyard.

It was huge.

I mean, when we got pushed on it, you felt like you touched the stars."

Now, what do you think happened when I showed him the tree?

I was, "Is this the same tree?

I thought it was so much bigger."

And every time you bring up a memory, you make it bigger.

So, if you bring up a bad memory, you make it even worse.

If you--a good--you make it better.

The challenge is this: our brain has a negative bias to it.

We tend to pay attention to and remember more negative things than positive things in our brain.

It's like our bad memories have Velcro, and our good memories are Teflon.

As an example, let's say you get a review at your job, and your boss has to rate you on these ten items, on a scale of one to ten, ten being very successful, one being you're very ineffective about this.

And out of ten items, you get one score of an eight.

That's what you worry about.

You take a test at school.

It has ten questions.

You get eight questions correct.

You miss two.

That's what you worry about.

It's no different than when the weatherman tells us the weather.

And he or she says it's going to be partly cloudy.

"Oh, really?"

They could say partly sunny, but our brain is wired to look at the negative.

And so we have to make sure, on a daily basis, we take gratitude.

I want to have you practice in your mind doing some gratitude statements, but let me give you some examples of what people have said about gratitude.

"This is what I'm grateful for.

My grandparents are okay, given their health issues."

"The forced time off has helped me appreciate why family is so important to me."

"I drove around in my car today and honked and threw donuts out the window like a frisbee to all my teammates.

They loved it and recorded it for the whole team to see."

"With our current lifestyle restrictions, I have more time to cook, so I'm eating healthier."

So, in your mind now, I want you to just close your eyes and think about two or three things you're grateful in your life.

Thank you.

And another technique related to gratitude journaling is called "Wayfinding."

"Wayfinding" is an ancient art form of spirituality, where you look for positive energy from lessons of experience, whether they were good or bad.

The key to this being powerful for you is you want a very, very detailed about how you record what was the activity and what you learned from that.

It really does help you understand who you are and who you want to be in life.

So, I want to give you a couple of examples before I ask you to do this yourself.

So, here's some examples of "Wayfinding."

Again, detail about the activity and detail about the reflection of what they learned.

"Activity and event: I volunteered at the YMCA on the 31st of October for 90 minutes to help run a conditioning class for youth wrestlers.

Reflection: What did I learn?

I don't have the patience for little kids, but I do love teaching."

Another example, "Activity: I got up early on the 2nd of November and took 45 minutes to contact three new people about internship opportunities.

Reflection: What did I learn?

I'm not locked into doing just one thing.

I can just try different internships.

How cool is that?"

The third example is, "From March until the end of the school year, I helped my little sister and brother with their online school work, while my parents went to work.

Reflection: What'd I learn from that?

I think I might be a teacher.

I'm pretty good at this."

So, think about, in the last three months, think about some pivotal experiences, good or bad, and what was the lesson you learned from that?

Thank you for doing that.

Another spiritual resiliency technique is called "Finding Your Flow Activity."

When you're in a flow activity, you're in a state where you're very relaxed, very present in the moment, and have a sense of peace about you that almost appears spiritual.

In flow activities, usually people do these in their spare time with some great regularity.

It could be hiking in the mountains.

It could be playing a musical instrument.

It could be writing.

It could be journaling.

It's anything that allows you to get in a focused cocoon, where you feel like you are regaining some peace energy to then deal with some of the hardships in your life.

I do a lot of work with men and women who compete in the Senior Games, and they can be pretty wild people.

They get pretty worked up about last participations and next competition, and I have one Senior Olympian, that she says her flow activity is to do coloring.

And she gave me a picture.

She spends four to five hours a day doing coloring.

And she says it's the place that she goes to get control of her life.

So, she's not focused on past events and not worried about future events.

The key to have flow activity be part of your life is you want to think about what activities have you done in the past, that when you did them you felt a sense of relief, a sense of peaceful energy, and a sense of being focused in the moment.

And you need to feel ways to build that in all of the time for yourself.

When people do flow activities, the immune system is strengthened, which allows you to fight off everyday illnesses and colds, because the white blood cells get to circulate more frequently throughout the body.

It's a mood elevator.

You feel better about yourself and life around you, and it helps fight off depression.

The next technique is "Centering Your Attention."

The word "centering" is about being in the here and now.

When you think about it, the only moment you control is right now at this moment.

That's the only thing you can control.

And every time you choose to leave that moment in time and go to the past or future, you're allowing yourself to be less than your best.

So, I'm going to teach you a technique about centering and then talk about why it's important.

Here's how you do this technique.

In just a moment, I'm going to be quiet for about 30 seconds.

And in your mind, I want you to close your eyes; and as you breathe in, for the length of that inhale you're going to say in your mind the number one.

And then when you exhale, in your mind you're gonna say the number two.

And then on the next inhale, you're gonna go to the number three, and then four.

But here's what's going to happen.

As you're doing this, you're going to have some very wild random thoughts come into your mind.

"Oh, my gosh, I forgot to put the clothes in the dryer.

Did I get butter at the store today?

What am I gonna do if Michael's plane is canceled?"

And you're just gonna find random thoughts come in your mind.

When that happens for you, just recognize it's a random thought; and then regardless of what number you're at, when you take your next inhale, I want you to start over to the count of one.

So, the first round could be one, two, three--random thought, okay.

One--random thought, okay.

One, two, three, four, five.

Just recognize you have a random thought.

Let it come in, let it go back out, and then come back to counting.

Please go ahead and do this with your eyes closed.

Thank you.

I like to use this analogy with centering.

You know, when we were little, and we went to school, and we had the fire department come to our school, what did they tell us we're supposed to do when we smell smoke?

We're supposed to stop, drop, and roll.

When you do centering, you're really telling your body to stop, look, and listen.

You're taking a pause from life in order to give yourself pause of energy, a pause of mindset, so you can deal with future life challenges that you might have for yourself.

The next technique is this idea of "Mindfulness Meditation."

You know, centering is a great exercise to prepare for mindfulness meditation.

It's a good practice.

A lot of people believe, "I cannot do mindfulness meditation.

I think it'd be too boring.

I don't have the patience.

I can't sit still."

But what people tell us is when they repeatedly do mindfulness meditation from 10 to 15 minutes in duration, they get a sense of calm that comes over them, that will last for a long time during that whole day.

So, imagine this.

You do meditation in the morning, and then you're driving home from work that afternoon, and somebody cuts you off right on the road.

If you hadn't done meditation-- you might be honking your horns, and doing all kinds of symbols with your hand at that driver.

With meditation, you just nod your head.

"I got you," keep on going.

So, meditation actually allows you to use energy throughout the whole day.

It's not hard to practice.

Anybody can do it.

I'm going to actually take you through about a minute of meditation here, so at least you can get an idea of what it's like.

So, I need you to sort of close your eyes and just sit still in your chairs.

Okay, make sure your feet are on the bench, feet are separated.

Don't cross your feet.

And just take some nice deep belly breaths.

Just feel the air come into your stomach, where your belly comes out, and you need to exhale with your mouth slightly open.

I want you to notice how your sit bones feel in your chair.

Think about any kind of noise that might be around you.

Feel the lighting on your face.

How do your hands feel?

Where are they positioned?

Your shoulders.

What does it feel in my lower back?

And just feel a sense of peace, as you take a few more deep breaths.

And slowly open your eyes.

This is a phenomenal technique for young kids; 'cause when you practice meditation, it actually takes the hippocampus, where memories sit in the brain, and it makes the walled hippocampus thicker and more dense.

And when your hippocampus is thicker and more dense, you pay attention better, you learn more, and you have a stronger memory.

All those start to go with age, so you want to build up the density as soon as possible.

When I am teaching young people how to do meditation, I do need to do some lead-up exercises in the form of centering to get them to meditation.

And kids are great about centering meditation type drills.

What I might do with a young student athlete who has a lot of anxiety, we might sit outside on a porch bench, and I will first have him do some deep breathing, and then we will just look around, and we'll talk about the trees and the different leaves on the tree.

And if the wind is blowing, what are the leaves doing?

And is there any animals crawling around?

And what do you see with this dog now walking by?

And we just talk about the details of what we see in front of us.

If you're driving a car, and you come to a red light, you can practice centering drills, which is where you sit still at the light, and you just talk to yourself.

"How do my hands feel on the steering wheel?

How does my sit bones feel?

My shoulders on the back of my chair.

The air conditioning is hitting the right side of my cheek.

The guy in front of me is from Florida.

He's got a dirty license plates over the number six."

But you just talk to yourself about what you see in the present moment.

Athletes tell us that when they do centering and/or mindfulness type meditation, they say it helps them prepare for the best performance.

Because typically what they do, they like to jump out of bed, throw all their practice gear in a gym back and run to practice.

Then they come home.

They eat like crazy.

They go to bed.

And they do the same thing the next day.

And now they wake up 10 to 15 minutes early, and they just get themselves centered.

They focus on their breathing, how they want to show up today.

And then when they go to practice, they don't have their mind get distracted by worrying about what I should've done earlier today and what I need to do when I get home.

We had one of our Olympic coaches spend time teaching his entire team meditation.

And here's what this coach says about that.

"We taught our players meditation because we were able to show, with the help of a medical doctor, that it strengthened the quality of happiness, resilience, calm, and a sense of compassion towards other team members, which they said was all requirements to have the best team possible."

So, you can start with moments at a time doing centering, but you want to eventually move into some meditation with some regularity.

The final technique, we call this "Forest Bathing."

Forest bathing is a technique of spending time out in nature.

We have done tests with different kinds of electrodes on your body to measure what's happening physiologically to the body when you spend time in nature, go for a walk by a river, in the mountains.

And what we see when you're out in nature is people tend to feel a sense of safety.

There's something about being out in nature that it is so grandioso that we think, "Well, if I can do this, I can do anything in my life."

And it gives us a sense of power that is so deep, it can be very spiritual for you.

The challenge is, is we can't save forest bathing until the end of the week.

If you are feeling tension and stress on a Monday, then you need to think about getting out into nature earlier than just, "Oh, my God, I've had such a stressful day.

I'm gonna have to get out and take a hike on Saturday."

You don't save it, because forest bathing is a form of rest recovery, and this is where you are very different as performers, compared to Olympian/Paralympians.

Olympian/Paralympians know that rest recovery is a part of training, and they do it with great regularity for themselves.

So, in closing, I would like to say this about spiritual resiliency.

To manage spiritual resiliency, to have it be part of your life, it gives you the great gift of appreciating the current moment you have in your life.

It is great for coping skills because it allows you to take a timeout window to just step back, take a breath, and to see what do you want to do before you take action on a challenge you have in your life?

This is absolutely a great way to build phenomenal memories in your bank account to draw on when you're faced with a hardship.

Thank you for being here.

Go out and make it a great day.

[applauding] ♪♪ Hunter: Today we learned about the role that spiritual connections play in our sense of purpose, wholeness, and well-being.

We learned how to practice the power of gratitude and how to overcome our brain's negativity bias.

Finally, we learned how to teach young people to center and meditate.

This is practical information people of all ages can use.

Adults, in particular, can use this information to help the young people in their lives.

We are glad you joined us.

♪♪ ♪♪