325: Raise Your Kids To Be Okay With People Not Liking Them with Amanda Schaefer

Introduction 

You're listening to Biceps After Babies Radio Episode 325.

Hello and welcome to Biceps After Babies Radio. A podcast for ladies who know that fitness is about so much more than pounds lost or PR's. It's about feeling confident in your skin and empowered in your life. I'm your host Amber Brueseke, a registered nurse, personal trainer, wife and mom of four. Each week my guests and I will excite and motivate you to take action in your own personal fitness as we talk about nutrition, exercise, mindset, personal development and executing life with conscious intention. If your goal is to look, feel and be strong and experience transformation from the inside out, you my friend are in the right place. Thank you for tuning in. Now, let's jump into today's episode.

Hey, hey, hey. Welcome back to another episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm your host, Amber Brueseke, and I have a fantastic guest today. It's my friend Amanda, who is a mental skills performance Coach and she helps kids, specifically athletes, to be able to build their confidence, be able to perform well at whatever level it is that they want to perform at, you know, we recognize in performance, there's obviously a skill component when it comes to athletics, but as you already probably know, there's also a huge mental component. And what we think how we feel about ourselves, the confidence we have really impacts how we show up and. And that's true for whether we're talking about kids on a sports field or court or, you know, us showing up in our own lives, what we think, how we feel about ourselves determines our actions, determines our results. And so I'm so excited to bring Amanda on because we had a really great conversation about confidence, specifically how it relates to your kids and how you're we are able as parents to instill that confidence into our kids.  

However, we can't talk about confidence with our kids without talking about our own self-confidence, because that's something that gets passed along to our kids as well. So I love this conversation that we had, I had with Amanda because she gave some really great tactile, you know, strategies that we can start to apply right now, specifically the three P's that she talks about at the end of the podcast episode. And you kind of get to see it in action. She gave me a little bit of coaching with one of my kids and something that we're dealing with in the realm of sports and mental performance towards the end of the episode as well. So this is such a fun episode. I really hope that you take the time to listen to it. And then you can go and follow Amanda. She's doing amazing things in the sports world with mental performance. And I'm just so grateful to have her on the podcast.  

Amber B 02:34 

I am so excited to introduce my friend Amanda Schaefer. Amanda, thanks for coming on the podcast. 

Amanda Schaefer 02:40 

Let's go. I'm so pumped. Thanks for having me. 

Amber B 02:42 

Yeah. I I am so excited when you messaged me on Instagram about what the topic we're going to start to get on. I was like yes, this is like such a good overlap between what you're really good at and what my audience really needs. And so I just thought it was brilliant and I'm super excited about the topic. But before we dive into confidence and raising our kids to be OK with themselves, I just want to give a little background, do a little introduction. Who are you? What do you do? 

Amanda Schaefer 03:07 

Yeah, I am a full-time mental performance coach and that's a fancy way of saying mindset training for athletes. I work nationwide virtually with athletes anywhere from, I think, the youngest I've worked with is 9 all the way through college. I have a couple of pros that I work with, one-on-one and my whole goal is to equip athletes with the mental side that they can let their physical side shine on game day that encompasses all sorts of skills, breathing, self-talk, visualization routines, belief shifting, all of the fancy things that we wish we would have had when we were athletes. 

Amber B 03:42 

Totally. And I want to ask you a question about how you got into this, but I I want to share just a little bit of my experience because you say like like we wish we would have this. This was one of my. Like defining experiences as an athlete in high school because my coach did that like I learned visualization from my my high school volleyball coach, we would visualize before every single game like he and he taught us how to do it, how to like, go up for the the set or the spike and like visualize yourself performing well. And so yes, I mean that was such a pivotal point for me as as just a developing young woman that I just love that this is a focus of yours. But like, how did you get into this, like, what was that transition like for you? 

Amanda Schaefer 04:21 

Yeah. So there's a lot of points in my life where it kind of lead, led to this. And I think for me, I resisted it for a long time because I was a pitching coach softball for years. I actually got into pitching coaching that side of the game in college just to make a little bit of money on the side. And my mom and my dad would always ask me, you know, how how can you teach this? How are you this confident? And I was a very dominant athlete. I was very confident in my abilities. And I remember taking and this is fast forward I started coaching. I coached travel teams. I became a head high school coach. And I was really trying to make a career out of coaching softball. Well there's not a whole lot of people that can work full time coaching softball unless you coach at a college. And so for me, it was just a side hustle, something that I didn't really take seriously. And then I took my mom to a tournament with one of the teams I was coaching and we're at the hotel in Kansas City and she brings this conversation up again of Amanda, I'm not seeing as many dominant pitchers like what, what made you so dominant and a couple years later I'm going through a couple of hardships in my life and I start Googling some of these things of how do you teach confidence? What is it? I found an article on resiliency. And it was kind of one of these aha moments of, well, if you can teach this, then I'm going to test this out. So I actually started teaching it to my high school athletes, had about 30 athletes, and we started with breathing techniques. We made it to the district tournament. One of my athletes is freaking out. We have the tying run on 2nd she's up to bat. We have to continue on it's a single elimination. She does a box breath and in her mind she had no other choice. She had to succeed, and she comes back. She hits in the the game-winning walk off double to win the game. She ended up scoring later and it was one of those moments where even I, I mean, I wasn't going to admit this to her in the moment. But she comes up to me and she goes, Coach it worked. Wow! You actually did it, and so it was this like slow burn. I actually sat on research for two years. It researched all this. I hired a couple of Masters students. I got certified. And this is when we met. I didn't actually launch my program. We have a 12-week mental skills training program. Actually, didn't launch it until two years later in the fall of 2019. 

Amber B 06:52 

So awesome. And so, I mean, it's such a great story of like seeing a gap seeing having this realization that maybe you had something that other people didn't have. And I think I think that's what's sometimes hard about our our gifts is we don't quite value them because they just come so easily to us. It's like this. This came easily to you and so turn around and being like OK, maybe I do have some natural inclination, but there probably are skills. It's a skill, right? I can teach this to somebody else. And then you ask yourself, how do I teach this? And then you test it out and then you try it out and you get some results and then you just build on top of it. And that's, I mean, it's been amazing to be able to step back and watch you kind of build the thing that you've built and and see how many people you're and how many young women's lives that you're able to really impact is, it's just been awesome. OK, so the reason that like we are here today is because I posted something on Instagram and I posted a reel and it said something like do your daughters a favor and raise them to be OK with people not liking them and that super resonate with my audience. But the question that I got over and over, it was like, OK, that's great. Yeah. Double tap, like, hurt that. And how do we do that? Right. And so you message me and you're like, Oh my gosh, I could talk on this topic for so long because it is a lot of what you do so I have my answers as to how we raise our daughters and our sons, obviously as well to be OK with themselves and not have to have other people like them. So I wonder how you would answer that question, how do we do that? 

Amanda Schaefer 08:17 

So good and I jumped right on that because I think that's the premise. A lot of what we do is we're teaching these skills. I can teach your daughter visualization. I can teach your son, you know, his routine when he steps into the box. But if you don't have that sense of self, what is that athlete taking onto the field? Who is that athlete off the field? And we just wrapped up a training called confidence camp and the biggest mistake that parents and players, not even just athletes. But the biggest mistake that we make is what are you placing your confidence in? And so often we assume my confidence is in my ability, in my talent. Either you’re talented, either you’re runner, either you're a lifter or you're not, and we know now you can train those things. You can train the talent, you can become talented if you put in the effort. And so often we're telling our athletes, go be confident, trust the process! But they don't know what that means. 

Amber B 09:14 

Sure. 

Amanda Schaefer 09:15 

So we say these things, but unless we know how, so how do I teach confidence? When you ask an athlete and get really, really curious as a parent, ask them, what are you placing your confidence in? Are you waiting for that starting position to feel confident? Are you waiting to hit your first home run and then you'll be confident and so really having that self-assessment, that first step is awareness of having that conversation. Where are you placing your confidence? Because if your confidence comes from the ADA babe from your coach, or the praise of your parents or what your teammates think of you, or if you hit the winning, running, then those things are fragile. Those things will come and go. And so if your child struggles with confidence and their confidence comes and goes, they're going to be riding that confidence roller coaster forever until they can figure out what the true definition of confidence is, which is an intense trust in oneself. 

Amber B 10:12 

OK, I like that. So an intense trust in oneself and I I think wrapped up in this conversation too that I'm I'm thinking about is like we like such a great point like we use this word all the time like just have confidence. Have confidence yourself. Like what's and how do I know when I have confidence? Right? So I think most of us have some innate sense of, like, I'm confident in this area and I'm less confident in that area, but how are we measuring confidence? How do we even know where we're at, the confidence scale I mean. Knowing that there is room for improvement in some areas, it's just such an arbitrary ethereal word, so I wonder if you have any answers as to, you know, how do we measure confidence, confidence, if that's even a thing and and like, how do we know that we are building our confidence or it's getting better, it's getting stronger, it's getting less and it's just how do we ground this into tangibles? 

Amanda Schaefer 11:01 

Yeah, I love that question. One of the things I do a lot with my one-on-one clients is profiling, so performance profile is basically saying, OK, we're going to take some of these physical skills, tactical skills, technical skills, and your mental skills, and we're going to place them on this map where you can give it a rating. So you do A through F, you could do 1 through 10, and if you can track, let's say, a skill, you know that you're working on is your hand clean. Let's say your hand clean is one out of 10. Suck it. Great. Well if you commit to the process and you trust the process, and you're going to work on this lift for the next three months in the gym, come what's 3 months from now, August, July. If I said, hey, come back to me in three months and let's rank this out of 10. How confident are you in your hand clean. And then you've created that proof in your mind. I worked on it, therefore my confidence is increased in it. It's a technical and tactical skill. I can increase that. The same thing can be said for confidence. So you can have a performance profile with confidence in specific area. So you could say what is your confidence level on the mental side with your hand cleans or just in general, what's your general confidence towards lifting or towards softball and we can kind of benchmark those and create data points so that they can look back and see. A lot of my one-on-one athletes until I point it out to them, they just expect that that progress should happen. But when they look back and they realize how far that they've come, the brain loves proof. And so if your mom and dad. You're saying, but you're amazing. You're you're my mom., you have to say that. You're my dad, you have to say. Well, what's the proof there? Look how hard you've worked. I've watched you working in the basement. I've I've seen you get up early and go to the gym at 6:00 AM, even for ourselves. If you can focus on that proof, confidence comes from preparation and confidence comes from those confidence conditioning statements of I have worked at this. I can trust my training. My confidence comes from me and my process and that you can't compare to anyone else. 

Amber B 13:02 

Yeah, that's good and and. So how do we separate out this idea of of trusting your training right, trusting the practice that you've put in and and and at the same time have it be placed in ourselves, right? Like it's like almost seems like we're still placing externally on. I guess it's something that you did so maybe that's where the overlap is, but just can you kind of speak to that like cause you said confidence is placing trust in yourself. So then when we're also placing trust in a process or our practice or our effort or whatever, can you kind of speak through how those kind of coexist together? 

Amanda Schaefer 13:34 

Yeah. So if we're going to focus on the effort side of it. When we look at confidence, confidence has to be a choice. So we mistake confidence as a feeling. Yes, you are going to feel confident, but they're going to be days you're going to show up where you don't feel confident. One of The Pioneers of mental performance, the late Ken Robeza, would always say, are you that bad that you have to feel confident to perform well?  

Amber B 13:59 

Interesting.  

Amanda Schaefer 14:00 

And what he's what he means by that is he's worked with some of the top performers in the world and we just assume that the Tom Bradys, you know Travis Kelsey's and all these studs of our generation, but just feel confident naturally every single day and they don't. We're not in their minds. And so it's a daily decision. It's do you trust the dedication of the work that you've put in? We talk about muscle memory. Do you trust your physical side and in order to do that I think you just recently read the inner game of tennis by Tim Galloway. It’s this idea that we have two minds, we have our trusting in flow state when letting the body work, the mind can be quiet and then the body can flow. The other side of that is when we become analytical, when we doubt ourselves, when we're in that ego and we want to place our confidence in those external validating things like the stats, the win loss record, our PR's, and again going back to that is if you shift to that self too and you trust your training that intends trust in oneself, then you need to start praising those things ourselves in the mirror like we need to start praising our own processes and our did I show up? Did I commit to this even when I didn't want to get up during the 6:00 AM alarm and then with our kids that's great that you got a home run. That's great that you got all A's, but what did you do to get those things? 

Amber B 15:27 

Yeah. So. It's like that's how we model that for our kids is it's not praising the outcome, it's praising what they did to get there or the commitment that they had or the effort that they exerted or whatever like that process. When we focus on that as parents, then what we're teaching our kids is that's what they should focus on. And that's what gives them confidence rather than like you have confidence if you get the A and if you don't get the A, then well, you kind of suck. I don't tell you, so we can help them to develop. Cause I think that's part of our job as as parents is to help our kids develop their inner voice and and how they're speaking to each other or to themselves over their lifetime. And so when we can model that for them, it makes a lot of sense that we can help them build their confidence, not because we tell them that they're good, right? We don't want them to build our confidence on that, but we can model for them what it looks like to say that to themselves and that's powerful. That's super awesome. 

Amanda Schaefer 16:16 

Absolutely. 

Amber B 16:17 

Okay. So I have 4 kids and they're all very vastly different and they're just innate confidence. I have a couple of kids who like are so confident and I look at them and I'm like, Oh my gosh, you have no idea. Like, you just think you can do anything and that's great. And I'm not going to, like, temper that at all. And then I have some other kids who it's like, I really have to. Like overly encourage them because they don't think they can do anything and they're really timid and it's just so interesting being, you know, born into, like, they're all born into the same family, they all have the same two parents, and yet they come out so differently with just some most innate abilities. So is there some genetic component to like confidence? And I think we've established that it is. Even if you maybe don't have that innately, it is something you can still build. But, have you seen that with your athletes? I mean, you kind of mentioned yourself that you just feel like you have a little bit more confidence. So what have you seen especially with athletes you're working in? Is there a difference? Do some people just naturally have it? And then for people who don't have it, can we help them to know that it's OK, you can still build it. 

Amanda Schaefer 17:17 

Yes, absolutely. The first thing that comes to mind is from Gallup strength Finder. We talk about balconies and basements or the bright side and the shadow side, yes, and we do a lot of I guess you could call this a profile, but we do the true colors is a personality test that we run our athletes through in the program. And this is really eye opening for parents and coaches because your athletes are going to kind of sway on these profiles or these personality tests, and if we look at the difference between introverts and extroverts, you know, Myers breaks any any of the the profiles. If we look at these tendencies and we say, OK, not everyone is going to be extroverted, we have to really break down these beliefs that I think in our culture, we see extroverts as leaders.  

Amber B 18:05 

Totally. 

Amanda Schaefer 18:06 

We see extroverts as well, they're just confident. They just have it. And what people don't see is that there's also dark sides to that. 

Amber B 18:12 

Absolutely, yeah. 

Amanda Schaefer 18:13 

So let's focus on your kids that are confident. If you're listening to this and you're like whoa, my kid is super confident. There's a 99% chance that I would be willing to bet that they struggle with perfectionism in comparison. Those are the two biggest things that come up. So even though this kid may be super outwardly confident. Their biggest and darkest demons that they'll be. You'll be sitting with them on the end of their bed. I guarantee you those conversations are going to come up where they start to compare themselves. So if we understand that part of it, if we look at the non-confident kids or I suppose I shouldn't say it that way, I should say more introverted, more quiet, you know, the workhorses. The you know, they're the ones on the mound where they're stone faced, they're Stoics. Like, what is this kid thinking? This kid doesn't show emotions. Again, there's a a dark side and a bright side to that. And if you can start to pull those out of them of. Hey, you know, I noticed you didn't get too high or too low. You just kept going at it and you never gave up and we start to praise those things. The mistake that we make. There is, we use their shyness. We use their timidness. We use their reservation as a way to kind of label them. I see this a lot with young kids. Primarily a lot on zoom, parents will unmute for their kid on our first call. We just had our first call last night and they'll say ohh so and so shy. And so you just gave them a free ticket to play into that. And So what if we just empowered our kids to look at the there's dark sides and bright sides to each of those things and evaluate well, OK, if you look at your kids that “are less outgoing”, what are their superpowers and how can you praise those? How can you shine more light onto those areas? 

Amber B 19:58 

Oh gosh, that's so good because I I mean, in our society it is like confidence is good and whatever the opposite of it, it's not good. And what you're saying is like that's not actually true. It's like there's really great things about confidence and the really there's a dark side and there's really great things about me, more, maybe stoic and there's a and there's a dark side and I think we as a society kind of do a crappy job sometimes of we only recognize the light side of one area and the dark side of the other area, and realizing that there's light and dark in both is is so powerful. There's a book, my son, who is one of the kids who kind of lacks a little bit of confidence that he was reading the book quiet, which is about introverts and extroverts, and it and it, it really speaks to like how our world is really built to like prop extroverts up as like like you said, the leaders like, it's really great to be an extrovert and the whole book quiet is on the power of introverts and how their light side. And that's been really enlightening for him to read, because as someone who struggles a little bit more with that who is a little bit more introverted. He's reading this and being like, oh, there's actually really great things about me as well, right? It's not just that, like the confident, extroverted people are are the winners of the genetic lottery. 

Amanda Schaefer 21:07 

Right. Well, actually, so your sister Cara, who works for me and is on our team, she actually pointed this out to me in a recent podcast, and she referenced, I'm pretty sure the same volleyball coach. Did you guys have the same volleyball coach? 

Amber B 21:18 

Yeah, we did. Yeah. Russ Kerwin. Like, shoutout to Russ Kerwin! 

Amanda Schaefer 21:20 

Shoutout! So the cool thing that she pointed out to me, and I think I forget this as a mental performance coach, is she made the comment that if you can learn mental skills, then everybody has access to it. So if a kid is naturally gifted or naturally talented in the piano or in baseball, or in softball, the nice thing about mental skills is that whether you're physically talented or not, anyone can learn visualization, self-talk. 

Amber B 21:34 

Yeah, yeah. 

Amanda Schaefer 21:49 

Confidence. Conditioning techniques. That kind of it was kind of a no brainer in my mind of like ohh, the way that she worded that was incredible. So shout out to Cara. 

Amber B 21:57 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think I think this the actual skills or the implementation of those, again, confidence is really ethereal. Visualization is really tactile, right? Like visualization is something I can teach you to do, and that is going to improve your confidence. You know, as an ancillary measure, but it's like I can teach you how to visualize. I can teach you how to do affirmations. I can teach you how to show up and hit the ball and do it over and practice it over and over and over again. So I think that is such a powerful, you know, differentiator. When we're talking about how, how do we do this, how do we build confidence? What about this this idea? So I think we've talked a lot about confidence in, in and of itself and in, in actions and things that you're doing. What about when we turn that back on to our experience with other people or like other people's judgments of us or other people, what they think about us? Because that is a really challenging thing for. Well, a lot of women, like, I'm not even just talking. About girls like. A lot of women still very much struggle with really caring what other people think about them and and I also want to just preface this with like there's some humanness just to it, right. We as as a human species. In order to stay in community with each other, which way is safer for us like we have to care what people think on some level, but a lot of us take it to the extreme of, like really basing all of our confidence on what other people perceive of us and what other people think. And so then when we double tap on Instagram that we want our daughters to be OK with people not liking them and that we're not even there ourselves. And then we can't. We don't even know how to teach that to us because we haven't figured that out. So what are some ways that we, as women, can if we know that this is something we struggle with, worrying about what people think about us, how can we start to do that so then we can pass it on to our daughters and our sons? 

Amanda Schaefer 23:42 

Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the most powerful questions that you can ask is. And what does that mean about me? What am I making that mean about me? 

Amber B 23:52 

That's good. 

Amanda Schaefer 23:53 

And that's a lot. That's a really powerful question that a lot of my athletes, you know, you can ask that question once, but I think the most powerful sessions that I've ever had to the point of tears. I call it the drill down method. Whether this is the correct you know, terminology for it or not, this is something that I do and you just keep asking that same question over and over again. And a lot of it comes from Neurolinguistic programming and and what does that mean and what does that mean and what does that mean? And so if you're having a conversation with your daughter, you're having a conversation with yourself. If you just keep asking that question and you get down to the core of it, either somebody is nearing back to you, something that you're already thinking about or worried about. They're nearing it back to you. 

Amber B 24:34 

Yeah, what are your deepest, darkest fears? And they're just saying it out. 

Amanda Schaefer 24:36

What are your darkest fears and they're saying it out loud or it's just absolute. It sounds silly. It's just there's no basis to it at all. And you realize, wow, I was really worried about this thing that is now really arbitrary. And if you wouldn't ask that person for advice, then why are you taking their criticism? 

Amber B 24:55 

Yeah. Yeah, it's really good. And I think at some level, as you know, as I've done my own work in worrying about what people think of me, you know, we both put ourselves out there on the Internet and not everybody loves loves you, unfortunately, is that like drilling down to like it, It's a, it's a fear of not being enough. And the fear that that makes me unlovable, right? It makes it so that I'm not worthy of love. Someone's not gonna. And I'm going to be left alone with nobody to love me because I'm not good enough. And I think for me that that has been something I've had to work through. So like, again, is that really true? Right. Does that really make me because one person didn't like my life? Does that really make me unlovable? And we were talking about this before because we were kind of catching up on business and I was making the point that so often the loudest people are the critics. The critics are super loud and the people who love you are not always just as loud, sometimes they're a lot more quiet, and so it can be really easy to focus on the few that are critics, rather than realizing if there's a few critics, there's a lot of people who are like the silent majority who actually really appreciate what you do , so I don't know that that actually makes a difference because I'm still caring about what people think. 

Amanda Schaefer 26:08 

But here's here's a different I know that you love analogy, so maybe we'll we'll talk about it in the form of analogy. One of the trainings that we do is buckets and so they've done studies. There's actually four different buckets of your support system. And so there's tangible bucket, you know. Like the physical. So you show up to the gym. Where's my jump rope? That's tangible support. Obviously, you're gonna get that from different people in your support system. Then we have informational support so you know what's my workout is Amber going to give me my workout today. That's information. We have an 8:00 AM game, whatever those information buckets are. And typically those people that provide those buckets are our teachers, our coaches, our parents. Whatever fills those buckets. And then we have emotional is, you know, I love you no matter what. I'm proud of you no matter what. And then you have a steam bucket, which is kind of typically seen as our confidence bucket. And so who are we asking to fill those buckets? And the biggest mistake that we make is we mix those two sides where we're waiting for our coach to praise us. We're waiting for everybody else on social media to praise us. And if those aren't actively in your support system, why do you want them to fill those buckets, let alone kick that bucket over? They have to protect those buckets. And so if you look at your confidence bucket and your love bucket, we need those from parents. And so if you're going to give that to somebody on social media, we have to cover those buckets, you know, and we can fill those love and esteem buckets ourselves. 

Amber B 27:33 

Yeah, yeah. Or the people who like really actually know us, right? Like my husband is appropriate to fill that bucket. People whose like, opinions. I really trust because they know me. And we've developed a relationship. I'm gonna let them fill that bucket. And this is so. I love. I mean, you know me, I love metaphors. I love it. I love it, Love it, but it really makes me think of too, when we're when we're talking about buckets and who are we letting to fill fill those buckets. It it just makes it, it makes it so obvious that, like, why are you letting a stranger on the Internet fill that bucket that like they shouldn't have any, any. You know, access to in the first place and yeah, I mean I just love that it's why am I basing my lovability on someone who doesn't actually know me and who I can place my lovability on is the people who actually know me and and they're the so this this is the aha. I do think criticism is important. I do think feedback is important, right, because we can only get better. We have blind spots. We don't see it all, but I'm going to take that feedback from again my spouse, someone who knows me, my mentor, like those people are gonna give me feedback, and I'm gonna be like, oh, maybe I need to change that. Or adjust that. Or maybe I'm not great in that area, but that's very different from taking feedback from stranger on the Internet who shouldn't have access to the buckets at all. 

Amanda Schaefer 28:48 

Absolutely. Well and even asking the question. Am I asking? Let's say we we take out all the people that aren't supposed to be filling our bucket. Let's say the people that are filling those buckets, am I asking the right person to fill the right bucket? And that's a mistake. Parents. I'm going to speak to your children now because that's part of this podcast is that sometimes your kids literally just need you to fill their love bucket. They don't need more information. They don't need you to criticize their performance. They just need a hug. 

Amber B 29:15 

Yeah. Yeah, that's really good. 

Amanda Schaefer 29:18 

What bucket are you filling in for ourselves. Who am I asking to fill what bucket? 

Amber B 29:23 

Yeah. And what? What bucket is my kid asking me to fill right now? Because I do think we can hop into that like support mode of, like, what do you need? What can I do? And it's like, no, I just. I just need love. I just need you to be there and have you be a rock and like, then I can go do the things that I need to do. It's so it's so good. So you know, for parents who are like, OK, great. I have an idea of, like, building confidence. Are there any specific practices we can get started with that can help to build our children's self esteem so they can go out and slay the dragons that they want to slay, whatever those are for them in their world? 

Amanda Schaefer 29:56 

Yes, yes. So I love that you're asking this question. This is something that I teach inside of my parent programs. But I've been giving this away because I think that there's a lot of myths out there of raise your hand if you've heard of the Oreo method right, the Oreo method says you gotta sandwich the criticism. 

Amber B 30:15 

Ohh like say something good and stay in criticism and then the praise. Yeah, OK. I was like, yeah, I know this. 

Amanda Schaefer 30:15 

Between pieces of praise. It just, yeah, it just feels so cheesy to me and. 

Amber B 30:23 

Manipulative. 

Amanda Schaefer 30:24 

And I don't have teens yet. I have young kids, but I work with a lot of teens, they can see it coming from a mile away. 

Amber B 30:30 

The see through that so much. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Amanda Schaefer 30:33 

So I reworked this into what I have termed the three P method. So the three P method is, if you want your, you know any relationship really you could use this with your spouse. You could use it with your children. The three P method is we are starting with authentic praise. The first P is praise and so again, going back to the first part of this, you know interview and conversation is what can you authentically praise, that you have proof of, that you're just kind of pointing out the proof to them of the process. Even when it was hard, I saw you getting up early to workout even when you struck out. I'm really proud of you for getting back into it, whatever that authentic praise is, it's almost coming at it from a piece of curiosity. Hey, did you notice this? 

Amber B 31:22 

Yeah. 

Amanda Schaefer 21:22 

And then you're inviting them into a conversation, because now you have their ear. Then the second P is their perspective. We're still leaning into this curiosity. How can you phrase this in a question and the way that you're going to ask this is, well, what did? What did you think? Or What did you feel out there? I I genuinely want to know. I don't know the answer to this. And then as parents or even as spouses, we're taking that backseat of I literally don't have the answer and I'm genuinely curious what is your perspective? How do you think you performed? What you know, how do we recap the game for you and they'll start talking. Now, it may not be immediate after an athletic event or or in the heat of the moment, you might want to give this conversation some time, but that's going to open up their concerns. Their thought process is something that maybe they're proud of. And it might take the conversation in a whole new direction. And then the final P, and this is the most important thing, is your perspective. And it sounds like this. Well, do you want to know what I think? 

Amber B 32:26 

You have to ask first. That's so good.  

Amanda Schaefer 32:27 

And they have, they have to say yes. Or no and. And it's completely flipping it because I think the mistake that we make a lot is we just jump right in with our perspective. 

Amber B 32:35 

We just want to give our current opinion. 

Amanda Schaefer 32:38 

Yeah. This is what I'm seeing. This is what you need to fix. This is what I'm proud of and how many times have you told your son or your daughter. Oh. My gosh, you're amazing! Eyeroll, scoff, ignorance. You're just saying that because you have to.  

Amber B 32:51 

Yeah.  

Amanda Schaefer 32:51 

And so when you praise them, ask them their perspective and then give your perspective. They don't even have to know that you're doing, you know, you're kind of just, like, rolling through this conversation piece. The other tip that I have is if you can do an activity where both of your eyes are forward, think about a time where you're not making direct eye contact car rides. You know, like sitting on a couch, laying in bed right before bedtime, where both of your eyes are kind of gazing towards the ceiling. They're going to just open the floodgates of their hearts to you because you're on the same side. 

Amber B 33:24 

That's so good. OK. Will you help me with one of my children? 

Amanda Schaefer 33:29 

Yeah. 

Amber B 33:30 

Okay. So I have a child who like he is very confident and so if anything ever goes wrong in the game, it's always somebody else fault right? It's ohh and like it's the rat's fault. It's my teammates fault. It's the coach, like always somebody else's fault. And so it's a really difficult experience is like when he does good. It's all him baby. But when he like when they do bad and even when he's not performing well, he never. Well, he never says anything about that. It's always he always points fingers. So as parents, how can we support him? How can we like I think self. You know again feedback is so important in in being able to grow and it's like if you can't see the things you're doing wrong, how the heck are you gonna fix them? But he just like can't go there. I don't know if it's like psychologically unsafe for him to like go there. It cracks his confidence that maybe he's not good as he thought he was. But this is something that my husband I have been really been struggling with this one child. So lay it on me. Tell me how I love my child. 

Amanda Schaefer 34:33 

Okay, I love this so much. I'm sure that you've heard of this, or at least read it, but growth mindset, it's not even called growth mindset. It's just called mindset by Doctor Dweck, and so the. But I love going back and referencing these, but one of the quotes that I wrote down is don't prove, improve and so his ego is wrapped up in proving I have to prove to myself. And so if you think about and you know that you do all this work but you're so close to it. And so if you can think about where was times in his life, where that wasn't true. And can you challenge it? And so maybe you could ask him, is it baseball? 

Amber B 35:11 

It's basketball. 

Amanda Schaefer 35:12 

Basketball. OK, you said ref. OK, making that connection now. So if you think about a time where in basketball can you work on and again using the three P method without challenging him on those direct times where he is blaming find those moments where he is doing it right and condition him to place his confidence in those moments of when was he in a flow state, when was he taking ownership of his game, when was he not blaming. And if he's going to take credit for those moments, then when you have a future conversation in the moment where he is blaming, you can take that conversation. And you can say OK, but remember that conversation we had last week, are those two the same situation? Because if you're going to take credit when you're successful, failure is your greatest teacher. 

Amber B 36:02 

Yes. 

Amanda Schaefer 36:03 

And so let's look at this. This is a safe place, and let's just let's just clear the air. Dude, I love you no matter what. Yeah. Do you know this? Do you know that I'm proud of you no matter what? 

Amber B 36:15 

Yeah, that's so good. Yeah. And I think honestly. Like and I know this about myself. I'm not super great at praise. My integrator and I like our team needs praise like our team needs needs all these things and my kids need praise and like the people in my life need praise and it's not my go to. And so I think that's absolutely an area of growth for me that I can like. It's it's I have to like think about it and put effort into it, but I think you're right. I think making it save and that continual reminder of like I love you no matter what. This is a safe space. Yeah, like it's all I'm always a safe ground to land on. Like I'm never. I'm not gonna love you less when you lose a game and I'm not gonna love you more when you win a game like it's I can't love you anymore less. I think that's something I could do a lot better of of of making that the constant thing that is in his mind, so it is more psychologically safe to not be the best, I think it might. It probably isn't psychologically safe. He has to be the best. Right, because little bit of like youngest child syndrome as well, like having himself when he has older siblings. 

Amanda Schaefer 37:16 

So this might surprise you, but I actually resonate with what you said about it's it's hard to remember to praise because we're so we're action oriented. And so this is actually on my podcast that I thought was really incredible. If you see it say it. And this comes from Rhonda Rovell and one of her mentors. If you see it say it and don't assume and that has really transformed even in my, my direct team is if someone crushes it, I'm going to say something. 

Amber B 37:45 

Yeah, that's really good. I love that. And I I I'm working at it being more of a natural, a natural thing for me because it is so important. It is. It's so important for our psychological safety and and it's not that I don't feel that way. It's not that I don't feel like you did a great job. It's not that I feel like I love you, but it is that act of actually opening my mouth and communicating it. So it's not just like, well, of course you should just know that about me. It's like I actually said it out loud. 

Amanda Schaefer 38:11 

Right. But in the absence of communication. 

Amber B 38:14 

Yeah, people make up their own stories. 

Amanda Schaefer 38:17 

80% of the time, negativity will fill that void. 

Amber B 38:22 

Yeah, that's. I mean that's that's so good. Such a good reminder. 

Amanda Schaefer 38:26 

It hits you.  

Amber B 38:27 

Yeah. OK. I want to be better about filling that void and making it really apparent how how I think it feel. Thank you for that. Thank you for that little small coaching session for me as I care my own children.  

Amanda Schaefer 38:38 

I'm honored.  

Amber B 38:39 

Okay. Awesome. So this has been amazing. I I'm walking away with things that I'm gonna work on from this conversation. So people are like, Oh my gosh, this has been amazing. I have a child I wish I was on the podcast. And I gotta ask a question about my child to Amanda like Amber got to, how are they gonna connect with you? How they gonna find out about your programs? How are gonna get their kid, their kid involved with what you offer? 

Amanda Schaefer 39:00 

Yeah, absolutely. Well, one of the things that we have been giving away since forever for the past five years is our conversation guide, so I would love to give that to any of your followers if it's like 12 pages. We should really charge for it, but it's a journal prompt. You can use it as a journal prompt, but there's also sections in there where I do outline the three P method and it goes a little bit deeper. That's just a quick PDF. And then there's actual reflection questions and conversation starters that you can use with your athletes. And then there's a really cool the last page is finding your inner warrior. So you could literally print that out and give it to your athlete to depict who is best self and then the second thing, this is depending on when you listen to this podcast. Our social handles are @fearlessfastpitch and then soon, the summer we're going to be rebranding to Fearless Warrior. So either one of those two will get you both those links. 

Amber B 39:50 

Awesome and you're currently focused on fast pitch athletes, are you expanding to like my basketball sons? 

Amanda Schaefer 39:59 

We are. You heard it here first. I recently got hired to work with a Pro Football team and I have a client that's entering the draft. And so. It's just kind of been this, like, I really wanted a safe place for softball athletes, and that's not going away. We will always be here for softball athletes, but I think we're going to start expanding to run groups of other sports and a lot of our athletes are currently multi sport athletes. So it's a, it's a natural transition. 

Amber B 40:26 

Sure. Yeah, it makes sense. OK, well, that's awesome. And we will definitely link that up in the show notes. So if you want that PDF, go to the show notes of this episode and we'll have that link for you. Thanks, Amanda. Thanks for sharing so freely with my audience. Thanks for giving me a little bit of coaching for my children, I really appreciate it. And yeah, it's just an honor to be able to call you a friend. 

Amanda Schaefer 40:45 

Amazing. I love it so much. Thanks for having me. 

Amber B 40:49 

I hope you enjoyed that episode with Amanda. I appreciated the special coaching that she gave me. I'm definitely going to go and implement that with my child and we'll see how that can improve his experience of playing the game and his experience and his confidence as he develops as an athlete himself.  

If you're wanting to snag the bonus that Amanda referred to, you can go to bicepsafterbabies.com/325. That's where you'll find the show notes for this episode, and you can go ahead and download it there. That wraps up this episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm Amber, now go out and be strong because remember my friend, you can do anything. 

Outro

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