Mental Performance & The Importance of Breath With Grant Parr

 

In times like today, marked by uncertainty and waves of challenge, being in the best mental state as possible is critically important. Today’s guest is Grant Parr, a highly regarded mental performance coach, author, keynote speaker, podcast host and former Division 2 quarterback. Grant’s clients are Olympians, Olympic coaches, professional athletes, collegiate athletes/teams, business executives and Fortune 500/1000 sales organizations. Drawing from his work in sports psychology, Grant and host Adam Markel engage in a timely and informative conversation about the importance and role of mental performance in being at your best. Grant advocates that it all starts with the breath which allows us to be in full control of our mind and body. Learn more about this empowering technique and how it can help us endure and thrive during challenging times.

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Mental Performance & The Importance of Breath With Grant Parr

I am taking a breath and feeling how blessed it is to be able to sit in peace and quiet before we move forward. It’s such an interesting thing. There’s so much going on in our world. A lot of it is super concerning, to say the least, and a great deal of uncertainty. In the midst of all that, we still have this profound opportunity in every moment that we choose to create peace, to create a space, to be still for even a second and to feel what that feels like. It’s hardly in my experience that when I do turn my attention in that direction, I take a conscious breath, a moment to be peaceful, that it doesn’t create a mini transformation. It’s a big word but it always seems to produce that for me. It’s a miracle. I feel more that the peace inside of us is vital to how we navigate all of the discomfort, uncertainty, and disruption and any other things that we might say are part and parcel of what’s happening in the world. As well as this important chance to gain clarity, to come away with something that feels like truth.

We may not have had that opportunity, but for the fact that there has been such a shaking up of the norm and the status quo. That’s what’s on my mind as I start. When it comes to things on the mind, I’ve got a great guest to talk about what’s on the mind because Grant Parr is a highly regarded mental performance coach. He’s a keynote speaker like myself. He’s a podcast host. He is a former Division II quarterback and author whose clients are Olympians, Olympic coaches, professional athletes, collegiate athletes and teams, business executives, Fortune 500 and 1,000 sales organizations. Grant released his first book, The Next One Up Mindset: How to Prepare for the Unknown.

It’s a good title for the times for sure, which is becoming a highly regarded must-read within the athletic and workplace domains. He has taken his unique experiences, an athlete, coach and a sales leader to create the 90% Mental podcast that provides a window into a broad range of athletes and coaches mental game and where they share their insights into the journeys around mental performance. I am fascinated by this topic. Grant, I’m happy to have you on the show because mental performance is going to be one of those unsung heroes in this time that we’re living in and through. Grant, thanks for being on the show. I appreciate you being here.

Thank you, Adam. I want to thank you because of that introduction, even though that before the show, I have my routine ritual what I do before I speak with people and get on shows. It’s all about getting your breath. When you were going through that introduction, it allowed me to remind myself to get into my breath and be right here, right now and be present. I thank you for the introduction because it got me centered. I’m excited about our interview for sure.

ESPN announced they’re going to be moving up the timeline on a docuseries they created about Michael Jordan, not Michael B. Jordan by the way, for the people that may not be old enough to remember the only Michael Jordan. The greatest basketball player that has ever played the game in my humble opinion. Regardless, a great player who played on 5 or 6 championship teams that you probably know better than me, Grant, how many the Bulls won. Their coach, Phil Jackson and this is my only connection to the Bulls other than the fact that like many of us, we watched in mouth-dropping awe. It was like, “What they can pull off?” This was in the ’90s. That’s their heyday. What could they pull off? What could he pull off? What could that team pull off? Phil Jackson is the coach of that team. He was a former New York Knicks. I’m from New York.

It all starts with the breath. When you have your breath, you have your mind; and when you have your mind, you have your body. Share on X

It’s painful even to admit that I’m a New York Knicks fan. It’s brutal. There are no words anymore for us Knicks fans to describe like Spike Lee. He can create miracles. The man finally found a way to win an Oscar but he can’t somehow renew the Knicks to produce a winning team. Phil Jackson was a Knick and he became their coach. One of the things that Phil Jackson, like John Wooden and some of the other great coaches in history have been known for, is the work of the head of the getting the players in the right mindset. It’s a general question to start, Grant. I’d love to get a sense of why this work has been important to you and give us some of your background and anything you want to riff on regarding that space of the mindset importance when it comes to coaching and leading people in teams.

For me, the importance of this work and why it resonates and connects with me is that I have to deal with a lot of shit for a long time after I left the game of football. I played football for thirteen years. I was a quarterback and I had a career-ending injury. I didn’t have a chance to make the decision to leave the sport I love. It was forced on me. I was frustrated, pissed-off, and I didn’t deal with those emotions. What had happened was my injury, which was to my left hip. I had a compressed fracture and over time, it started getting worse and worse. I started to walk funny and my spine was getting affected. My emotions, psyche, confidence, and ego, all that being crushed. It led me to depression and an identity crisis. If you wanted to talk about the touchdowns that I threw, the records that I broke, I didn’t want it. I removed myself from it because I was upset about that game. I didn’t even like it anymore. In my 30’s, I couldn’t tell you that I was an athlete because I’m like, “I’m not an athlete.” Now, that I redesigned myself and reignited my warrior in me, I’m an athlete. I love being an athlete. I love being a lot of things.

It was going through all of that and having two hip replacements on the same hip before I was 40 and one of them leaving me handicap for about four years. All that adversity allowed me to get to this point to understand this work because it wasn’t until my second surgery where I did the work. I got in. I had breathwork, intentional work, gratitude work, meditation and all this stuff I started to implement within my life. As I got my life back after my second surgery, that was at the point where I’m like, “I need to reignite who I am.” I get to create a new Grant and I get to, and that’s a huge word or a statement, “I get to.” I spent two decades going, “I wish I used to be the old Grant.”

I lived in that paradigm for a long time. When I started the work, I saw what it did to me and I started to get a new view of what I wanted. That was what sparked me to go towards sports psychology and mental performance. That’s how it got me to this point. When I came into my second surgery, I started to realize that all the work that I was doing mentally, spiritually, emotionally, that was getting me prepared for the rest of my life, it energized me. It made me realize I was in a position to get to and I get to redesign and reactivate who I am. I spent a lot of years trying to be the old Grant. Now, I got to be a new Grant and more powerful, present, and purposeful.

When I got to this point of embracing mental skills and mental performance, I started to go back to my professional life as a salesperson, as a sales leader and started looking at all the things like, “I don’t live in regret, but if I can go back, do things differently, and teach people how to do things differently with their day, emotions and mindset,” and I was all for it. When I answered your question of like, “Why I got to this and how I got to this?” It’s based on a lot of my adversities that I had to deal with. I don’t regret them. I loved that I went through all that as much as it was shitty to go through all that. I’m in service now. I love what I do and I found my passion.

Let’s talk about mental performance because clearly in the time that we’re living in, probably the worst enemy that any of us can have exists right between our ears. What can we say about how it is that our minds will either be a good friend to us, maybe a great friend to us in these times, or where they could be the worst enemy that we’ve got? In answering that, maybe draw on your experience as an athlete, in working with Olympians, and the people that you work with are top performers. They don’t get to have a bad mental day. Some of these are up for the Olympics. They get this one shot to make the team. They get maybe 1, 2 or 3 shots to win a medal. It is not a lot of margins for error to have a mental bad hair day.

What’s important for athletes, for performers or anybody that wants to control all that traffic between your two ears is we’re going to have a bad day. It’s going to happen. The main thing is that we’re trying to make sure that we’re doing the right things during practice and outside of practice that we have the most control of ourselves when we are competing or when we have to perform. For me, as a mental performance coach, what is important is if you want to control the activity and the inner dialogue between your two ears are two things. It is work on that relationship with your breath. If you want to be present, if you want to be in the here and now, where your feet are, you have to have a relationship with your breath.

Also, we’re going to have a lot of positive thoughts. We’re going to have a lot of negative thoughts. We as performers, have to learn how to not listen to our thoughts, but to talk to them. We’ve got to get ourselves back into power, back into control. We have to build self-awareness with our breath that when these negative thoughts and negative emotions do arise, we talk to them and we stay in power. The way that I say it is it’s called champion talk. It’s important for performers and athletes to have that relationship with their breath and also their self-talk, the way that they connect with owning themselves in a moment. When you think about performing, the whole goal is nobody wants to fail. It’s all about succeeding.

What we’re trying to do is teach athletes to have a different relationship with failures in practice and outside of practice. When these adversities, when things do arise, when they’re competing, they have tools like knowing how to get into their breath, knowing how to talk to themselves and learning how to visualize. I’m going to stress this on the show. If you want to be gritty, mentally tough and resilient, it all starts with the breath. When you have your breath, you have your mind. When you have your mind, you have your body. That whole process happens quickly if you know how to get into your breath. To answer your question, when an athlete is competing and they start to feel the wheels are coming off a little bit or maybe their performance is not the way they want it to be, they have to get into the breath and they have to start talking to themselves to so they can stay focused on the right things.

It’s a powerful distinction you made there, Grant, which is the difference between talking to your mind and listening to your mind. Would you agree that a lot of people spend tons and tons of time listening to their mind? Can you give us a little bit of the difference because I’m learning as everybody else is reading this and hopefully learning alongside me? I’m curious, if I knew how to talk to my mind instead of listening to it, what does it do for me? How does that change the game? 

What it does is it puts you back into control and power. Typically, when you start listening to thoughts, this is what I have noticed. You’re either listening to something that just happened or you’re listening to the thought that’s going to happen. If you want to be great, if you want to be excellent, it only happens in the now. For me to talk to my thoughts, I need to get into my breath. That starts the whole process of me being self-aware and getting into now. In my whole life as an athlete and as a sales athlete, there are many times where I’ve got caught into listening like, “How shitty I was or I should have done that.” That doesn’t do me any good. I’ve lost my power. I’ve given it all to my thoughts that are in the past I have no control of. I’ve got to get back into the now with my breath so I can start talking to it. Meaning, getting back into affirmations. I am statements. I can statements. I will. Anytime you use the word or the statement of, I am, that is besides saying your name, that’s confirming your most present, authentic self in this world of saying that I am anything. I am a champion. I am a winner. I’m a husband. I’m a best friend. You’re confirming who you are at that moment.

It’s interesting because John Kehoe, I remember hearing this from him years ago. He’s an author, a thought leader, and human potential expert, I would call him. He talks about the mind as something that we can’t trust necessarily. The mind is not necessarily our best friends and he even called the mind a trickster. It’s important in this discussion when people say, “Are you telling me I shouldn’t listen to my mind? I thought self-awareness or mindfulness might be about listening.” I’m not saying based on what you’re saying that we don’t have the opportunity to listen or that there isn’t a value in listening. What I am thinking about based on what you’re saying, that is making a lot of sense to me, is that if our mind is something that is not necessarily our best friend at times, certainly. That it is, in fact, a trickster that we can’t always trust. If we’re listening to the trickster, what is that doing for us? What is it doing to us versus what you’re talking about, which is that to take the trickster out of the equation and to speak directly to the mind from a place of a deeper knowing or from the place that we know empowers us to be at our best? Am I near to the core of what you’re saying?

You are and when you think about those thoughts that we tend to listen to at times, a lot of those thoughts are based on our belief systems that were formed throughout our life. To bring it to light, to give you an authentic and vulnerable experience that my whole life, I spent maybe almost 35 years in my life thinking that I wasn’t smart enough. That was something that happened to me in elementary school and that I carried it through my whole life. When you think about all the things I’ve done in my life, I played the hardest position of all sports, all the promotions, that money, all these monetary things, but cool things. I wrote a book, got my Master’s, all this stuff. How stupid was I?

The mind is not built to focus on one thing. We need to build self-awareness with our breath and be vulnerable to the moment to talk to it. Share on X

When you think about these thoughts that come up, how many times in my life when I have an articulate, sophisticated conversation, I’m in an interview or I’m talking to someone where I hear that, “You’re stupid. You’re not smart enough. You haven’t earned the right to be at this table,” it’s all because of that belief system that I have allowed myself to hear that narrative for so long. I got to a point and I’ve done a lot to work on that narrative and now when it comes up, I’m like, “No.” I talk to it. “What are you talking about? I’m not stupid. I’m going to light this thing up. I’m here. I’ve earned it.” I’ve changed my energy with my language, but you have to train yourself to do that. That’s where you and I are talking about. You have to talk to it. You’re going to listen to it. It’s going to happen. We’re human. Our minds are not built to focus on one thing. It goes all over the place. We have to understand, build self-awareness with our breath and they’d be vulnerable at the moment to talk to it.

I want to come back to the breath. I’ll say that to remind people where you’ve taken it so far, Grant, which I love, is that when you have your breath, you have your mind and when you have your mind, you have your body. For those of you that want to connect the dots here, if you were an Olympic athlete if you were a professional athlete and how you determine success or failure and how much money do you earn? How many endorsements do you get? Pretty much everything will depend on how your body functions? How does it operate? How does it perform under some of the most intense and pressured situations you can imagine?

I know what that’s like because I was an athlete, not at that level. At another point in time early in my life, I was a lifeguard. I was a Jones Beach lifeguard and that was an intense environment to perform daily at. We were on a crowded beach with a lot of people in the water and in conditions that were often extremely challenging. We made rescues all day, every day, throughout the summer. I was there seven years and that was life and death. Forget about the gold medal, for us, if we got a silver medal on any one day, it meant that we lost somebody or somebody got hurt. Silver wasn’t good enough. Bronze, certainly not. It was gold.

Every single day on that beach gold medal meant that everybody that came in, left and we didn’t lose anybody, etc. It’s important that we get how it is that we can perform in conditions that are extreme and are difficult most often, daily. Given what’s going on in our lives, in the world, in the economy, in the global economy, etc., this is a time when performance is going to matter. That performance is something that we’re all interested in. I want to bring it back to that beginning point that you talked about regarding our breath. I get now that our mind is this grill key ingredient in terms of how our bodies will conduct themselves. The mind, because it is as you say, running on its own. It’s on autopilot and jumps all over the place. Often, it is even retracing old territory.

 

It’s going back and telling old stories about the things that we may have believed about ourselves at points because of whatever. Maybe things that other people said to us like, “You’re not smart enough. You’re unkind. You’re angry. You should stick to something you’re good at,” or whatever it is that we’ve heard all along. The mind will repeat those things to us under various conditions and in different scenarios. You go, “I don’t have to listen to that. I could instead direct it.” That is empowering to most people if they knew how they could direct their minds so that their bodies would follow. That’s where I want to come back to you, Grant, to ask you, what’s the connection between the breath and the mind and the mind and the body?

That’s where when we talk about being locked in and being fully present. It’s not just being present, it’s with our breath. It’s the whole vessel. When you get to that situation when you have a relationship with your breath when you’re met with adversity, when you’re met with the unknown, the unexpected, you can get right into that breath. You need all of it. You need your breath. You need your mind and your body to make the best decision at that moment. Whether if you’re going to use your body or not, maybe your body is more body posture. Maybe it’s the way you need to move the body, but that whole process needs to happen or it does happen quickly. You can make it quicker, depending on the relationship that you do have with your breath.

When it comes to somebody, let’s say they’re a downhill skier or they’re going to go off that jump, that insane event in the Olympics. There’s such a small margin for error in that. What are some of the things that you will work on with an Olympic athlete or a professional athlete on how it is that their breath will produce the right mindset or the thoughts that would then direct their body to be able to perform at the highest levels they’re capable of?

There’s a lot that goes to it because you want to understand how the athlete prepares? The history of the athlete going down that ramp, what they see and what they feel? You want to understand their process. When you step back from that whole process, the breath gets you in a position to get present so that you can move forward with your routine and your process. When we perform, I know there’s a lot of people that want to win. They’re results and outcome-driven. I’m not about that because we can’t control it. We can do things to position for those things to happen but we can’t control it. What I want to do is that if you’re going to judge yourself on anything with your performance, how present are you? Judge yourself on that.

 

Can you control that? When it comes to techniques or processes, when it comes to maybe a downhill skier, it’s all about getting in your breath. It’s all about visualizing. If you want to be good at anything, if you want to be an overnight success, which usually takes about ten years anyway, you have to get reps, mental and physical. Your brain doesn’t know the difference between a physical rep and a mental rep. You need to combine both. You need to get a lot of reps. There are various ways of doing visualization and you also have to develop that champion talk. Those three things are in your mantras. Those things help you to get present. The most present you can be before you go down there and when you go down that ramp, all that work is going to take you to that moment where you trust.

You trust yourself and your craft. You trust your breath. You trust how being present you are, and you do what you do. If you get into that mindset, you can lock in, then guess what happens? The most beautiful thing that happens as an athlete outside of winning that gold medal or a championship, and that’s getting into flow or zone. That’s what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to get us positioned to get totally present that if you can’t get in the zone and flow beautiful, but you can still do beautiful things with your performance without being in the zone. More often than not, when you get locked in and you get fully present, beautiful things happen like flow and zone.

Flow and zone, I know this is not an easy thing to define, but I’m going to put it to you anyway to give your definition of what that looks like. Is that purely being present or is it presence plus?

To me, it’s present plus. It’s trust. You’ve done the right things or enough things for you to trust yourself. For me, flow and zone are interchangeable. They’re words that we use a lot in performance. Also, you can be in a flow state just walking down the street. You can be locked in and be flowy, but I’m talking about more performing. It’s being present plus. It’s about trust. It’s hard for you to experience these things that happen in the zone, like things that are happening fast, but you don’t know what the hell is going on, but everything’s going right. Things are super bright, clear, and crisp. You don’t know why, but you’re doing everything right. Everything is dark and dim. You can’t hear anything but you’re doing everything right. That’s because your body is trusting itself. It’s trusting all that work, all the physical and mental reps that you put into your craft.

Maybe the plus is the trust. I’m hacking it with you. If you’re present plus, what’s the plus? You could trust yourself, but still, your monkey mind takes you out of the present moment. Even somebody who trusts themselves can make a mistake. We’ve seen the greatest athletes have bad days. How does that happen? Perhaps they weren’t there right then. They weren’t in their body. They weren’t present at that moment and they missed the shot. They one-millimeter change in direction and they miss the Olympic gold or something. This idea of those two things working together is a tactical and tangible takeaway for people to go, “I’m in the middle of this thing. We’re all in the middle of this thing that we don’t know when it’s going to end and what post-virus looks like or the bigger world around me that I’m a part of.” All of that you don’t know. What can I do at this moment to truly be in my best state, which I would call the flow state?

Being in the zone, whether you’re an athlete or not, you know what it feels like to walk down the street the way. Do you remember that movie Saturday Night Live with John Travolta? People, if they know that movie, they’re smiling because to see John Travolta in his ’70s get-up walking down the street with the Bee Gees music. It’s like, “Staying Alive.” That’s the definition of flow. He was locked in, he was present at that moment and did he trust himself, especially out on the dance floor. Being where we’re at, I can’t think of anything more beneficial to all of us than to be in our best state, that flow state. That does mean being present and also being able to trust yourself and trust in the universe, so to speak, that everything is happening as will be in our highest interest. The starting point for that for you is to be able to breathe. I don’t mean just breathe the way we all breathe unconsciously, but somehow or another to get those conscious breaths in. Those are the reps almost. Am I getting that?

Yeah and I like to add to that too because when we talk about, especially this time that we’re living in. It’s one thing to say like, “Get into your breath and talk to yourself,” but how do you do that? In some of the frameworks that I work with and created when we talk about creating the mind and body connection so we can be more present, I do have a strategy that’s called MVP. Who doesn’t want to be their Most Valuable Player? It’s Meditation, Visualization, and Powerful self-talk. What you do is work your energy down throughout your body or up through your body and get into a meditative state.

Stay in power and focus on the present. Use “I am” statements to confirm who you are at the moment. Share on X

Whatever that thing is or what you want to do or that goal, you start visualizing it and then you start putting in that talk. That’s how you start teaching yourself how to talk to yourself when you’re in that meditative state. You work your energy back throughout your body and you come out of it. That takes about 3 to 5 minutes. It could be longer or shorter, but that’s one way. Another way at the moment when you start to feel a little bit the wheels are coming off the car a little bit or you’re feeling a little nervous or scared or fearful, then you do a BVT, get into your Breath, you Visualize real quick, and then talk to yourself.

You talk to yourself back into the direction where you want to go in a positive way. MVP and BVT are some strategies that people can use. I would also say in this time, I know this is a crisis, but I always say where there’s a crisis, there’s an opportunity. How do we see that opportunity? We got to get present. We got to get into our breath. I see this as an opportunity and I’m seizing it. I feel great about the things that I’m doing. My business has stopped for the most part, but I’m keeping ongoing and I’m being creative at this moment.

Let’s go over the MVP and BVT for people again so they can get it one more time. What is the MVP?

Meditation, Visualization, and Powerful self-talk.

Those are the I am statements that you were referring to earlier. You get hit with that sudden rush of anxiety. Your body temperature rises. You start to get a cold sweat because you’re thinking about the money or some other thing. If there’s an intervention required right there, how do we intervene on our behalf then, the BVT?

It’s more of a refocusing strategy or tool. Going back to your initial image of going down that hill as a downhill skier, right before you do something like that, you take a deep breath, get into where your feet are, get fully present, see what you’re going to do quick. Say that one word, that one statement, and trust yourself. It’s no different to talk in front of tons of people. You’re going to get nervous. You’re going to be human. That’s okay. Get into your breath. Visualize how you’re going to be talking, how you’re going to move on stage, and then say that statement. Say that mantra. It’s something that, as a mental performance coach on my work, I am my work. I do this stuff all the time. To be honest with you, before I get on this show and before I get onto any other podcast, team, or company that I talk to, I always say these three things, “I get to do this, they want to hear me, and tap into your joy.” I said those three things before I was speaking to you. It’s getting into that present moment. When I can get into those three things, for me at least, I can see an opportunity. I’ve allowed myself to be comfortable, open, and joyous. That’s my favorite emotion.

As we wrap things up here, Grant, I’ve enjoyed this conversation. Resilience is a key ingredient in how the world doesn’t just recover from what’s happening but can thrive. I agree with you 100%, the ability to see and to seize opportunities and in the near term when there’s this chaos. I’m not talking about taking advantage. I want to make this clear to everybody reading. This is not about somehow figuring out how to take advantage of the chaos and a moment in our markets, a moment in the business context where things are inefficient. I’m not saying take advantage, but I am saying there are opportunities as a result of that inefficiency or the things that are upside down at the moment that we will look back on and say, “I wish I had been more proactive than. I wish I had been building my business instead of trying to protect, defend, or to be paralyzed, honestly, doing nothing or being in fear.” This is an opportunity for more inspired action at the moment. What you’re sharing with us is important for that. I want to understand what do you do on a ritual basis each day so that you’re working on creating resilience for yourself in the midst of all this? What does one of those things, one of those rituals look like for you each day?

Given what’s going on in our lives, the world, and the economy, this is a time when performance is going to matter. Share on X

It’s quick. There are a few things that I do. The first thing that I do is light a candle because I’m all about energy. I understand that I’ve spent your whole show talking about breath because that is the basis of mental performance training or mental skills training and mindfulness training. What fuels all of that? It’s our energy. The candle for me and the light is it’s a representation or a symbol of lighting my fire and because that’s why I’m here is to share my energy. My energy is my offering. I light my candle, I do gratitude work and then I put in some music on depending on my mood in the morning. That’s when I start doing my intentional breathing. After that, I’ll end up walking my dogs or I’ll come back after my dogs and do some meditation and then I’m off to work and then I do my thing. That’s my morning ritual.

I’ve got a visual already of what that candle is representing. Even thinking, “Where’s my candle?” I’m going to light my fire, like The Doors song, “Light My Fire.” I enjoyed the conversation, Grant. I know our people have. I’d love to, first of all, recommend that finding out more about Grant Parr is easy. Do please leave a review. Let us know what you think. Go to AdamMarkel.com/Podcast to leave a comment. We respond to those. We’re happy to receive them. You can even email us at Team@AdamMarkel.com. You can join us through all the social channels @AdamMarkel on Instagram, Facebook, etc. All of us are navigating this unchartered territory together. We are all explorers. We are all pioneers. The best thing that we can do in going forward in this exploration is to remember and be mindful of what Grant has shared with us.

That is to check in with our breath because when we have our breath, we will have our mind when we have our mind, we will have our bodies. That’s an integrative approach to getting in the flow and getting in that zone, this idea of presence plus, presence plus self-trust and trust as well in the universe. As we say goodbye, I’ll remind us all of the waking ritual that I’ve practiced for a few years. That is simply first to wake up. I hope everybody is keen to do that, to wake up and to cultivate a feeling of gratitude then. That’s not something you do in a gratuitous way. It’s possible to do that. You could also focus on the fact that as your waking up and being given the gift of a brand new day, that there are also people that would love to get that gift and didn’t that day. There’s something truly important and sacred about that moment.

 

Lastly, to plus what Grant shared with us, what’s the statement that you could say out loud to set the course of the day, to set the trajectory, set the coordinates for what your day is going to be like? I have a statement that I make and it is a power statement. It’s an intention and something that I want to manifest in the day. It is also recognizing that our words have great power and great meaning in terms of setting the course and also giving us a sense of our own identity. When the winds of change are blowing greatly, sometimes even those roots can get dragged up at times. The four words I say after waking and feeling grateful for that blessing, I say, “I love my life. I love my life. I love my life.” What will your words be? What statement do you want to make to grace a brand new day? That’s your choice. We’d love to hear from you and find out what some of those statements are. Grant, thank you so much for being a guest on the show. I appreciate your time, energy, and everything that you shared with us. 

This was awesome and I appreciate it. It’s been a great time to talk to you for sure.

Ciao. We’ll see you again soon.

 

Important Links

• The Next One Up Mindset: How to Prepare for the Unknown
• 90% Mental – Grant Parr’s podcast on iTunes
• Team@AdamMarkel.com
• @AdamMarkel – Instagram
• Facebook – Adam Markel

 

About Grant Parr

Grant Parr is a highly regarded Mental Performance Coach, Keynote Speaker, Podcast Host, former division 2 Quarterback, and Author, whose clients are Olympians, Olympic Coaches, professional athletes, collegiate athletes/teams, business executives, and Fortune 500/1000 sales organizations. Parr, recently released his first book, The Next One Up Mindset: How to prepare for the unknown, which is becoming highly regarded as a must read within the athletic and workplace domains. Grant has taken his unique experiences as an athlete, coach, and sales leader to create the 90% Mental Podcast that provides a window into a broad range of athletes’ and coaches’ mental game, and where they share their insights into their journeys around mental performance.