Lorraine Huber

Flow Unleashed
Flow,

unleashed, unleashed,

unleashed.

Cameron Norsworthy
So what does it take to become a world champion? And

Lorraine Huber
that's when I started actually, really progressing. That was the biggest learning of all, the biggest, biggest, biggest learning of all. That's a big problem. You don't want to do that as an athlete. You're putting yourself in a massively vulnerable position, that was probably one of the biggest challenges that I had to learn to deal with. Otherwise I'd be like sick to my stomach. I didn't used to know that, that there are mental skills you can actually learn to be able to step up to bigger challenges and deal with pressure. That way, it's not really general knowledge in a way.

Cameron Norsworthy
Welcome to flow unleashed. I'm Dr Cameron Norsworthy, scientist and high performance coach to multiple world champions. In this show, we unpack key insights on specific topics, so that you are kept up to date with the latest science and practice of human performance.

Today's guest is World Champion Lorraine Huber, star in many ski films, and having achieved over 28 podiums and over a decade of performing at the highest level, Lorraine is without a doubt an expert in human performance, her sport is perhaps the riskiest of all skied disciplines. Trophies are awarded not just for speed, but primarily for finding the most creative way down an untouched mountainside thought with protruding rocks and Cliff edges. Lorraine not only knows what it is like to perform consistently at the very edge of peak performance, but she is also a well educated mental strength coach now helping others to eat pressure for breakfast. You may not be striving to become world champion, but we all have goals that we want to attain. We all have struggles to overcome and pressures to contend with. How we approach these challenges often dictates how we perform under pressure. In working together, Lorraine and I realized that after her many years of success on the tour, Lorraine was hitting a ceiling and stressing over success, the nerves and frustrations she felt were the same that we all faced when striving for success. What she needed was a new approach to performance, one that would unlock her potential and break through the barriers that were hindering her dreams. Join us as we take a behind the scenes, look into Lorraine's life and unpack how Lorraine radically changed her approach in order to become world champion.

Lorraine Huber
Flo unleashed. Awesome

Cameron Norsworthy
to see Lorraine. It's been a little while

Lorraine Huber
it has been Thank you for having me on the podcast.

Cameron Norsworthy
My pleasure. Often when people think of a world champion, they think of they're superhuman. They're great at everything, and everything comes easily to them. You've talked openly about not feeling confident, about being really nervous about being Escher and when in competition. Yeah,

Lorraine Huber
I did struggle cam. I struggled for years with the pressure of competition and just not being able to perform when it really mattered, and feeling so frustrated because once again, I had, like, let myself down and hadn't been able to ski my line as I planned, and also just the general experience of competition was horrible, which I think other figure out athletes can relate to. But just being so nervous, and then being stressed because I was nervous because, you know, my knees were shaking, and my stomach felt awful, and I just thought that in that state, I wouldn't be able to ski powerfully. I thought I was like, weak and jittery and, yeah, I wasn't really a very positive experience because my level of stress was too high to really say, Hey, that was such a cool challenge. Yes, it was nerve wracking, but wow, what a cool feeling. I think one of the biggest learnings I had was that even world champions can have self doubt, that you don't have to have this mental toughness and this unwavering self belief in your abilities, where you're always confident about what you can do, because I thought that's what a mentally tough athlete looks like. They never have doubt. But then I learned actually, there are quite a lot of athletes who do have doubts and anxiety and feel the pressure, but they never let that be. Be in the driver's seat. They don't let that steer the ship, that kind of fear, and they do it anyway. And then once I realized, wow, you don't have to be born this way. Oh, you can actually learn skills that can help you with that challenge, mental skills, just like you would learn any physical skills, and they're, like, clearly structured and skills you can acquire. Oh, really, that's a thing. Then I was super interested in that whole world, and I got really into it, and loved learning about it all, and so much so that I decided to do a master's degree in mental strength coaching. But I didn't used to know that, that there are mental skills you can actually learn to be able to step up to bigger challenges and deal with pressure that way. It's not really general knowledge, in a way.

Cameron Norsworthy
And what was that first mental skill that gave you that hope that you could adopt. And you went, Ah, okay, this actually works. Let's, let's dig into

Lorraine Huber
this. Well, what was the first mental skill? Wow. Well, I think visualization, actually. So the classic mental training where you visualize, in my case, how I want to ski down a mountain out of my own perspective, through my own eyes. I think that was like one of my very first mental skills that I learned. And you would be shocked, like, even in a sport like free riding, I don't think all that many athletes learn how to visualize in a really structured way, they just kind of acquire it as they go along. But it's a shame, because you can actually learn the skill in a much more professional or structured way, conscious way. But it took me ages to learn that, because I could have learnt it in much less time had I known that knowledge was out there? Took me so many comps and so many mistakes to finally kind of figure out my own little system, but I would say that was my first, my first skill. So as I leveled up and learned how to visualize better, I had this really good structure where, for example, instead of trying to visualize the whole line at once. I started with the top section. Once I had that dialed, I would do the middle section and then the bottom section. Then I knitted those together. Is just one example of how I was able to prepare better for that. But literally, it was hard, hard work, and I would often be up until 1111, 30, at night before comp day, trying to memorize everything. And because I'm a perfectionist, I wanted to make sure I knew it really, really well. And then, though the next day, I was so solid, like I knew exactly where things were and if I had to make some last minute changes, I was able to do that because I had it all memorized.

Cameron Norsworthy
Yeah, fascinating. And I'd love to talk in a little bit about that peak performance moment and the pressure and the stress of of those intense moments, but also being an elite athlete, and for listeners who don't know free ride tour, there's a whole load of lifestyle stress. You're traveling. You're living out of a suitcase. You're moving literally around the world from place to place, and you don't have a long time in each place to really get truly settled and get to know the mountain and feel as comfortable as you want to feel. And often the hotels aren't what you want them. And there's always complications. And this isn't unique to skiing that happens in other sports and international sports, but there's, I guess, a sort of a set of lifestyle skills as well as that sort of peak performance based skills. And I'm wondering what really helped you, because you were on the tour for, you know, more than 10 years, and a professional athlete for a long time. And what do you feel has really helped you sustain yourself and not only endure that high performing lifestyle, but learn to enjoy it.

Lorraine Huber
Wow. I do think that. I think it was a mindset thing. Well, we started working together cam, and I remember often speaking about this lifestyle stress and managing my energy at the events. And like you said, I always felt like I didn't have enough time to prepare my line. It was always really stressful. And then you have, like, the writers presentation, the writers meeting, and you have to do these interviews, and all the additional commitments that you had. It's not like we could just be in our. Room and analyze our lines when I learned to see all of the commotion around that as part of the challenge, like as part of the competition. So to widen my perspective of what the challenge is from just skiing this line from start to finish on the mountain, it was actually much more than that. It was managing my energy, like deciding when I'm going to start hiking up to the start, or how am I going to have breakfast? How am I going to regenerate preparing my gear, like all those little steps, which are hundreds of decisions that go into actually, then standing at the start, ready to go, and seeing that all as part of the challenge, because now you have a much more positive spin on things, because otherwise, and this always happened on the tour, by the way, like The tour was so stressful in the way that we would prepare one face, say, face a, we were scoping it already. We were chosen our lines. I'd memorize my line, which is a lot of head work, which takes energy, and then they're like, Okay, venue A's off, uh, unstable, or whatever. Maybe it got warm, and then there was a massive crust on it, or something the sun, or there was always something. Then it's like venue B. Sometimes we got to venue D, wow. And then once even we had to compete on the same day as inspecting. We got an hour to inspect, and then we had to go up to the start and perform like, now it's time to get rowdy. So I feel like the tour was such a Stress Inoculation Training for me. And if you see all of that as part of the challenge and as an opportunity to grow from that challenge, you're much more open to that change. You're like, okay, all right, bring it on. Or All right, this is part of it. I know that change is going to come. I know that all these things are very typical, so it's happening as I expected. Rather than be like, what? Oh no, like, what we we can't compete on that face, but I really wanted to, and so now you're kind of getting stuck on the fact that you can't compete on this face, that you're already prepared, whereas someone else has already moved on and is already like well into their way to prepare the next line. So that's agility, actually, if I think about it's what businesses want to be they want to be agile because their conditions are constantly changing, and having this growth mindset and a mastery approach helps you be more agile. That helped me a lot. I

Cameron Norsworthy
believe you had a you had an injury that maybe you're out for about eight months. I think in two seven or two eight that you had to come back from. And I imagine that was a similar, not necessarily set back, but teaches you to be agile. You hold on to things being how you want it to be, and then suddenly you have to literally reinvent the vision, the plan, the processes, the motivations around it, and so forth. How did that injury hinder or help you?

Lorraine Huber
Well, I would say it's a setback, an injury like that. I did my I told my ACL and my MCL in 2007 to come back from that. Physically, as a skier, really does take a lot of time, and then mentally, it took me also time, so I needed about two years to really come back from that. But what the injury did give me is it made me so much more professional and structured as a skier. Because before the injury, I was active, I skied, I climbed, I did stuff, but I never trained with a plan in the gym, with goals in mind. And after that injury, I totally got onto the professional bandwagon and learned all this stuff about how I can prepare my body to withstand the crashes that are inevitable in free writing. And I learned a ton of stuff, and it's, you know, it opened this whole world of of learning as well and getting through an injury like that. It's so important for me to have a clear plan and path ahead, like knowing exactly what the next step I need to focus on. And I I manage my injuries pretty well that way, because I was able to focus on, okay, for example, with the knee. Now we're working on really being able to bend my knee after work on getting my VMO strong again, doing all the exercises for that diet, sleeping, ah, like rehab? Is this super complex? Thing, it can be a full time job. If you can, you can easily conduct rehab like a full time job, no problem whatsoever. And you know, there's so much to learn there which will help you as a non injured person moving forward. And that really did up level my skills as well. But it was a painful learning, because at the beginning, I had no idea, and I made some stupid mistakes. I didn't have a good team around me, and it took a long time. It took probably much longer than it would have but then for my following injuries, where I did have that knowledge and I did have a team around me, I like, my rehab was super good. The problem is, if you don't have the systems in place, and that if you don't have the behaviors automated, then when life gets difficult, you just stop doing it. That's the big difference between professional athletes and your everyday guy who loves to do his sport on weekends or whatever, the professional athletes have systems and structure in place where they don't get up and think, Huh, what am I going to train today? And should I do it at the gym, or should I do it at home? And what kind of heart rate do I need to like, it's all decided. It's all on paper. All they have to do is get up, put their gear on, and the behavior becomes automated. It becomes such a habit to train, it becomes part of their DNA. And that's what is just really important for everyday people and me as well. Now not being in such a structured program like I used to with the Olympic center. I used to have a coach and all that. It's really important to integrate training as a habit and as automated behavior, rather than this grind. And you have to do it and got to be disciplined. No, you just have to have certain structures in place and develop certain habits and make it fun and easy and give yourself a reward afterwards, and even even if it's just five or 10 minutes, but to have that continuity is something that I've learned is way more important than it being perfect and this awesome one hour one and a half hour strength workout, the continuity is just so, so key.

Cameron Norsworthy
Thanks for tuning in. If you like what you hear, please hit the follow or subscribe button on the device that you're listening to this on hitting subscribe is the best way you can support the show. It is the one and only favor that I would like to ask from you, it helps others to find the show and supports us in making many more pods for you to enjoy. Okay, let's get back to the pod. Yeah, I'm really glad you brought that up, because even with when we apply mental skills or we look to insert change, you'd like take mindfulness, for example, you know, I spent some time with the Brahma Kumaris, which is a group of monks, and they had this discipline of using mindfulness for 60 seconds every hour, as opposed to these sort of long meditations, or these long periods where we might do At the beginning of the day, do the checklist feel like we've nailed it, and then go live a completely different life? It was this continuation of just constantly, just seeping it in, seeping it in, and it becomes more of a habit, more of a way of operating. And I think so many people listening, and you know, myself included, we, we struggle with that discipline, we often know what we want, or we know what we need to do, but it's doing it day in and day out. And often, I kind of reflect on it, and I think, well, sometimes it's just a choice, you know, where every day, every minute, every hour with we have choices in front of us and what we choose. You know, are we really in control of our choices, or are our kind of automated avoidant patterns or anything else taking over? And other times, it's about being in the right environment, you know, having that tribe that motivate you and and you know you want to go along because you're going to laugh and you're going to have fun and you're going to meet friends and that kind of stuff. What do you feel has been really helpful for you to insert those habits you talked about. I

Lorraine Huber
just want to say something about your point with that tribe, like as a mum, the only way I can train this is something I figured out, because first I sought out the mums group, where they fit for mom. They meet, you, run around, you do these exercises with other moms. I thought that was awesome, because I'd have the social aspect. But really I didn't have it, because we were all sweating our heads off anyway. And then I try Pilates, because I was like, No, I need that structure. I need, like, a place and a time where I go. So, but that didn't work for me either, because here at home, my husband travels a lot, and then if he's gone, I can't go to Pilates. We don't have help at home. We don't have family. So I was setting myself up for failure there, until I figured out, okay, I need a gym at home. I need a gym at home so that when my baby's sleeping, I can then train. I'm flexible, I can get it done like I just had to reduce the hurdles as much as possible, to the point where I used to train outside in the backyard. Here I live close to San Diego. Weather's beautiful. I like being outside, and I thought that was a good place, but it really annoyed me that I'd have to get the weights up there, I'd have to, like, sweep the floor. I'd have to maybe wipe down the mat and all that stuff. And then already 15 minutes was wasted. And so I now I just have this spot in the garage downstairs. I go straight down there. I don't have to move anything around. I usually when I get up, I already put on my gym gear, so that hurdles out of the way. And then when my baby's sleeping, I go down there and I do my gym work. It's 40 minutes. Typically, I can do it in a bit less as well. It's the kind of exercise where I don't have to spend 15 minutes warming up. Like, honestly, I do few movements, and then I can get straight into it. This is pretty new for me, these these movements. It's pretty exciting to to learn all this. But having something like just where every day I do something, so three times a week I do the strength, and then the other days of the week I'm running, which is also something I can do with baby. I've got a buggy. It has to be something where I can just make it as easy as possible. And running is awesome. You don't need a lot of gear. Can put her in the buggy, and we're off. So one of the things is reducing hurdles. It's really important. Another thing that you spoke of is integrating habits into identity, like I have this, like I worked out, okay, what is it that I really want to achieve with my habits? You know, our habits make up who we are, really, I experienced that very vividly, when I used to be embarrassed, when people were like, what do you do? And I was like, I'm a professional athlete. But back then, it wasn't a job, and I kind of felt weird saying it. I was always embarrassed saying it. I felt like I was an imposter. I start feeling completely stopped once I started training professionally, because I really was training like five, six days a week. I was putting in the hours. I was experiencing myself as an athlete. I was working, and I built these habits, and now I was like, you know, I really am a professional athlete. Look, I'm proving it to myself. I'm training, I'm doing all this work, and then I'll be like, Yeah, I'm a professional skier with full confidence. So that's when I realized, yeah, wow, your habits really are who you are. And if you can integrate these daily habits into who you want to become, like I want to be a lifelong athlete in the water and on the snow. And so now I'm going to every morning I do three exercises, these three mobility exercises before I get to drink my black tea, which I love. I love my tea. In the morning I do those three exercises. And if I'm really rushed, I have to do at least one. And ideally, I do them outside, so I get some sunlight through my eyes, and I take Freya with me, and we enjoy listening to the birds, so we have a nice moment as well together. And that is already like one kind of habit that I've started now, which is helping me to get back into feeling like an athlete, because being a mom and being really far away from also my community, my snow community, has been tough, and I want to reconnect with my athlete self, and so that's one of the steps that I've taken. And it's possible because I was very specific what the habit is. I chose the three exercises and I just, I didn't, I haven't got a super set time, but it's definitely going to be before breakfast and before I get my tea, because that's my reward then. And it's very easy, it's very achievable. And what I'm doing right now is just installing that and making sure I do it every single day and showing up, and then I can gradually build on that and make it a little bit more, maybe beneficial, physically or something. Now it's all about the performance. It's about the continuity. It's about building that habit, and then performance will come a bit later. Yeah.

Cameron Norsworthy
Lorraine talks about the infrastructure needed to achieve difficult goals, she's an example that becoming great is not a God given gift. We are not simply born with this or not. Whilst it may require some talent and luck along the way, it is also the result of the choices we make and the commitment thereafter, it takes hard work and discipline to achieve our dreams. Hard work will always beat talent if talent doesn't work hard. The issue for many of us is not that we don't dream big. Almost every kid imagines playing for their country or doing great things. The reason why so many don't soar to great heights once dreamt is that we get distracted along the way. Big ambitions often take time to achieve. As the road stretches out, pressures manifest and we don't always stay on course, continuing can be stressful, and most end up choosing to avoid or buckle under the pressure. Yet in search for success, there will always be stresses and hurdles to face. There will always be a million reasons why not to do it. There will always be valid excuses that justify the position to give up pivot or take a rest. There will always be more attractive and more pleasurable things to do when times get tough. But big goals wouldn't be big if they were not difficult to not drown in the difficulty and end up enduring the pressures of stressing and striving for success. There are tried and tested practices that can help us enjoy these challenges and stay on track. If we are structured enough and willing to professionalize our training and give importance to our preparations, then we can turn a stressful lifestyle into an enjoyable challenge, we can turn the very pressures that push us away from our dreams into the fuel that enable our progression. Lorraine explains how she embraced not just the main goal of performing at a best gym competition, but embracing everything associated with it, she realized that the little things are actually what keep us progressing and on track, and are just as important as the pinnacle of our dreams. By inviting the hundreds of decisions, multitude of sacrifices, the late night training and the difficulty involved in the lifestyle, she was able to remove the friction from the difficulty and distinguish the pressures and stress that otherwise takes its place. Her growth mindset and mastery approach allowed her to revel in the extra work that others might avoid or stress about, seeing it as all part of her challenge, her profession, who she was, she was able to do it more efficiently and more effectively. Lorraine and I worked to help her mind prioritize learning, growing and flowing in all her day to day duties. In doing so she enjoyed her lifestyle more, became more motivated and set herself up for success. This freedom gave Lorraine more mental bandwidth to professionalize her mental preparations. This increased structure not only made her feel even better, but gave her a system to further reduce the stresses of her high performing lifestyle and further enjoy the life she was living. This added structure gave her wings of freedom. No longer was the mind consumed with stressing over results, demands of sponsors, logistics and the duties she needed to do, as these aspects remained, the reduced pressure and stress surrounding them enabled her to enjoy the challenge before her, Lorraine created optimal habits, automated behaviors that were pre planned to help her to help sustain these habits, she worked to make them as simple as possible and remove potential obstacles in realizing habits really are who you are. She learned to take complete ownership and responsibility for her habits and training, she created internal rewards to nurture her motivation, and even learnt to identify with the habits to further motivate her participation in them day after day. In short, Lorraine teaches us that greatness is not gifted. It is earned, not by pushing harder than everyone else, but by bypassing the pressures that typically stall our efforts and committing to being the journey. See that greatness demands All right, I want to get on to before we run out of time. I want to get on before Freya starts screaming in the background.

Lorraine Huber
Don't jinx. I

Cameron Norsworthy
want to get on to performing in that pocket where the pressures on where we've been training for a long time we've or we've been leading up to a particular event, a particular point, and there is an inevitable influx of performance anxiety. You know, the brain kicks in and, and I love what you said earlier, either getting rid of the misnomer of even world champions you know, have doubts, like every human being under the sun is going to have thoughts and feelings that we don't want. It's part of it's part of being human. But that ability to sidestep that, not put our focus on that, is often the difference between people who can find their performance or people who kind of get locked into that that kind of wheel. And I picked out a couple of quotes of yours, which I've actually never heard you say, but I really like them. And one was Life begins at the end of your comfort zone. And another one was how to overcome performance anxiety is almost always intertwined with a fear of failure. Tell me a little bit more about those quotes, what they mean to you.

Lorraine Huber
So life begins at the edge of your comfort zone. It's a quote from Neil Donald Walsh, he wrote this series of books called Conversations with God, which isn't at all religious, but they really had an impact on me. And that quote reminds me that life really gets interesting when we're leaving our comfort zone, when it gets hard, when we're struggling to perform, perhaps when we feel out of our depth, that's where we can grow. You know, I think we all know this intuitively, but I love that reminder, and I love also just knowing that it's not really meant to feel comfortable, it's going to feel uncomfortable, it's not going to feel good. And that's when, you know, okay, I'm outside of my comfort zone. I'm in that growing zone, that learning zone, so I'm good, I just have to learn to tolerate it. So that's a big one for me. And then the other one the performance anxiety. So we spoke about, you know, some of the challenges in free writing, they're real, objective challenges, like navigating through this train that I've never been on before. But most of the pressure did come from within me, from inside. You know, most of the pressure was me really desperately wanting to do well and having good results, and finally, like reaping the rewards of all this hard work that I felt I had put in, and I had put in hard work, you know, yes, also wanting to be world champion and feeling like, if I don't achieve those things and everything is kind of fanat, you know, that's how I used to see it, like, I've invested so much into this career. If I can't achieve these things, if I can't get the good results, what was it all for then? Like, what was the whole point? Once I understood that I was putting myself under a lot of pressure, and I had this key moment, actually, I had this key competition that helped me realize how much pressure I was really putting myself under because I wasn't aware of it. That's the thing. I always kind of operate that way. I kind of, I guess, thought that's how you operate. That's how other people operate. But I went to this comp. It was in France. It was a qualifier, a four star qualifier, and it had snowed so heavily the day before and that day that we couldn't inspect the venue. So the plan was to go up on competition day, and we would get time to inspect the venue, and then we would go to the start and do the cop. And I had a very early start number, so I had even less time than other athletes to inspect. And so I was like, this is like, Lorraine, even if you don't do well here that, you know it's it's not on you. Like, this is really very challenging, and just do your best. So when went to inspect that morning, I was like, Okay, I'm gonna choose something super dead simple, like there was actually this man made structure in the face and like these landmarks I knew I would see. I was like, Okay, I'm gonna go from there to there to there. I didn't overthink it. I had. 10 minutes to do this. Usually you would spend half a day, ideally, and then you spend another half a day studying in with your computer like a total dog in the hotel. So anyway, I was like, Hey, I'm going to do this. This. This went up to the top. I remember going up in the gondola and just doing some breathing and actually not feeling that nervous for the first time in my life. Otherwise I'd be like, sick to my stomach, you know, just when's this gonna be over? Kind of thing, just like, I wasn't that nervous went to the start. Wasn't that nervous because I wasn't putting pressure on myself. Did the run went great, went into the finished corral, met some friends, ended up going skiing with candy thorvex all day, who's, like, the best free skier on the planet, my absolute hero. And I was having a ball, and then I went to the prize giving I find out that I won the comp. Didn't know, and I was like, wow. So if I don't put myself under all this pressure, I'm not that nervous. I can actually perform really well. That was a big eye opener for me. So now I understood, okay, there's this thing that I'm creating. It's not an external thing. I'm creating this pressure because I really want to do so well, and I realize I'm a perfectionist and I'm a super high achiever, and that I was muddling or confusing the value of my person with results, that's a big problem. You don't want to do that as an athlete. You're putting yourself in a massively vulnerable position. If you think that if you're doing well, then you're more valuable as a person, bad news. So I started separating that, separating the results that the judges give you, which are very like subjective as well, with my performance and with who I am as a person, with my value as a person. Once you have as clear separation there, you don't feel as threatened. I was very threatened. It was dangerous, danger, danger. The competitions were very dangerous, which is why I was so stressed. So now I was much more able to see it as a fun challenge. And with the work that we did together, having that construct of flow psychology, that was awesome, because now I could just focus on, okay, it's not about the results. It's not about trying to achieve this concrete result outcome, which I don't have influence over, because I don't know how the judges are going to see me and how the other competitors are going to ski. Don't know, but I can manage my own interior experience, inner experience. And so then, you know, the focus was on, okay, I'm going to ski this line. How do I want to ski it? I want to ski like, super fluidly. I'm going to focus on the feeling that I'm going to have at the takeoffs. I'm going to push off the balls of my feet. I'm going to focus on really feeling like I'm stomping my land. It's like, I made it much more process oriented. So instead of being like, Oh, I really have to get podium on this run, because if I don't podium, I'm not going to qualify for the tour next year. Now I was focusing on actual, like, physical actions, like, Okay, I'm going to prioritize going as quickly as possible, and I want to make sure I take all my jobs really smoothly and with lots of confidence. And that helped me now focus on the right things at the right time, and then the results comes. Came just as a byproduct of that like that was the biggest learning of all. The biggest, biggest, biggest learning of all is not to try and engineer results, not to focus on outcomes, but to really just focus on the process and those step by step, little decisions that you take and that you can truly influence. And then it becomes a lot more fun. I felt a lot less pressure, because now my goal wasn't to necessarily win. My goal was to challenge myself to grow and to just progress on my personal path, my personal progression. I stopped looking so much at the other competitors. You know, I used to way, way too much focus on them. And whoa. You know, what's this person going to ski? And, oh, she's probably going to do really big drops. So I'm probably going to have to do that too. Now I just could focus on, okay, what do I want to do as my next step and challenge? So last comp I did this, that already went pretty well, but that bottom section didn't go so well. Let's try and focus more on that. And so now I'm just much more focused on myself, which is also positive, because it keeps me focused on my skills, not on what the others are doing, and it brings my stress levels way down. And then also, if I do make a mistake, it's. So threatening, because I used to think, you know, if I make a mistake, I've failed, like, if I crash in the run, I'm failing. And it was all for naught, and that was a lot of pressure. But now it's like, okay, so if I crashed, well, that obviously gives me a lot of feedback. That mistake isn't failure, it's feedback. For me, what do I still need to work on? What do I work on next? Obviously, I have to just put more work into it. And so would tell me what to work on, which was really important, and I never had a coach. So for my situation was even more important. And then it just was awesome, you know, and that allowed me to then finally, really clinch the world title, although I wasn't focusing on that and learning that it's great to have goals of being world champion. I'm not going to tell anyone not to have those goals and dreams, because you have a vision, and then you know generally, where your direction is going to go. So have that. It's great, but that comes first you have this maybe Achievement Goal, and then you focus on the process goals. Okay, so what do you need to do right now? Like, what concrete actions can I focus on that will get me there? What are the skills I need, and break it down like to little, little things, and then you focus on that. That was the biggest learning of all. It's such

Cameron Norsworthy
an important learning. You know that pressure can feel so overwhelming, whether it's standing up to do a keynote talk, you're at the top of the mountain. You know, if you do a good line, you become world champion. Years of anticipation and and, yeah, you know, when we try to, I guess, dissect, like, from a scientific point of view, try and dissect pressure. It doesn't really exist, right? There's a increase in heart rates, higher sympathetic activation in our in our nervous system and so forth. But, you know, that's really just a response to this kind of like mental construct, these expectations and this sort of world that we've projected and then created quite rigid expectations or demands within. And yeah, you know, I'm always fascinated how it's ultimately a complete illusion. If you're, you know, take tennis, for example, you're serving for match point. There's no difference between that match point and the first point of the match, or a point in the middle of the match, right? There's, it's just a point, yeah, but it can feel so different, so overwhelming, so crippling, and to be able to, as you said, take away that, that anxiety, you know, most people don't actually see it as anxiety. They just sort of feel pressure, or they get tight, or they get tense, and they may not identify it as you know, underpinning all of that is this sort of anxiety response within the feeling of anxiety, which then has a physiological response, which then has a mental response, and it's all interlinked and intertwined. And I love what you said. Either I can't remember whether it was on another podcast or you wrote about it or something, but you talked about the inner coach versus the inner critic, and using that tool to be able to manage your self talk, and I guess, turns self criticism and also what I just talked about the changing the rules of that projected world, or the changing the expectations that we that we stress over. How has that grown inside you, that kind of relationship with your inner coach?

Lorraine Huber
I mentioned that I'm a perfectionist and a high achiever, so I do identify as that, but I it's also part of knowing myself, and I'm not going to all of a sudden not be a high achiever anymore, but I feel like with my experience and over the years of learning, I can recognize much faster when the critic pops up and is kind of in the driver's seat, or when another aspect of myself might be more in the driver's seat, if that makes sense. And whereas before, I wouldn't recognize it necessarily, and the critic would be like having his way and doing everything he wanted, and I'd listen to him or her all the time, and that would get me into trouble. So you know, my relationship with my inner critic and my inner coach, I'm I'm not trying to, like, Ban my inner critic from saying anything, because sometimes the inner critic is he's also, or she's also value. I inner critic is male. He's also valuable. Well, and sometimes it helps us to improve ourselves. And you know you don't want to banish your inner critic, either because then you might start becoming narcissistic or just love yourself too much, but knowing how to manage that and knowing when the inner critic is is basically starting to cripple you. Or when it's time for like, your inner courage to step up, or your inner coach to be like, no Lorraine, you've got this like you've prepared really well. You know that you always stress before a performance like this. You know you always think you're not prepared, but usually you're much more prepared than you think. And it usually goes really well, don't worry about it. You'll be just fine. And to just remind yourself of that and to know yourself Self Awareness, it really all does start with that. Otherwise, if you don't have the self awareness, you probably just forever ago, in the same patterns and circles.

Cameron Norsworthy
And now a question to you, do you need to raise your mental game? Are nerve stress or pressure getting in the way? We have found that spending a few minutes every day to build your confidence, focus and mindset can make a massive difference to your life, we've helped 1000s of professionals level up and start reveling in their challenges. It has been our privilege to support people in their endeavors, be a professional sounding board and give people the skills to be their best. Getting a flow coach is invaluable, and for many it has been life changing. We are here for you too. If you want your very own flow coach to maximize your own performance and satisfaction in life, simply go to flowcentre.org today. I love it how you just identified your inner critic as male. Then what else does your inner critic look like? The older, younger,

Lorraine Huber
my father's extremely critical of himself, which I didn't even realize so much until we spent a lot of time skiing together during covid. I didn't have a lot of commitments, and we had the ski resort to ourselves. It was just the most magical season, and I just, dad was my ski buddy, took him skiing all the time, and we did this awesome line, like, because dad doesn't get a chance very much anymore to ski steep free ride lines, like, he usually skis with his wife, and has to really tone it down a lot. And with me, he, all sudden, he said he's hadn't skied this much power and cool stuff in 20 years. So we went into this really cool line where it was really committing. It was steep at the start. You had to, like, slide in there and and then, no, I skied ahead, and then he skied and then we were at the bottom. We looked up to our tracks. And then he was like, look at that turn there. I really screwed that up. I was like, I looked at him. I was like, Dad, look where you just skied down. Like, when was the last time you skied such a steep committing line and you're focusing on that? And I was like, Oh, he's like, I'm like, him. It's like, whoa, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, sure it comes from that. And, you know, I adore my dad, and I think my sister's similar. We're both high achievers, so just knowing where that comes from, I think can be good, you know, but, yeah, I

Cameron Norsworthy
It's probably liberating, right? Because there's an acceptance there that maybe it's not all your own as well, that, yeah, choose to be something else. Yes,

Lorraine Huber
I think so. I think it is liberating to have that explanation, that understanding where does this really come from? Yeah, and that that's not something that we can necessarily influence. You know, my my dad is my dad,

Cameron Norsworthy
so, yeah, I have my inner critic, which is this, like cartoon character, sort of like an evil monkey and and it makes me laugh every time I it happens, because I can, kind of, I don't take it so seriously. I just see this cheeky, annoying monkey having its way. You know, that's also, that's

Lorraine Huber
like a Harry Potter trick.

Cameron Norsworthy
Yeah, here super helpful. Often we forget to coach ourselves, or perhaps have never known that in order to be our best, we have to be our own best coach. In learning to coach ourselves, we form the very same. Respectful and compassionate relationship with ourself that we would with an external coach we detach somewhat from our own madness and distracting patterns and give ourselves the space and the opportunity to take charge of our consciousness and change a reaction into a considered response, whether we are helping others to achieve their dreams or striving to achieve our own. Getting to know our inner critic as we would a friend, enables the opportunity to coach our inner critic. It gives us the power to optimize on the move. We can take charge of our mind in the moment to perform under pressure in the moment, Lorraine highlights the importance of approaching the performance or goal in an experiential and process orientated manner, in realizing that not putting pressure on oneself allows the freedom required To perform at our best, it can be helpful to not focus on things we cannot control, like results and outcomes. Many high achievers will naturally fuse their value as an individual, as a human being, with the results. It is why entrepreneurs feel self worth fluctuate all the time relative to the success of the business, or why athletes moods change week to week depending on results. When we put so much effort into something, the mind will naturally want to become obsessed with the results of our effort. Though this is rarely helpful, and for the most part, it distracts our moment to moment performance. Instead, Lorraine highlights how important it is to focus on what we can actually influence, focusing on our own inner experience, such as the fluidity of a move, the act of stumping her landings, and the experience of each process that makes up the performance. All her attention is then focused on the ACT, and in doing so, the expectations and comparisons that cause so much of the pressure that usually stifle our performance disappears. This focus on personal progression also enables mistakes to be viewed as fascinating feedback, often critical for future progression. The lens of failure and the stress that might otherwise surround such a response ceases to exist. Instead, we are able to self actualize in the moment and perform under pressure. And now a quick question for you, do you enjoy learning the psychology and neuroscience of human performance? Can you see yourself helping others to raise their game? Well, we have designed the ultimate course to train our coaches so that they can amplify the performance of other elite professionals, and now we are opening it up for you, too. If you want to take your knowledge and practice to the next level and become a coach, then join us on this year's ICF approved flow coach accreditation. If you want to find out whether it's the right fit for you, simply go to flowcentre.org

Thanks for tuning in. If you've enjoyed this chat and feel like giving back, please share it and subscribe. It makes a huge difference in helping others to find this pot. If you want further details about this episode, please go to the show notes. That's it for now. Keep evolving, and we hope to see you when the next episode drops. You have been listening to flow, unleashed. You