Why You Need MENTORS to Break MENTAL BLOCKS | Mikaela Shiffrin EP 497

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:12Where would you be without great coaching in your career and in your life? Nowhere. I've been really lucky with my coaches. Starting off with my parents, my first coaches in my life, they both taught me how to ski. And like I said, my mom, she's been my coach since I learned how to ski. But she traveled with me my first year in the World Cup. She still travels with me now. and she is, like, people have a misunderstanding. People go up to her and be like, when are you going to stop following Michaela around? Like, what do you do all day when she's skiing? Like, she's on the hill. She's setting, she's helping set the courses.

0:45She sets some of the courses herself. She videos. She's, like, pulling fence, setting fence. She's a ski coach. She's just employed by me, not the U.S. ski team. So people, like, have a hard time wrapping their heads around it, and some of her friends even will be like, come on, like, come hang out with me more. Michaela's fine. And they don't realize how much of an impact she has on my career. And like my mental stability and just being able to exist in Europe for six or seven months at a time without being home. Like I'm fairly familiar with most of Europe now, but you're still not home. So she's a very important coach.

1:23So what's the biggest lesson your mom has taught you? There's a lot. And this might not be the most important lesson, but pretty early on, she and my dad kind of set this philosophy that it's more fun to do things if you can do them well. And there's a way to do them well so that it's fun. And it comes with like a methodical approach and studying and learning. And this could be with school. Math is more fun when you understand it. And it takes a little work to understand it. But then it's like doing a puzzle that's actually fun. or soccer growing up with my brother. He's two and a half years older than I am, and we both, you know, we both wanted to play soccer and try out for the local travel team in New Hampshire.

2:05And it was a really good team, and we needed to practice. And my mom helped us. She got the books and some DVDs, and we would study, like, different drills and soccer moves, like, things we could learn and Maradona and all these, like, fun tricks and, like, learn how to juggle a soccer ball, like the basics of that learn how to dribble properly learn how to like then you practice working on speed you practice running technique all of those things and it was a step-by-step fundamentals we worked on that in the summer and then we'd go back to our team in the fall taylor is the cinderella story of soccer he had a growth spurt the year before he grew a foot and a half wow and he literally he like lost the ability to run and my mom brought him back she taught him how to run again.

2:52She bought him a unicycle to practice balance and all of these different things, like ways, because his whole goal was to get back on the team with his buddies. He came back and he ended up being the fastest runner on the team. And his ball handling skills were like light years improved from what they were. And his coach is like, this isn't, this is unbelievable. I've never seen something like this happen when a kid grows a foot and a half and it takes longer to get your coordination back than that. And my mom's like, yeah, well, That's what happens when you, like, work at it. Sure. But it was all fun stuff, too.

3:25Like, all summer long, Taylor and I would just play soccer together. And with skiing, it's the same. I mean, it's all, like, you learn the different skills and the fundamentals. And tennis, too. Tennis is something we love. And it's so much fun to do it when you're playing well. And it actually stinks when you're not playing well. So that's kind of our little bit of a family philosophy. and my mom just happens to be the greatest teacher that I know. She just knows how to break down movements and explain it in a way that makes sense that people can learn. Taylor and I have a joke that she will see somebody struggling on the ski hill, and someone we don't know, just like someone public just skiing.

4:07She'll see them struggling, can't make it down a trail, and she'll go over to them and help them. It's like the five-minute crash course in how to become a World Cup skier. And by the end of that literal five minutes getting down to the bottom of the trail, they're arcing turns and like enjoying it. Like this is literally the difference between people doing the sport and not doing the sport because it's brutal if you can't make it down the hill. And it is so fun if you know how to like carve some turns and you can get down. And that's like the motto of life.

4:48Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation. And I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. That will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on The School of Greatness. And if you are loving The Daily Motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

5:37Again, have an amazing day, and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.