Episode #104: Dawn Grant

 🎙 From Practice to Peak: Mental Training Lessons with Dawn Grant 

In this episode of the Significant Coaching Podcast, Matt Rogers sits down with Dawn Grant, renowned mental trainer for professional athletes, whose clients include Olympic champions, PGA Tour winners, and elite performers across multiple sports.

Dawn breaks down the myths around mental training and hypnosis, showing how simple and practical it can be for athletes, coaches, and parents. One of her most powerful messages: raise athletes to be practicers, not just gamers—because the way you train mentally every day determines how you’ll perform under pressure.

This episode is a master class in mental performance and emotional resilience that you won’t want to miss.

👉 Learn more about Dawn and her work: DawnGrant.com

👉 Follow her on social media:

• Instagram: @DawnGrantMentalTraining
• Facebook: @DawnGrantMentalTraining
• Twitter/X: @DawnGrantMind
• LinkedIn: Dawn Grant

And don’t forget—you can grab the new Baseball, Volleyball, Basketball, and Softball Recruit’s Journals and sign up for the Significant Recruiting Launchpad classes at CoachMattRogers.com

Transcript

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So athletes that have that competitive nature, which not all humans have, they're motivated by sports and winning. So I might focus on teaching them that anger and those outbursts and that frustration is gonna take you out of the zone and out of the moment and your peak performance. But you can't just decide at a competition or a tournament on Saturday to not do that anymore. You have to learn and practice other alternatives and managing your emotions and all that on a daily basis. Welcome back to The Significant Coaching Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Rogers. You just heard Don Grant, renowned mental trainer for professional athletes. And she reminded us that you can't just show up on game day and expect to flip a switch. If you want to compete at your peak, you have to practice not only your skills, but also how you'll manage your emotions, your focus and your mindset. Dawn has worked with Olympic athletes, PGA champions. Elite performers across all sports. But what makes her remarkable is how she breaks down the myths around things like hypnosis and mental training, and shows us how practical, simple, and powerful they can be. One of the biggest takeaways from our conversation was Don's advice to raise athletes to be practicers instead of gamers. We've all used that phrase, haven't we? That means building daily habits mentally and physically that prepare you for those pressure moments. It's a shift that changes everything for athletes, coaches, and parents alike. What you're about to hear is a masterclass in mental performance before we dive in. A quick reminder, the new baseball, volleyball, basketball and softball recruits journals are now available along with the significant recruiting launchpad classes, and you can find them all@coachmattrogers.com. Alright, let's get to my conversation with Don Grand. We're gonna have a lot of learning today. I'm excited to share you with our audience. We have a lot of parents with student athletes and a lot of high school, college coaches, athletic directors that listen. Before we click record, you talked about that there's some naysayers when it comes to the mental side of sports and a lot of people just don't understand what mentor performance is all about. Fill us in a little bit. Yeah. And it goes far and broad. I personally even feel that the college hasn't caught up. So like a sports psychologist in the curriculum for sports psychology. Is not even close to what I'm doing. What I'm doing and what I then therefore believe is the true mental game is related to not only like confidence, but the quality of the thoughts worry, doubt, fear, second guessing, trying too hard. A wandering mind thinking about something else altogether. A pre, a previous whole, a previous station the score dinner, an argument you had with somebody earlier. There's so many things that could be going on mentally that take somebody out of the moment. And we could also say, takes them out of what would be the peak performance state already identified as the zone or the flow. So we can break that down in this. This interview also is if we look at what the flow is or the zones. Day we already have a predetermined kind of recipe and most people, most athletes are doing the opposite of all of these elements. So in order to, have I consider a really great mental game, you've gotta have calm presence and focus and be properly using your conscious mind and have a good, pure, subconscious that's got great mechanics in it through repetition, but also great belief systems.'cause those are thoughts. Through repetition that become habitual. And that's what we have a belief then. My experience, a lot of either people just don't believe in the mental game, which I find so fascinating'cause I'm like enthralled in it, right? So when I meet people that. Don't believe in it or don't really give it credit. I'm a bit surprised because if we just say as simply as, will worry cause you not to play well? Or will anger cause you not to play well? Or if you're still focused on a previous hole or station or stand, like most people would say, yeah, yeah, that does cause a problem. And that is the mental game. Overthinking the score being in the final. Being in the lead and trying to maintain that lead or doing a shoot off and trying to stay calm under that pressure. That's all mental game stuff. It's so interesting you talk about that because I know you've worked with a number of PGA professionals. We saw Tommy Fleetwood yesterday and has not won a PGA championship yet. He's one of my favorite golfers. I root for him every time he plays. And yesterday he gets the 16th, 15th hole. He is up by two strokes. He falls apart. Brutal. And you could just tell afterwards that he didn't have an answer for it. And I've been there, I was that type of athlete that I was really good. And then when the pressure came on I lost it a little bit. I couldn't get my focus back. Yeah. What do we say to those athletes? After a round like that, or after a game like that where they had the lead, they had everything in control, and something in between their ears, they lost their focus. What, where do we begin with that situation? Again, I feel like it's education, right? Because even at the PJ Tour Pro level, they may not totally understand the mental game, and it doesn't really matter how elite an athlete is. It does not mean that they totally have a grasp on it. I've seen that over and over again. Some of them have plowed through, some of them have been doing their sport for so long that they maybe have acquired a mental game without realizing it. But to be able to implement some mental skills in moments like that if they don't understand it enough to acknowledge my mental game's important right now, or is wavering and how to fix it and what to do about it. And then make the correction, then they'll just fall apart in a situation like that. And I think golf is a perfect example. We see it all the time on Sunday in the last holes. And I, for me, that, which, that makes golf interesting and fun to watch because I find that fascinating and funny that somebody at that level. Can still not have a strong mental game. And one of the other things is their go-to their go-to is mechanics, their go-to is, maybe changing the putter or I don't know. It's usually something physical. Oh, my elbows sore. Yeah, they, they are these go-tos. Without recognizing, again, understanding or acknowledging that there's a mental aspect and that's invisible unless you understand it and then you can start paying attention to it. And that's probably why he was like confused, right? Yeah. Where do you start? Let's put you in that situation. He's walking off the course he's signed his card and he's got 10 minutes with you before he is gotta go do something else. Where do you begin? When somebody wants something so badly loses it that they have it in their hands. What's that conversation look like? Again, that would be raising the awareness, right? So in that moment, if I had an opportunity to talk to him and he was willing to listen, it probably wouldn't be the five minutes after. It'd be the next day or something. Sure. And he would probably. I would ask him, what was going through your mind at that time? What kind of thoughts were you having? And I'll, for some people the thoughts are either they're also elusive. They're so used to thinking a certain way. It's so familiar. It's like wearing the same perfume or cologne every day. If you constantly doubt yourself or worry or regret, or, have belief systems that like, I'll never win on the tour, or I can never hold it together for an entire round whatever the phrase is. Sometimes it's so familiar that people don't even realize. So it can take a bit of me pulling, a lot of times people will say, I don't have negative thoughts, but then once I start questioning and talking to them, they're there. They just don't realize it. Another thing that they'll deny is fear. One of the PGA guys I was working with, he was in the lead moving into the final hole on Sunday. And he started having the thoughts of, if I win this, both of my college, both of my kids' college would be paid for and I could get the sports car he wanted, Austin Martin, I'd get the sports car I always wanted. And you start thinking that way. And then what, right? You can either become too cautious, too careful, you can try too hard. Those things will get in the way of mechanics. All the time. So you know, it's, it is definitely a lot more than a 10 minute conversation or an hour afterwards. It has, you have to be a willing participant to listen and then start really digging in there and start having an awareness. And in this example. That player may or may not have that awareness right now, but it would be a matter of time of working together to start paying attention to the negative thoughts or belief systems that are there, and then let's start tackling them and figuring out how to use your conscious mind better and subconsciously change some belief systems. But you're saying it's not just the negative thoughts. Sometimes it's the overly positive thoughts, I get to pay for my kids' education. I get this car, we, I don't have to worry about this debt. Sometimes that can weigh on us the positive you just as much as the negative. Yeah. Especially pj, you're talking about a million dollars and how much that can change your life and it's down to the final hole in the final shot. Yeah it's a big thing. Talk, as far as pressure. That same pro, just, at another time we were working together, he had said to me that he never looked at the score, right? He didn't wanna know score. He knew on the golf courses where the scoreboards were, and he would deliberately not look at them. And then when the, the little ladies are walking around with the scores, he'd deliberately not look. And he said that he had that pretty much under control, except when the cameras would come. And the large group groups of people would come because that was the clue. He was in the top five probably. And as soon as the cameras had come, he had fall apart. We did work around that, but mental training and some hypnosis and the hypnosis helped him change the belief around the cameras, meaning that's great. I, I gave him suggestions of. The cameras are here. I get to show the world my great mechanics and how far I've come and I love that there, that those cameras are here. Like I totally shifted the perspective for'em. I love that. Yeah. I was a college basketball coach for a long time, and for me, it, and you tell me if I was off base here, but I, for me, as a shooter. I don't want my shooters thinking about the scoreboard either. I don't want them thinking even about the moment. I want them going back to their training. I gotta jump stop. I, if I have a solid base, man I'm gonna make it. And that's where I gotta get, I gotta get to that solid base. I know when I'm solid and my feet are locked, I'm gonna make it. Is, are those the type of things you're taking an athlete through? What you're referring to again, is the mechanics, right? Yeah. A go-to. Yeah. But it is a familiar go-to. But the way that's working with the mind that's beautiful is the conscious mind can only focus on one thing at a time. It's got, it's called, back thousands of years in Eastern philosophy, it was called one Pointed Attention. The, this knowing has been around for a long time. So if you tell your conscious mind. Focus on the process and you can manage it and be a supervisor of that through that meaning stay on the process. Of course it's gonna wanna wander. It reminds me of a little puppy that hasn't had training yet. It doesn't know how to sit and heal and you're teaching it, but it like wanders off and you go, come back. Come back. That's how your conscious mind is at the beginning of, any kind of mental training. Like you, it's wandering all the time, right? So you can tell it to focus on the process and be there, there's lots of practice and ability to do that'cause there's an understanding, but actually getting it to do it. Is the next phase, right? The next step in learning and getting better. I kept thinking, I'm gonna go back to this golf tournament yesterday at the last three or four holes I kept, I don't know why my brain thinks this way, but I kept going, all right, I find this guy's caddy. What am I saying to him? So this may be a business for you. You might wanna start focusing on caddies or the relationship that the caddy and the golfer, because Yeah, I just kept going. What would I say to this guy to calm his nerves? He just hit a bad shot. He's the, one of the best golfers, one of the best strike golf strikers in the game ball strikers in the game. How do I get him back to remember that? So it's, yeah I don't know why my head went to that caddy, but I guess it's being a coach, as long as I had it, I was my player's person. I was the guy they counted on to get them back mentally on track. And I don't know if I ever did a good job of it for sure. No, I totally understand. Back in 2008, I worked with Vijay Singh and one full day I worked with his caddy because that is the person in his ear. And another thing that's popping into my mind is related to child athletes and parents. The parents are the caddy, right? So a parent needs to understand how to, be more than just the mechanics, like understanding the mind. I have like online courses for athletes and one of the things I say is that. If a parent's going to enroll or register their child for one of these online courses, like you do it too because you need to speak the same language. If the athlete is learning French and you don't know French, there is no communication there. Like you need to learn the language and what your child's working on so that you can be their caddy in any sport, not just golf, right? You can be their caddy or saying the right thing. You're not just saying. It's okay buddy. Move on. Just forget about it. That doesn't, that's not productive. It's not constructive. And that's what a lot of people will do. Or they'll get upset with, oh, you can do better than that. This is unbelievable. Which is de degrading, right? There's so many different things. But looking at things in a healthy, constructive, productive way and learning from experiences. Every miss is a bright flashing, neon sign. Of what you need to work on to get where you wanna go. But what happens instead is people get mad, they get upset, they get sad, they get angry, they get resentful. They wanna quit. They just wanna forget about it. They just wanna move on, pretend it didn't happen. And there's some mental trainers out there that will even tell them to visualize that they did it. Period. Yeah, there is some of that I teach, but there's, it's much broader than that. If it's just pretend you hit it or made it period and then move on, that's just delusional, right? That's fake. And your belief system won't even accept it, and it's not gonna do anything. You have to pull out the information like, why did I miss and not be mad about it if I continually doubt myself. And am thinking about maybe another teammate and how they maybe. And like clay shooting, you're in squads teams basically, and you take turns to go up and shoot. So if there's a, maybe a higher level, higher class shooter and that person is shooting a pair in a certain order and your plan was to shoot it in the opposite order and you start doubting yourself because that guy's higher class level and he's a better shooter, so I'm gonna do what he says. And then you don't feel comfortable, but you say pull anyways, and you try to shoot like that whole scenario. So it's really being able to be, confident with yourself and believing in yourself and not just trying to morph into what somebody else is doing. There's so many different things like that, and every personality is different, so it can play out in different ways. Like anger may be more of an issue for some people. Yeah. Yeah, it definitely was for me as a coach, as, and I worked with a sports psychologist a couple years back, and I told her, I said, I, there's too many times I'm walking outta practice or a game and I'm beating myself up because I'm like, why did I say that? Why did I handle it, that situation the way I did? And one of the things we worked on is. Take, having that situation in my head and going, okay, how would I handle it differently if that happens again? So I'm curious about that.'cause for me, I, I, there's so many families that have. Kids that play volleyball and basketball and soccer and softball that listen to this. So I don't wanna stay on golf for too long, but me as a golfer, I had a pro fif 20 years ago, tell me, here's what I want you to tell yourself. Every time you swing the club, use your arms to swing the club to the target. And it's amazing what that phrase did for me. And I try to do the same thing for my daughter who's a volleyball player, before she serves. I'll go remember your breath and find your pace. Yeah. And it's amazing what that does for her, just to remember those two things. Is it that simple sometimes for an athlete? And that's similar example to what you said before, and it goes back to that one point of attention. Yeah. And a singular focus. And the process is a good thing to focus on because it's in that moment. And the thing is there is more going on. That's a mental cue, but. Once you start throwing in other things my teammate is being nasty to me. The other side, the other team is cheating. I'm winning or I'm on a streak. Once you start throwing those things in, then it makes it tricky to focus on. Something like a process. So that's where it gets complicated. It sounds like a simple solution and it is a good solution, but you have to train your mind to be able to stay on it and to not go down these rabbit holes when these other things happen. That's really the trick. And so it sounds, it's keep it simple, stupid, the kiss thing. But it's harder than it seems because the conscious mind is. This puppy, right? Or a lot of times I think of it like a dog that's been living in the wild and all of a sudden you wanna domesticate it. So you know, depending on your age, how long has your conscious mind been living in the wild? Yeah, a long time and tell me if you're seeing this too, but with YouTube and Instagram now, there's so much coaching going on. You can get, you can go down a funnel of whether you, whatever athlete, type of athlete you are, coach, there's 25 people telling you how to. Yeah. And my worry is always there's too many chefs in the kitchen. There's too many voices in their head. Yeah. How do we, and you gotta find that person. You gotta find that person, that voice that fits you. Not, like you said, not your teammate, not the person that's maybe performing better than you. You gotta find the one for you. How do we do that? Yeah. How do we fight through the mess to get to that voice? Yeah, so you know, I have a few examples coming to my mind or analogies. I can remember 20 years ago or 15 years ago listening to golf commentators talk about you a particular pro swing. And there was almost this underlying belief that the swing ha it must be a certain way. And that one's weird and that one's wrong and they shouldn't be doing that. And then as a little bit of time, a little bit, it's time went on, there seemed to be more of an acceptance of the different swings and I don't really hear that, pointing the finger like there's something wrong with that swing. And then I've come over,'cause I own a shotgun club and so I'm, and I have a lot of clay, target, clay sporting clay's competitors as clients. They, the way that I see that over there is they will instructor hop, they'll go around the country and they'll hire different instructors. And some instructors are world champions, so they're like, oh, that one's a world champion, so I'm gonna go to that one. And that one's, in the Hall of Fame, I'm gonna go to that one. But there's all these little nuances in their techniques and some techniques are completely different than others. And of course that. Person, that instructor, that world champion, they think theirs is the right way, and what happens is this confusion. And I do feel like every body is different. And again, this goes back 15, 20 years when I was watching the golfers be ridiculed for not having that perfect stroke or something. Everybody's body is different. Everybody's flow is different as far as some people are hyper and some people are chilled out and you gotta really figure out what works for you. And I think it does help to maybe dabble just to figure out. I like that, or I don't like that. This works for me. This doesn't work for me. But be really cautious to not go to a coach. That 100% says it's my way or the highway. This is the only way. Even if it's not working for you or doesn't feel comfortable, like you've gotta move on and you've got to find somebody that you're compatible with. It's no different than any other relationship. Have somebody that respects and honors where you're at, has some expertise that they can contribute to it. But. Not think that, what they have is for every human being. I don't know how much you work with kids. I know you work with a ton of adults and professionals that are doing their thing at a very high level. Is there a difference in how we develop a 12-year-old athlete and a 16-year-old athlete, a 20-year-old athlete, and a 30-year-old athlete? Is there a difference in, in how we communicate these things? Yes and no. The no is there's no difference with. Worry is worry and doubt is doubt. And lack of confidence is lack of confidence. And fear is fear and getting overly upset and not being able to refocus. That's the same no matter what age. What I do notice is the older people get and the longer they've been. Performing, it reminds me of a really long file cabinet, right? They have all these files in there of what could happen and what could go wrong, and the how many times I've been to this event and I've never won, so they can have a lot more crud in there. But the positive. Is they have a lot more wisdom and a lot more experience, right? So then you flip to the younger and they think they have wisdom, but they don't necessarily, right? They don't have all that experience. So there's still newbies at different things. Maybe a new tournament or first time they're competing at a certain level or whatever it is. And they don't have that big file cabinet. The positive of not having that big PO file cabinet is they don't have all those fears and expectations going into something. Those preconceived ideas like, I'll never win here'cause I never have in 10 years. Something like that. They go in and that little chip on their shoulder helps'em a little bit. So it, and the other thing I've observed is the younger they are, it and this is the case for every human you have to want. Whatever it is that you're being connected with. The same with a coach or, anyway, if I talk about mental training though, it can't just be the parent wants this kid, like the parents watching this kid have temper tantrums, which we all have. It's not just kids, if they're kicking their clubs or they're throwing their ball and they're whatever, upset and sad or angry the whole rest of the night and taking it out on the dog when they get home. Like this. This happens at every age, but there has to be. The person themselves has to want to look at that and has to want to work on it. And so that to me is the only struggle with working with somebody younger is they have to want it. It can't be the parents that want it for them because again, this is all invisible, right? So the quality of somebody's thoughts is happening in their head. They have to be the one to assess it. Work on it, work on new skills, create new habits of how they think about things, and you can't just put that on somebody. So those, that would be what I would say about that. Yeah. I love that. We talk about, you hear it on TV when you're, whenever you're watching a game, there's a rookie up at the plate at a baseball game, or a rookie quarterback, or rookie kicker, whatever it may be, and the announcer will say. He may be just young enough not to know the situation he's in or she's in. My question for you is, let's go back to the file cabinet. How do we teach 12 year olds, 13 year olds, 14 year olds that are really getting into the competitive side of their sport? How do we teach them what to keep in the file cabinet and what to throw in the garbage can? Yeah. Is that an even a. An approach that we can take. I'm begging as a parent of young students, again, what I'm doing is different than even what's taught in school. So I can talk about for sports psychology. So for what I'm teaching, what I teach is life skills. They are how to use your mind to your best ability for peak performance at everything. So if you're looking to. Or you see you've got a feisty kid that gets really angry and gets really down on themselves. That's not just in sport, that's in life also. That's a character thing. And my feeling is you've got to first have the awareness and the understanding and learn about this and learn different ways, but you've gotta practice it. And a lot of times people are motivated by sports. So athletes that have that competitive nature, which not all humans have, they're motivated by sports and winning. So a, I might focus on you teaching them that anger and those outbursts and that frustration is gonna take you out of the zone and out of the moment and your peak performance. But you can't just decide at a competition or a tournament on Saturday to not do that anymore. You have to learn and practice other alternatives and managing your emotions and all that on a daily basis. So you had to learn how to do that. And then you've gotta get the repetition ahead of the tournament. No different than mechanics. You don't change your mechanics the day before, the week before an important to tournament. You have to do it ahead of time. And that is absolutely the same with the mental game. So you have to learn skills and work on your mental game ahead of time. And the practice field is life. And that's another really important thing that I teach. I can show people and teach people what to do, but you've gotta practice it daily in life. And then when you show up on Saturday, it's second nature. It's not some foreign thing you're trying to figure out how to implement. But the win-win is you're gonna have better performance in the tournament. You, you're also gonna be better in life, like having understood and managing something like anger is gonna be good for school and work and relationships and everything else. I love that. Give us a couple of things that we can do with our kids. If we're parents or coaches and we've got kids from that 10-year-old to 18-year-old range, what are some of those things that we can practice with them every day? Whether we're dropping'em off at school, we've got that five minute car ride to school, or we're picking'em a up after school. Are there things that we can do to work on those things and focus on those things? It's complicated. Again, for a parent that doesn't know French, right? But I can teach you some things like but again, most parents don't even know how to do this themselves for real, right? Yeah. Like you got a lot of parents that still have their anger outburst or resentful or regretful or worrisome or doubtful, and. It's a human issue. Yeah. So if the adult can first start recognizing, wait, I do this myself and I wanna learn how to do it differently myself. And so I'm learning as I'm teaching. And so what, what would I do different here? And the thing is let's say a child again, picked up from school, they bombed a test that day, right? It would be more like reflecting. So this would, in sports, it's what I call post segment routine. Post is after the sha, after the whole, after the round, after the event, after the station, whatever it is. A time to reflect in a constructive way. Like what? In starting with what did I do? Especially, I don't know, let's say with test taking and a kid is working on doing well and get, increasing their grades, maybe improving their grades. So maybe I did well, was I really did study a. Hard this time. Like I did take the time to study. I went in, I slept good last night. But that moment of, when I didn't know the answer is when I started getting anxious and falling apart and then I froze. So you got some positive and then some negatives. I don't even call'em negatives normally, but there, there's the information, right? Yeah, of course. There's the neon sign and so it's okay, so what can we do about that, honey? So you're telling me now that under pressure you start feeling a lot of anxiety and then you freeze. So we need to work on that. Let's. Again, I'd probably be seeking help you could Google maybe like how to breathe through anxiety, how to change your thoughts, how to redirect the mind to something more constructive. It's just easier said than done. So it's a little tricky because there are things, yeah, like breathing 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and relaxing the body all the way down, like 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. But doing that right now,'cause I'm telling you, you two is one thing, but doing it when you have practiced it over time, then it will have more effect. Yeah maybe that's the great thing is on the way to school, on the way home you're practicing those breathing techniques. A parent can take 20 seconds to say, Hey. Things go bad today. You get in a situation where you're confused or you don't have the answer or you don't know what to say. Just take that breath, it's count. Count in five. Count in out five. I love that. And I, to me I want to be more of that parent. I don't want, I don't want the drive to school and the drive home to be, a psychologist's office, I don't wanna be their psychiatrist, but I do want to be able to share tips and tools with them and provide that support. And I think most of us parents do, yeah, I think most of us parents, and you're a parent too. We wanna just, we wanna give our kids some tools that nobody gave us. Yeah, for sure. And on my social media, I actually do little 30 62nd reels with tips constantly. And that's all free too. So that would be one way that people could learn some tips. But the, pausing in a moment, another kind of human issue, not for just kids, but it's something that adults can work on and then teach their kids, is to not be reactionary, right? If we react instead of respond. There are underlying beliefs or patterns and habits that there are these knee jerk reactions. So to be able to recognize, which ones are problematic, which ones are causing the issues somebody says. You're stupid, I hate you. Does somebody, the only reason that would affect somebody is if they believed it on some level themselves. If they didn't believe it, they'd probably look over their shoulder and be like, who you? Who are you talking to? Wait, what? That's not me. But if it hits that kid and the kid's crying after school or wanting to tell you about this or ready to fight that person, that's because it's like an open wound in there and that person pushed that button. So then that's another spot of awareness. Honey, that's not true for you. And the thing is if you're noticing that those kind of words can affect you that way, then let's look at it. Do you really feel that you are a dummy and nobody likes you, or whatever the words were? I noticed that, these kids ignore me at school, so then they feel like they have evidence of it. So then it would be like, what kids do you play with? And what kids do seem to smile when you're coming over? And so you start to shift and have them focusing on the positives'cause they are there. They're there, even if it's the teacher really loves you. Did you notice how she did blah, blah, blah, blah the other day? And so it's repetition in thought that create beliefs. So if there's already a belief down in there that's negative, then it was repeated enough that it got in there in, in one form or fashion. So the old fashioned way takes 21 days to change a habit. You have to, repeat something more positive and then focus on the, the proof. People do like me. And then that can replace the negative belief or that's one of the reasons I do hypnosis because we can go in there even faster and just change the belief systems in the programming. Let's dive into that. I've been holding back, but I want, I wanna get into hypnosis with you because I'm one of those people, I'm scared to death to do it, i've seen some people that have walked away with amazing results and some people have walked away with nothing. What does hypnosis mean to you? And yeah. Why do you promote it? It's funny because it's one more thing that I'm so enmeshed in that I find it interesting that there's still people out there that don't understand it, but they've, there's misconceptions. I would say that the movies, media has probably fed into the misconceptions, right? Because it's entertaining, right? Yeah. But that doesn't mean it's truth. So the, here's the truth. First of all, meditation seems to be a little bit more wide, widely accepted nowadays. It wasn't always like that. But if it was almost like a, a hair and a. Rabbit, whatever, a rabbit and a turtle and a race or something, right? Like the me, the acceptance of meditation is a little bit ahead of the acceptance of hypnosis, but the bottom line is that the same state of mind, so they're identical in the state of mind, but so is some other things that you're super familiar with. So I like to think of a slope up here is beta and then there's alpha. Theta and delta. So if you think of like this mountain slope or whatever, beta is, when is the name that we have for measuring the conscious?'cause there's a subconscious also. This is the conscious mind. It's the conscious mind brainwave activity. That's the chatter. So if you wanna think about it with sports, that's when your mind's do this, don't do that. And oh my gosh, this is horrible. Blah, blah, blah, blah. So those are all the chefs in the kitchen? Yes. The little chatter. Okay. The analyzing. You're, doing a test and you're thinking about that you're not smart, or you know somebody's talking to you and you're not really thinking about what they're saying.'cause you're thinking about what you're gonna say back. That's all this chatter, that's beta activity. That's where we are. Most of the time in our waking state. So then again, conscious mind, not subconscious. If you relax the conscious mind a little bit, so that can be through something like a breathing technique or focusing on one thing instead of all this chatter, you can move it down into alpha. So that's a quieter, a slightly quieter conscious mind. And it's a range. It's not like a light switch. There's ranges. The range below that is theta. So in like normal terms, we would say alpha. In our life is like I was just starting to relax. Like you're sitting on the couch, you're just starting to chill out. You're not thinking about a million things. You're starting to relax. That's alpha theta is maybe you close your eyes or not, but you could be super daydreaming. But if you're closing your eyes, you're almost asleep. But you're not asleep. And so if somebody walks in. A kid walks in, a dog, walks in, a spouse walks in. You can hear them, you can, because you're not asleep, but you're super relaxed. That's the data right below that is delta, and that is what we call sleep. So you can think of this process, this slope, beta, alpha, theta, delta as the process of going to sleep. You got wide awake and you have sleep. Okay at the bottom. So not only do you pass through alpha and theta on your way to go to sleep every single time ever in your whole life because they're just measurements of conscious mind activity. When you wake up, you pass back up through them to get back to beta. Or you might hover, if you're half awake, half asleep in bed, flip flop, flopping, you're probably coming up to theta a little bit. And then going back to Delta to sleep. If you go back to sleep if you wake up and you have a hard time going back to sleep, you're probably all the way back up a beta. So this is all stuff you're familiar with. Hypno. Let's go with hyp meditation first. Meditation. Is alpha or theta, depending on how relaxed you are. You could be lightly in meditation or you can be deeply in meditation. Hypnosis is an identical state of mind, so light hypnosis is alpha, and then deep hypnosis is theta. And if I have a really tired client, like a roofer. Who's been working on a roof in 9,000 degree weather all day, he's gonna go right into Delta, right? It's hard. It's hard for me to even keep him awake. So a hypnotist gives relaxation techniques like taking a good deep breath, relax your forehead. There's all different. Things I can even make'em up, tighten your little toe and then release it, you're helping the conscious mind to focus on something, and then also it relaxes the body. So in meditation you can be, you're hovering in this half awake, half asleep hypnosis. You're hovering. Most meditation is like guided. You might be going on a little walk on the beach or through the woods, and there can be metaphors that help you with your confidence or whatever. Or there can be mantras, like repeating a word over and over again. Hypnosis just takes it to another level. So suggestions can be given to you at that time. You're not unconscious and you're not asleep. You ha you're that half awake, half asleep. So you actually hear what's being said to you and you can accept or reject suggestions. So if like your wife came in and she's. She said, from now on you're gonna take the garbage out every Friday, no questions asked. You're gonna open your eyes and be like, what are you doing? And so when somebody hires me. And we're looking to do hypnosis. If they're coming in to improve their, their golf performance under pressure on the final hole. I can give them all sorts of suggestions the same way I did with the golfer, with the cameras, right? You love playing all the way to the 18th hole. Not only that, but you are your, you are better than ever on the 18th hole, your ability to focus. Is amazing on the anti, like I could say things like that. And of course if that's what they're hiring me for, they're gonna accept that suggestion. They're not gonna open their eyes and say, why are you saying that to me if I said and. Not only are you amazing on 18th hole, but you run right off and you go to the closest bank and you steal all the money and you bring it back to me. They're not, they're gonna be like, what? So you gotta remember, you're like half awake, half asleep. You have awareness, you'll accept suggestions that. You want. And once that happens, that's where it feels miraculous.'cause we're used to trying to change things from beta conscious mind. So we're trying I'm gonna do that different, I'm gonna do it different. I'm no longer gonna eat soda, drink soda. I'm not gonna, I'm gonna exercise every Monday. All these things we try to do consciously, but we're up against subconscious programming. So it's hard and we're not used to it being easy. So when suggestions can go into the subconscious, they can be instantaneous. And that's weird to us, right? We're like, that's weird that's impossible. That can't happen. But that's literally what happens. So you have to allow yourself to relax and go on hypnosis by trusting it and being comfortable or whatever. And you have to be open to the suggestions. And if you have those two things going, it's seemingly miraculous because it goes straight into your programming. I love it. All right. I could, I'd be 100% now. Okay. With you. Hypnotizing me, Don I don't know if the guy on the street or the guy in the yellow books. I got you. I'm okay with, but yeah. The way you explained it, I'm all in now. My question is, let's go back to beta and Alpha. Yeah. I'm a coach. Are those things you're doing in Theta? Should I be doing more of those things day in and day out as a coach and the alpha and beta? Great question. And so here's the cool, and I cannot think of his name right now. I have his book out there in the other room basketball coach that would teach it was one of the high coaches he has, like Phil Jackson. Yeah, he did meditation with his Yes. With his, yeah. Yeah. With the bolt. So he was all into this, right? Yep. What was your question again? As a coach, alpha, my question is what can do alpha and beta or beta and alpha to help make that process with theta even easier? So here's what you're gonna love. I love this because, so I started I'm gonna tie it together, but just bear with me for a moment. In 2001 is when I started being a hypnotist and having a private practice by the, by three years later, I'm like, I'm not just hypnosis anymore. These people need to learn how to use their conscious mind better, or say, recreate their problems. If they're like consciously upset about something, they go back to drinking, go back to smoking, go back to sleep problem. So it became this combo. And then and then fast forward, I start working with athletes and I'm, they want the magic fix. So they came to me first for hypnosis, and then I required the mental training. So I'd have long-term results and then, and so I, and I started noticing similarities. So hypnosis clients for years, and then athletes and the hypnosis. When you come outta hypnosis, you remember you're half awake, half asleep. It's like a power nap. It is a power nap. You, it feels like time flew by. It seems like everything disappeared around you. It felt amazing. You wished it could continue. There's a bunch of different things. I started working more and more with athletes and I would ask them about the zone state. They'd go time flew by. Everything disappeared around me. I didn't even know the cameras were there. I didn't even know the crowd was there. I didn't even know I was on the last station. I could have kept going. It felt so good. I could have kept going. And so there's years of me hearing these two things and I was like, I'm onto something here. Yeah. And then five years ago, science started proving that the zone state. The flow state, whatever you wanna call it, is alpha. So they put elite athletes up to EKG machines and they measured them during their peak performance moments. And they had proven then that the alpha state, which I already said hypnosis, is alpha theta, depending on how deep you are, the peak performance state happens in alpha. But if you break it down, it makes sense. Because the chatter is the beta, right? Like you all athletes, most athletes know if they're overanalyzing, overthinking, thinking about the previous station or around, or a tournament or whole or whatever. All that chatter is not their friend. And so it makes sense. You have to quiet that part of your mind. So you're looking at alpha for a place where you can train to. And it, which goes back to training the conscious mind to quiet, which goes back to how do I weed out all of the conscious issues, worry, doubt, fear, second guess, regret, like all of those things. So you're a big believer that coaches should be doing a little bit of meditation with their kids, their athletes every day. I love that. Yeah. And not just the breathing, but the thoughts we want to have, I. The pressure situations, how we wanna feel about ourselves, how we wanna feel about our support system Yeah. And make sure we're practicing that support system. So it's real. The way that I see it is if you think of a little bridge, yeah. So you've got beta and you've got Alpha, theta, and Delta, right? So anytime if I have a client that has a problem going to sleep, I'm gonna teach them, relax the bridge, I'm gonna help them over the bridge. If I have an athlete that is overthinking or worrisome or a lot of, whatever crappy thoughts I'm gonna teach them how to bridge. Techniques to get into alpha, and since hypnosis is alpha theta, then that's called an induction into hypnosis. And if you're thinking of meditation, then that's called, I don't even know what they call it, and it's a meditation, relaxation sequence or something. There's different techniques. So that is the bridge. To go from beta alpha, but it's something again, to get better at with repetition. A lot of people who have never done meditation before or hypnosis before will say I've tried that and I just can't relax my mind long enough. Or, I've tried that and I'm too a DD for to do that, or, I've got too much going on to do meditation. I can't relax that long. But that's just, again that's the dog run running wild. They're not even trying. To train it. At that point, they're just throwing in the towel and instead, again, just like if you're training a wild animal, you have to repeat it over and over again. I'm, I was gonna say 54. How old am I? I am, I'm 54, so you know, I'm in my fifties too, so I know exactly what, how that what just happened there. I stopped counting. Yeah. My, my wife can never remember her age or how long we've been married, so I get, I'm with you. Yeah. Depending on our age, like how long has that conscious mind been running? Wild in the woods. Yeah. It's a long time for a lot of people. It goes back to, I don't know why my hand keeps hurting as the person keeps punching a wall. Why? No. You're doing this to yourself and sometimes you need that realization. I, for years I'd get home from a basketball game and my wife would be there. My kids would be there. And they go, how are you doing? And I'm going, what do you mean? How am I doing? That crowd was so big tonight and they were so mean to you. They were, and I'm like, I didn't hear a word. I didn't even realize the crowd was big tonight. I didn't, was people yelling at me? You know is so that's alpha. Yes, that is. So you were in the zone, so the zone isn't just for the person in the tournament or whatever, right? The zone is a peak performance state for all humans. So it happens with somebody maybe acting on a stage. It happens, when you're on a date. You're out on a date and the restaurant closes around you, the chairs are up and it's dark out, and you don't even realize it until you like tune back in. So Alpha is this kinda hyper-focused in that moment with this calm, cool, collected mind and everything disappears around you. So we've, we have that happen spontaneously in other different ways, but you can also train towards it and it's a human thing. It's not just. For athletes, right? One, one of my favorite movies is for the love of the game with Kevin Costner, and he's on the mound and he is at Na Yankee Stadium, and they're yelling at him and he's got this phrase that's clear, the mechanism and everything goes silent and all and all he has is that focus of him in the catcher. Nice. And I've dreamed about that for over 50 years. How do I get that? How do I make my brave do that? And I know I'm capable of it as a coach. I've done it for years and I've been in that zone as an athlete. But it's recreating it, it's teaching it, it's so hard for coaches. So I, I love the tools you're giving me, and I love the approach you take. It's hard because most people, humans on the planet doesn't matter at what degree. It doesn't matter how elite they are in sports. It doesn't matter if they're a coach, doesn't matter if they're 80. We wanna look at them as older and wiser. It doesn't mean that they know this or understand this. It's hard for even somebody at a high level, even as a coach to teach it if they don't understand it themselves. Peak performance state, again, what we wanna call the zone or the Z or flow. Is for every human on the planet and it's available to all of us. What you wanna know is that you are your own worst enemy. You are a victim of your mind right now. And not that people some people like to play victim, but it's not ideal, right? Like you wanna take a leadership role and be a manager or supervisor of your mind versus feeling like a victim of it. So if you let it just keep doing its thing, it's gonna keep running wild. And you, but the alpha state, again, it's normal. You pass through it. When you go to sleep, when you wake up anytime you're daydreamy or chilled out or whatever it all humans. Not only have access to the Alpha State, but they also have access to this peak performance state that's euphoric. That feels amazing that it doesn't even feel like it's them. To me, it's a spiritual connection even, I could take that one step further and say you, a lot of athletes will say, it didn't even feel like me. Like I was just pulling the trigger. And to me that's a connection with your higher self, your greater self, your whatever, your spirit, whatever you wanna call it. It's almost like an out-of-body experience. And so you get in your own way from that happening. That is through the misuse of your mind. Introducing. Worry, doubt, regret, overthinking over trying all of those things. So if you can imagine re eliminating these things, like pulling them out like they're weeds and doing that successfully, then the state that's remains is a natural state of peace and enjoyment and productivity and inspiration, and insight and momentum and all these great things. We have been in the flow and in the zone.'cause we've already talked for an hour, which is amazing. I know, right? John, you're fantastic. Are, do you take new clients? Is it individuals? Do you work with groups? Do you work with teams? I do all of it. But I have streamlined a lot by having online courses and other pro virtual products. So like I have an athlete mental game online course, I have a golfer, I have a clay shooting, I have success for humans. I have, a weight loss and wellness one. And then I also have a stress-free mindful living. So I have multiple online courses that take people through this process. But I have other products too, like mental training on demand and hypnosis, audios that are downloads. There are large packages that include private sessions, but I've made it so that. Yeah, I can reach millions across the planet and not have to only be doing private sessions. So well done. That's, I will pick your brain at some point if you're open to how I can do that as well.'cause that's my stress is I can only work with so many individuals at a time and I want to do more. I want to help more. Where can everybody find you website wise as social media? So my website is dawn grant.com. D-A-W-N-G-R-A-N t.com. Social media, if you just search, Dawn Grant mental training. I'm on every single social media platform, and I do wanna tell the listeners that if they go to dawn grant.com/free, that I have a page there where they can try out some of my products. So whether it's a seven week trial not a seven week. A one week, seven day trial or, different accesses to like maybe the online course for discounts and such. A free hypnosis audio, that's a download. So it's don grant.com/free and there's some goodies there. I will be trying that out this week. Don, thank you so much for doing this. You're fantastic. I'm so glad we had this conversation. And you're welcome. Again, I wish you well with all the thank you, all the help you're providing. Great convo. Thank you. That was Don Grant renowned mental trainer for professional athletes, and what a conversation it was so eye-opening. She reminded us that athletes need to be practicers, not just gamers. It's a lesson that really sticks with me. You can't wait until game day to decide how you'll handle frustration, pressure, or momentum swings. I know I needed that as an athlete and as a coach, and definitely as a parent. You've got to practice those responses daily, just like you practice your mechanics. That's how you build confidence, resilience, and true peak performance. I hope this conversation challenged you, whether you're an athlete, a coach, or a parent, to think differently about the mental side of the game, because as Don showed us, it's not mystical or complicated, it's practical, it's learnable, and it makes all the difference. Alright, before we wrap up, remember the new baseball volleyball, basketball and softball recruits journals are available now and the significant recruiting launchpad classes are open as well. You can find them all@coachmattrogers.com. Hey, thanks for listening, and until next time, stay focused, stay humble, and stay in the fight.