Speaker 1: 0:38

Welcome back to Speak Out. Stand Out. I'm Elizabeth Green and today's guest is Gary Chubik. Gary is a mental performance coach and he's worked with pro and college athletes, businesses, the FBI, all kinds of different organizations to build confidence and communication skills, which is what we talk about here. He does a lot of different things, but that is a big part of what we talk about here and what we're gonna talk about today. Gary, we're glad to have you. Thanks.

Speaker 2: 1:01

We talk about here and what we're going to talk about today, Gary.

Speaker 1: 1:03

we're glad to have you. Thanks for being here, thanks for having me. So, gary, you are a public speaker, but let's just back up, because one of the things that I mean our whole purpose here is to give parents strategies and skills so that we can build confidence and communication skills in our kids from home. And when we're talking about that can mean just having a conversation with a neighbor or somebody at the grocery store. It could mean being on a stage competing in debate. It can mean lots of different things, and you have a lot of experience in public speaking, even though that's not maybe necessarily the path you would have chosen. Is that right?

Speaker 2: 1:37

Yeah, very much so. I think when you focus on being a good leader in your own life and you're self-led and you try to have character, and you try to have character and integrity, and eventually leadership finds you. And so I found myself in lots of leadership positions that I didn't really ask for, but along the way you pick up certain skills. So, yeah, I have my own journey with public speaking and you know, going from an unconfident, sort of bashful, reluctant speaker to one who speaks on stages all the time.

Speaker 1: 2:10

Yeah, and you know I think I'm this. I'm the same. My background is extremely shy. As a child, I had to take a speech class, excelled at it and thanks to one teacher who built my mindset and I went on to become a news anchor, built my mindset and I went on to become a news anchor. And so you know, I think most of us and most of the teachers on my team all have that one, not maybe one teacher, but you know we all started the same. Nobody walks out of the womb ready to step on a stage and, you know, be the center of attention, right. Even if you thrive off of that, we all still have things that we have to overcome and to learn how to do it better. So let's just go back to the beginning with you. You said you were not excited about public speaking. You were a shy kid. How did you overcome that to have a career where this is what you do?

Speaker 2: 2:54

Yeah, it's pretty fascinating. First of all, I was thrust into leadership situations and situations where I needed to speak on a bigger, wider scale, and so I think just having to do it was really helpful. But I remember moments where I just felt so sick before I had to get on stage and I mean I just I didn't know what to think, I didn't know how to respond, I didn't know what to say and I didn't have a framework to be able to speak at a, you know, with a at any kind of competent level and I think't have a framework to be able to speak at any kind of competent level. And I think just doing it over and over and over again. But there were a couple of times that were significant.

Speaker 2: 3:29

I would say one of the most significant times was when I was in my mid-20s and I was studying sports psych and there was a book called the Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Galloway and I was fascinated by this book. And one of the reasons why I was fascinated with it was because I was doing a lot of reading about football and sports like football and that was kind of my sport. And so Pete Carroll, coach of the Seattle Seahawks at the time had a defensive end who really struggled with his performance. And so they had a bye week in the middle of the season and he had suggested to this player that he read the Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Galloway. It was written in 1972, one of the very first books on sports psych sort of, in the modern world. And so this player reads this book in a bye week and then comes back a totally different player in the second half of the season. All of his sacks, his hurries, his tackles just was such a significant, stark black and white sort of comparison that I thought, well, maybe that's worth me taking a look at. So I went and took out the inner game of tennis from my local library and read it and I was like, oh okay, like this is really interesting, this is really interesting, this is really helpful.

Speaker 2: 4:43

And basically the premise of the book is that the more you're relaxed, the better you play. And so the whole book was about being in the present moment, just sort of embracing the moment and just kind of relaxing and just letting your personality shine through, instead of maybe trying to communicate like somebody else might. It's just learning to be comfortable with yourself and kind of like doing two things I really think. Number one is that you're learning to trust yourself and you're just surrendering to the way that you're wired. So you surrender to the way that you're wired and you trust yourself on stage, and that to me, honestly, that's been one of the most difficult things is, when I get on a stage, do I trust myself to say and do the right thing? And that trust takes a while to build, but you can do it, and once you start succeeding at it, you kind of go oh, this is how you do it and it just took me a little bit longer than most, I think.

Speaker 1: 5:36

Well, and I think I love one of the things you said is you just you had to do it. You were thrust out there and you know we have a lot of parents that you know are concerned. They want to build these skills in their kids but they don't want to push them to a point of where they're uncomfortable. And that is the point where we grow, you know. And so sometimes we see you just have to do it. You might not do great at it, but you just have to do it, and the more you do it, the better you're going to get. Like you said, the more comfortable you're going to get with yourself, the more you're going to trust yourself. But that is not an overnight fix. So what are some skills and strategies and things that you used on yourself and that you teach other people to be able to get to that point where we can trust ourselves and not panic, not feel physically ill before we have to get on stage?

Speaker 2: 6:21

Yeah, Well, it's rather interesting. I learned an acronym, or at least like a model of speaking. That was really helpful for me. So I was a pastor for 28 years and I've still struggled being on stage even being a pastor, and so I learned this little system that was super helpful to me, that I used over and over and over again. I was really embarrassed in a way because I thought everyone knows what I'm doing, Everybody can see sort of the scaffolding that you're building to be able to make this presentation. But it was interesting to me it was nobody ever saw it. Week after week after week, nobody saw it except me. I was the one that really noticed it.

Speaker 2: 6:56

So for me it was this, it was a little wordplay it was me, we, then my topic, you and us. And if I just went through that system or that process every week, it always seemed to hit a home run. And so the very first part was was me? So I tell a story about myself or something that I've gone through or something that I, I know, and then it was like I wonder if I can get everybody in the boat. So that was the we part me, we, and then the topic. So you can unfold the topic a little bit, whether it's two points, three points, one point, it didn't really matter. And then you is like how does this affect your life and how could you use this in your life? And then the us is what would happen if we all did this? And so it's just a simple little way of just framing the entire talk and it just seemed to work week after week.

Speaker 1: 7:50

I think that is such a huge, important thing. Whenever we teach speech, writing, I always tell kids there are magic words to use, and you is absolutely a magic word, because nobody wants to be spoken at. We want to be talked to and with you know, we want to be a part of the conversation and if it doesn't affect us, quite frankly, we usually don't care, which is terrible, but that's just the way that's. That's the way we are as humans. So I love that. We, me, we topic, you, us, right, okay, I'm, I'm, I'm going to, I'm going to have to share that with our students. That's great, yeah.

Speaker 2: 8:23

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 8:24

So being prepared, obviously right, that's one of the number one things. You have to know what you're going to say, you have to know your point, you have to know who you're talking to. But even being prepared it doesn't mean that we're going to get up there and come across as confident. Even if we know exactly the words that are about to come out of our mouth, it's still a whole different thing on how we're actually doing it. So how do we overcome that we might have the greatest speech or greatest sermon or greatest pep talk of all time, but if we can't deliver it in a way that people listen, it doesn't really matter.

Speaker 2: 8:57

Yeah, it's very true, it's very interesting. So in my world, in the sports psych world, when I'm working with pro athletes, I mean people, can you know? People have all sorts of ways that they can build confidence and I don't think my way is the only way, but I always preach that there's two ways to build confidence. Number one is be prepared and number two is to prove it to yourself, because really you're the person you have to prove it to in order to earn your own trust. So let's prepare and prove it.

Speaker 2: 9:23

So the prepare piece listen, you're never going to get away with, you know. I mean you're never going to get away with preparing for a talk that you're going to do without preparation. It's just that's just kind of what you have to do. You might have gifting, you might have talent around that, you might have skill, but eventually it kind of catches up to you. So your preparation is really crucial.

Speaker 2: 9:43

And I think, in terms of preparation, if you can break everything down into small little bite pieces, like, for example, if you're in that middle part where you're talking about your topic, then you can say well, listen, can I just talk about one of my points? If there's three points, can I talk about one of those points without my notes, or is there a trigger word that I can memorize, that once I have that word memorized and then I can, my knowledge base can open up and I can talk about that more often. So oftentimes what I would do is I would look at, I would write out my messages and then I would put just one word beside a paragraph just to just to encapsulate the thought or the topic, and then I then that way, if I was talking, I could just glance down at my notes and have that word right in front of me and I would know what to say. So I think breaking it down into little, bite-sized pieces is really, really important.

Speaker 2: 10:34

And then the second thing is to prove things to yourself, which is again kind of in your preparation, where you're learning to trust yourself. So if you just share that one topic without your notes and you begin to prove to yourself that you can do it and I think if I could like go back and coach my younger self, I would just say keep proving things to yourself, keep doing that, because then you'll build your own trust. And so now, oftentimes I'll get on stage without any notes for 45 minutes, but it never used to be that way. I really had to work hard and prove things to myself and really put in the preparation time.

Speaker 1: 11:07

Yeah, and I think it depends on the situation. There are some instances where you have a very specific speech and you need to hit every single word planned, but in most scenarios that's not the case. So I love that, Just as long as you're comfortable with what you're going to talk about. The way it comes out might be a little bit different each time, but you're still getting the same message across, right.

Speaker 2: 11:28

Very much so. Yeah, and the part of the trusting yourself is just learning to talk at a certain pace, with a certain tone. And you know there is some vocal flexibility that you might need. You might speed up, you might slow down, you might use more voice inflection than others. You might, you know, put an exclamation point on some of your conversations by maybe raising your voice or dropping your voice. I mean, there's also those types of mechanisms.

Speaker 2: 11:51

But I think just giving yourself the opportunity to do those things and one of the things I found again, it was from the inner game of tennis by Timothy Galloway was just kind of slowing down. You know you can talk really fast and you can say a lot, but what I learned is that the whole purpose of communication is that something is like caught by your listener right, or by the audience. You want them to catch it. So when you say too much, they don't catch anything. It's like throwing, you know, like a thousand grains of sand at somebody and they don't catch anything, right. But if you throw a football or a ball, they can catch it. And so I had to learn that what was being caught was more important than than all the content that I think I had in my head that I could spew out and maybe somebody would just capture one thing. But I think just communicating one or two things was really helpful for me and then to slow down and just kind of stay there for a while.

Speaker 2: 12:48

I had the privilege of speaking at the Snohomish County Prayer Breakfast it was the second largest county in the state of Washington and there were diplomats know, diplomats there, there was city officials you know they're here in Seattle, you know it was about 800 people and I was the keynote speaker for that, which is like mind boggling because of where I think I've been in terms of my skill level and, you know, don't always have the most confidence or whatever. But but but it was really great. I just talked about one thing, that was it, one thing. And it's interesting to have all these conversations, residual conversations with people after that and people just say, yeah, I remember what you said and it was like a one-point talk and that was it.

Speaker 2: 13:30

And everyone seems to remember it. It's really remarkable. So yeah, it's the slowing down and really understanding that you're trying to say maybe one or two things and just kind of land there and it's okay that. That's what it is, yeah.

Speaker 1: 13:44

I 100% feel the speed thing.

Speaker 1: 13:47

I'm sure you've already noticed I am a fast talker.

Speaker 1: 13:49

In fact, whenever I was a news anchor, my dad would call me and say, slow down, because I just especially when I'm nervous or excited, you know, then I just I start talking at a much faster pace, and it's something that even I teach communication professionally and I struggle with.

Speaker 1: 14:05

So I think it's important for everybody to realize that you know there's always room for improvement and and even if you get better at it, sometimes you still have to very consciously like if I right now I'm consciously thinking about the speed and what I'm talking and how I'm speaking, and I feel like I'm talking extremely slow, but I I'm probably talking at a normal pace, but it's not normal for me. So it's just one of those things that you know there's always work to be done. We can always always improve, but how okay? So I have two questions on those thoughts, but one one is do you have any tips for slowing down, especially like you know you're excited or you're nervous and you just you just got a lot of things to say besides what you need to say. How are you mentally making yourself be a better speaker in the moment?

Speaker 2: 14:53

yeah, it is really interesting. So one of the things I notice is when I slow down, time moves faster. I know that's such a strange way to think about it, but when I slow down and I can emphasize my words or I can use voice inflection or I can tell a story that I wasn't planning on but I'll tell a story it's like giving myself time to think is actually really helpful, because I used to talk really fast as well and I thought maybe that comes across as maybe I'm exciting or I've got something important to say, and some people's microprocessor in their head like yours it just works faster and you have to try and get out all that information and you know where you want to go. So it's like good on you, like your RAM is really fast in your head, I like that.

Speaker 1: 15:37

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 15:38

And I and you know, slowing down really is a challenge and I think I did that a lot too. It was quite a challenge because I have so much to say and everything to me is like a like a mind map, like I have this topic but I could talk about this and talk about this and talk about this and talk about statistics and talk about you know a story, and like made to stick was a great book for me to read, um, because it really um, honed in on what's important when I'm, you know, preparing or crafting a message and uh, and so that was really helpful. But slowing down to be able to eat, talk about each of those things was really powerful. So I think just this idea of like okay, you need to calm yourself down before you go give a talk, and I came up with this method and it's how to perform in high-pressure environments and I taught it to the FBI, I teach it to athletes and I think it just works in so many areas of life, so I'd love to share it with your audience.

Speaker 2: 16:30

It's called CAPE, c-a-p-e. It's kind of like a Superman cape, so the C stands for control. Man cave, so the C stands for control. So like, physiologically, kind of take that deep sigh, which is a universal sign to calm down and just relax a little bit. So what we're trying to do is lower our cortisol levels, because cortisol is a neural inhibitor. It actually constricts our blood vessels. So what we want to do is have more adrenaline be the hormone that we want to activate, rather than cortisol. So it's like take that deep breath and relax.

Speaker 2: 17:01

So that's, c is control yourself, and then A stands for assess the situation. And your brain is so amazing. It processes so many things. It's remarkable. For example, if I asked you to turn around for not even one second, like if you just glance, you literally could tell me a. Even one second. Like if you just glance, you literally could tell me a hundred things about what's behind you. Like that's how amazing your brain is. So when you assess a situation, your microprocessor is working at lightning speed, so it's pretty sharp. So you want to trust your assessment. So you, you have control yourself. Assess the situation.

Speaker 2: 17:38

The P is make a plan, so you have what yourself. Assess the situation. The p is make a plan, so you have what. If the ball comes to me. You know, here's I'm going on to this particular stage, and I'm gonna. I have a plan for how I want to enter the stage, how I want to come across like you have a plan, and then e stands for execute, which has three parts trust your plan that you just made, trust your training and trust your instincts. And so everyone who goes on a stage and everyone who's an athlete, or if you're a police officer and you just made a stop, someone was speeding and you pulled them over you can do the CAPE method. So, before you give a talk, control yourself, assess the situation, make a plan and then execute.

Speaker 1: 18:23

I think that that also applies to parents, us as parents and when we're parenting, particularly in tough situations or needing to have tough conversations. I think that's a great thing that we can incorporate too into that part of our lives, not just in the professional world. But that brings me back to the other thing you said when you were talking about you could throw a thousand grains of sand and they won't catch anything, or you can throw one football and hope that they catch it, and that was also that clicked to me of ways to have communications with our kids as parents and, you know, knowing if we're going to go in and there's one message that we really need to talk with them about, if too many words will absolutely dilute that message and they're not going to catch anything. So I think that that's a great. Like I said, those are both fantastic points in the professional and the parenting world too.

Speaker 2: 19:12

Yeah, think of thoughts like calories. The more calories that you eat that you don't expend, the slower you get. You get lethargic, you get overweight. It's not helpful to you. So think of thoughts as calories. And yet when we have enough thoughts that we can expend, we actually become very efficient. So in the same way, when we're giving two thoughts to our kids about a particular topic, or maybe we want them to do something, or you're giving them advice, when you use too many words, you literally just slow them down and they become overwhelmed. So it's like pick your words wisely and just say what you have to say and then be quiet. And that's such a challenge. Like I do a lot of coaching right, and so like I'm always biting my tongue of things I want to say, but sometimes silence is the best, is the best remedy to say whatever you have to say and then let them decide how they want to respond to something.

Speaker 1: 20:03

Yeah, and I'm with you, especially as a mom and my personality, being able to be quiet is a tough challenge for me.

Speaker 2: 20:15

Yeah, me too.

Speaker 1: 20:17

But I will say, when I actively am thinking about that and I'm actively implementing that, it changes the conversation entirely and almost always for the better. If not right then, but at least 15 minutes from then or so.

Speaker 2: 20:32

Exactly.

Speaker 2: 20:33

There was a study done that I read about and, forgive me, I don't remember where I learned it, but there was an actual study done.

Speaker 2: 20:35

I think it was in Leadership Magazine.

Speaker 2: 20:36

Now that I read about and forgive me, I don't remember where I learned it, but there was an actual study done, I think it was in Leadership Magazine now that I can recall, where they you know someone would be like a coach would be coaching a coachee and he or she would tell them the answer of what they needed to do or kind of what was obvious, and what they did was they actually tracked how the coachee responded and whether they did that thing, and what they found out was when a coachee was told what to do and they just did it in that moment, versus giving the coachee time to process, they actually would put into practice the very thing that the coachee was trying to design for them.

Speaker 2: 21:20

Anyway, they actually put it into practice sooner and they did it more long term. And so the very thing like sometimes we think, well, I'm just going to give you the answer and this is just the way that it needs to be and this is for your good. I'm just going to tell you the answer. It actually takes longer for it to sink in, which I think is totally remarkable, that's really interesting.

Speaker 1: 21:41

I guess it's kind of similar to learning lessons. We can tell you, if you get a speeding ticket, you're going to have to pay more for insurance and that doesn't really mean anything to you until you have to pay more for insurance. Right, you have to learn the hard way. My youngest or my oldest is 16. That's why it's in my brain right now.

Speaker 2: 22:02

Exactly Like. You can get a speeding ticket and it might cost you 250 bucks, but you just need to know. Over a three year period it probably cost you $2,000.

Speaker 1: 22:11

Yeah, yeah. So well, I think this has been really enlightening and I know this is a little bit of a different world because you're used, you're in the sports world and with professionals and business people and we're talking to moms and dads, but a lot of moms listening. Do you have any final words of wisdom or things to impart that can help us be better as parents in communicating with our kids, but also teaching our kids to be able to be strong communicators, like you've learned to be?

Speaker 2: 22:39

Yeah, there's something called the Yerkes-Dodson scale, it's called the level of activation or the activation scale, and basically what it's trying to figure out is if you were to think of two axes, the vertical axis being their performance and the horizontal axis being the level of emotional engagement. So what they're trying to figure out is what level of emotional engagement can give someone peak performance in sports. But if you think about it, it's really useful even in parenting or coaching your children, and it's like becoming aware of your own emotional engagement. So what they found was, if you were to do like zero to 10 on the horizontal scale, with a peak at five, what they found was that peak performance actually happened between four and six. So you're not too calm, but you're not overly activated, you're just kind of in that middle area, and I have found that to be so helpful.

Speaker 2: 23:32

As a parent, or I'm trying to, let's say, help someone achieve something or accomplish something I'm like. Well, my level of engagement as a leader, as a coach, as a parent, is to say, okay, my best performance is between four and six, so I can't be unengaged and I can't be over-engaged, because if I'm over-engaged, then my emotions start to get the best of me and, as a parent, you want to parent with emotion. You don't want to parent emotionally, you want to use that emotion for your benefit, to achieve something or to teach something in your kid's life. So I would say it's like, yeah, first of all, be aware of where you are as a parent, because you know if you're upset or if you're frustrated or if you're angry. But if you can learn to come down a couple notches into that peak performance zone, then you can be your very best as a parent.

Speaker 1: 24:24

And you said. I want to just to restate one thing you said you want to parent with emotion, but not emotionally. That's incredible. I love it. I love it. I am going to sticky note that on my mirror, or something like that. Well, gary, this has really been a great conversation. If people are interested in learning more from you, we'll certainly link to your websites and your socials and all of that in the show notes. But if you want to just take a second and tell them a little bit more about what you do and what you offer and how you can help us you know, in the different avenues, different paths of our lives go ahead and share just a little bit about what you're offering.

Speaker 2: 24:58

Yeah, you're very kind, thank you. So I'm most of the time I'm on on Instagram because that's where my clients are. Um, I don't love social media but that's I do it just cause I think I need to. Um, but yeah, my, my email or probably my website, is elite mindset nationcom and, like I said, most of the time I can be found on Instagram. But really what I do is I unlock potential in my clients.

Speaker 2: 25:19

So, whether you are, you know, kind of like you got all cylinders working and everything's going really great, I think those are my favorite people to work with because they are bringing this wealth of resources to the table. Listen, you don't have to be sick to want to get better. Right, the best always want to get better. They're looking for that cutting edge and coaching is a big part of that. You know, pete Carroll told me from the Seattle Seahawks. He said you know the best always want to coach.

Speaker 2: 25:49

And for Russell Wilson, a quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks at the time he talked to his mental performance coach 365 days a year. So it's not about like I'm not doing well, I need to talk to somebody. No, a coach is really designed to help you be better all the time. So somebody no, a coach is really designed to help you be better all the time. So if there's anybody out there who just wants to get better, it doesn't matter if you're struggling or whether you're already at that 90th percentile in your field, it doesn't matter. A mental performance coach designed and their specific purpose is to unlock more, like I call them reservoirs of potential, right, like you've got more levels in you and if we just sort of like dig a little bit deeper, you do really have more, um more potential in you that you haven't tapped into yet.

Speaker 1: 26:27

I love it. Well, gary, thank you again for your time. Again, if you're listening, you want to check out Gary and find him on Instagram. All the links are right below. Wherever you're watching or listening, be sure to check him out and we'll see you next time.