The Goalie Mindset, The Vines, & The Olympics

If there’s one thing about the human experience that I’ve grown to begrudgingly accept over the years, it’s that we’re creatures of habit. How we feel and what we do is essentially who we become. I accepted this begrudgingly because, as a kid, I was pretty enamored with my identity. In 6th grade I was, dare I say it, cool. Now, being a student at the Rodeph Sholom Hebrew Day School, it wasn’t all that hard to distinguish myself as cool. Generally speaking, if I didn’t run away from spiders and wear pajama pants with lizards on them to school, I was basically James Dean.

But I was the downtown kid in a school largely populated by Upper West and Upper East side families, so I was pretty much from another planet. I was raised on rap music, and the majority of my wardrobe was fashioned by the company Cross Colours. I had a girlfriend, could dribble a basketball between my legs and was a purple belt in tae kwon do. I had the Nike logo shaved in the back of my head. Try and mess with me, Moishe. I’m Jesse, I’m cool, and I know it.

When I left Rodeph after 6th grade, I entered my new school quite confidently. Within moments, I found myself in a peculiar world, one in which the music of choice was something called grunge, and the preferred sport was soccer, and everyone wore flannel…and it turned out that my coolness had been a temporary condition. Crap!

I had assumed that my well-deserved confidence would travel with me to this new place, but when I looked around in all the spots it usually hung out, I was demoralized to discover that my self-conviction was nowhere to be found. Suddenly it turned out that I didn’t know how to do clothes. Or dance. Or anything that mattered really wait what was happening how did I become a shy kid? A quiet kid? A kid who, when he walked in the door one morning, the cool girls looked at and said, “When I have a son, I’m going to dress him just like you.” Agh!

My feelings didn’t know what rap or grunge was, but they certainly understood discomfort. My emotions didn’t know my identity; they simply knew that I was buckling under the scrutiny of unconvinced eyes – those of my new classmates, and my own. My confidence had been a bit of a show, performed by an eleven-year-old who still had plenty to learn. It had been a parlor trick, one that had been so well rehearsed that even I (or maybe especially I) didn’t know where the trick ended and where reality began. My sense of self-assuredness was a fragile gimmick, one that was best received by those who simply didn’t know any better, myself included.

Had my self-conviction been spurious all along? No, it was simply impermanent. But, in the moment, my sense of self had indeed had been real. It turns out that if you genuinely feel and act confident for a bunch of days in a row, then that’s who you are. You’re a confident person. If you genuinely feel and act alienated or pitiful for a bunch of days in a row, then that’s who you are. You’re a pitiful person. You don’t define you, and neither does the environment around you, but your mindset does. And we have more control over it than we think.

The Goalie Mindset

A few years ago, I had a 7th grade student who was struggling in nearly every respect. He didn’t fit in at his new school, his grades were suffering and he felt generally out of sorts. Well, this felt familiar. It turned out that he was an incredibly serious hockey player, a goalie. He played on a traveling team that went all along the east coast, from Montreal to Miami, beating every available team in its age group. And this was a fifteen-and-under age group; my student was twelve, and he was the goalie. I don’t know anything about hockey, but I felt like I knew how to get through to this kid.

The advice I gave him was to clearly articulate what makes him feel capable as a goalie. What minutes steps, specific abilities, and most importantly what mindset did he assume every time he put on those pads and that mask and went onto the ice to protect that goal? Whatever it was that made him a competent goalie, he could carry that with him into the classroom, into the lunchroom, into his textbooks and allow him to create a new vision of himself in these realms, using a goalie mindset.

Unsurprisingly, it turned out that he had worked tirelessly to gain the skills necessary to be as good in goal as he is. Ok, so he had a work ethic when it was directed towards something that mattered to him. The hardware wasn’t defective; we just had to point the motivation in the right direction, guided by the proper perspective and sense of meaning, no problem.

It also turned out that he had incredible hand-eye coordination, and was tremendous under pressure. These are both skills easily transferred to the classroom, amongst a wide variety of other contexts. Lastly, he confessed that he was embarrassed about his hockey accolades, as he thought that spending time with older kids was weird. Ah, so he was over-qualified.

Aside from the abilities he had that could be demonstrated to being pragmatically useful in realms outside of hockey, we focused on his mindset. We discussed who he sees himself as when he’s in goal. We talked about what his entrance music might be if he were a pro, what his goalie nickname would be if he could choose it, and what animal he thought best represented him as a goalie. ‘Don’t Like’ by Chief Keef, The Panther and a panther. Ok, a bit redundant, but this kid clearly viewed himself as a badass goalie.

The aim was for him to remind himself that no matter what he was doing, he’s always a goalie. And it’s true. Whether he’s taking a Latin test, playing video games at a new friend’s house or standing in goal, he is a goalie. He’s The Panther, no matter what he’s doing. As long as he can click into the goalie mindset (Bird #18), and his emotions can follow suit, then that’s what he is.

Most of the time, how we feel is a function of how we think. If we think as a goalie, then we’re likely to feel like a goalie, and then we are a goalie. I still don’t really know how to dance to anything but hip-hop, but I’ve learned how to use my mindset to turn yesterday’s memory of myself into today’s reality.

The Vines

Sarah is 30 weeks pregnant, and I’m kicking her out of my office. Sometimes, in my line of work, I’m presented with the challenge of having to guide a pregnant woman away from me, as I declare that it’s too early to talk about tutoring her unborn child. In these instances, the expecting mother isn’t intending for me to educate her child while in utero, but is in fact trying to set up a plan for how to enable her baby to eventually waddle its way into an optimal academic setting of the future. Oy.

Of course, questions about child development are perfectly acceptable, but that’s not what she’s asking for. She wants to know about pre-K placement exams. This is alarmingly common in New York City, as are the wildly competitive processes for helping children get into the best middle schools. When they’re in middle school, most students are focused on how to gain entry to an optimal high school. High school students are, of course, ravaged with pressure about being accepted to an ideal college or university.

They want to go to a good college so they can get a good job, a good job so they can get a 401k, a 401k so that they can retire comfortably so that they can die properly enough for their children to not have to worry. Sarah is 30 weeks pregnant. OY.

When do they…be? These children, when are they actually doing the thing? The life living thing? Far too many of us are led to picture our lives as a series of vines. We swing from one to the next, aiming to make it across the jungle of life without ever touching the ground (the ground, as we all know, is lava). And this image is generally fine, as it can translate to awesome things like ambition, forward-thinking and big-picture planning.

But if we don’t have a good grip on the vine from which we’re currently swinging, we’re less likely to find any of this very gratifying or even remotely worth it. This means we need to (gasp) live in the moment, at least a little bit.

The more you appreciate the vine from which you’re presently swinging, the more likely you are to have a good grip on that vine. The better your current grip, the higher your chances of making it to the next vine become. The roses are like Mario’s mushrooms. Fully ingest them all. They’ll help you beat Bowser and save the Princess.

The Olympics

Odds are, in about seven or eight years, I’ll be doing my best to help Sarah’s child get into a good high school. Playing the admissions game for New York City high schools is basically being on the JV team of the college admissions process. It’s wild. And when students get into the high school or college of their choice, parents are understandably elated. They high-five me, “We did it!” They’re proud of their child, they pat themselves on the back, and everyone takes a deep sigh of relief. The kid’s going off to a great, and likely rather competitive, school. Job well done.

Nope. Job well started. I like to compare this process to qualifying for the Olympics. Just like being accepted to the high school or college of your choice, qualifying for the Olympics is a huge deal. In no way would I ever trivialize these accomplishments, nor would I disparage someone for celebrating them.

Ok, so you qualified for the Olympics! Now you have to be in the Olympics. That’s gonna be, um, hard. And guess what? Everyone else in the Olympics, aka your competition, they also qualified to be in the Olympics. So, I hope you enjoyed that high-five, because we have some work to do.

Now you’re in the Olympics…don’t you want to do well? You’ve trained your entire life to get here. You worked incredibly hard for this opportunity. Picture the opening ceremonies, when the world’s greatest athletes are being showered with praise by fans from the hosting country, and they’re all waving. Flowers are being tossed, athletes are grinning widely as they envision the challenges to come, and you’re standing there with a wooden I Made It To The Olympics medal around your neck, quite pleased with yourself.

Is this who you want to be on the first day at your new school? At your new job? Swinging from your new vine? No? Then articulate why you’re happy to be where you are, and how hard you’re going to work to make the moment count. Recognize how much of your efforts came from within you, and not due to a mere instigation from an outside force. Demand of yourself a thorough understanding of what’s to come, how to do it, and why it matters to you.

To you. Why it matters to you. You’re the one who needs to know how to live your life. You’re the one who needs to know how to say it’s okay when you mess up. You’re the one who needs to believe the thoughts in your head are good, and honest, and meaningful. If it doesn’t come from inside of you, it’s only going to land outside of you. If it’s not from within, it’s without.