Overcoming Mental Health Obstacles and Finding Peace | Basketball Coach, Joanne McCallie

Joanne McCallie (0:00)

I want to coach. I'm Coach P for life. It's not like I'm changing hats. I love coaching. But I also feel like I could talk to anybody, a professional athlete, a high school student, anybody about mental health and trying to allow them to seek acceptance and ride through stories and understand that things are going to be okay. And there is a process.

And at the same time, people really beat themselves up with this diagnosis, you know, where did I get it? How did I get it? Is something wrong with me?

And so I've talked about be good to you, be good to you in this process of understanding brain health.

Michael Gervais (0:41)

Okay, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais. And by trade in training, I am a sport and performance psychologist. And the whole idea behind this podcast is to learn from people who are on the path of mastery to better understand what is it that they're searching for and how do they see the world and themselves in it? How do they explain events? How do they prepare themselves to deal with adversity and challenge and pressure? And we also want to understand the mental skills that they use to build and refine their craft. These mental skills are trainable. And if you want to learn more about how you can specifically train your mind, it's just a quick reminder here to check out the online course that I've created with the head coach of the Seattle Seahawks, Pete Carroll, at findingmastery.net forward slash course.

I believe that it can materially make a difference in your life.

I want to take a minute here to announce a really exciting event that we have coming up. As you continue to navigate the challenges and opportunities of 2024, I want to pose a question. What are you doing right now to be great with stress? How are you working with stress on your pursuit towards your most important ambitions and goals? And I just want to get right to the heart of the key elements, one in particular, for what it takes to excel in today's high heat, high stakes world. Because stress is not the problem that we think it is. Stress is a synonym for change, and our ability to be agile with change, that is the real opportunity at hand. So if you're wanting to unlock extraordinary results and sustainable performance in your life, it's not about avoiding or reducing stress. And as simple as that sounds, it's very tricky to do, but it is about fundamentally changing your relationship with it.

And that's why I'm so thrilled to invite you to a special event. It's a free virtual event that we're offering, and it's called The Power of Embracing Stress. It's on Wednesday, March 6th at 2 p.m. Pacific. So to sign up, just head over to findingmastery.com/training, whether it's advancing in your career or improving your health or cultivating stronger relationships.

I think a new approach to stress can be one of the most powerful unlocks for you in your life. So join us for this free virtual training, The Power of Embracing Stress, on Wednesday, March 6th at 2 p.m.

SPEAKER_3 (3:19)

Pacific.

Michael Gervais (3:20)

Go to findingmastery.com/training to sign up. Once again, it's findingmastery.com/training. And I'm really excited to see you there.

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Now this week's conversation is with Joanne McCallie, better known as Coach P one of the most highly decorated female college basketball coaches in the country. And over the last 28 years, Coach P has coached at Maine, Michigan State, and most recently Duke. She's the only division one head coach to lead two different programs to 30 win seasons with three national championship game appearances. She also won the national coach of the year in 2005 So Coach P.'s success on the court, it just speaks for itself. But there was more that I wanted to explore with her. She recently made her longtime battle with bipolar disorder public, something that she didn't feel comfortable talking about during her coaching career. And so we get into why that was the case. What was the downside, what was the upside, you know, what are the internal narratives that she was working through and what were the social pressures that she was picking up on as well. So for those unfamiliar with bipolar disorder, you might recognize the term manic depressive. And so it is a set of symptoms and conditions that is responsible for it like these unusual shifts in mood. And these unusual shifts are oftentimes incredibly high and then with an incredible lowness to it as well. So there's a deep anxiety and then there's a deep depression. That's called bipolar one and I'm oversimplifying it here, but there's bipolar two as well, which is called a hypomanic. So not this incredibly high, high, high manic episode, but hypomanic and there's some depression involved in that as well. And so it's just, you know, the ability to carry out day-to-day tasks during these episodes is really hard, really challenging to live in a way that you feel connected to anything because you're really struggling on the inside. And some people like hypomania, but it is because there's such a productive nature to it.