Sam, what do you get asked about most when it comes to getting in shape. The answer isn't pushups. The answer isn't how do I get a six pack? The answer isn't should I shouldn't eat this? It's how do I get motivated? So I've brought together to awesome episodes that I've absolutely loved doing this year where motivation has
been the focus. I had the absolute pleasure through the course of this year of speaking with two very very strong minded, independent, motivating women, Jana Pittman and Sabrina Fredrick. So Yana many of you will know her, she's a jewel Olympian. She gave me this great little trick on combating self doubt and how she managed to conquer so many huge life goals in such a short amount of time. And I'm talking about huge goals. Nothing this woman cannot do.
And then Sabrina Frederick, who's a professional footballer from Collingwood. She has some non negotiable routines and mindset habits that she does before every single game. It's probably the most likely reason that she completed the grueling SAS Australia test. Jana also was an SAS. We could call this the SAS episode. Anyway, lots to learn, lots of motivation from these two incredible women that's coming up on the Good Life.
Really excited to chat to our guests now, which is none other than the incredible athlete duel Olympian across winter and Summer Olympics Supermum Janna Pittman. Welcome to the wood Life and thank you so much for joining us.
Oh thanks Sam, that was a lovely intro.
I am genuinely inspired by you, and it's interesting I thought back to when I first was thinking of you, and you were famous for your incredible athletics career, and you know, you're a fairly polarizing figureback then, and it never seemed to wavery you. You know, you were so tough and determined, and I'm sure you had your moments behind closed doors, but of course, you know, I always used to think, God, this woman is just as tough
as nails. And you know I've read before that you said your father was sort of the inspiration or the driving force perhaps behind this motivating mindset that you have. But can you share a little bit more, perhaps to our listeners that are thinking, God, I wish I had just five percent of Janna's mindset, and perhaps I'd be kicking a bit more ass.
I like it, Sam, Look, yes, I think I think I have to preface that by saying that my resilience and my mindset has changed and wavered over the years. I am absolutely human, and I've had multiple times where I struggled to get out of bed in the morning just because I've taken on too much or I've lost faith in myself. So I think for me, yes, my father was an absolute role model for me in life. He was a gunner right from the beginning. You know,
he always worked hard. He worked Christmas Day, for example, we regularly not even have a Christmas lunch with him because the guy was a builder out on the building side and he would be actually constructing houses. And he was just so focused on success. And I think in some ways it's a positive and a negative, Sam, because I think you grow up with the idea of what you want to achieve in your life, and then sometimes when you fall short of that, it can be quite debilitating.
So for me, the greatest I think, the most success I've had in my career has actually been after athletics, So sport was great. I think A lot of that comes back to genetics and luck, but it's the things I've pursued subsequently, you know, trying to be a doctor, having babies by myself through sperm donation at one point, and then obviously now clocking over to six kids this.
Year will be an extraordinary challenge.
But they come about because many years ago I had to actually stop and look at my mindset and realize that it was offskew, and a lot of that negative media you're talking about, and some of the things that I'd done wrong in my life, I think really humbled me to realize I needed to find some self acceptance, and once I found that, I was able to grow from that. So we often you know, I do a lot of public speaking these days, and we talk about
growth mindsets and things like that. But for me, it was actually breaking down who I was as a person and rebuilding from there and accepting that some of the things that other people don't like are actually my strengths
and the reason why I'm successful. So for those people out there who might be thinking, wow, she's taken on the world, and you know, I can't be her because she does all these amazing things, it was actually realizing that I love being busy, accepting that I'm not always around with family and kids, and being comfortable with that,
but also accepting that I'm going to fail. And it's almost like once once you get over that fact and you realize it's going to happen whether you like it or not, you then don't get as fixated on those results that.
I love that I think. I think that's something that will relate to so many of our listeners. I'd love you to share perhaps your thoughts on goal setting.
Well. I reckon we we should debate this one a little bit, because I'm sure you've got lots of great ideas around this. And it's funny because if I put the athlete hat on, so for many years, and so many of the young athletes out there, or anyone, as you say, with a five kilo goal or whatever it is that they're trying to pursue in life often gets so fixated. I think you mentioned that a little bit before too with the blinkers on when I was a
younger athlete. But you get so strongly fixated on a goal that therefore, when things go astray, you have the tendency to fall off the wagon. And maybe you know, eat that mass bar rather than sticking to the goal of little bits incremental you know, changes make the difference. So I makes it completely different from the average person when it comes to goal setting. I am someone who believes in having five or six goals all at once, and I figure, if one of them fails, I'll just
lean on the next one. So it's that whole one door closes, the next one open. So that's actually how I've got through all the failures in my life, failed marriages, miscarriages, lost the Olympics, all that kind of stuff, because I always had a concurrent love running alongside my main goal. And so I would simply and maybe this is a skill I don't know, I would just simply skip focus.
So I change from focus on sport to focus on medicine, or if medicine is not going too well and I'm being yelled at by the bosses at work, focus on the children and a goal we have there. So I think it's it does make a busy life, but I think just throwing yourself into multiple eggs, you know, having multiple eggs in one basket, which a lot of people who say goal setting is not a good thing they say you have to be focused and committed to that one goal. Well, I tell them, well, I don't agree
with you. So what do you think? Are you a single, sole focused goal setter or a let's have multiple balls in the wagon and protect yourself a little bit.
I'm okay with having one or two horses in the race, but I'm probably I like things to stay simple from a process perspective, I think people complicate things, not necessarily with having too many goals, but having too many processes for them to focus on at once, and therefore getting a little bit overwhelmed or lost along the way. That I'm a big believer with that.
Yeah, that makes sense, but.
I'm going to be frank with you, I've never heard that theory before. That's quite That's a revelation. It is, and I'm giving myself sixty seconds to digest it and actually get my head around it, because what a fascinating outlook. And a lot of people I agree with you would argue if you're spreading yourself too thin and you've got too many balls in the air at once, that's going to be it's going to be detrimental to any of them potentially landing. But someone like you, who's obviously.
That's just something we've been told.
Yeah it is, yeah, yeah, yeah, I.
Don't think it's just me, sdam I reckon, it's something we've been grown up and told that don't take on too much. Now I'm not saying take on killer goals five or six of them at one time, but I just feel like I need my emotional energy to shift in different areas. So I can sit down for four or five hours and study, but then I need to shift to my fitness goal, and then I need to shift to my parental goal, because if I then't have areas, it's almost like you're rebooting your system every time you
change to the next goal. But the biggest time is when it's protective when something fails. So it's funny because my vivid memory of the twenty fourteen qualifications for the Winter Olympic Games, and I'd put my total ass on the line by announcing to the public, you know that I wanted to be the first female summer Winter Olympian double and it came down to this one race. I had to push off the top of this ice hill,
and if I didn't push, well, that was it. I could go home with tail between my legs, and I remember getting so nervous standing at the top, going I can't do this, I can't do this.
What if I fail? What if I bugger it?
Da all that, you know, that little mental chatter that can happen in anybody's life. And then I had that split moment where I said, but it doesn't matter because you're in second year of medical school, so you'll go home and become a doctor. And I thought, oh yeah, sweet, and all the nerves just flew out of the way because I realized it's not my only goal. It's a huge, important thing that I want to achieve, but it's not the end of the world.
So what about from a motivation mindset perspective, you seem to be this person who you know, I can't isn't in your vocabulary? Where does that come from? And if there are people out there who that's not just in their vocabulary, it's probably the most often term that they use, how do they get that out of their system? And what's your advice to them.
I've got a few things yet.
Firstly, for the first time I reckon in my life recently, I've been sitting there going I don't know how I'm going.
To cope my car, So that's nice, and.
It was vivid. The other day.
I was lying on the bed. I'm not coping with this twin pregnancy as well as I hope. So my superhuman motherhood powers are debilitating at times, and I'm in eight tired fatigue with saw legs and a saw tummy and thinking how on earth am I going to cope with twins and an eighteen month old and my kids and my career and realizing that something's got to give. So I am a big believer that you can have it all. You just can't have it all the time at the same time. So it's prioritizing what things are
most important. So where are you going to throw your motivation? And certainly I do agree with you. The word I can't is something I've worked very strongly since I was young person to not have as part of my vocabulary. And it's funny you say that because my children say I can't, And the first thing I said to them is, sweety, let's change that I can do this, but I need mummies help, or I can do this. And we'd have
that conversation two or three times a day. So it's something I've had ingrained in me as a young person for a very long time, and I do it with my children now. So I guess for your listeners, it is something you can encourage in your children to change that mindset. Before the age of seven, they say, is when you can really put those inroads to sort of
form those neural patterns in the brain. But one how I actually learned about it, because it wasn't something my mum and dad taught me, was when I was in my early twenties. I was working with this fantastic coach that talked about how your brain is like a filing cabinet and whatever you saw at the front of it is the thing you draw out first.
You know, whatever at the front drawer is the thing you find first.
So when you have those conversations I can't or i'm fat today, or I'm not able to cope with this, if you keep reiterating that to yourself, it's going to be the file that you take out every time you're faced with any challenge.
So I guess we retrain that.
So I wore a little elastic band for about a year, and every time I said I can't or I you know I'm going to fail at this. I would actually snap that elastic band on my wrist and it would have like a little bit I know it's ridiculous, but it would short circuit that process in my brain and I would try then to automatically replace it with something positive.
I will do this.
I will try to do this the sort of the reverse of my current feeling, and to be honest, Sam, over time it just became natural, so you know that thought process is always still there. And don't get me wrong on SAS Australia, there were multiple times where I'm like, oh my god, I can't do that, but then it wasn't an option.
I just did.
So it's almost it's a reprogramming and a retraining to make you believe that nothing that's important will come easily, but that you're just sabotaging yourself if you don't give it a shot.
Now, usually when I have a guest in the studio, I know exactly what we're going to talk about. But my next guest we could honestly have an enthralling conversation about a number of topics. I want to ask this person about being a role model to so many young Girls and AFLW Superstar sas Superstar Now podcast host Welcome to the Woodlife, Sabrina Frederick. How are you?
I'm very well and what an intro.
You're obviously a big mindset person. I also know you're a big visualization person and I wanted to just go there for a little minute because you're a big, big believer in it. Can you talk us through a little bit what you do from a visualization perspective, first of all, from an AFLW standpoint, and then I'd love to know does it transition into other areas of your life. There's a two prong question for you.
Yeah, I mean it is a big one.
I think more and more people are getting into it and realizing the power of it. I think it visualization for me personally, is more about seeing yourself somewhere, which then instills belief that you can actually be in that environment. I don't necessarily think that it's painting an exact picture of what you want to happen, because things change all the time. For me, it's more about what am I feeling,
what am I doing when I'm my best? So in terms of a football game, it's being around my teammates, and if I can envision getting around them and goals being scored and me being in the middle of it and them being around me. It's that feeling that I get from the sport that I visualize and the passages of play that sort of get me there. I think sometimes people mistake visualization for playing out a game in
your head a thousand times over in different scenarios. That's completely different, and to be honest, so that would probably really exhaust met a game a thousand times before I've even played it, or just visualizing those moments. I guess going back to your why why you do things is for me, the reason why I play football is the love of the sport, but also the connection to my teammates. So me playing at my best is me in those environments.
And when I go out onto the ground before games, I really do try and envision myself in certain parts of the ground in those moments, and then it's crazy when it unfolds in some circumstances and you just think, wow, like a couple hours ago, I was really thinking that, and that really unfolded, and it instills that belief that it's in you to get to that point. In terms of translating that out of football into the rest of my life. I'm a huge believer in visualizing what you
want for your life. I think that football is just a part of me. It doesn't define me. It's just something that I do and it makes me a better person. But even coming back to, you know, being a parent. More recently, I've been visualizing my first moments with her when she's born, or my first moments of when she can run around? What am I going to be doing? Am I going to be out there and full of energy? And sort of living out those moments as well. So
I think it can. It definitely can translate into different parts of your life. And I know a lot of people sort of like, is this magic or.
Oh yes, spookyrself, spiritual, whatever you want to call it.
But I think it's more just that stuff that makes you feel good. Why would you not want to feel that before it's happened. So I think it's more just living out those moments that make you feel good, instilling belief that you can achieve those things, and then you know, if it happens, it happens.
But for me, it's worked, So it's similar to what is happening to the contemporary version of meditation, like people who have now worked out you can meditate in a myriad of ways. You've got to find the right form of meditation to you. And you know, you see visualization and it absolutely works, but it'd be different for every person. Yeah, everyone has their own in repretation of it, and it
has to feel right. If you're cynical about it or you're skeptical about it, it's never going to break through.
Well, no, because then it's becoming a force thing, and you never want it to be forced, especially visualization, because that whole process is filled with emotion and I guess passion and that feeling of what success means for you. And I think if it becomes a chore, then you're almost doing the complete opposite of what that feeling is trying to achieve. So yeah, like you said, it is basically a form of meditation because you're taking time away
from reality and giving time to yourself. And I think every single person has a right to mess with it and sort of figure out what is the best for them, because in end the day, that's the person that you want it to work for. So no, everyone can sit cross legged for you know, twenty minutes and meditate, no noise or whatever.
You know, I don't even think I could do that.
I think for me, I've tried different practices and over time, and trying is the big key thing here is you don't know until you try. So even for you, like you said, you've never really gotten into visualization.
But you know what I have, I just haven't realized. It hasn't been a conscious practice. Yeah it's been. I do it with business and I do it with family. Yeah, and perhaps not. You know, we don't have a game everything. It's your life. I don't have a game with my family game every weekend, so I perhaps don't do it on those that. When you do it for footy, is it the same amount of time? Is it? Do you have a particular like do you have to give yourself in a particular state? Do you do it just pregame?
Do you do it the night before?
In terms of pregame, I do do it normally when I walk out onto the ground because we will get there a couple of hours before the game, So my initial period of walking out into a ground, I will always have a moment to myself. So I do that every single game. But then it's sort of free flowing. Like the night before this sometimes where I really can't
sleep or whatever, and I'll just tap into that. I'll just sit there, eyes closed and just visualize something, or you know, there might just be something that triggers you, and like I might be watching a game and a moment might happen and I'm thinking, I just want.
To in another game, yeah, and.
I'm no, no, no, that was last week. I'll be watching a game and I will see something happen in the game, and I'll think, like it's just triggered me and the feeling of playing, and I just think, I just want to harness that for a moment. I just want to take that moment, how I'm feeling watching that and translate that into how I'm playing. To be honest, so I turn up to a game and I didn't feel like doing it, I wouldn't do it, like coming
back to that chore thing. I'd never want it to feel like I have to do something to achieve something, because for me, that's the whole point.
Thanks so much for joining me on this bonus episode of motivation. If you have any tips to share on how to stay motivated, i'd love to hear from you. You can always leave me a little voice message in the show notes. And if you love today's episode and you want to listen to the full episode of Janna or Sabrina, make sure you head back into your podcast feed the full episode and many many more in there. Great thing to listen to over your holiday break. I'll talk to you soon.