Episode 329: Child's Play - Applying Lessons from Kids to Achieve High-Performance
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Welcome to another episode of the Purple Patch podcast.
This week, IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon explores the concept of Child’s play. What do children have to do with our pursuit of high performance in work, life, and sport? It turns out, quite a bit.
While it may sometimes seem like kids do nothing but go to school, say the wildest things, and create messes around the house, the study of child development holds valuable lessons. Understanding how children grow into high-functioning adults can parallel the importance of sports and physical challenges in our own lives. These experiences can help us perform better under pressure in all aspects of life.
Today's discussion about high performance will draw inspiration from the playful and physical activities of children that many of us remember from our childhoods. The aim is to rejuvenate your spirit of adventure and inspire you to either rediscover the joy in your current pursuits or take on an entirely new challenge.
Episode Timestamps
00:00 - 06:39 - Welcome and Episode Introduction
06:46 - 23:45 - The Meat and Potatoes: Part 1 - Framing Your Offseason?
23:49 - 33:36 - Part 2 - Reflecting on the impact of Offseason
33:37 - 44:17 - Part 3 - From the Athletes Themselves
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Full Transcript
Matt Dixon 00:00
I'm Matt Dixon and welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. The mission of Purple Patch is to empower and educate every human being to reach their athletic potential. Through the lens of athletic potential, you reach your human potential. The purpose of this podcast is to help time-starved people everywhere integrate sports into their lives.
Matt Dixon 00:32
And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast as ever, your host, Matt Dixon, and today we are going to go to the very pinnacle of high performance, and we're going to talk about kids. Children. What can they teach us about developing sustained high performance? Is that a serious question you might ask me? They do nothing, they go to school, they forget to brush their teeth, they leave their clothes strewn all over their bedrooms, and they play well. It turns out, they can teach us quite a lot. At least the study of child development can. How children develop into high-functioning adults has massive parallels with understanding the importance of the value of sport in our lives and how we can leverage sport, or at least personal physical challenges, to help us show up better and perform under pressure across all aspects of life. And so this today is about your high performance, but it's going to be born out of kids running around in a playground, falling out of trees, all of that good stuff, and most of us can remember that from our childhoods. It's all in the meat of potatoes. But first, before we get going, I do want to just remind you of one thing. We're bringing you this show today ad-free, and it's going to be clear of heavy promotions. And so with that in mind, just a quick note: if you listen today and you have further questions you want to follow up with me or a member of the Purple Patch team, or you'd like to chat about any program at Purple Patch, please feel free to reach out and connect. As ever, your first discussion and consultation is free. You can email us at info@purplepatchprofitness.com, or if you'd like to explore all purple patch offerings, those can be found at purplepatchfitness.com. Register for our free educational newsletter that we put out which is all about digging deeper into some of the concepts that we discuss on this show. All right, with that, I've got my trusty producer in hand. He is ready to go. Barry, you do a cracking job. We thank you for your service and lead us like a warrior into today's meat and potatoes.
Matt Dixon 02:56
Yes, it is the meat and potatoes. And if you are a regular listener to this show, you've heard me discuss the path of sustained high performance. You know, it's my big thing. I've helped athletes win world titles. I've helped very busy leaders show up and gain an edge in the workplace. I've helped everyday people emerge from mental health challenges or clinical or ill health to find their recipe for sustained high performance. It doesn't matter what field we're talking about. For me, performance is performance. Your success is about more than just occasional excellence. It's about consistently showing up your best self, physically and mentally, especially when it matters most. And the truth is that across any field, for you to show up consistently and predictably, it requires mastery in two connected areas. The first is a performance base layer, and that's the first pillar if you want to call it that of sustained high performance. That's you showing up and consistently delivering your best physical self, operating with unwavering energy levels, sharp cognitive function, a robust immune system so you're taken out of the game less, and physical resiliency to handle life's demands. It's about being prepared every day to face challenges head-on, and that's the physical part of it. But there is also the mental component as well. That's what we label—the traits of a high-performance mindset. You've heard me talk about it on this show a lot. You want to think about that as your second connected pillar, cultivating a mindset of mental resiliency and adaptability. This mindset is essential for you to be able to navigate obstacles, perform under pressure, overcome setbacks, and thrive no matter what the environment is. In many ways, it's your inner strength that drives you to push through challenges to emerge stronger. And when we combine these elements—daily physical readiness and a high-performance mindset—it's empowering and empowers you to rise to the occasion, consistently, and confidently, meet life's demands, and effectively overcome obstacles. At Purple Patch, we might say that you are delivering yourself to consistent and predictable purple patches. Now if you are a regular listener, that's old news. We've talked about it quite a lot. We've done episodes on both your performance base layer and a high-performance mindset. So where do children come into this?
Matt Dixon 05:37
Well, it turns out that we can understand ourselves as humans if we cast our minds back a little bit and reflect on our childhoods and the role and importance of free play. So when we think about child development, I want to investigate two key areas, number one, free play, and number two, the critical role of experiences, actually living experiences, rather than just learning or receiving information. And what we're going to do by understanding these components is we're then going to link them very simply to the development in improving, in a journey of sport, or, of course, life and work performance.
Matt Dixon 06:26
So there are two parts to this. The first is a reflection on free play for kids, what's their value, what's important, and even a little bit about what the consequences if we don't let our kids engage in free play, and in that free play, how experiences play a critical role in emotional development. And then we're going to very simply create a bridge where we think about our own experiences and how that relates to my recommendation of taking on a physical challenge and embracing sport; in many ways, by reflecting on kids today, we can answer the question, Why did mine so many CEOs of major organizations love to do things like climb Everest or try and fly around the world in a hot air balloon, or compete in a marathon or Ironman? It's a lot about what we're talking about today. So let's first talk about children engaging in free play out in the playground, not under at least strict adult supervision, where they've got the freedom to go around and do whatever they want, take risks, climb up, go a little bit faster, and throw collaborate all. It's the chaos of the playground. How does this link to their emotional development? After all, you are going through or they are going through childhood so that they can develop tools to enable them to be more effective as adults. And so how does free play play a play a prior role in this? It turns out, it's critical. It's really important. Firstly, free play fosters social skills. Unstructured, and this is important; it's not about organized sports; it's not about supervised play dates; unstructured play amongst children is crucial for developing some of the social skills that we think about as adults—negotiation, cooperation, and conflict resolution. Stand on the side of any school playground, of course, with permission, and you will see these things happening in real time. So free play helps with social skills. That's great. Free play is also the arena where you build emotional resilience. Engaging in free play allows children to experience managing minor risks, some failures, setbacks, and disagreements with one another. And so, in other words, it helps them develop emotional resilience and also the core components of self-regulation. Free play, of course, as well, encourages creativity and problem-solving. In other words, it stimulates children to learn to solve problems independently, contributing to their emotional and cognitive development. And free play ultimately promotes autonomy. Through free play, children learn to make their own decisions and to navigate social dynamics without constant adult intervention, and so that cannot help but foster a sense of confidence and autonomy. So in other words, a lot of the components that I would argue lead on, and most child development experts as well, lead on to becoming a higher functioning adult; it occurs out of free play.
Matt Dixon 09:53
But everything I just outlined there is not my thoughts. That's not what I believe free play does; any child development expert would highlight this. A book that I would encourage you to read, perhaps add to your repertoire, is called The Anxious Generation. It's by Jonathan Haidt. It's very, very interesting, and in the book, Jonathan goes into great depth about the importance of free play, and he also highlights some of the perils of denying free play to a child's development. It holds back emotional development if a child doesn't have access to free play. He also goes into the negative consequences of replacing free play outside in the chaos of the playground and the parks and replacing it with screen time, video games, social media, and other individual screen-based activities because they are not the grounds on which we get emotional development. Now that's a compelling read for me as a father of a 12-year-old, but it also sparked my coaching light when I'm aiming to help adults improve their performance.
Matt Dixon 11:09
Think about this. Kids’ play is vital to enable them to ultimately thrive in life. You see where I'm going with this as a coach, don't you? And that's a big part of this experience. When we think about play, it's a vital arena to equip them in broader life. The important part of life. And a huge part of free play is experience. It would be pointless telling children, lining them up against the wall, and saying, "Here is the value of play. Now, here's the theory." The only pathway for them to foster the emotional development of these components that we talked about—negotiation, collaboration, overcoming adversity, navigating a sense of risk, creativity—all of these components that I just outlined—the only way that the emotional development can occur for the children is via experience. Let's consider the importance of experience over just receiving information. It's pretty simple stuff, but it's important. Learning through doing.
Matt Dixon 12:28
I've seen as a coach firsthand that the power of doing experience, especially when it involves challenges and direct engagement, is far more impactful for learning and personal growth than any time you just have a passive consumption of information. He says this, as the coach, as you're sitting here having a passive consumption of information. But ultimately, application experience is where you start to gel. You start to gain actual emotional development. Real-life experiences lead to deeper, more embodied understandings of concepts and skills, as opposed to just receiving information. It also fosters moral and emotional development. Experiences, particularly those that engage with emotional challenges, are essential for developing empathy, compassion, moral reasoning, and finally, wisdom. None of us, children included, develop wisdom through theory. It's only through lived experiences. Individuals apply and test their knowledge in real-world situations rather than just accumulating facts. And so when we bring this back to children, play delivers a profound impact of active engagement and real-world experiences that therefore have the driving impact of improving emotional and cognitive development. Great, free play. We're sold. Super, but here you are right now listening to a podcast on performance with a performance coach. That's me, and I'm ramming down your throat information on child development. I'm talking about children playing, and yes, getting kids off the screens. I hear the rallying call, and I'm with you. That's great. But how does it link to someone like you who wants to improve your mindset and your approach to better performance in sports, life, work, etc.?
Matt Dixon 14:42
Well, it's pretty simple. Actually. You might have guessed these concepts directly apply to us. Let's think about experience-based learning in sports and work. Let's think about active engagement. Just as Jonathan Haidt emphasizes learning through doing, it's the same for athletes and professionals. You improve by engaging in real-world challenges rather than just studying techniques or theories. It's practice, experimentation, and real-time decision-making. They are critical for mastering skills. I'll give you an example: purple patch training camps. We host multiple training camps all over the world, and we build the whole camp experience around a simple concept, educate, and then execute; in other words, we don't have you into a classroom setting and say, "This is how you should ride a bicycle." We explain the concepts, and then we get out and we do. Now, of course, there's nothing revolutionary about this. I'm sure that you don't need me to sit here and say, "Listen, you educate the theory, and then you go and execute it." But that is if you just pause for a second. That's important. Explain the concepts and then experience them.
Matt Dixon 16:15
We also go through feedback and adaptation experiences, actually going through the motions of something and providing in immediate feedback. It enables us to adapt and refine our approaches. And of course, this is essential for continuous improvement in anything—sport, work, environment. In other words, by living through an experience, you are going to have to navigate valuable mini-failures. Oh, that wasn't right. Goodness me, that wasn't great. I need to adjust this. I need to go from here. I've got these roadblocks and obstacles. I need to adjust around it. It's the same as what our kids are doing in the playground. We're just doing it in our environment. And so this is important because it doesn't just help you get better at skills; it also hones a mindset of creative thinking, a solution-based mindset, and adaptability. These are critical mindsets that apply to anything in life, but for them to develop and improve, we need to navigate experiences. A huge one that any pro athlete is going to tell you about is growth through adversity. Living through experiences, setbacks, and challenges, whether it's in training or work, is going to build your resilience. It's also going to develop what is commonly called a growth mindset. And this is very, very similar to how free play helps children develop emotional resilience. You might have heard the line, Every champion has failed more than anyone else, and that little line, as cute as it is, has real substance because athletes, pro athletes, understand that the line of progression is never linear. It's always going to include many, many setbacks. And so by living through experiences and going on the arc of a journey, you're developing not just gradual progression, but you're developing a mindset of growth.
Matt Dixon 18:26
A second component of experiences is understanding pressure, pressure, and performance within pressure, just like children learning to manage emotions through free play. Athletes and professionals must learn how to handle pressure and stress in high-stakes situations, and a key component of that is building emotional resilience so that you can perform well under pressure. But I promise you, you cannot develop that in a vacuum, by reading a book, or by listening to a podcast; you must live experiences. And just as free play fosters autonomy, gaining experiences in sports is going to build a sense of control, even a sense of confidence. And of course, as you build a greater sense of autonomy, a sense of control, and some more confidence, you learn to be more decisive and effective in your actions, whether it's during competition or, of course, in the workplace. And so experiences are really important for us as adults. As kids, we're learning and we're understanding, collaborating, communicating, and navigating obstacles, but as adults, we need to live experiences to also do the same.
Matt Dixon 19:52
So why do I tell you all this? Well, in truth, it's a call to action, or for some of you, a rallying cry. As further encouragement, keep doing what you're doing, go on the journey, and embrace the sport. A couple of weeks ago, I did an episode on taking on a physical challenge, and I referenced child development in there. When we spend time and we dive in and we think about child development, it's really when we think about the sport that it highlights one of the most important values of embracing sport as a part of your journey. Outside of work and all of your responsibilities and broader life, including family, I believe there is massive value in you taking on a physical challenge, and committing to a journey in sport because this is your version of play, adult play. For me, sport is the ideal vehicle to foster all of the same benefits and values that Jonathan Haidt identifies with children's free play. Think about it for a second. Sport: You commit to a huge challenge, but it's low-risk. Ultimately, your income—unless you're a professional athlete—is not wrapped up in the results. Your self-worth isn't; at least it shouldn't be. Yeah, we've got a little bit of ego. We want to do well. But ultimately, sports and physical challenges are very low-risk environments, and yet, in that environment, you are committing to something. You have to fully commit to be successful and achieve your goals; you have to test yourself. Typically, you have to get out of your comfort zone. You're going to have to navigate a series of experiences. You're going to face challenges. You're probably going to have a few failures on the way. You are going to go through lived experiences that are going to foster all of those traits. And by definition, in that low-risk environment, parallel to all of your roles and responsibilities, you're going to be just given, given, given experiences and lessons that are going to, whether you like it or not, hone the development of all of those traits. Now, it's also a healthy thing to do. It's a great source of pride and satisfaction. It might even have fun doing it as well; it can even open up a whole world of community. So yes, the value of sport is great, but as it relates to child's play, it's adult play.
Matt Dixon 22:52
When you do this, when you commit to journeys, you will improve the traits that we know make you better equipped to perform under pressure, focus on the key elements, and collaborate and communicate in the real world. And that's the important part of it. Kids play so that they don't realize this, but so that on the journey they become more effective adults. They experience emotional development through the arena of play. We leverage our play, adult play, taking on a physical challenge, a hobby, a sport, so that we can yield great benefits that apply to our life as adults, in other words, in the workplace, as a father, as a mother, as a partner, all of these components. My observations of working with people just like you are that this crucible of sport is a vehicle to help us show up better in life. It's fun, it's enjoyable, it's rewarding, but it's a vehicle to show up better in life. The folks that I've worked with who embrace sport, no matter how busy and time-starved they are, are better equipped under the big banner of emotional resilience and stress management. Engaging in challenges outside of work, like training for a marathon or an Ironman, requires enduring discomfort, setbacks, and failures. This process builds emotional resilience. They're better equipped to handle pressure across all aspects of life. They have better problem-solving skills. They're highly adaptable. They've got a better sense of confidence and certainly, autonomy. No one is coming to rescue you in these challenges; it's you looking in the mirror and growing yourself. They build confidence and a sense of control; they even enhance their leadership skills. And so these are the components that ultimately lead to better fulfillment, better performance across life, and a sense of balance. It has wisdom and perspective all the way.
Matt Dixon 25:05
In summary, taking on challenges outside of the work. It's a powerful way to cultivate emotional strength, performance-enhancing traits, and a balanced growth-oriented opportunity or mindset that positively influences your professional life. Ultimately, when we think about it, we're just big kids. Kids play, and it helps them adult better. As adults, we play, and it helps us adults better. Very simple, ask Jonathan Haidt; some things never change. See you next time.
Matt Dixon 25:44
Guys, thanks so much for joining, and thank you for listening. I hope that you enjoyed the new format. You can never miss an episode by simply subscribing. Head to the Purple Patch channel on YouTube, and you will find it there, and you can subscribe. Of course, I'd like to ask you if you will subscribe and also share it with your friends, it's really helpful if you leave a nice, positive review in the comments. Now, any questions that you have, let me know; feel free to add a comment, and I will try my best to respond and support you on your performance journey. And, as we commence this video podcast experience, if you have any feedback at all, as mentioned earlier in the show, we would love your help in helping us to improve. Simply email us at info@purplepatchfitness.com, or leave it in the comments of the show on the purple patch page, and we will get you dialed in. We'd love constructive feedback. We are in a growth mindset, as we like to call it, so feel free to share with your friends. But as I said, let's build this together. Let's make it something special. It's really fun. We're trying hard to make it a special experience, and we want to welcome you into the Purple Patch community. With that, I hope you have a great week. Stay healthy, have fun, keep smiling, do whatever you do, and take care.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
experiences, free, play, sport, emotional resilience, challenges, children, life, patch, adults, high performance, develop, mindset, emotional, purple, learning, development, components, playground, performance