Your Mind is an Opportunity: Building Mental Toughness with Dr. Lara Pence 2020-11-04

As a runner, you prioritize your physical training, but what are
you doing for your mental health training? Dr. Lara Pence (aka
Dr. L) is a clinical psychologist who has spent the last 15 years
working with endurance athletes to help them shed unhealthy
patterns of behavior and build mental strength using curiosity as
a tool to become mentally resilient and adventurous. By training
athletes to dive deeper into the why behind their goals, she also
helps them boost their mental toughness by creating a
values-driven way of being.


 


Dr. L shares a lot of great info with Coach Claire on how to
build mental strength, including discussions on the relationship
between athletes and food, changing our personal narratives about
our performance as we age, setbacks, and motivation. Having a fit
mind is at least as important as having a fit body, and this is
an episode everyone can benefit from.


 


Dr. L is an East Coast native who did her post-doctoral
fellowship in Dallas, TX. She has since built her own private
practice, becoming one of the most sought-after therapists in
Dallas.  She moved to Colorado in 2019 to become the Chief
Mind Doc for SPARTAN, the world’s top endurance company. She also
hosted the Spartan Mind podcast and served as a consultant to the
organization on various mindset-focused initiatives.


 


Dr. L is also a coach for The Unbeatable Mind, alongside Mark
Divine, founder of SEAL FIT. She has been featured in various
publications and media outlets such as Good Morning America, the
BBC, Glamour, Vogue, WebMD, Psychology Today, and The Huffington
Post. 


 


Most recently, Dr. L has launched her own podcast called Curious
Minds with Dr. L, and she has a new product called LIGHFBOX, a
simple program designed to exercise your mind, spark curiosity,
and boost your mental fitness. 


 


Get ready to strengthen your mind and boost your mental fitness
with Dr. L!


 






Questions Lara is asked:


 


6:17 You like to call yourself an "active therapist" and that's
not just because you are also a runner.  What do you mean by
that?


 


7:39 Let’s talk about the people you do work with and your own
running background. How do you specifically work with runners?


 


9:34 Eating disorders and running. Obviously, to be at the top of
your game, you need to be light and lean. Thankfully some elite
runners these days are talking more about how getting too lean is
really causing huge problems, but there is a fine line between
being at your highest performance and whether that’s actually
healthy or not. So how do you kind of dig through that mess?


 


12:15 Let’s go into the performance side of what you do, mental
strength training if you will. A lot of people, when runners or
athletes get to a certain level, they realize that it’s not just
all about physical training. The mental aspect is absolutely
huge, if not more important than the physical training. Everybody
wants to know: How do we get mentally tough?


 


14:47 You’re saying that we should just be curious about why a
race or a workout didn’t go well. How do you incorporate
curiosity in success and failure when it comes to athletes?


 


17:12 I would love to hear about how you practice incorporating
curiosity. Say I’m a runner and I’m trying to go after this big
goal and I’m just getting frustrated. How do I practice curiosity
to improve my mental strength?


 


20:33 What happens when you peel back the onion and maybe there’s
not such positive motivation down there?


 


23:45 Obviously 2020 has been a crazy year, but for runners
specifically, all their races have been canceled pretty much. And
so the carrot that everybody has, that’s evaporated, and so a lot
of the clients that I coach have just been like, “You know what?
There’s no race on the schedule. I don’t really feel like
training anymore.” What advice do you give runners who are
training without races?


 


29:23 I read on your blog that you wrote an article recently
about overcoming setbacks.  Obviously as people, but also as
runners specifically, setbacks can happen all the time, whether
it’s just a bad workout or a big race that you train for that
didn’t go so well. I’d love to hear your ideas about overcoming
setbacks.


 


33:28 How about successes? Some people, surprisingly, don’t
handle success very well. What are your thoughts on that?


 


35:54 I'd love to get your thoughts on comparison and
competition.  Runners compete in races and we compete
against ourselves. That can be great, but that can also be pretty
tough, especially if you were let’s say a high school or college
runner and you’re now in your 40s, 50s, and 60s, and you’re just
not the same person that you used to be. I would love to get your
opinion and thoughts about Masters runners and about how as we
get older, we’re not as fast as we used to be, and how can we
still celebrate what we can do? 


 


40:16 I think honestly, the runners that have the healthier
outlook as Masters are the ones who were not competitive when
they were younger, because they’re finding it all new and
exciting, and every race is a PR, so it’s really special, whereas
sometimes I get other athletes who competed before and it seems
like they’re always looking backwards instead of looking
forward. 


 


42:31 What's next for you? You say that you have a race coming up
in May. What are you training for?






Questions I ask everyone:


 


43:42 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started
running, what advice would you give?


 


43:51 What is the greatest gift running has given you?


 


44:15 Where can listeners connect with you?





Quotes by Lara:

 


“One of the things that I love to do, one of my strengths, is
actually knowing my limitations and knowing what’s the
appropriate arena for me to explore something with a client and
when it’s not.”


 


“The judgement that can accumulate inside of us is almost like
energy, if you think of it as energy. It’s really toxic and can
be really poisonous. And when we reduce the judgements and open
up space for curiosity, it really allows for a willingness to
learn and a willingness to absorb other information that can
actually be helpful and fuel us.”


 


“In terms of setbacks, I really, really encourage individuals to
have the mindset of everything is an opportunity.”


Take a Listen on Your Next Run


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Mentioned in this podcast:

https://www.drlarapence.com/


Podcast - Curious Minds with Dr L


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