Do you ever feel like you’re holding yourself back because you’re afraid to fail? Do you feel weighed down or less confident because you worry about what they will think? Do you ever wish you could just quiet the noise in your mind and trust yourself more?
It’s OK if you said yes to any / all of the above. If we’re being honest, all of us have navigated these spaces; we just don’t talk about it. Many of us try hard to hide our struggles - especially the internal ones - because we’ve been told that it's a sign of weakness.
Navigating struggle is a sign you are human.
We all experience struggle - both internally + externally - to varying degrees, ESPECIALLY when we’re striving for excellence athletically.
Not talking about the hard stuff doesn’t make it go away. Beating ourselves up because it’s happening keeps us down longer and increases our suffering.
Those strategies come with a high cost. And they do nothing to help us thrive.
We cannot rise when we’re on the ground beating ourselves up.
Gone are the days of shut up + suck it up — which means we’ve gotta skill up so we know HOW to do hard things.
Equipping + empowering ourselves with the foundational skills to positively cope with stress, pressure, fear, judgment, comparison and other hard things is the WAI forward.
It’s the WAI We rise
Learning how to do hard things helps us unlock new levels of performance and bolsters our wellbeing in the process.
“During the Covid shutdown, our daughter, who is an elite swimmer, began having both mental and physical challenges that greatly started to affect her. She was no longer confident in her swimming. We decided to seek help and Sam was recommended by a friend. They quickly got to work. Through their bimonthly zooms and calls, Sam was able to engage, support, and challenge her. They began to unravel the questions and fears of her “entire” self, not just sport/performance. She has been able to set physical and mental goals and process the results. It has been hard work, but we have gotten our daughter “back”. Sam’s approach is life-changing. We are so thankful for how she has impacted our daughter.”
GM, Mother of DI, Power Five Student-Athlete
Let’s get started:
If we want to uplevel while honoring our wellbeing, we need to take charge of our internal world
i.e. the thoughts, emotions + stories we tell ourselves.
Have you ever put in the work and the results weren’t there?
It doesn’t feel good and can make us question whether or not we have what it takes.
You’ve probably heard (or told yourself) that
If I could *just*…
Stop overthinking;
Stop comparing;
Get out of my head;
THEN, things would come together.
If I could *just*…
Relax;
Stop stressing;
Focus;
And try harder;
Then, I’d feel more confident.
Here’s the thing…
The notion that if you just work hard enough, you’ll achieve what you want - is incomplete.
It’s not the whole truth… there are factors outside of your control that impact outcome.
(Not an easy one to digest.)
It's time to rework the old equation of hard work = outcome to a more expansive and accurate version,
so we can put our attention and energy on the things we CAN control.
New research in sports performance, neuroscience and psychology tells us that we achieve at higher levels when we shine a light on our feelings and emotions and use that awareness to focus our response in ways that honor the whole person - not only who we are as athletes.
Despite 100% of coaches + athletes acknowledging that the mind plays a role in performance, most athletes aren’t equipped with the skills to navigate their inner world, never mind under pressure.
We haven’t been taught HOW do do those things, yet.
The good news is that those are skills we can develop together - and when we do, we unlock new levels of performance AND open up the door for greater fulfillment.
We can learn to harness the power of our emotions (for real), release the grip of worry + what-iffing and break free from the Fear of Other People’s Opinions.
Worried that you won’t have the time to commit to one.more.thing?
We’ve broken things down into bite size pieces - so you can integrate this often missing pillar (the mental pillar!) into your life as human striving in sport.
Imagine dramatically reducing nerves, self-doubt, overthinking, and perfectionism
so you can:
Positively cope with pressure, stress, expectations and other hard things
Fully TRUST in the process + yourself
Unhook from the grip of comparison, fear and the inner judge without losing your competitive edge
Take charge of your inner world (vs. the thoughts + emotions taking charge of you)
Feel firmly planted, KNOWING you’re capable of the challenges in front of you
My name is Samantha Arsenault Livingstone. I’m an Olympic gold medalist, high-performance consultant, forever athlete and fierce mental health advocate. I’m also a mother of four sports-loving girls and married to a Master collegiate strength + conditioning coach. Sport is woven deeply through the fabric of our home - and it’s where I spend the most time in my consulting business, helping teams and organizations build healthy, high-performing cultures. It’s dream work - and work I never imagined I’d be doing.
After retiring from 18 years in the competitive swimming world that took me around the world and to the top of the Olympic podium + NCAA podium, I jumped wholeheartedly into the world of education and club coaching. I had my life mapped out - until one of our twins needed open-heart surgery at just 12 mo old. (She’s a healthy + thriving tween today!)
That experience was one the most brutal of my life - and, it was one of the most beautiful. Understanding that two things could be true at the same time was a bridge that led me back to my 18 year-old self who stood atop the Olympic podium in Sydney Australia with this gold medal around her neck.
On the outside, it looked like she had it all together. On the inside, a completely different story. As I was finding my way as a young mother with 3 girls under 3 - healing from the intensity of the hospital stay, I started to rumble with this question: Can we cultivate greatness and be healthy? The short answer is YES. When we’re equipped with the skills + support, we can perform and thrive as humans.
The Livingstone High Performance Academy + Mental Muscle Gym is born out of a need - providing a solution to the very real problem that still exists in sport. One that hit me as a major AHA moment while watching my daughter’s learn to play hockey (no, none of them swim! They prefer to play on frozen water!!).
The drill they were doing had them skating across the ice full speed and then at certain spots, they’d slide across the ice on their bellies, head first with arms out like superheroes. The design of the drill: Teach them HOW to get up on the ice. Hold up. Wait.
The struggles + pain we navigate aren’t just physical. Why aren’t we teaching athletes HOW to rise?
And so, for the past 6+ years, it’s been my mission to weave together all my skills - as athlete, teacher, coach, mother, advocate, mindfulness instructor and human with lived experience - to help others learn how to do just this.
To empower + equip.
To educate.
To pay forward what I’ve learned along the way.
It’s dream work.
RECLAIM YOUR POWER WITH
THE LIVINGSTONE ATHLETE ACADEMY + MENTAL MUSCLE GYM
Unlock New Levels of Performance With Tools to Help You Cope With Pressure, Stress, and Other Hard Things.
In the Livingstone Athlete Academy, you’ll find resources and real time tools to help you reclaim your power, stack tools in your toolbox so you can unlock new levels of performance and navigate hard things in your life. No one has it all together. When things are feeling a little stormy inside, you need tested, and reliable tools that work for YOU.
Think of this space as a weight room for your brain. Just as we wouldn't expect to drop into the weight room once or twice and expect strength gains, the same is true for our brain.
We are humans first, and as humans, we experience emotions. I want to challenge you to strip away the labels and look at emotion for what it really is (not good or bad).
The LHP Athlete Academy© is a virtual, six-block series created by Samantha Arsenault Livingstone to help student-athletes identify, develop and strengthen the supports, skills and tools needed to positively cope with pressure, stress and other hard things - in sport and in life. The LHP Mental Muscle Gym© houses over fifty, sport-centric, 2-15 minute mindfulness-based "workouts" to strengthen attentional and emotional agility - an integral part of performance and wellbeing.
If You’re a Self-Motivated Athlete
Striving for Excellence,
This is for YOU!
This program is for self-motivated athletes who are striving for excellence and are hitting a few speedbumps (or mega curveballs) along the way - internally and/or externally.
Do you find your mind shifts + drifts from the present moment and focuses on: stress, pressure, comparison, what other people will think, or imagine all worst case scenarios when you want to be in the moment?
THIS IS ALL NORMAL. In fact, I’ve experienced many of these things as an Olympic gold medalist, and they are topics that have surfaced consistently in my work with teens + young adults over the past 18+ years.
BRING INTENTION TO YOUR ACTIONS SO THEY ARE
IN ALIGNMENT WITH YOUR GOALS
You’ll learn how to unlock new levels of performance by identifying, developing and strengthening the supports, skills and tools needed to positively cope with pressure, stress and other hard things, so you can achieve greatness in sport and life, while honoring the emotions and struggles that come with being human.
Inside the Livingstone Athlete Academy, you’ll find:
A six-block series created by Samantha Arsenault Livingstone, OLY., M.Ed. to help student-athletes identify, develop and strengthen the supports, skills and tools needed to positively cope with pressure, stress and other hard things - in sport and in life. The LHP Mental Muscle Gym© houses over fifty, sport-centric, 2-15 minute mindfulness-based "workouts" to strengthen attentional and emotional agility - an integral part of performance and wellbeing.
Teamwork Makes the Dream Work
We can’t talk about the harnessing the power of the brain without talking about all things nutrition. Inside the Academy, you’ll find powerful resources from Rebecca McConville, MS RD LD CSSD CEDRD-S. Her insight helps connect so many dots - and empowers and equips athletes with tools to optimize their wellbeing and performance.
More about Becca: She’s the owner of Rebecca McConville Consulting and is the Director of Performance Nutrition at Mind Body Endurance supervising sports dietitians specializing in eating disorders.
In addition to private practice, she has served as a consultant to the University of Missouri Kansas City Athletics, Kansas City Ballet, local colleges and previously worked with the Kansas City Chiefs. Becca along with Dr.Riley Nickols have developed and presented over the US :The Eating Disorder in Sport Workshop for athlete providers.
Becca is also the author of Finding your Sweet Spot- How to Avoid RED-S (Relative Energy Deficit in Sport) by Optimizing Your Energy Balance and RED-Solution mentorship program for clinicians. She also co-authored AT LAST a workbook for athletes transitioning out of sport.
Included in Academy Membership:
- 12 months of access to the LHP Athlete Academy + Mental Muscle Gym
- 6 workout blocks inside the LHP Athlete Academy, with over 32 videos from Olympic Gold Medalist Samantha Arsenault Livingstone, M.Ed. and Director of Performance Nutrition at Mind Body Endurance Rebecca McConville
- 6 customizable, printable workout cards for each block
- library of over 50, 2-15 min. sport-centric mindfulness-based exercises to strengthen neural pathways
-optional mental toughness scale to measure gains
Investment:
- $600 or 6 monthly payments of $100
Let’s get started!
“As a student-athlete, there are many daily stressors that other students do not necessarily experience to the same extent. Student-athletes are tasked with being adaptable and responsible by juggling both academics and athletics as our top priority non-stop. Typically, the sport that we play is what we identify as our outlet where we can decompress from all the stressors in our lives. However, what happens when our sport becomes a stressor? What happens when we get injured? What happens when we lose a game? What happens when we have no time for anyone but ourselves? What happens when our sport becomes more of a chore than an enjoyment?
The Athlete Academy acts as a tool for attacking stress and teaches us how to prioritize ourselves through mindfulness activities and breathwork activities. It is easy for athletes to prioritize taking care of themselves whenever physical injuries arise, however, this is not the case when we cannot physically see the issue. Using the mental muscle gym in the athlete academy, student-athletes can train their brain like a muscle. Taking a few minutes every day to train the brain can be extremely impactful in regard to the way we manage our energy and stress throughout the duration of the day. This teaches mindfulness, decompression, focus, self-care, and intention planning, and can even help to channel our energy into our most important tasks at hand, rather than wasting our energy and mental capacity dwelling on the uncontrollable.
For me, the tools embedded within the Athlete Academy have been extremely beneficial during COVID. I can truly say that these tools have allowed me to become more conscientious when I waste energy stressing over things that are out of my control and have helped me transition my focus quicker and more efficiently whenever I have multiple tasks to complete. Before using the Athlete Academy, it would take me a lot of time to create a plan for attacking my “to-do list” instead of diving right in. I strongly recommend that everyone take a try!”
- KN, DII Captain T&F
Enroll now to ensure you start your season with the tools you need for success. Ultimately, this journey is about helping you become the world’s greatest expert on YOU.
And to do so means knowing where we turn when things get tough. Because they will.
Small actions taken daily compound over time. Start building the skills now that will help you perform at your highest levels this season.
Frequently Asked Questions
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I hear this. My first response would be to lean into what emotions are coming up for you - overwhelm? excitement? hope? uncertainty about how if it’ll be worth it? You’re worth the time + effort. These skills will serve in your pursuit of excellence athletically - and beyond that - they are skills you’ll take with you into all areas of your life.
How many hours, days, weeks, months, years do we spend training the physical and technical parts of our sport? How many of us have put in the hours, done the work - and fallen short of what we know we’re capable of achieving an experiencing because our body + mind were not in line?
It is going to take work. And. It’ll be worth it.
It can feel uncomfortable to try new things - and that discomfort opens us to growth and new opportunities. What we know from the work of researchers like Drs. Brené Brown and Susan David is that when we invest time + energy into this work, it saves us time and energy in the long term. We cannot rise when we’re on the ground beating ourselves up - learning HOW to rise takes work.
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I used to think this stuff was “not for me” - and believed wholeheartedly that meeting myself with harsh criticism and judgement is what gave me my edge. (Because that’s the story we were sold.) Truth is - I got to the top of the Olympic podium in spite of that critical voice, not because of it which leaves me wondering what could have been if I had been healthy.
Let’s toss out the ever growing body of research and pretend that the old school way of ‘sucking it up’ and ‘shoving it down’ and ‘pushing through’ does contribute to achievement, we must ask ourselves: At what cost? For me, that inner voice drove me into the darkness of depression, suicidal ideation and an eating disorder.
I’m curious to learn more. If they’re willing, I’d be happy to connect on strategy call to answer any of their questions. Send them here to sign up for a free, 20 min strategy call.
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This isn’t about adding more to your plate, though technically we can’t create more time in a day. We can decide what we say no to in order to say yes to other things; we cannot do it all. (Yikes, my recovering perfectionist self just clenched my jaw a bit - and that’s the truth.) This journey isn’t about showing up perfectly every day; it’s about stretching ourselves to grow in new ways so we can unlock new levels of performance WHILE honoring our whole-selves. What’s the alternative?
Dropping in for 2-15 minutes a day - or a few times a week - is better than nothing. Small steps move us forward. The time spent here changes how the rest of the day feels; when we take time to reset, we are able to move stress through, respond vs. react, and be present with the people and tasks in front of us.
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All of the Workout Blocks are available upon enrollment.
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Twelve-ish weeks depending on how you utilize the space. You’ll have access to the space for 12 months - so no need to rush to finish.
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Encouraging your friends and teammates to join you is highly encouraged - and - they’ll need their own membership to the spaces. Sharing your user name + login is not OK. Sharing what your learning and inviting them to join you is totally OK.
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Yes. You can pin the membership space to the home screen of your phone OR download the Kajabi app (it’s the host platform I use - kind of like the iTunes for online courses + workshops).
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Greater awareness. Higher levels of fulfillment. Elevated performances. Braver voices. Higher levels of grounded confidence - the knowingness that they can take on the challenge in front of them. More equipped humans who meet themselves with greater levels of kindness when they’re down - which leads to them rising faster. More joy in sport. Athletes feeling seen + heard + truly going for it. Athletes transitioning into college and life after sport feeling READY for the hard things they’ll encounter.
On the coach front - greater awareness. Improved feedback. Growth on all front. Stronger, more connected teams. Athletes digging in with grit and grace. Evolution in language - less complaining and negativity. Less judgement. Way more curiosity. Increased confidence to talk about emotions and spot thinking errors.
Witnessing growth + walking alongside of humans as they discover the strength inside of them is what pulled me into teaching in the first place. It’s an absolute honor. So grateful I get to do this. Cannot wait to watch you step into your power full + soar.
ARE YOU READY TO MARCH TOWARD YOUR GOALS WITHOUT SACRIFICING WHO YOU ARE OR YOUR WELLBEING?
When we’re striving for excellence - in sport and/or life, we’re going to bump up against struggle. Our power is in how we respond - how we meet ourselves in those moments.
Sacrifices are part of the process, of course. And, it’s time we put down the old school idea that in order to cultivate greatness, we must sacrifice ourselves and our mental wellbeing.
The High Performance Process will help you achieve:
Clarity around your goals so you know where you are now, where you want to go, and why it’s important to you
Awareness around the thoughts and emotions you’re having that impact your behavior so you can focus on actions that serve and support your success.
Curiosity around your thoughts so you stop beating yourself up and worrying about what other people think
Aligned action so you have the tools and skills to control how you respond to stress and bumps in the road.
You ready to step into the New School? :) I’ve got you. Let’s do this.