When I was a senior in high school, I asked Helene Horan to prom. She said yes. Looking back, I really wish she’d said no. In fairness to her she got there eventually.
I committed to Positive Psychology before Positive Psychology even “existed”. As a small child I had a deeply formed, perhaps rigid, sense of right and wrong. When I saw something wrong, I wanted to fix it immediately. Now with children of my own I can see the same rigidity, but it’s not only about what you perceive as right and wrong. There’s also what you will DO to right that wrong.
What is disturbing, however, is that Swimswam, nominally a “news” website, seems unwilling to seriously moderate comments in any way. I have pointed this out to them before, when they have posted stories of sexual abuse victims and allowed anonymous commenters the freedom to slag those victims.
I’ve always felt like I should not produce anything, whether it be writing or audio, if it’s redundant to what’s already out there. So I didn’t take the decision to kick back up again lightly. If my podcast was just a low-fi version of either of these two podcasts, with lower profile guests, why even do it?
The BS Vendor is a person who tries to profit off of selling you pure, unadulterated cow manure. They are often IYI’s, putting a veneer of “science” around an empty shell. They don’t understand how probability works, which you don’t need to understand complex math to figure out. They seek rent (money) for their BS.
Later today I'll be recording a podcast with a long sought after guest: Susan Teeter. Susan was the coach of the Princeton University Women's Swimming and Diving team from 1984-2017. We're going to talk on this podcast specifically about what she's been up to since her "retirement" last year.
Where should we begin? Earlier this month, Dagny Knutson got her $617,800 judgment against her former attorney, Richard Foster, reinstated. Schubert managed to insert himself into this conflict in two crucial, despicable ways.
On Monday, I announced the recent, quite dramatic events going on with this blog. In that post, I made a couple of serious mistakes.
"the reference to the brother, however, was swimming related"
I wouldn't accept that explanation from my four year old. In fact, there is a lot about this situation, despite the adult nature of the texts, that warrants such comparisons. We'd have to have a conversation about the lying on top of whatever she did wrong.
I hold my son's head with my right hand, the left hand scooped under his butt. He screams. I bounce. He errantly flails his hands. I bounce and "shushhhhh". He kicked his legs with all his might. I bounce.
Slowly but surely, he gets a little more limp in my arms. His eyes start to get heavy, then close intermittently. Eventually, he will slump entirely into sleep.
I've been a New Jersey resident for close to two years now. I still can't make heads or tails whatsoever of the geography. When I'm driving some way I've never been, it feels as if I change towns every few minutes.
That's not just my imagination though. NJ has 500+ municipalities packed into a tiny little state. Something about taxes, blah blah. You're not reading this for New Jersey politics
Over a week ago, published only by the Orange County Register/SCNG, there was one more log added to the towering bonfire of terrible things that Mark Schubert has done during his coaching career.
Since starting this blog, I've gotten to a lot of areas in America that I never knew. I spent part of last fall out in Arizona in the pleasant hospitality of my friend Garrett McCaffrey and Grand Canyon University. I've visited Houston three times in the past year. I went back to Nebraska and saw a whole new part of the state.
That was all fantastic, but I have realized recently that I still know very little about what's going on within a short drive of my home base here in Jersey City, NJ. Likewise, it's been over a decade since I set foot on a pool deck in the LSC of my youth, New England
One year before the men's ACC championship, the assistant coaches were tasked with each giving an inspirational speech to the guys. My friend Marty Hamburger stepped up to the plate big.
His speech, which I will paraphrase because this is kinda sorta a family blog, came down to one thing. There was a big difference between talk and action. You could talk about doing something, or what you wanted to do, but doing it was something other entirely.
Marty had two sons. He had done it. I'll let you fill in the rest.
The speech lightened the mood for everyone on a tense evening, and I was thinking about him last week when my son, our second child, was born.
Four and a half years ago, when my daughter was born, I was head coach of a Danish swim club. I had just been selected (and declined to attend) a meet with the Danish Junior National team, because the meet was in Iceland and I didn't want to be far away if my wife went into labor.
I got a little flak from my colleagues at the time. Little did I know that would only be the beginning of the road I would have to navigate in my new dual role. This was Denmark, the land of parental leave. So I had fourteen days, which I won't complain about since many of my American readers probably experience going to work the very next day after their child is born.
I didn't get the fourteen days, however. I got called in a couple times, including interviewing and hiring a new coach just three days into my daughter's life. After that, it was back to the grind. I was coaching almost every morning and every weekday night.
During the first year, I would sleep away from home for 65 days, including several stretches of approximately 10 days. I remember I was in Croatia when my daughter crawled for the first time, struggling to watch on crappy wifi.
There was an essential conflict in what I did. The more successful I got, the more time I would be away from home. Shannon Rollason, a man I greatly admired for balancing his family and elite swim coaching, didn't sugarcoat it for me. I remember him telling me that with the Olympics approaching that time at home was going to grow even more scarce for him.
My own father hadn't taken an active role in raising me. He had, basically, just worked. He was an outstanding provider, and I grew up very well off. I emerged from an expensive, private liberal arts school with no college debt. I am not ungrateful for any of that.
He would often leave for work before I woke up. He would return for dinner from 6:00-:6:30, then go back to work. He worked Thanksgiving, Christmas and most other major holidays. When I started swimming I missed a lot of those dinners too.
It wasn't the path I wanted to follow, not the relationship I had chosen when I decided to marry my wife. I felt constantly pulled in two directions.
At one point, I remember returning from a meet, a frustrating weekend. I broke into tears at the kitchen table. I was exhausted, and I felt like I was failing at both of the things I wanted to be excellent at. I certainly didn't have a road map for either.
In September of 2015, my life changed. I stepped away from the grind and came home. Life was still stressful, to be sure. My mother was slowly dying from a brain tumor. My wife was starting up a new job.
But I had time to focus on doing one job extremely well- being a dad. I was home every morning and most nights. I walked my daughter to and from school, and made most of her meals. I had my weekends back.
To this day I'm extremely grateful that fate intervened and sent me home. I could have missed out on so much. I realized the simple truth that kids really benefit from a lot of time with their parents- my daughter was happy and thriving and our relationship grew stronger and stronger.
My greatest fear, of course, was that somehow my coaching skill would atrophy if I didn't spend all my time poolside. That was far from the truth. First off, parenting a small child gave me a lot more empathy for the children (and their parents) that I worked with every day.
I got patience that I never had, in spades. I relearned how to teach someone something. I got really lucky in that a swim club offered to let me work for them part-time, and basically define my own role. "We want you on the team" they said, and offered to let me do whatever I felt I was best at.
So finally, I learned to stop trying to be everything to everyone and just focus on a few things that I knew I could do really well.
Which leads me to today. I founded this business on that principle. I was not going to try and do anything that I was ok at, or pretty good at. I was going to stick to a few things, and do them really well.
I thought there was a niche to carve out, one that could lead me to continue to do what I love (coach) and still be a father to my kids and the loving husband I wanted to be. I think that there are a lot of coaches with the same goal, trying to chart a similar path in a world that isn't always quite set up to make it convenient.
I got to make up for lost time with my first kid, with the second I won't have to. Later today, I'm going to leave for a little bit, stand next to a pool, and help some kids learn to do it a little bit better. It's a simple thing that I won't take for granted this time around
The longest one, which features some quotes from Schubert himself, begins with the title "Mark Schubert is a legend..." before asking the question that is the core of why Schubert is no legend. He doesn't belong in any of the multiple hall of fames he currently resides.
Lately I've been listening to a music mix that convinces me that I am rapidly moving towards the "old" portion of my life. I go out for a jog, or a dog walk, and I put on the "Top 100 Songs of 2002". That's right, I've decided effectively "screw new music". Let's just play what I listened to when I was eighteen and life was simple and easy.
Over the last couple weeks, significant challenges to two of the most popular Positive Psychology concepts have emerged. The Marshmallow test, a foundational piece of research behind GRIT, and the effect of growth mindset have each faced serious criticism.
I've seen both GRIT and growth mindset spread like wildfire in athletic environments. Do these new challenges mean we should throw them away just as quickly? Probably, not, but let's see what is going on with each argument
