How to Coach Gen Z and Gen Alpha - Mental Fitness Coach Stasia Rivera

In this episode of "Spirit of an Athlete," host Amanda Smith talks with Stasia Rivera from Vivi Athletics, about the mental fitness of Generation Z (Gen Z) and Generation Alpha (Gen Alpha) athletes. They explore the unique challenges these younger generations face, particularly due to technology's pervasive influence on their mental health and athletic performance. Stasia emphasizes the importance of creating supportive environments characterized by connection, safety, and trust. Many coaches assume their athletes are entitled. She shares insights from her work with athletes and coaches, offering practical strategies for fostering mental resilience. The episode aims to equip parents, coaches, and athletes with tools to better support young athletes' mental well-being.

Stasia Rivera is a mental fitness coach who leads athletes in defining and bridging the gaps that prevent them from making an immediate impact in life and sport. As a co-founder of Vivi Athletics, Stasia supports athletes to gain repeatable success that builds confidence, motivation, and an ability to gain the next level advantage.

Connect with Stasia Rivera:

Website: www.viviathletics.com

Instagram & Facebook: @viviathleticsofficial

Tune in to gain valuable insights and practical strategies for supporting the mental fitness of young athletes!

In this Episode: 

• [00:00:05] Mental fitness for Generation Z (Gen Z) and Generation Alpha (Gen Alpha) athletes.
• [00:02:15] Unique challenges faced by younger generations due to technology.
• [00:04:30] Impact of technology on mental health and athletic performance.
• [00:07:00] Differences between Gen Z and Gen Alpha in relation to technology exposure.
• [00:09:20] Misconceptions about the resilience and toughness of Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Entitlement is not the issue. 
• [00:11:45] Role of social media in the lives of young athletes and its effects.
• [00:14:10] Importance of creating a supportive coaching environment characterized by connection, safety, and trust.
• [00:16:35] The significance of open communication and emotional support in coaching practices.
• [00:19:00] The concept of mental fitness as a crucial component of athletic training.
• [00:21:25] Resources and strategies for parents, coaches, and athletes to support mental well-being.

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Check out more from Amanda:
Website: Body Whisper Healing
Instagram: @Amanda.G.Smith
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Pinterest: AmandaGSmithBWH
LinkedIn: Amanda (Ritchie) Smith

Take the Gutsy Chick Quiz to find out how your athletic mindset might be holding you back from healing your chronic health issue: https://gutsychickquiz.com

Transcript

0:19

Welcome back to another episode of spirit of an athlete. I'm your host, Amanda Smith, and on this episode, Stasia Rivera from Vivi Athletics joins me to talk about mental fitness for Gen Z and Gen Alpha. This was an eye opening conversation for me, and I am still taking in what Stasia explained to me about these generations and how we should be coaching them, as well as how they show up as athletes. I truly hope you stick around to find out more about stage's course and her book at the end of the episode. As parents, coaches and athletes. I truly hope you take in all of stage's amazing information. Enjoy the episode! Dasia Rivera, thank you so much for joining me on spirit of an athlete on this quite crazy day in my neighborhood. I truly appreciate what we're about to talk about because it's hitting home today for me. It is. I feel like it was probably lined up just right for us to be together today and loved our talk that we were able to have, and I'm excited to continue it. Thank you. Ah. Okay, so you work with Gen Z and Gen Alpha kids. What's a Gen Z kid and what's a Gen Alpha kid? Good question. So most of our Gen Z's are starting to be in that 24 range to about 14. Um, so somewhere in there is the cusps of the Gen Z, and then right below that we have the gen alphas. So 13 to kind of probably two years old. We don't know what the next one will be yet. Um, but uh, somewhere in that range, those are our gen alphas. So I like to think of it as like, if they're in middle school right now, they're probably at Gen Alpha and younger, and then if they're in high school and college or starting to enter that workforce really early, that's a Gen Z. It blows my mind that we've we literally have Alpha and Omega next to each other. Now that's it's righteous, uh, in terms of that word. So I have an alpha is what that tells me. My daughter's ten years old. She's a gen alpha. Why do you focus on these two generations? We do. We consider ourselves generational advocates and for all generations. I think it's important for Gen Z and Gen Alpha to also understand the nuances of other generations. And, um, but we focus on the Gen Z and the Gen Alpha because we feel like there's a lot of misunderstandings around them. Some of the ones, like we were talking about like that they're mentally weak or they're not as tough, we can't push them. They quit. Um, I'm seeing very different things when different conditions are there for them. And so that's where we really consider ourselves to be advocates, is they're facing a different set of challenges than other generations, largely connected to technology and the impact it's had since day one of their upbringing. So the Gen Zs, the first generation we've had that had tech since day one, meaning really advanced tech, smartphone and, um, pads and those types of things. And then Gen Alpha is even more because we're seeing this evolution of like AI and all of these different things that are going to influence their world. So there's a big change in how that creates that baseline safety in our deeper structures of our development. And a lot of people just don't know. And it's not it's okay. Like not everyone rolls around wanting to know neuroscience and being super nerdy, but um, but we do. It's something that we really want to advocate and simplify for people so that they can start to see the brilliance of this generation. They're also the smartest generation we've ever raised. They're they're able to do things and, and create and synthesize information in incredible ways that other generations can't because they didn't have that development. So there's there's always pros and cons, and we like to focus on the process. I love that. Okay. So I'm sitting here thinking like I am technically a millennial, uh, which annoys me because millennials were. And this goes back to what you were saying about Gen Z and Gen Alpha and the tech. So millennials were defined as the first generation to be to to have tech their entire life. Granted, it was you know, like the the most basic computer you could possibly think of. Right, right. And dos, I very much remember DOS the the black screen with the green type. Yep, yep. Uh, and and we were the first generation to have chat rooms. I remember sitting in my first chat room at 12 years old, uh, sitting in. Uh-Uh, but but you said with Gen Z, it's the smart technology. How is that different than millennials? So the some of the nuances that we see is, um, is the, the influence of so many things that the smartphone brings. So it's not just a computer where I sat down at a desk and the squeaky internet went off, and I maybe loaded a page once a minute. You know, in the beginning to where now we have literally information and milliseconds. We have alarms, dings, bells. A structure that's intended to be somewhat addictive. And so that's a difference. That's that's a big difference. And I also feel like culturally we're all kind of tapped out and maxed out. So the technology has become the off switch. I have my fingers in quotes because what I consider it to be is a pause button. So yes, I might feel better for a moment, but then I come back to my reality and this is where we're seeing. We label these things as mental health epidemic, connection epidemic, addiction, epidemic. But really what we're what we're experiencing is a lot of very overwhelmed, internal people that don't have the right tools to come connect and and do what they need to do on a daily basis with all these new modern era threats. Okay. How much does social media play into this? Well, a lot, you know, because again, I'm not a proponent for some of the extremes that I've seen where it's like, we've just gotta cut it off and that's just not realistic. It's just not. Um, but we do need to start to show Gen Z and Gen Alpha. What impacts does it have, and can we take some digital detox time or have some structures in place that help us not have it take over? So I like a great example is my own child. So he's an online student. He finished school. All of a sudden he replaced that with a lot of technology time. And I kind of noticed it. Um, but I didn't really say anything. So he's a highly competitive athlete, as I mentioned. So we drive 90 minutes for him to train and car. He'd had kind of a tough practice. We're in the car and we're talking and I'm like, let's talk about what what's happening, you know, with you and your routines. Like. And he was the one that started realizing, oh, I've been really on a slippery slope with my tech, and it's actually making me feel different with my relationships with certain family members. It's affecting my like, my tolerance, like. So he realized, like, I'm on a dopamine high and I don't want anybody to interrupt me. And now all of a sudden, my sport is frustrating when it normally isn't because I'm not getting that good feel that I want because I totally tapped my my dopamine system. And he was sort of putting that together. And he was the one that was like, I'm, I'm detoxing. Like I'm I'm cutting it off because he knows he doesn't have an in-between personality. He just doesn't. So he's like, I'm. And I said, okay, let's talk about what we're going to replace it with. You know, because we have to feel good. We have to do the other stuff. So he started to realize what those things were. So yeah, just right in my home, like, these things happen to all of us as parents, mentors and coaches, you know, and we know. But how we did get back into what we call baseline is, is really important. I want to highlight this for the listeners. So going on any tech, it doesn't matter what tech it could be the TV, it could be, you know a simple game. They're getting dopamine hits when they do this. And those dopamine hits are affecting the rest of their life, and they need some downtime from it in order to recover. Yeah, man, that's like for me, I want to shout that from the rooftops, because I know a lot of parents and I'm doing it right now. We're recording this session and I've got my kid on the TV downstairs. It was supposed to be a no tech day for her, but I knew that she needed that in this moment because of what's going on in my neighborhood, which is quite crazy. Uh, and I said, you know what? Yes, go watch TV because it's going to be her dopamine hit. It's going to be that thing that's going to rebalance where she's at. So are there times when we want our kids involved in tech, and there are times when we don't want them involved in tech? I think we've already identified the don't. But what about the do? Yeah, and I think that that's the larger conversation. I feel like we get this information and then we're like, cut it off, you know, or this very black and white, um, the surgeon general just came out and said that he wants to issue a label warning people about the implications of social media. And I'm not going to quote this exactly right. But roughly what he was saying is if a child is on fast dopamine think phone think immediate hits. Right. That's a little different than a movie. Movie's a little slower. It's a little you're a little bit more participatory. And in fact, a lot of Gen Z and Gen alphas don't actually prefer movies if you talk to them because it's a little too slow. So I've had many people tell me this and I'm like, make sense? You've been raised to have it be faster and more in time. Your system responds more to that. So in this study, what he also presented was if we go above for roughly four hours, that significantly, significantly impacts mental wellness. And so again, what do we focus on the mental health epidemic. But what I want people to start to focus on is why do we have one. We have because of the reliance on tech. Too much. So, like you said, it's finding that balance and starting to see those shifts in our kids. Are they frustrated when you ask them to step off? Well, then you might have a dopamine piece, you know, and I'm I'm talking very frustrated or very reactive. And so we have to start to kind of know what to look for, to have a different conversation. But also we've got to replace it. What are we what are we replacing it with. You know, if we're going to take it what are what are they going to get in return. What are they actually like. How are they going to develop as people outside of this? These are the questions we're asking as the advocates and trying to encourage instead of nothing. What is the thing that's going to help them have have greater sense of well-being? That's what we were where we want to be. Yes. Okay. So how does this play all of this tech piece play into athletes? Okay. Oh good question. Yeah, I've seen a lot of different approaches to tech. I've seen teen cultures where they just completely are. We've given up. We don't care. Um, we just let them have their phones 24 over seven. Um, I've seen, um, programs that it's like we put them away during certain times. It's there's just dead time that this is not, you know, having a phone out is an appropriate. Um, so I think that it's, again, where the larger conversation is, is helping the team set the standard and start to create that buy in. And those rules and the, the idea of what the system is going to be and why, you know, we get a whole, uh, idea or collective experience for the coaching staff and the team or the athlete and the parent or, you know, and I think because we don't necessarily have that ability to have nuanced conversations right now because of time limitations or skill limitations. We're avoiding that. And we're relying on these extremes again. And those don't work. Those create really massive like kind of relapse behavior. Right. Where it's just like all of a sudden I'm binging 12 hours because I haven't managed my day to day life and my day to day stress. And so then we have these nervous systems and athletes now where it's like, go, go, go, crash for an entire day and just and don't even peel yourself off the couch and, and you know, and then, okay, maybe I reset myself enough to try again. But, you know, eventually there's a mental or physical way that the body's going to show that wear and tear. Um, and again, it's not out of choice, it's out of survival. And we have to have a different conversation to start to create choice. Yes. How is this influenced the way coaches, uh, if there's a coach that's been coaching for, say, 15 years, probably even ten years at this point. How have they had to restructure, or how should we recommend that they restructure what they're doing to to better facilitate one attack to the kid who is going into this overload, overload crash? Yeah. Oh good question. So I actually would love to share how I got back into athletics. And, um, I was really fortunate to have a mentor in my community that should have never lived in my community, small town. I had a coach that had coached at the SEC level, Pac ten level. Pac ten doesn't exist anymore, but we all know you know what it is. Um, so very decorated coach ended up randomly in my tiny community and coached me to the point that I was able to compete at the D1 level. Never would have happened without Joe Gatson, my mentor. So Joe and I stayed in touch over the years. He would come and run camps. I coached, you know, we we just would swap stories and and then I moved out of coaching and into the counseling psychology and we still stayed in touch. Um, but one day he called me, and he's like, I can't do this anymore. Like, and this is a this is he's he's a boomer. He's, you know, he's um, and he's that generation, that generation. He's already coached three different generation types. This was going to be his third. And he was just like, I'm tapped out. I don't get it. I'm not connecting with these kids. I don't even know if I want to, you know, and just being very candid and brave, honestly. And I just said, you know, Joe, I've learned a lot on the on the counseling psychology side of how motivation works and how habits work and what's really going on with just generation. And I actually really appreciate so much about them. Would you are you open to talking? You know, and so we just started a conversation and then he was like, this makes so much sense. Can you come work with my team? So that was how I moved back to athletics. I created a 50 page manual. I was on a plane to Winona, Minnesota, and I was teaching this content to college athletes at the D2 level. And, um, and I knew it would, would work on a certain level because I knew once people understand how they're wired, the keys to the kingdom come back, you know, because we give them that resilience back. You can do something about your anxiety. You could do something about what you feel like is depression, even though it's nervous system collapse, probably, you know, we can do all of these things. And so we did. We began the journey. And I've been working with Jo's team for almost five years now, just and many other teams. But he's my favorite because to answer your question, Joe has completely changed how he coaches. So I was trained in an old school era where you got your butt chewed on aggressively. You made a mistake, and Joe held a very high standard for me and my teammates, and it was just what I became accustomed to. It's how I coached when I left, because that's what I knew. And but now Joe has completely changed. So some of the pillars that have changed is, um, he takes the time to ask his athletes how they're doing. He takes the time to help them understand and implement the stress reduction techniques that we've learned. There's conversations about grounding and orientation and, you know, taking in your environments and, um, feeling your feet on the floor and having different discussions. And those are invitations that are coming in and the huddles. He no longer raises his voice as often, but his team has the flexibility that he they can handle it if he does, because he's focused on connection, safety and trust building. And I'm not. And so has the team. The team has learned how to embrace Joe and see Joe's best qualities, even if he has some a place where he chooses to raise his voice or demand more. They're choosing to see where Joe is also evolving because this isn't a one sided street. I don't believe that it's up to the coaches, parents, and mentors to bend every will to the Gen Z and Gen Alpha athlete. That is not what we are proponents of. It's about meeting in the middle. It's about understanding each other, having empathy, having conversations that get us on the same page instead of a team bonding pizza party where we just encourage clicks, we actually have team bonding that creates real conversations so that people can get on the same team and and really start to have each other's back. And so it's been exciting to see because they went from losing record to they went from a 50 over 50 season 500 to setting the program win record for their sport. Um, they had their first All-American. Um, just some really cool stuff has gotten to happen with this group, and it touches near and dear because Joe was such a person in my life. Such a reason why I was able to enjoy it and love college volleyball. And and then now I get to be in the arena again and and and doing cool stuff with people. And it's just really special. It is. Okay. There's two things that I want to bring to light a little more light that you brought up. You said connection, safety and trust building are the three things that Joe focuses on. Connection was first, safety and trust building seem like there are two things that most coaches understand and know that they need to do. It's that connection piece that I think most coaches need a little more info on. Would you be willing to share what What does Gen Z and Gen Alpha need in order to create connection? That doesn't look like that pizza party. Yeah, I love it. Yeah. So, sorry. Um, there's been some big shifts in, like I said, Joe, taking the time to actually ask how the athletes are doing, we implemented a culture rule where if you were having a tough day, you just came in and named it as a team to your teammates. You didn't try to hide it. You know, um, your teammates already know you're off. Why are we trying to pretend like we're okay when we're not okay? Like, I'd rather the teammate just name it and not have to feel like they're suffering in silence and struggling, and instead they just name it. And then all of a sudden it goes away most of the time and they're fine and they just practice and the team knows how to properly support them and so does the coaching staff. So we just started implementing some radical honesty, um, templates within the training protocol where there was just places where we would get radically honest, and some really cool transitions that happen for Joe. All of a sudden, athletes are knocking on his office door, willingly not scheduled. Um, all of a sudden he noticed, like, the kids put away the phones on. Not I don't want to call them kids. The the team. The athletes put away their phones and were in the back singing again. He was like, it reminded me of when I coached you guys, you know, and they're back there singing and the All-American carries the cooler off of the bus, not the freshmen. And everyone is participating in. Everybody is pulling their weight. And he was like, it is crazy to see the shifts that have happened because we're having more candid conversations. We're being radically honest with each other about what we want. And that's what the byproduct of winning is, is connection. When connection and safety are established and programs, winning happens. If you have the physical talent, obviously you if you don't have physical talent, they might be a little tougher, but you could still do it. We've seen physically less capable teams have mental game mental fitness at the highest level. Boom. They're they're on the path to success. So those are some things that we've implemented. Lots of other things that I can think of. But that connection piece is really just comes down to creating the time, just the two minutes to check. In the two minutes, he he got a lot better at giving direct feedback, um, and telling athletes what he liked about their performance and then giving the feedback of what he wanted to have happen and why. Um, I this is a generation of why. And that puts a lot of us experts on blast because we wanted to just be like, because. Yeah, well, because I think Zeke will find 5000 other coaches on one click on YouTube, you know, so it's all about the connection for them. And that's where their restored resilience comes from. If they know you have their back, they're like any other generation we've coached. There are little nuances like, I'll give you one more example. So Joe and other programs I've talked to, they're like, I get so frustrated that if I just changed practice one hour or if I if I add an extra session in, they just freak out and it's like, it really bothers me. It's entitlement. And I'm like, okay, let's have a let's have a conversation. You know, I'm like, okay, do you like it when somebody just randomly throw something in your schedule? You know, probably not. And yet you're flexible. You adapt because we have those social rules that we've learned where it's like, I'll just hold that anger in or I'll just like be fine even though I'm not, you know? And so what I was able to kind of explain is like, I don't think we understand how they're really hanging by their fingernails and their day to day life. Everything feels really intense for many reasons. Um, there are a generation of surveillance. We follow them around 24 over seven. We can know if they're at the practice gym or they're at the library or they're somewhere they shouldn't be. We can know whether they got an A on their test or an F within milliseconds. We don't understand the implications that that has on their internal safety system. We just don't get it. So if they're already having to perform perfectly and then having to manage these really intense schedules and all of these things, one little shift is going to feel like life and death to that type of nervous system. So if we don't have that flexibility and that trust and that safety, then I am going to see that as a threat to my day or to our relationship coach athlete. And I'm going to I'm going to struggle. So while Jo doesn't love that or other coaches that we work with don't love that they've learned how to honor that and at least have some respect for that. So also on the other side, the athletes have. So if the coach comes and says, guys, we're adding another practice. They know their coaches thought about it and has a reason why. And and they have that trust. Right? It's not like I'm throwing a bomb in their court and expecting them to be okay. So there's this mutual connection. It's not one sided. The athletes have to be flexible to that. That's not fair for it to just be coach, parents, mentors, caretaking them. Also, it's not fair for coaches, parents and mentors to not have respect for the athlete as a human being and where they're coming from. Yeah, yeah. Okay. There's a couple of things ruminating for me at college. We have housing and food and our our friends group or our team that we have connected with Maslow's hierarchy. The bottom the foundation is food, water, shelter. And then the next step above that is safety. What do you know about kids who aren't in college? And that foundational level isn't that stable? Yeah. Um, well, we know they're going to have deeper challenges in, in the, in that internal safety. I mean, when basic needs aren't met, than we know that alarm bells are going off and there's a high start time. And that's going to show mentally or physically, right. The kid might be more emotional either internally or externally explosive, but they also might have physical symptoms like chronic tummy aches or anxiety attacks or those types of things, because that basic safety structure of connection and, um, the basic needs of being a human aren't being met. And I actually this came out probably almost ten years ago, but I loved it. It talked about when Gen Z was a very first coming out, that they're the first generation to invert the needs. So they're the first ones that are actually focused on well-being, which is the very top as being the primary thing that they want. And they're even willing to sacrifice some of the other things to have wellbeing and self-actualization. That's the top. So they're the first ones. And when I heard that, my mind went like I was like, oh my gosh, like, that's spot on. And um, so having that moment for you right now because my brain's like, holy crap. Because when you think about like I was taught that, that once you get to that wellbeing state and you want to level up to the next level, you go through that triangle all over again. But if we invert it, they don't care about they're not as much the foundation that we would all suspect you need because that's what we've grown up with. I love this look at our work environment right now. You know, as we play this out a little bit further, um, they would rather work remotely, make a little less money and, and live more freely and be able to have flexibility than lock themselves into a night, you know, a 40, 50 hour a week job where they get paid more and they're like, no, thank you, I appreciate it, but I don't need that. Whereas just two generations before that, you know, the the boomer generation, the baby boomer generation, that was how they were completely raised was you follow the line. I just had a beautiful conversation with my parents about this last night. You know, how they were just like, it's this and it's this and it's this. And and my mom shared this awesome story. She her background's nursing and she talked about how she went and did this quick exercise. I'll summarize quickly, but they basically made you write ten things down that mattered to you, and then they just made you. As she went through her lecture, she just had you cross off two things. And my mom described how much harder it got. And I think what she was saying is this is like the aging process. We start to lose things as we go. But I think I talked to her about last night is that is being inverted because now Gen Z and I think Gen Alpha will closely follow are like, no, I this list is my priority. This is where, how what, how I'm doing life and I'm not going to cross things off. I'm going to make it work. And this the rest of this will all. I'll figure it out, you know, whatever. And I think we really just it's a kind of a mind blow because it's so different just to generations to watch that transformation in that expectation of life. And, and we just don't realize I mentioned the 24 over seven surveillance, but we also just talked about what you guys are going through right now in your home and the difference in what kids are being exposed to and what safety means in their world. And we don't realize how much that is not a conscious choice, okay? The lower our structure is and our nervous system, our brainstem than our midbrain, those are autopilot things. It's like Velcro. It's going to stick to it. And so we recognize that there is a lot stuck to their system that we just simply did not have to experience. Period. Ruth. Yes. Yeah. And there are things that other generations have experienced that are in their Velcro to don't. Again, it's not a one side story, but right when we think about the intensity, the amount, the the frequency, that's what we're really seeing and why we're seeing a shift in what we then label is, oh, well, now we have a mental health problem. Oh well, now we have a lack of resilience. Oh, now we have mentally weak generation. Do we know they're just different. They just do it differently. Yeah yeah I can't we can't highlight that enough on this episode honestly because that that is the rhetoric right now. We were weak. We have become weak. No we've become different. So in in we're going to let the community in on this one. So we have an active situation in my neighborhood right now where we know that there are we are hunkering down in our homes. So it's an active situation. And my ten year old is scared. And this is something that she's had to deal with year in and year out at her school because of active shooters at schools. And I live near Columbine. I live near stem these two schools. One was the most recent and one was the the first, if you will. And this is what we're dealing with when it comes to mental health. And seeing how my daughter responded to what's happening in our home right now and what's happening in our neighborhood is it's intense. But this has become her new norm, right? So it's just different than what it was for us. We in schools, we were practicing tornado drills and fire drills. She's practicing active shooter drills, especially around 420, which is when Columbine happened. And we seem to have issues like that consistently here. So it's just different. And thinking about this from a flipping the hierarchy, Maslow's hierarchy just I'm still I'm still sitting with that and that that one's going to sit for a while. I have a feeling because it you for me, I'm thinking about it from a neurological perspective that shifts how we treat her. Neurology. And you mentioned this too with athletes, what we're seeing more often and this is across the board with these generations, whether they're athletes or not, is it's super intense. And then idol and the the label that that a lot of psychiatrists and psychologists would throw at this is ADHD, right? We have a whole generation of kids who have ADHD. Is it really ADHD or is it just the new normal? Exactly. I, I think we're getting better at defining what neurodivergent is, the spectrum of all of it. The autism. She and I think because of neuroscience, I like to remind people that 90% of what we know about the human brain has happened in the last ten years. So most of the people in the general population don't know those shifts. We're still kind of stuck to these old adages that we've been told that that are easy for us to believe. And so I think what we're really seeing is we're not guessing anymore. We actually really know what's happening internally. And we're seeing the neurodivergent story. And a lot of it is tied to the early tech imprint. And the tech is kind of, in a way, replacing that caregiver connection self-regulation piece over the person, because we're all kind of tapped out. I mean, stress levels are higher amongst all generations, but Gen Z reports the highest stress of any generation we've ever raised. So again, there's that advocacy of connecting what's been different for them. And we know what it's been. We don't have to guess. We know. And then we have the Pet scans and the brain scans and the imaging to know exactly what's going on. And you're right. We are seeing more divergence and learning because that's more how they've been pattern to learn, to look at many things and put it together. And that can be a superpower. When somebody is regulated, when they are in their safety system is in baseline, that is going to be a skill that we need. Because being able to put together abstract concepts into one is something that machines aren't going to be as good at for a long time. Emotions are the second thing I always say. The two things we've ignored are the two things that Gen Alpha and Gen Z are going to have to show up to having tough conversations and admitting that we're emotional creatures and beings, and being able to do those two things. Those are the two like. And I just feel like, um, we've got a skill set. We've got to kind of catch up to. But we have the science. It's not like we're guessing these aren't theories or ideas. They really are simple hacks and tricks that can help restore that resilience and that wellbeing. And feeling like I can manage my day and my life and my performance in this way with athletes. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Stasia. Holy cow. Okay, we've come full circle. We're back to the tech. Yeah. Yep. Oh, you have a book coming out. You're this. What's your book about? Yeah. So we really saw the need. Um, our programs are tailored towards athlete centric focus. We want to focus on them first. But we really saw the need to start to talk to the coaches, parents and mentors about what we've been talking about on this podcast. And so we really started breaking down. How do we bring these islands of connection and safety and awareness into the athlete relationship so that they can perform, and you can actually enjoy the process too. As a coach, parent and mentor. So that's what book is about. It focuses on just really simple tools to start to create what we say is like a life worth living. And that that is really where performance shines the most. The winds are the byproduct of all of that, and we've seen that time and time again. So we've just kind of broken it down into daily things that we can do and ways to see this and continue to have the conversation about what's unique about each generation with the technology and how we call it a tech waterfall. It's kind of like it started off with radio, you know, and records, and then it's just increased. So we break that down. Yeah. Oh that's beautiful. Okay. You also have a course that is in the same vein, but not necessarily for the coaches but for the athletes. Yeah. So that's our level advantage course. Um, so we really saw a need for athletes that are working hard to get to the next level, college and pro, or a really elite high school experience with club. Um, they, they have a need. You know, they're whenever you're changing and going up a level, there's more that's required. And so what we, what we know about elite athletes is they put a ton of hours into the physical training. And, um, when you start to get more elite, there's only so much better physically you can get. So the game changer really is the mental fitness side. And um, so that's where we just started really breaking down these principles we've been talking about in the show, empowering athletes to really understand how they're wired, um, in very simple ways in their day, and to be able to manage that in what we call our four stripe system. So they're able to live their four stripes each day and, and be able to really start to repack in their nervous system and get that flexibility in that resilience and that enjoyment back in their sport. I love that you call it mental fitness because if we called it anything else, it would just be work. And as athletes were like, yes, give me more. Give me more of that please. Right. Oh that's beautiful stage. Yeah. Oh my gosh. All right. Where can people find you. Find this course. Find your book. Hello. Oh my gosh this is so exciting. So VB athletics.com is where everything is at. You can book a call with us if you're looking for that one on one experience where we're coaching you individually or a course makes sense, we like to just make sure we've got the right fit. The books there when it's launched, um, everything's going to be in that place. And you can follow us on socials at Vive Athletics Official and Vive spelled V v I. That means living to be alive. That's that's why we called that our our company name. So yeah, you can find us there. Love it. Stasia, thank you so unbelievably much for joining me on this crazy day in my neighborhood. And on spirit of an athlete. Thank you for what you're doing. I'm so glad we're connecting. And I just appreciate the messages you're bringing forward. And it was awesome to be here, I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you so far. Yeah. Thanks for listening to spirit of an athlete podcast. 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