#196 – Gary Chupik: Mastering Mental Toughness in Sports and Life

Enter the Lionheart

Lawrence Dunning

Books, Wisdom, Entrepreneurship, Mma, Finance, Jiujitsu, Renaissanceman, Author, Realestate, Goals, Business, Mentor, Philosophy, Ayahuasca, Society & Culture, Psychedelicexplorers

5 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 17 July 2025

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Gary Chupik isn’t just a mental performance coach—he’s a mindset architect for elite athletes, business leaders, and anyone chasing their full potential. Gary is the founder of Elite Mindset and has coached clients from NFL & MLB athletes, to FBI & Fortune 500 CEOs. He brings a rare blend of neuroscience, leadership psychology, and lived wisdom to everything he does.

0.00: Gary’s background in mental training

5.00: Overcoming performance anxiety by being task conscious neutral thinking

8.45: Focusing on the present moment (syncopation) in competitive sports

13.00: Yerkes-Dodson scale for perfect activation

18.00: The illusion of choice; elites have no choices

23.00: How to inspire kids to greatness in sports (without burnout)

28.00: Difficulties of Parents coaching their own children

33.00: What sports to initially expose your kids to

35.00: When is the competition season over (for Masters Athletes)

41.00: Reframing setbacks and competitiveness as a 40+ athlete

46.00: Why athletes need to tend the garden of all aspects of their life.

www.elitemindsetnation.com

Find Gary on IG: https://www.instagram.com/elitemindset/

Until next time, love and good vibes.

Podcast Website: https://enterthelionheart.com/

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Transcript

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0:00.0	in sports when you experience failure or a setback, your ability to reframe that setback is really
0:07.0	important. The way that you're interpreting a setback informs your level of resilience. But when you
0:13.7	get a little bit older into your 40s, you think to yourself, well, I can't do what I once did,
0:18.6	or I don't even want to do what I once did because of the cost involved.
0:22.9	However, our ability to reframe our competitiveness is really important.
0:28.7	So for example, it's like, well, how can I be the best father that I can be?
0:34.6	What if I can take that same type of fight mentality or competitive mentality?
0:40.0	How can I let that overflow into different areas of my life?
0:58.1	A single theme is too narrow for great minds and daring hearts.
1:02.8	Get ready to enter the Lionheart with your host, Warren Stunning.
1:07.7	Gary, it's so great to have you.
1:11.4	I love people that work with professional sports teams and elite athletes, And you've been working on just cultivating an elite mindset for a long time. So
1:16.9	really excited for this. Yeah, thanks for having me, Lawrence. So Gary, maybe we can maybe start
1:21.9	with a bit of your background, how you came to be the mindset coach, you are today. Yeah, it was a little bit of a meandering path to
1:29.8	a men of coaching. I was a pastor for 30 years, so my primary mode for pastoring was not telling
1:37.0	people what to think. It was just coaching people on the spiritual part of their lives. And so that
1:42.4	primary mode of coaching has always been kind of my
1:45.8	mode of operation. And so when I moved into more coaching stuff, it was a really easy transition.
1:51.8	I was just able to coach on the mental side. So I really love mental coaching. And I was an
1:57.1	athlete growing up. And so that, you know, tapping into that competitive side to me was
2:02.2	really easy. And I think at some point in my life, like one of the reasons why the transition
2:07.2	happened for me was because I had burnt out. And I just mismanaged my energy levels. And the things
	...

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