Here's how I got here and why I coach the way I do.

I was 15 years old, sitting in the passenger seat of my older brother’s car on the way home from yet another hard day at camp.

It was mid-August, with another hockey season on the horizon. The off-season was coming to an end and training camps were ramping up.

On the drive home, we did what we always did. We talked hockey.

We talked about camp that day and how exhausting it was. We talked about what we were excited about, what this upcoming season might look like, and inevitably, everything that would be required of us over the next several months.

Except my brother and I were looking at the road ahead from two very different perspectives.

He had already gone through the gauntlet of junior hockey and the stresses of earning an NCAA offer. He had dealt with difficult coaches, healthy scratches, injuries, and the constant uncertainty of trying to get to the next level. In his final year of junior, he even broke his back and returned within 12 weeks to keep his college offer alive.

Sitting beside him, I knew exactly how much he had sacrificed to keep rising the ranks. And as we drove home that day, I found myself confronted by a question I had never really asked myself:

Was I going to do the same? Was I going to sacrifice as much as my brother did? Train as much as he did? Put my heart and soul into getting to the next level just like he did?

The answer was no, but yes.

I loved hockey and I loved competing. For most of my life, I wanted nothing more than to be as good as my older brother. But sitting beside him that day, I also knew what continuing to chase his level of performance would require.

I just wasn’t willing to make the same sacrifices he had. But I knew that I still wanted to rise the ranks somewhere, somehow.

I just needed to find something else that I could be equally obsessed about.

Failing From the Jump

My parents were never shy about their opinions of what I should do with my life.

Doctor, lawyer, or engineer. Pick one and get it done. There was no room for confusion.

So when I chose to shift my obsession from hockey to Psychology, it wasn’t exactly the path they had envisioned for me. To them, and to myself, I was failing from the very start.

So I responded the way I had watched my brother respond time and time again: I raised the stakes.

If I was going to prove I had made the right decision, I couldn’t just earn an undergraduate degree. I had to go all the way and get a PhD. I wanted to become the first person in my family to reach a level of education that previous generations never had the opportunity to pursue.

I had stopped pursuing the next level in hockey, but I hadn’t stopped chasing the next level in life.

And before long, the same pressure I had watched overwhelm and consume my brother was beginning to overwhelm and consume me.

Where Our Paths Crossed Again

My brother was struggling to earn his spot in an NCAA lineup, whereas I was enrolled in a specialized Psychology program, preparing for graduate school in Clinical Psychology.

At the time, I didn’t even know Sport Psychology was a profession, it simply wasn’t talked about when I was an athlete. But I began applying what I was learning in university to help my brother strengthen his mindset and take his game to the next level.

One weekend, I went to visit him and watch his team play.

In classic college fashion, they had back-to-back games Friday and Saturday. He had been healthy scratched Friday night, but was told he would be in the lineup for the Saturday game. He was both distraught from being left out of the lineup and extremely anxious about having to be at his best the next day in order to stay in the lineup going forward.

So after the game, we found a bench at the end of a hallway in the rink to have a chat.

At one end was the main lobby, full of players, coaches, families and the usual post-game commotion. At the other end, it was calm and quiet. The two of us could finally chat.

We started talking about his frustration with being scratched, the pressure he was feeling, and his overwhelming fear of failure. He was constantly worried about falling short of the expectations that he and my parents had of him. The uncertainty around whether or not he would have success at the college level was completely consuming him.

As I sat there listening to him, I realized something that would eventually change the direction of my life:

I was experiencing exactly what he was experiencing on the ice, but in the classroom.

We were in different arenas, but experiencing the same pressure.

We started talking about the relationship between effort and results and about how easy it was to believe that if you worked hard enough, sacrificed enough, and did everything right, your desired results should follow.

That conversation became the foundation for what I now call the Slot vs Vending Machine Mentality.

The premise is simple: stop expecting your results to perfectly match the work you put in. Instead, embrace the uncertainty of rising the ranks and keep putting yourself in a position to succeed. This way, you spend less time consumed by the pressure of what might happen and more time immersed in what you can actually do in the moment.

Over the next few games he went from worrying about his coaches’ opinions, scared to make mistakes, and overthinking every little detail to being calm with the puck on his stick, creative in the offensive zone, and physically dominant all over the ice.

Soon after, I was sharing mindset tools and ideas with his teammates, and that’s when it hit me:

I could combine my love for sport with my passion for Psychology.

A New Obsession

Ever since that moment of realization, I never looked back. I was finally as obsessed with Psychology as I once was with hockey.

But I wasn’t just helping my brother change his relationship with pressure. I was beginning to change my own. Instead of constantly worrying about whether all of my hard work would eventually pay off in a PhD, I started focusing on how clearing my mind and bringing my attention back to the present moment would allow me to be more mentally tough than ever before.

It turned out that the answer to my question on that car ride home all those years prior, really was, “no, but yes.”

I wasn’t going to chase my brother up the ranks in hockey. I had found my own ranks to rise.

My brother went on to become assistant captain as a sophomore and earned the captaincy in both his junior and senior seasons, all while maintaining Dean’s List status in the classroom (I take complete credit for that, of course).

Meanwhile, I went on to complete a specialized undergraduate degree in Psychology and Master and Doctoral degrees in Sport Psychology, all the while working with Dr. Cassidy Preston to turn CEP Mindset from just an idea in our heads into a company of over 20 coaches supporting athletes across the world.

Today, I serve as Vice President at CEP Mindset, helping lead the company and ensure every athlete receives the highest-quality coaching possible.

But more importantly, I’ve had the honour of working with athletes at virtually every level, from youth chasing their first big dream, to college and semi-pro players grinding to get to the next level, and pros competing on the biggest stages.

After working 1-on-1 with hundreds of elite athletes myself, and helping support hundreds more through our team at CEP, I’ve realized something remarkable, despite their differences, the underlying struggle is almost always the same:

Rising the ranks is an absolute grind.

Rising the Ranks

I understand that car ride home with my brother very differently now.

At 15, I thought I was deciding whether I was willing to do what he had done to get to the next level.

But what I didn’t understand yet was that choosing a different path wouldn’t allow me to escape the pressure that came along with rising the ranks. I would simply experience it in a different arena.

Because the better you get, the more is demanded of you. Expectations grow, mistakes are more costly, and opportunities become more meaningful.

Sooner or later, the feeling of being overwhelmed and consumed starts to creep in.

I know now that the answer isn’t to get rid of that pressure. It’s to change your relationship with it.

To shift from being consumed by pressure to immersed in the moment.

That’s what allows you to continue to rise the ranks, both in sport and life.