Dr. Allison Rogers is a part of the Mississippi State University Counseling and Sport Psychology department. She specializes in applied approaches to obtaining peak performance with strategies based in self-awareness, efficacy and autonomy, emotional regulation, mindfulness, and understanding the interconnectedness of thoughts, feelings and behavior. Additionally, Dr. Rogers believes in a holistic approach to well-being and places a significant emphasis on relationships and communication. Dr. Rogers has a master's degree in counseling from West Alabama and a doctorate degree in sport and performance psychology from Western States. She holds a National Certified Counselor credential from the National Board of Certified Counselors and Certified Mental Performance Consulting credential from the Association of Applied Sport Psychology. Before coming to Mississippi State, she ran a private practice in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, for youth to professional athletes in the area of sport performance psychology (reaching peak performance through mental skills training). Since the start of her career, Dr. Rogers has worked in several mental health capacities across both the private and public sectors with a plethora of experience serving special education and neglected and delinquent populations of individuals. As a Mississippi native, Dr. Rogers strives to increase accessibility of mental health services in her home state while also hoping to continue educating teams and athletes on the benefits of proactive mental performance training.

Takeaways:

1. Self-awareness. I really liked how Allison explained self-awareness as the relationship between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Now, more than ever, with all the distractions out there and how fast paced life is – we really need to be extra intentional about this process. We need to study ourselves – doing the work, using any and all resources available to us – to take charge of our thoughts, so that our feelings and behaviors are as we want them to be – leading to positive results for ourselves and our teams.
2. Confidence issues. I hope you were able to note that one of the things Allison deals with the most is that of confidence. Yes, EVEN for D 1 Athletes. As you heard, one of the methods Allison uses to battle confidence issues is the establishing of a journaling habit. This allows her athletes to start with and keep track of small accomplishments and build from there. Once this is done the size of the accomplishments and level of confidences rises. Allison also emphasized the power of positive self-talk, which we’ve hit on before. And I love how Allison mentioned that we need to be careful not to let our weaknesses define our self-worth. Again, I think the key here is checking in consistently on ourselves – looking in the mirror – and seeing how we’re doing - what is and isn’t working in terms of how we feel about ourselves and then taking the time and doing the work to make any changes that may be needed.
3. Self-efficacy and autonomy. Allison touched on a great point here. Self-efficacy being the individual’s belief in their own ability to succeed. And autonomy – being the capacity to act independently and free from control. As our conversation showed, creating efficacy and autonomy is a team game. Leaders need to create environments that allow for both, and the team’s individuals need to work on themselves to best set them up for success both as individuals and as a team. When this comes together success usually follows.
4. Emotional regulation. Bad emotions lead to bad behavior – if we don’t know how to regulate them. Again, whether it’s breathing techniques as Allison mentioned or otherwise – there are things you can find to do to get better at regulating your emotions. So, we need to be intentional about this as the bad behavior that comes from bad emotions can hurt relationships and teams…in sports and in life..if we let them.
5. Mindfulness. This one is about making sure we stay in the present moment. Another tough challenge for all of us given the speed at which we live. And, again, it’s going to take every bit of the best intentional efforts we can give to make it happen. But if we want to be at our best – we have to be where are feet are. Put the phone down and have the conversation. Forget the past slump as Allison mentioned and just play TODAY’s game. I like how Allison mentioned getting back to center…using the grounding technique of engaging our senses and soaking all of that in as opposed to engaging bad emotions and distracting negative thoughts about the past, etc.
6. Internal foundation. Allison does a great job of explaining how the building of our internal foundation depends on who we are. So, in line with what we talked about in terms of self-awareness – here’s another reason why it’s so important. We need to know how we’re wired first, so we can figure out the best way to build our internal foundation – one that will be there for us when the ups and downs of life call for it.
7. Relationships. Allison put it pretty simply here, which was great - nothing can happen without genuine relationships. We do the work on self-awareness, we build ourselves into the best versions of ourselves as we’ve discussed..which leads to emotional control, which leads to better interactions with the team, which makes it easier to work with each other, which forms trusting relationships. Once we get there, the sky is the limit for us and our teams.

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