The Three Second Choice

SPEAKER_00 0:33

comes down to one choice. The arena is watching and your partner is moving beneath you. And you have three seconds to decide. I know three seconds is very uh very less, but still just just imagine, right? Not tomorrow, not after you think it kind of true. It's now. And whatever you choose, you have to stay with that moment, that pressure, that immediate consequence, it teaches you something about yourself that no amount of theory ever could. So it shows you like where your clarity lives and where it falls apart. So welcome to Mind Meets Machine. I'm your host Abek and this is the show is all about the quiet spaces or the quiet choices or the quiet area where people learn to meet themselves, make sense of pressure and figure out like what it means to keep going when these takes are real.

Meet Sylvia Rizzo

SPEAKER_00 1:35

And today we have a very lovely guest with us. Please welcome Sylvia Rizzo.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Welcome to the show thank you so much for your invitation. I'm really happy that I'm able today to join you for this nice conversation.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

Amazing that that's really awesome. Thank you so much Sylvia for being here. And um before we get into the discussion I'd quickly love to introduce Sylvia. He is an international Grand Prix Drussell Riser trainer and certified life coach whose work is elite sport. So elite sport has shaped like how she thinks about leadership decision making and the performance when uh there's no room to the second guest right that's a big one right so I don't know take much time let's get

The Myth Of Confidence

SPEAKER_00 2:25

started and welcome to the show again.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Thank you so much also for your uh introduction that was perfectly safe.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Amazing amazing Sylvia like I mean you know like uh I mean people often think right people often think that uh elite performers make decisions faster or immediate or with kind of confidence than everyone else or even other like there's some kind of certainty that comes with experience. So what do you think is the biggest misconception here about the decision making at your level so what do you think?

SPEAKER_01 2:59

Well I do believe that you know uh always being on this high level doesn't mean that uh you know we don't have any kind of doubt uh we don't have any kind of fear but uh we have to we have to move forward we have to take decisions in second we don't have the luxury sometimes well I have to say often you know to take time to postpone things and I do have to move in that precise moment so I've known and I grew up uh in a high sport environment where you know that that is my mentality and I apply this to my sport my business and my life of course sometimes I do have the luxury of just taking more time but uh in the work that I'm doing in the sport that I'm doing I I can I can't do it I simply can't do and that doesn't mean that I have all the certainties that I have all the answers to all the questions but I have to move forward despite you know the perfect moment is not there but I can do it just only accordingly if I talk about sport accordingly to the training that I've done earlier if I talk about business accordingly to the structure I have in inside me and I've built uh you know which is to which I can rely on anytime I have to make a decision or anytime I have to move forward. So we we are all human so also in high performance you know we we have of course uncertainty because you know we can't predict future so all the information is never there. The big difference is that you know in sport you have to do it immediately. And you know that can be I like that. I like that because I like adrenaline and I like pressure I like anything of that. So it's okay. And uh you know you have to accept to accept that dose of risk because in anything we do we we don't have certainty. So this is one big misconception that you know in high sport performance high sport level we don't have fears no we have we do have but we have to move any way forward we can't stay stuck there.

SPEAKER_00 5:31

That's very true.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

So um so when you are in that space of uncertainty what tells you whether to trust the decision or just pull back so what do you say well in that moment as I said you know I just uh

Building Your Inner Structure

SPEAKER_01 5:50

we have all to accept that uh certainty is never there in any kind of situation in life sport business never we can't predict future so we have any way to move forward and the point that I I can rely on is uh you know the structure it that is inside me when I talk about structure it's uh something that I've built over years and I do believe that we all we all have it yeah it's just a matter of you know uh willing if you are willing to find it and I I think that in the moment that you find out your structure which is done it's quite easy because if you think about a structure is like a box and inside this box you put all the experiences you have done in your life the good and the bad ones you put your values your fundamentals your mistakes and your principles the boundaries and you put also all the people that you have met in your life because I I do believe that you know from anyone we meet in our life despite outcome if it's good or bad but we can learn something from each of them. So we put everything in our structure in this box and here is coming out our structure so I know which are my principles with my values I know what I faced in the past I know the mistakes that I've done and this is my structure so anytime I have to take a decision or also anytime I make a mistake I just rely on this kind of structure because from there I know where to go.

SPEAKER_00 7:37

Interesting so I think that's where a lot of people get stuck like we are told that clarity comes first that the action comes but sometimes um the clarity only shows up after you commit and that definitely takes a lot of courage and which is obviously a different kind of courage. Like you have talked about maintaining clarity under the pressure so when you look back at the moments where that clarity was hardest to hold what was really happening underneath like what makes it sleep for clarity for me is essential.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

Again I have to say that you know I don't have the luxury of not being clarity first of all because I tried it on my skin if you think about I'm a horse rider right and I'm dealing with an animal that doesn't speak doesn't talk so my communication has to be clear absolutely because if I allow emotions coming in then clarity is never there is not there anymore. And if you think about you know example like I'm in a competition

Clarity When Emotions Surge

SPEAKER_01 8:45

also in daily training you know the horse gets tense spooked or something and I allow you know emotions coming in fear or panic or whatever then I lose clarity then which kind of communication I can have with my horse which kind of kind of aid I can transmit to my horse just only confusion and this is exactly what's happening also when we are in you know in in a business in a meeting when we are talking with persons with people you know if we are not clear then you know just uh a mess is coming up but the the importance of being clear is also you you mentioned maybe you know we said uh pressure is there and you know clarity is difficult to be found well I don't think so because I use pressure in another way I use pressure in order to stay focused so you know if I stay focused if I am focused I know what I want to say I know that clarity is there and I don't get distracted by anything else so I stay clear in my mind clear in my thoughts and like how do you I mean how do you catch that early like before it turns into something bigger you know um when something big uh is there we rarely become the better version of ourselves right so you know when pressure is there when the decision has to be taken or something then you know if we allow emotions coming in then panic fear over explanation is coming in everything is coming in and we have to be able to separate facts from what we feel so fact is reality. What we are feeling are emotions which are of course important but not in that moment not in the moment in which we have to take a decision not the moment in which stakes are high not in in the moment in which we have to move forward you know because otherwise all the doubts are coming in and our head is just boiling you know because when we don't have complete answers and we have like let's say empty spaces our head without that we can notice that is just making fill it up with ideas, emotions and everything. But that is you know it's losing focus. So how can I stay focused? I can stay focused because I know pressure is there so I use it as a positive tool in order to stay on my objective. So I might be able to adapt myself to anything that is coming through but I stay loyal to my direction to my objective to my goal to my destination that is that is interesting also so what do you think I mean how people in their daily life connect with this like what's what are your observations? How they can stay focused do you mean

Using Pressure To Stay Focused

SPEAKER_01 12:05

yeah I mean stay focused and how they actually relate these things in their daily lives well you know if you put everything together and you put on a scale so how many pros and cons you have right so if you allow emotions coming in you are only cons. You have only you know doubts and uh you are losing your way because you allow your head taking the power over the reality. So you are losing the focus here as I said and how can you stay focused? Just only being able to separate who the boundaries as soon as you feel an emotion is coming in you can recognize because we can all recognize because the the head is starting like telling us a lot of things and in that precise moment we have just to set back breathe and then go back to our structure that we have built before and from there we can go forward. But we don't have to allow just to mix everything up because otherwise we lose our way you know in my life I I I don't have the luxury of not being staying focused because if you think about I ride um horses I ride motorcycles which are quite dangerous sports right but you know if I lose anything can happen in life of course but you know due to the fact that these are already dangerous sports I don't have the luxury of thinking about something else while I'm not present. So being present in anything we do is something that well first of all it can give us the joy of needing the moment and then secondly you know it's helping us not to lose the you know the the way on which we are traveling to so that we can prevent also making mistakes that it's not necessary to do which I'm not saying that doing mistakes is something that we have to avoid because also from mistakes we can learn. And of course we are all human and we all make mistakes but if we are able to put boundaries between reality and emotions and don't let the emotions taking over our decisions our you know our life then we can see everything in

Pressure In Everyday Leadership

SPEAKER_01 14:45

a clearer way. That's interesting.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

Hmm and like so for someone who is not riding in the Grand Prix arena how does this kind of pressure show up in everyday leadership or work? Like what does it look like when people are managing teams or making calls in their own lives?

SPEAKER_01 15:03

Well let's be honest pressure is always there always at different levels of course depends also you know for me we are all different. So for me it's important and I can have pressure there and I don't know when I have to take a certain kind of decision for you is different and for someone else is different. So the level of pressure is of course different for all of us but if you ask me how you can handle to stay you know to handle pressure pressure has not to be a void first of all we have to accept the fact that pressure is there and we have to use it as a positive tool as I said in order to it's something that is helping us in order to stay focused you know pressure also reveals our character reveals who we are so in the moment in which we accept the fact that pressure is there we don't have to be afraid of it we don't have to deny it we don't have to escape from it. It's something that is always there and is just joining us in order to get a better way so that we can stay more focused then everything you know looks much easier and that's reality.

SPEAKER_00 16:22

We can't escape reality we can't uh you know if you hide from pressure and you say no you deny it and you say no there is no there is no pressure also there you are just allowing your head to deny something which is not true because

Mistakes Without Losing Credibility

SPEAKER_00 16:40

pressure is there but we don't have to say yes of course and we don't have to see like an enemy at all that is true yeah yeah so uh what do you think is I mean what one more part which is coming to my mind is like um because we are talking about this where I mean mistakes is something in a world have obviously kind of immediate consequences you cannot undo a movement once it is a kind of mate right like we say like if we are an archer and once I have released the arrow then I have no chance right so I mean so in that sense if you have to say like how do you stay with that like performing key bleeding after something goes wrong so what do you have to say on this well making a mistake is something human because we are human and we all make mistakes and you know the first mistake is never uh it is like a technical mistake you know you don't lose credibility if you make a mistake and the important thing is the moment in which you have done the mistake you have two different ways of reacting so one reaction is that you protect your ego you blame the situation you blame someone you overexplain yourself and in that moment you are allowing again emotions coming in and here is where you lose credibility because you are not admitting the mistake you know you're just finding excuses otherwise on the other side you can just acknowledge that you have done a mistake admit it of course and use the mistake as new information that you have in order to you know go forward and say okay fine now I have another information so how can I proceed in order to avoid the same mistake again so I put in my in the box of my you know structure and then I can just uh continue and in this way you never lose credibility because you have admitted it you acknowledge that you have done a mistake you say okay fine I did it okay now what can I do in order you know to fix and move forward because it's fixing it and move forward it's one after the other and making mistakes it's absolutely here we don't have to avoid or to be afraid of making mistakes we can all learn from it but the important thing is how you react because as soon as you admit it then you know people are not looking for the perfection perfection doesn't exist there is not anyone on the planet on this planet that is perfect but people are look you know normally are looking for uh stability and you can show your stability just on staying loyal to yourself so admit it they you know and it's not a a sign of weakness absolutely it's a strength because you are not afraid of showing you have done a mistake I did a mistake is for what so good I have new information but I have still to go on so if you have to give one advice to the listeners today what that will be only about the mistake or about in or in general I definitely want both but um yeah I because I'm just thinking like how how people can think yeah I mean both will be the better way well no about the mistake uh it's important just stay loyal to yourself and be honest and also another thing that is important I've done a mistake but I know the mistake that's really important these are two different things right so don't put the blame on yourself you've done a mistake fine but just recover immediately and you can recover just staying loyal to the structure we talked about earlier and if I have to to give an advice in

Find Your Structure And Move

SPEAKER_00 20:55

general I I really hope that people will take a moment in order to find into themselves the structure they have.

SPEAKER_01 21:03

You know I don't think that you know with my talk I can you know change the world or change the life of anyone but if I can give a suggestion just you know take a moment just to stay alone for a while and just think about your structure because we all have it. And then from there you know how to you know face and adapt to any circumstances because life is unpredictable. We have to you know be able to adapt to the new circumstances and as soon as we can rely on this kind of structure that is deep inside us it's not done about you know habits routine or something like this. No it's done by experiences. And this is really important. Amazing and if listeners want to connect with you what would be the great medium to connect they can find me on my website of marabuntablog.com and they can contact me anytime.

SPEAKER_00 22:07

That's amazing. Dear listeners what I'll do is I'll put all the links details everything into the show notes for your easy reference and I'll say like the clarity you need doesn't always arrive before the decision sometimes it arrives because of it. So thank you so much Sylvia for sharing your perspective it's really helpful. So uh and everyone who are listening I'll just say like I think a lot of people will definitely recognize themselves in what like Sylvia has shared that moment of standing at a decision point and I'd say realizing that there is no perfect answer. Just the one that you choose and what you do with it after right so if that resonates with you just be with it dearlessness notice where the pressure shows up in your own life and what it's asking you to see. Like sometimes the real work is not making better decisions. It's learning to trust yourself enough to make them all act right and obviously keep going when they don't land the way you hoped for so that's where the growth is that's where you find out who you are so with this this is your host of weekend this is Mind Meets Machine I'll see you in the next one thank you so much.