As the Gymnastics Coach at UCLA from 1991 to 2019 Valerie Kondos Field, often referred to as Miss Val, coached the Bruins to seven National Championships.
 
Miss Val's book Life Is Short, Don't Wait to Dance is a must read for everybody.
 
A key part of Miss Val's positive approach to life is that she looks at every situation with the best possible perspective: "I get to…". Miss Val took this approach when she successfully battled breast cancer. In her book, Miss Val expands on the topic:
 
"It was the spring of 2014 and I was driving home after a day of errands. My phone rang and I picked it up. It was my doctor. She told me to pull the car over to the side of the road. She said, "Your tests have come back positive. You have breast cancer."
 
I hung up the phone and at that moment I heard a voice from the universe—God—say, "Be anxious for nothing and grateful for all things."
 
Be anxious for nothing! My life has been forever changed! Rather than being engulfed in the fear and darkness of cancer, I was being commanded to not be anxious or fearful and instead to choose gratitude. But I didn't know how I was supposed to do this.
 
When I met with my oncologist, she said, "If you choose to, you're going to go through a year of chemo and surgery, but you'll be fine."
 
Be anxious for nothing. At that moment I got it. I knew exactly how I wasn't going to be anxious. I understood the proverbial equation. The way to not be anxious was by living each moment in gratitude. I realized that anxiety and gratitude can't coexist in the brain. That being the case, I had to choose… I chose gratitude.
 
I don't have to get chemotherapy. I get to have chemo. It was a choice. My choice.
 
I get to breathe. I get to work. I get to dance. I get to hug my girls, and my family, and my grandchildren, and strangers! I get to put gas in my car because, yay, I have a car to put gas in. I get to wake up early to prepare for work because, yay, I have a job.
 
This one revelation, "I get to…" changed my outlook on everything I think about and do every day. I discovered an invaluable new cue to my life. When I acknowledge that everything I do in life is a choice, I realize that the best decision I can make in any situation begins with gratitude. Gratitude is 100 percent choice. Gratitude isn't something I hope I could have, it's a deliberate effort in how I feel."
 
Miss Val beat breast cancer.

So did my wife...

​As the Gymnastics Coach at UCLA from 1991 to 2019, Valerie Kondos Field, often referred to as Miss Val, coached the Bruins to seven National Championships.
 
Miss Val's book Life Is Short, Don't Wait to Dance is a must read for everybody.
 
A key part of Miss Val's approach to coaching is that she teaches how to control the situation, not let the situation control you. There are three parts to her process: 1.) Gain an understanding of what your own natural (default) reaction to stress is. 2.) When faced with a difficult situation, rather than just reacting with your default personality, take control and pause. 3.) When you pause, hit the Refresh Button and give yourself the best possible perspective and response. You will gradually improve your default reaction to stress. In her book, Miss Val expands on the topic:
 
"The important ingredient in honing your default is to hit the proverbial refresh button over and over and over throughout the day. Just like with a computer, when you hit your internal refresh button, it trashes all the mental junk that is getting in your way of moving toward your goal.
 
Getting rid of the junk, which is usually negativity or things that are out of our control (but that we love to stress about), allows us to see clearly and focus on our personal path that will inch us closer to our goals.
 
At the very least, you will wind up with clarity as to what doesn't work; then you can hit the refresh button again and try something else. For me, hitting the refresh button brings me clarity of purpose. It illuminates my ultimate goal and allows me to refocus on how to get there, instead of being stuck in the minutia of regret, negativity, or someone else's opinion.
 
I first thought of the refresh button when I started coaching balance beam and needed to come up with a simple way for the athletes to refocus. Quite often when they made a mistake on beam, they would make many more mistakes through the remainder of the routine because they were focused on the original mishap, an error they could no longer do anything about.
 
I saw an immediate change when they bought into the refresh button concept. They would literally move on with the rest of their routine like the whole thing had been flawless. The first place this positivity and confidence showed up was in their faces. If their faces were tight, I knew they hadn't embraced their refresh buttons; if they were bright and smiling, I knew they had trashed any frustration and had moved on.
 
Smiling on balance beam is one of the uncommon things I insist our athletes do because, after all, the beam is their stage. As a bonus, research shows the act of smiling releases dopamine, endorphins, and serotonin, which fight stress, relax the body, lower the heart rate and blood pressure, and act as a natural pain reliever. Just like everything in life, our default starts with our mind."
 
Do you pause and refresh before responding to stress?