Episode 320 Veronica Karaman Embracing Change and Reaching New Heights Transcript

This transcript is from episode 320 with guest Veronica Karaman.

Scott DeLuzio: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. Welcome back to Drive On. I’m your host, Scott DeLuzio. And today my guest is Veronica Karaman. Veronica is a high performance coach for aspiring athletes and high achievers. And she’s here to discuss the Champions Way, which is a holistic approach to, uh, helping people reach their potential.

So welcome to the show, Veronica. I’m really glad to have you here.

Veronica Karaman: Thank you. It’s so great to be here. And I, um, just really want to honor all that you’re doing to serve the military and the families. And For all your listeners. Thank you for your service. I’m honored to be here.

Scott DeLuzio: Well, you bet. And thank you for, for those, uh, you know, kind words, uh, for the listeners who don’t know you and your, your background, obviously you and I have had a chance to chat a little bit before, but for the listeners who don’t know you, uh, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Veronica Karaman: Sure, well, I often tease people that I didn’t come out of the womb with an umbilical cord. I came out with a 5 iron attached because I’m a golfer and I actually [00:01:00] got involved in the game when I was 5 years old and my father placed a putter in my hand and he’d go play for 4 hours and I’d go putt for 4 hours straight at 5 and 6 years old to go in these national Pee Wee putting contest and so, Go Golf’s been a big part of my life.

I’ve always been an achiever and I’ve used the sport and champion mindsets from the sport to really help release potential in people, whether they be athletes or just coaching people to understand what peak performance is, the components of it, how it happens, and I’ve also used myself as my own student because I’ve crashed and burned many times.

And so I’m, I’m really delighted in this season of my life to have figured a few things out, um, thrashing through the woods of peak performance. So others don’t have to go through some of the stuff that I did, but I think everything boils down to mindset [00:02:00] and how you see things, how you perceive things and to equip people.

Uh, really with the framework of thought so that they can empower themselves is, is really what I’m all about. And one of the

Scott DeLuzio: reasons why I wanted to have you on the show is because a lot of times we have military veterans or people who work very closely with the military community, uh, on, on the show.

Um, but you come at it from a different angle, very similar message to what I tried to get across in a lot of these episodes, but from a different angle, from, uh, the, the, uh, the eyes of. An athlete. And there’s a lot of similarities between military and, and, uh, athletes at a, you know, at a elite level, um, where, where they have a lot of similar, uh, issues.

You know, there’s, there’s a physical issues. You know, you injure yourself when you, when you’re training too hard for, uh, you know, whatever sport it happens to be. And, [00:03:00] uh, you know, you can injure yourself in the military and you end up having these kinds of, kind of issues that, that follow you along with your life.

But, um, there’s even the mental aspect in, in the, the mental toughness that’s required to stay in the game, um, and not to quit and not to back down and all that kind of stuff. And, um, and then even later on in life when, um, you know, you may be retire from whatever sport. Uh, you know, on a professional level, you might retire from that sport or in the military, you retire from the military, you get out and you move on to that next phase of your life.

And you kind of shed a bit of that identity that you once had. And so there’s, there’s a lot of similarities there. And so I. Like talking to people from different backgrounds, um, to kind of cross promote the different, uh, things that, that will be beneficial to, uh, people in various, uh, from various walks of life, I should say.

And so, um, you know, that’s a primary reason why I wanted to have you on the show. Um, when we, uh, get into this episode, uh, we’re going to cut to a quick commercial break here in just a minute, but when we get [00:04:00] into this, we’re going to talk about. Um, the, the champion’s way approach that I, I talked about in, uh, in the introduction and, uh, you know, how it helps, um, you know, people who, um, are going through different, uh, changes in their life and, and facing these challenges that they might be going through and how they help, help people get through them.

So, uh, stay tuned. We’ll, we’ll get to that in just a minute. Hey everybody. Welcome back to Drive On. Uh, Kerriman here, who is, uh. A professional, uh, uh, athlete, she playing on the, the, this level of, uh, high level of, um, uh, you know, athleticism, and we’re trying to make that crossover, the, the core correlation there between, um, you know, high achieving athletes and, and maybe military personnel.

Uh, we’re talking about that a little bit in the intro here and, Uh, Veronica, your approach, the, the champion’s way, uh, that you briefly mentioned in the introduction, uh, focuses on four key areas, [00:05:00] the, the physical energy, mental focus, emotional connection and spiritual alignment. Uh, can you talk a little bit about how these different aspects contribute to peak performance on, on kind of any

Veronica Karaman: level?

Sure. That’s a great question. And I’m going to back up for a minute and just say, You know, I think that, um, one of the beautiful similarities between the military, let’s say mindset and an athlete is a disciplined mind, is a champion mindset, is the ability to perform in the storm, to have a higher mission.

And I think that, that anybody that is.

What makes the distinguishing difference between someone who’s just say a competitor versus a champion or someone that really achieves their potential is that they’re not afraid to go to the edge. of what’s [00:06:00] called their mental and emotional instability to find themselves. And a lot of times I think our traditional.

paradigm of performance is very what’s called through results oriented goals. I achieved, I failed, I won, I lost, I shot the score, I didn’t shoot the score. And that’s very one dimensional and it creates a lot of the disempowering emotions and the sense of defeat when you have a very Like I said, like one lane to your highway and I discovered the champions way through my own, uh, crashing and burning when I tried to make a comeback on the tour, when I was 40 years old, I hadn’t competed in years, got a sponsor, my, my goal was to qualify for the U.

S. Open in 6 months. Well, I gave everything I had to it. And even though I went from like shooting 80 to 69 in six months, I didn’t [00:07:00] qualify. And Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall and had trouble getting back up again. And at that time, mental game coaching was just kind of at the beginning. And I went to my coach and I said, what happened?

And he said, you made the mistake, Veronica, of of setting up a results oriented goal versus a process oriented goal. And the results are in a goal is like based on an event. And if it doesn’t happen, what’s after that event. And here I was a pro for years, and I had never thought about how I look at achievement.

And so I began to understand that if I shifted to focusing on process oriented goals, which is what I have to do, the path I have to walk, to get to the result, knowing that if I did the process, the result would happen, then it would be much more along the lines of a [00:08:00] continuum and personal growth. And that my identity wouldn’t be from the goal, but from my engagement.

And so I learned from a wonderful peak performance trainer, Dr. James Lower, the, just the new framework of thought that peak performance happens from a place of being fully engaged. To be fully engaged is to be physically energized, mentally focused, emotionally connected, and spiritually aligned. So think of four lanes to your highway, or think of four railroad tracks.

The physical, which is basically in sports, it’s swing mechanics, and in let’s just say a profession, it might be your skill set. The mental, which is focus, concentration, champion mindsets, how you think. the emotional, um, empowering versus disempowering emotions. And most people don’t know what high performance [00:09:00] emotions are.

And then I add the spiritual zone, which is in performance. identity, higher purpose and values. And if you’re a faith oriented person, you know, your faith in God. So the key is to identify a process in each one of them. I call champion zones and to do those four processes concurrently. And that’s when you take a leap.

So what good is it? Let’s just say, if I have an excellent skill set, but I have no focus, peak performance, no. Or if I have those, but I get angry and I, and I can’t recover quickly from. a poor performance, or I don’t believe in myself. Like I just came back from the, um, South Carolina Senior Women’s Open.

And, um, it was a, an overall open senior in regular division. And I had the chance to play with a gal, 23 years old, who could hit a six iron, 195 yards and had great hand action. [00:10:00] Off to qualify for the LPGA, but afterwards she looked at us and she said, do you think I can make it? And I thought, Chickie, if you asking that question, you are deficit in that spiritual zone.

So the beauty of the Champion’s Way is that it produces a self awareness in those key areas where you can self assess and see what you need to adjust. to make a shift, um, so that you can get to that level of being fully engaged. Because most people think that performance or achievement is linear. Like if I just work harder, right?

In golf, if you just hit more balls, but it’s comprehensive. So if you can perform in all of those zones together, [00:11:00] that’s when you take a leap. And I’ve seen it over and over and over again of. Achieving a breakthrough in record time through the Champions Way approach to performance. And

Scott DeLuzio: to the point that you just made there, uh, about, you know, like in golf, like hitting, you can hit buckets and buckets of balls over and over again, but it doesn’t necessarily translate to success as far as, you know, getting, getting better.

Um, and I, I had the same conversation with my son, uh, not too long ago, he, he, uh, plays baseball and he’s a pitcher and, um. He was practicing, practicing his pitching and he kept doing the same thing over and over again, same pitch, same pitch over and over and over again. Um, and I said, you know what you’re doing there, you know, it’s good, but there, you know, a small little tweak will help you throw more strikes.

And I said, You can keep doing the same thing that you’ve done over and over and over again, keep practicing the same way. And you’re going to get really, really good at throwing balls, not strikes. You’ll [00:12:00] get good at throwing balls, right? If you make this little tweak and then practice that, then you’ll, you’ll get.

You’ll get better at throwing strikes. And so, um, yeah, practice does make perfect, but it depends on what it is that you’re practicing. Right. And so in his case, the way he was practicing, he was practicing and getting really good at throwing balls. And so that’s not what you want to practice. Um, so, so you have to have, you know, the whole overall picture and you have to look at, okay, what is it that I’m doing?

Is this helping me move toward in that right direction? Right. And I think that’s kind of what

Veronica Karaman: you’re saying. Yeah. Even to take it a step forward. Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. Right? That’s right. That’s right. And so to have and I, and I see this with my younger players, because when you’re working with someone who’s a, say a teenager and they’re just in formation, you can see very easily what they’re missing because so many things have not been formed.

And I can’t tell you how many players I have to say, don’t just sit there and hit one [00:13:00] putt after a putt, hit the putt. Yeah. Follow it, see the break and then make an adjustment and that works regardless of whether you’re in sports or not in sports, but the ability to self assess and and to step back after a performance, maybe even after a career and say.

Non judgmentally, like to non judgmentally just observe your performance as if you were a coach looking at yourself. What did I do really well? What could I improve in each one of the champion zones? How am I going to tweak it and then I’m going to take that and I’m going to put it in my next competition and I call it leveraging your competitions.

And so whether it’s sports or let’s just say, you know, you’re going through your military career or it’s after your career is that [00:14:00] that it’s a continuum. And when you. Take it from that paradigm versus something is just over. It creates a much more healthy. Um, uh, a much more healthy journey for yourself.

And so within. The champion’s way. I call it love based performance coaching because you’re starting from a place of love and acceptance because so often, you know, we find our worth and our meaning in the goal in the achievement. And then we get there. It’s not there, right? So you’re starting from this place of I’m accepting myself right where I’m at because you can’t help someone from where they’re not at.

You can only help them. And so people need to get honest. So this is where you’re at. It’s totally okay. Now let’s build from there. The next process that we have to add [00:15:00] to get you to that peak performance. And it’s a beautiful thing because Um, it’s not in and out. It’s not off and on. It’s, it’s this journey, um, to achieving your potential.

Scott DeLuzio: Exactly. And just another example from just recently over the weekend, my, uh, my youngest son had his birthday and my, my daughter, uh, wanted to make a cake for him. And so she was, she was baking the cake and everything was going, going along just fine. Um, and she, she took the cake out of the oven and she went to transfer it from the, the.

Uh, the pan that went in the oven onto, uh, you know, a plate or something so she could decorate it. And the cake slid off the plate onto the floor, smashed into, you know, all bits and pieces. And she was distraught. She was, she was crying. She, she was like, Oh, I worked so hard on this. Right. So I went over to her and I said, well, what, you know, what can we do?

What’s the goal here is you want to have a cake. You want to, you want to make this cake for your brother, which is a super nice thing to do. Um, what do we need [00:16:00] to do first? We need to clean up this mess next. We got to go make another cake. And so let’s just. Forget about the past. I don’t want to say forget about the past, but like, it’s something that happened now we just have to deal with the situation and we have to move forward.

Yes, you can have a bad round of golf. Doesn’t mean that you can’t ever have a good round of golf. Um, yes, you can have a setback in, in your career. Doesn’t mean that you can’t turn that around and have a good outcome from that, right? There’s, there’s all sorts of, uh, you know, lessons that can be learned from something as simple as dropping a cake on the floor.

And I’m in a way, I’m sort of glad that she did so that I was able to have that moment. to kind of walk her through that and help her think through that for future times.

Veronica Karaman: And it turned out,

Scott DeLuzio: you know, I can’t say it turned out better because I didn’t try the cake, the floor cake, but it turned out good. I will say that much.

So we’re going to take another quick commercial break here. So stay tuned. Everybody. Welcome back to Drive On. Um, Veronica, we’ve just been talking a little bit about. Uh, [00:17:00] the champion’s way and the, the different, the mindset approach. And, um, I want to talk a little bit now about, um, like change. and loss, uh, things that happen to all of us, uh, changes that might happen in our careers, uh, might happen in our bodies.

As our bodies get older, things are changing. We have to kind of learn to adapt to these things. Losses are, are obviously universally, uh, you know, known throughout people, but, um, but especially in the military, these things can be, uh, pretty difficult and dealt with quite frequently. Um, how can your approach help, uh, military personnel, maybe even veterans, uh, navigate these transitions and continue to excel in whatever field they find themselves in?

Veronica Karaman: I think that’s a great question. And I’ve actually kind of thought about this as I thought about, you know, speaking with, with you. And I want to give a little analogy. I was playing in this tournament last week and. My playing partner during the whole round complained about the heat, [00:18:00] complained about the humidity.

We were in carts and she had to get this big fan and I mean, it was ad nauseum. I, on the other hand, heat is part of the deal. Like, I don’t create resistance to things that are in the environment, to things that are a part of the game. And so. So for me, even though the heat was high, I didn’t create mental obstacles.

I wasn’t resistant to something that would have been better off if I just accept it because it’s part of the game. So, you know, if you’re in the military, change is part of the game, right? Now, I’ve, I’ve had lots of changes in my, in my life, but the ability to adapt. The ability to attach a proper meaning to [00:19:00] something, the ability to not resist the change, just in its essence, makes change easier, never to say that change is easy, but you know what I’m saying.

So, so that’s, that’s part of the game. Um, secondly, I’ve experienced a lot of loss in my life. I mean, my father died when I was 15 and had lots of other losses, multiple losses. And I can remember feeling so lost and so stuck in, in those moments of, of loss. And as a coach, I, I’m always looking for causal, like what is like the bottom line and I realized that all loss, no matter what kind of loss it is, is first a loss of focus that’s created by structure, focus, and a loss of energy.

If you lose someone you love. What is [00:20:00] it that you’ve lost? You’ve lost a presence. That presence is, is energy. And I always say this, a champion has two distinguishing features. I don’t define champion as the one that gets the trophy. Champion in life has two distinguishing features, superior focus, superior passion.

Those two things together. So if you’ve experienced loss, what do you need to do to regain focus? And in my worst moment of feeling lost and undone, that almost leads to a suicidal thought, is focusing on what you’ve lost versus on focusing what you still have. The other thing I realized, being a person of faith, God is my source.[00:21:00]

So regardless of what I’ve lost, I still have access to source. Sure. Yeah. Like that, that, that was huge. And I can remember coming, coming in faith and saying, God, I’m bringing myself under the spout of heaven. I’m bringing you everything I have. This is all I have. You’re my source, here I am. And it, it, it just was enough shift to help regain focus.

The other is passion. When you can open up your mind to a new possibility, you’re creating passion. And so one, and just to recapture energy, like one of the smartest things my mom did after my father died is we pretty immediately went on a vacation to Florida. So, all we did was put ourselves in an environment of a life force, [00:22:00] being at the beach, being at the ocean and recapturing energy.

So, when I’m dealing with any kind of loss or, or helping people, it’s what do we need to do to recapture focus, even if it’s to structure your day by hour by hour, and open your mind to new possibility. I have a friend named Ovijene. Her husband was in the military. I think he was in, well, I think it was Air Force, but she knew he was dying.

She was 68 years old. She had no vision for herself. So when her husband was getting ready to die, she was getting ready to die, you know, emotionally with him. So I said to her, I started coaching her, I said, listen, don’t wait until he passes. Just create a vision for your life. Start now. Yeah. So I realized that [00:23:00] first of all, she was very sedentary.

I don’t think she’d mind my saying that she was a couch potato. I said, I got to get this woman’s body to move. So I said, I’m coming by, we’re going to start walking. We’re just going to start walking. So on like our third walk, she’s getting her body moving. All of a sudden she says, I think I’m going to try out for the North Carolina senior women’s pageant.

I

was like, where So she went and did that. And I said, let’s open up your mind to another possibility. She said, well, I’ve always had a dream as a little girl being an actress and I’ve never pursued it. I said, why not? And she was never encouraged. So I said, let’s sit down and work out your options. Do you need to go to school?

Do you need to finish your education? Do you need to go? So we started working through her options. So when her husband passed, she was already. [00:24:00] in training to be an actress. It is now 10 years later. That woman has been in movies, commercials. She has pursued her dream of being an actress. She is fulfilling her life.

She is with a group of younger people. So all that energy is coming to her. So we started creating her trajectory for her own, uh, fresh vision for her life. right at the intersection of that loss. And it’s a beautiful story because at 77 years old, that woman’s got more life in her than a lot of people have her

Scott DeLuzio: age.

Sure. And it probably even people have her age. It’s in some cases, right? Um, and when you. When you have that drive to chase after that, that dream, that something that she’s wanted all these years and, and she pushes [00:25:00] herself to get off the couch and do small things at first, right? Going for that walk might have been a big stretch, uh, in the very beginning, but then eventually that just became.

You know, something that you just do and then you move on to the next thing and you, you kind of add on layers to this, um, into the point where you’re. You’re almost unrecognizable from where you were, where you began, right? She, she

Veronica Karaman: looks younger now than she did. She’s lost weight. But here was the thing.

I said to her one day, I said, what really made the difference? Cause I kept speaking belief into her. And the real part was when she said, when you kept speaking belief into me, and I finally realized. That I was worthy to pursue my dream. That’s great. The belief part. You know, and, and the belief drives everything [00:26:00] and, and I always say there’s always more and probably the most remarkable story of the Champion’s Way.

And this is deeply personal. When my mother was 85 years old, she was given 6 months to live with a terminal heart condition. We were emotionally estranged most of my life. She had to quit school in the 5th grade to earn a living in the depression. You know, I had three degrees. I love golf. She thought the game was stupid.

You know, she was, you know, she was the good Catholic. Life is suffering. You know, it’s like I’m playing a game. So anyways, I prayed for 25 years. God, don’t take my mom until I know her. Cause I really didn’t know, know my dad. So when she was given that death sentence, I knew that was my time. And at the time, I basically was given the equivalent of a 100, 000 scholarship for a Ph.

D. in leadership. And I had to decide what the Pearl of Great Price was. Because I couldn’t care take and do a rigorous [00:27:00] academic. So I actually gave up the scholarship and I, and I remember saying, this is a whole different kind of championship. I’m going to reach your heart before you die. I don’t care what it costs, how it takes, how’s it going to happen.

I’m going to reach your heart. And so long story short. It was really frustrating because my mom was, was crusty, old, critical, you know. But anyways, one day I got so frustrated, bought her a dog, bought her a cat, took her to old folks homes, but everybody was too old for mildred. So one day, one day I said, mom, its said, I’ve had to put your tennis shoes on.

We’re going on the golf course. So I hand this little old woman an eight iron, and she takes a waggle. I was like, where’d she get the waggle? I don’t waggle the club. She goes, oh, that’s how Tiger Woods does it. I said, you Tiger Woods. So she takes it, they go back, swing swings down and pops that sucker almost a hundred yards.

Wow. So my mother’s golf career started at 85. At 88, I helped [00:28:00] her start a house cleaning business. She had her first paid modeling shoot. At 89, she started public speaking. At 90, I told her it was time for her first golf tournament, so I organized the first grandma open, brought together the generations, and at 91, my mom died my best friend and went out with a bang.

Wow. She was literally blossoming while she was dying. And I can remember one day just, you know, I was trying to help her die. Well, but then I flipped the switch cause I’m like, no, I’m going to help her live well.

Scott DeLuzio: And we had that many more years,

Veronica Karaman: right? Of creating life. And it was the use of her gifts and talents that there’s an energy in that.

And it extended her life almost seven more years.

Scott DeLuzio: Well, I want to talk a little bit more about some, some tips and strategies that maybe the military minded, uh, folks in the audience can, can apply to their, their own lives and the challenges and [00:29:00] setbacks that they may face. But we’ll get to that after this, uh, this quick break.

So stay tuned. Hey everybody. Welcome back to Drive On. Um, Veronica, something that you mentioned earlier in the last segment before the commercial break, uh, you mentioned how there was this woman in a tournament and she’s complaining about the heat and she’s, you know, having all these, um, Mental blocks to basically focus on the game that she’s trying to play.

Right. And there’s a saying, if, if you’ve been in the military for any length of time for the audience, you probably are familiar with this saying, but if it ain’t raining, you ain’t training is, is the, uh, the mindset, right? So basically get out there and train in, in the suckiest conditions that you can imagine.

Um, and that will prepare you for. the actual, the actual game when you may be in crappy conditions, but guess what? You’ve trained for it. Uh, you may be in great conditions. And guess what? You’ve trained in worse conditions, so you should be able to handle the, the, uh, the good conditions. Right. And [00:30:00] so I know a lot of the, the people out there in the audience, um, They’re kind of a, the military minded folks.

They may be served in the military or currently serving, or maybe they know somebody who did a family member or something along those lines. Um, I want to talk about some, some practical tips, strategies that those people can apply to overcome some of the challenges and setbacks, um, from reaching their full potential, uh, whether it’s during their military career or, or in their, their next career after, after the military.

Veronica Karaman: That’s a really good question. And I, I’m going to make it. Real simple, because you’re talking about mental toughness and you need mental toughness for life, period. You need to stay in training mode for life, period. I say, without training, there’s no championship. And without a championship, there’s no training.

So you need a vision for your [00:31:00] life and, and, you know, one of the beautiful things about being in the military, like you’re mission oriented. So you have to create a vision for yourself. Uh, there’s a, a great performance coach named Vince Pacetti. He said, there’s the ant, you need the ant and the elephant.

The ant is your subconscious, your dreamer, your imagination, you know, the big, the big thing. The, the ant is more that left brain task oriented to do. Most people, the elephant rides the ant. You need the ant to ride the elephant. Like you need both pieces. So I would say go someplace, whether it’s the beach, someplace where you’re away and allow your mind to open up.

And allow a new possibility to come to you. That big thing out there. For me, it’s always the pursuit of the U. S. Open every year. Well, the pursuit of it is my championship to begin with. [00:32:00] Because it’s, it’s that thing that I just go after, you know, it’s the dream. But then there’s the training. So, so you need both.

The, the, the, the dream and the, the training for it. The second thing is, There are three voices that speak to us all the time. The Critic, that says, Why you can’t do something? Nyah, nyah, nyah. The Coach, which opens up your mind to a new possibility. Well, what if? And the Champion Voice, that says, I can, I will, I believe.

You will never get to your potential from the Critic Voice. You will only get to your potential from the champion voice. So whether you’re saying, I’m going to pursue that new career, or you’re saying, I’m going to go walk 30 minutes tomorrow morning, you have to [00:33:00] begin to create the new story. With what’s called generative language, the language that’s future based, the language that says, I’m going, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s the push forward.

What keeps people stuck is using descriptive language. Well, now that my career’s over, I’m, you know, my life sucks, or I have this disadvantage, or whatever, is you’ve got to begin to complete your old story. and start your new story. So I encourage people, if you’ve had trauma, if you’ve come to the end of something, sit down and write out the story you no longer want to tell yourself and find the inner win in it.

Like take, take the gold that’s in it and release everything else. And what you learn from it, your learnings. [00:34:00] And then begin to create your new story. And we talked a little bit earlier, but, but we have different identities. And you have a survivor identity, you know, you have a seasonal identity. But when you create a new story, you have what’s called the second blossoming identity where you get to decide, who are you in this season?

What are your values? What do you want to accomplish? And it gets you looking out. And I love what Tony Robbins says is if you want to change your reality, you’ve got to change three things. Your state, your strategy. And your story. So I’m, I’m a senior citizen now, you know, one day you wake up and you see a deadline.

I’m like, Holy crap. Holy. It’s like, you see what you have and you see what you don’t have. Right? Right. So I’m in [00:35:00] this little town of Pinehurst. And it’s like part of part of my new story is. Do I want to stay here? I’m giving myself permission to explore. Well, what’s it like to live in Myrtle Beach? What’s it like to live in Charlotte?

Like, like, I have some advantages of, like, there’s some downside of not having family, but there’s an upside. I’m unencumbered. So let me see something in a way that will allow me to see where I want to go. And I think a lot of people don’t give themselves enough room to explore. Take six months. Take a year.

Give yourself permission to explore because I think a lot of times You know, knowing comes through action and we don’t give ourselves permission to just explore, to see what that new possibility might be for us. What

Scott DeLuzio: else, yeah, what else is out there that you maybe don’t even know about certain things that, [00:36:00] that exists and you want to, you want to find out the things that.

The, that you don’t know. Um, and, and, you know, those are the unknown unknowns. Like you don’t know that you don’t know certain things and go, go and discover those things. And there’s, there’s some benefit to that, but you were talking earlier about, um, you know, basically the process, uh, that, that you, you go through to, uh, basically continuously training and continuously improving yourself.

And, um, you know, that type of mindset and, uh, just kind of translating that to the military mindset is the, uh, the, I think the crawl, walk, run, uh, mindset is that you, you have to, uh, don’t bite off more than you can chew. Don’t, don’t have that goal of, um, you know, the, the championship, uh, you know, the, the.

Elite performance before you know, you know, of, uh, you know, golf tournament, let’s say the U S open, uh, as an example, um, just cause we’re on the [00:37:00] topic of golf here, um, don’t have that as, as your goal before you even know how to swing a club, um, you know, take the baby step of, you know, taking, taking that first step and learning how to, how to play the game and then, then move your way up and work, uh, you know, to, you know.

Completing a round of golf and then move up to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. And now in anything else in your life, um, you know, as, as you, as the people in the audience here, if we’re leaving the military, um, you may have a goal of becoming, uh, you know, a lawyer or a doctor or, uh, something else, some other career field.

Right. But you’re not going to. go from hanging up the uniform one day to walking into the operating room and being a doctor the next day, if you don’t have that medical training already. Um, so now it’s like, okay, well, what’s that next step? And, but how do I continuously improve myself to be able to get to whatever that end goal is?

Um, but the, the process itself, the, the, [00:38:00] the discovery of, um, You know, is this something I even enjoy? Is this something that I’m good at? Is this something I’m capable of doing? Um, that process is something that you, you can enjoy. And then you, you are always working on improving yourself and getting yourself to that, that next level.

I think it’s kind of what you’re trying to say, right?

Veronica Karaman: Yeah. It’s interesting. Cause I love the word convergence because convergence is basically taking Your gifts, your talents, your skills, and your experience, and maybe you’re just Repackaging them in a different way or giving a new application So I went through this like when I was 40 and I knew like to say my touring days were over And I had all this knowledge about achievement and the whole sports thing and whatever.

I’m like, well, what do I do with that? Do I just hang it up? You know? And, and, and back [00:39:00] in that day, it was different. Like there’s a lot more opportunities for women in golf or whatever, but back then, and I actually had some people come to me. Excuse me and say, you know, you should go through this life coaching program at school.

You’d be really good at being a coach, like a professional life coach. I’m like, nah, you know, and I like kept pushing it off for like two years, but they kept, it kept coming to me and it was interesting because it was the other voices I was listening like, right? Like, like there was a voice coming to me.

And so finally I said, okay. So I went through this, um, Life Coaching Certification, and it was so empowering because for the first time it wasn’t about the intellectual, it wasn’t about the achievement, it was about the being, it was about connecting, and I knew how to achieve, but I was learning these relational skills of listening, asking powerful [00:40:00] questions, you know, taking responsibility, and for the first time in a long time I felt my soul growing, you know, and so coaching became an umbrella for me that I could bring all these tools, whether someone needed an achievement tool or, or a relational tool.

It’s like I had this bag of clubs, you know, and I could pull out whatever I needed. If someone was achievement oriented and they needed to learn to chill, or someone was more relational and they needed a kick in the butt, you know, it’s like, and so I, it was a convergence because I could bring all this together under a new umbrella that really has become my career path for the last.

More than 20 years. And so it’s not necessarily doing something brand new, but it’s, [00:41:00] um, kind of repackaging what you’re already really good at and bringing those things together in a new way. Yeah, it’s a

Scott DeLuzio: good way to think of it too, because, you know, your life is full of all sorts of different experiences and some experiences may apply to one thing very specifically, you know, in the case of a, a sport, you know, uh, learning how to swing a golf club or learning the rules of the game.

That’s very specific to that one particular, uh, function that you might be doing is in playing that, that game or, you know, in a career, uh, you may have, uh, you know, situations where you learn something. very task oriented, the way you do things at a certain job. Um, but all of those things have other lessons.

There’s that, um, uh, the, the discipline and the, you know, all of that type of stuff can be extracted from some of those lessons, right? When you, when you. You know, have the discipline to [00:42:00] practice, uh, you know, the, the sport that you’re doing, and you can take that same discipline mindset and, and apply it to any other aspect of your life where you need to have some discipline.

Um, there, there’s a lot of lessons that can be crossed over. Um, and so those things, the, the accumulation of all of those things that you’ve experienced throughout your life, um, you can. tap into those. And those are kind of like your toolbox that you can use to apply to other things in your life. Right?

Yeah.

Veronica Karaman: Yeah. And I, and I say, you know, I’ve written eight books. Well, I was like, I didn’t even know I’d written that many books, you know, but I like to write well, well, I’m a golfer, but I like to write and I’m a speaker. And, you know, and so it’s, it’s. Sometimes you get tired because even when you get older, you still have to grow.

And I think when you get older, and this is something I’ve even learned this year for myself, is [00:43:00] there are ways to go about what you’ve normally done alone, but do it now in community, because community brings energy, right? Sure. So this past year, I invested in a writer’s group. where now I’m part of a community of writers.

Well, most of my books I’ve done, I’ve written alone, but it’s been such an enriching experience to now collaborate and learn and share and with other writers. And so, again, I think it goes back to that focus and passion of how do I generate more energy and passion for myself and how, and let me take dead aim on a target.

Just one thing, you know, and so for me, like if you’re athletic at all, and let’s just say, I’m going to say you play golf, do one championship a year, like I tell guys that are businessmen, they have their [00:44:00] families. It’s like, take two months out once a year and pursue a championship, like, because even if you get your foot in the water with training, You’re going to experience personal growth because there’s nothing like a championship, right?

To, to get you to release some potential. Like I have an arthritic knee and, uh, and I, my doctor’s telling me you’ve. You, you’ve got to get a total knee replacement. Well, I wasn’t ready for that, and I didn’t think that I could do it this year. But I found out that, okay, I’m going to try to do this. I got special permission from the USGA to have a, have a cart instead of walking.

I just made first alternate to the Senior Women’s US Open. And I’m like, I played three rounds of golf before that, but it was in me. Sure. Do you know what I’m saying that because regardless of what limitation you have, you [00:45:00] still have more ability, you still have more potential. And you might be like my mom, 85 years old, given six months to live.

How much more champion potential was in that woman just because she got coaching. And we opened up her mind to a new possibility and we walked it out together. So I always say there’s always more.

Scott DeLuzio: There is. Well, we’re going to cut to a quick commercial break. Um, when we get back, we’re going to try to inject some humor into this episode and a little bit more.

So stay tuned. Everybody welcome back to Drive On and, um, our conversation here with, uh, Veronica Karaman. Um, at this point in the show, uh, if you’ve been watching the last couple of weeks, uh, I like to, add some humor to the end of the episode, typically either telling a joke or watching a funny video of people doing stupid things.

Um, but before we get to that, uh, Veronica, it’s been an absolute pleasure speaking with you today. Where can people go to get in touch with you? And you mentioned before the break, you had some books that you wrote, uh, where can people get [00:46:00] in touch with you, find a copy of those books and anything else that you’d like to add?

Veronica Karaman: Um, well, thank you. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed myself and my website. is TrueChampionAcademy. com, TrueChampionAcademy. com. And on there, um, I have a 12 module video series. It’s a course that you can take as a self study, or if you’re interested in coaching, uh, one on one with me, um, you can reach out to me through there.

And all the content, uh, for my coaching is there. And also my system, there’s a Champion’s Way, I have in a book, you can get on Amazon. Uh, Core Foundations for Achieving Peak Performance in Sports and Life. And my latest book that I just came out with this year, several months ago, um, called God Make Me a Champion, An Athlete’s Journey of Faith into the Power of Surrender.

This is kind of like my faith based journey. A lot of athletes or achievers have a faith in God and they love to compete, but they, the two never intersect. So I show the intersection of faith [00:47:00] and competition. And then this book is the one I wrote with my mom, My Shot of Joy, uh, Miraculous Journey of Redeeming a Lost Mother Daughter Relationship.

And if you look really close, she looks just like Betty White. Oh my, I was going to say

Scott DeLuzio: that in the picture on the cover of that

Veronica Karaman: book. Um, and this is a wonderful book and also if there’s an estrangement in your family and, you know, you’re seeking reconciliation, this is a wonderful book to help you with those, um, relational tools.

And if you’re interested in my speaking, you can contact me and I, I do a one day workshop called Find Your Champion Zone, um, that could be, uh, used, uh, with golf and leadership. So I’m here if you need me.

Scott DeLuzio: Well, we’ll have links to all of those in the show notes. So for anyone who wants to pick up a copy of the books or, uh, you know, book Veronica for either coaching or speaking or any of that kind of stuff, we’ll have those links there for you.

You can take a look at it there. [00:48:00] Um, all right. So, uh, time for a little bit of humor here. This is actually a, uh, quote from Hank Aaron, the baseball player, but in honor of our guest in the golf theme of this episode, uh, the quote is actually a little bit, uh, you know, oriented towards golf here. So the quote is, he said, it took me 17 years to get 3000 hits in baseball.

But it only took me one afternoon on a golf course.

Veronica Karaman: I have never heard that one but that’s really good. I think I’ll use that myself.

Scott DeLuzio: So anyways, thank you again, Veronica, for taking the time to join me. I really do appreciate it.

Veronica Karaman: Thank you so much.