Overcoming The Top-10 Mental Obstacles In Sport - https://go.sportmind.io/Mastery

The SportMind Portal - https://go.sportmind.io/Portal

The Daily SportMind Book: https://www.sportminddaily.com/

The Squash Playbook - https://www.squashplaybook.com/ ⚫️💨

In today's episode, I sit down with one of the most accomplished and intellectually fascinating athletes in modern volleyball, Carli Lloyd. Carli isn't just an Olympic bronze medalist from the Rio Games, a world-class setter with 15 professional seasons under her belt, or an NCAA player of the year who led the University of California Berkeley to their first ever national final.

She's also a deep thinker, a storyteller, and a master of the inner game. And this conversation goes way beyond her resume. We dive into the mental side of being a setter, the emotional thermostat of the team, and how she learned to stay calm, lead, and make decisions under relentless pressure. Carli opens up about perfectionism, her battles with self-talk, the belief that she wasn't good enough and the moment a sports psychologist told her she needed to change her inner narrative or it would break her.

She shares how tools like journaling, breath work, mindfulness, and years of psychological re-patterning helped her transform as an athlete as well as a human being. And how these tools now guide the next generation of female volleyball players. She mentors. We go deep into the Rio Olympics,

the heartbreak of losing the semifinal. The emotional weight of playing for bronze, and the surprising truth about what an Olympic medal can't fix. We talked about acceptance, control, identity, the danger of outcome, obsession, and why optimism is a trainable skill that can completely shift a young athlete's trajectory.

And for me, the real magic in this episode is how honest, grounded, and generous Carli is. She peels back the layers on leadership flow, state fear. Trust, comparison, motherhood, and what it really means to express and not just impress if you're an athlete, a coach, a parent, or simply someone who wants to understand what high performance looks like from the inside out.

This is one of those episodes you'll come back to again and again. Let's dive in with the wonderful Carli Lloyd. 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carlilloyd3/

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