This week on The Alaska Show we sit down with Holly Brooks, owner of Holly Brooks LLC a counseling, coaching, and consulting service based out of Anchorage. www.HollyBrooks.com Holly made her first Olympics in Vancouver in 2010 at the age of 27, then went on to represent the US Ski Team in 2012 and the country in 2014 in Sochi. We talk about fostering healthy high-performance young athletes, sports psychology, her childhood, how moving to Alaska and coaching the West Anchorage High School team laid the groundwork for her olympic run, her experiences as a pro athlete, and retirement. JJ and Alex discuss news and events, including the overnight survival of four lost children in a blizzard in Western Alaska, the pros and cons of selling Alaska back to Russia, Iron Dog, Fur Rondy, and Alaska's first Comic Con. Alaska News & Events with Alex and JJ (0:48) Interview with Holly Brooks (13:48) More blogs, vids, and pods by us www.TheAKShow.com IG @alaskashow @alexandertrokey @jcoe_photographer Facebook.com/TheAlaskaShow https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkp_iaWCQaqpzUZD_f4uHrQ/videos?view_as=subscriber   Intro News Stories - Four children survive night outside in blizzard Alaska being sold to Russia? Events Comic Con in Fairbanks Fur Rondy Festival kicking off February 21 Iron Dog race ends in Big Lake this weekend   Show Notes Ex-professional cross country skier Professional career sort of book ended by two olympics. Famously qualified, by surprise, at age 27 for the 2010 Vancouver olympics, was a member of the US ski team in 2012 for the first women’s relay team, and went again to Sochi in 2014. Formerly coached West Anchorage High School and APU ski teams Found time to win the Mount Marathon race in there twice in 2012 and 2014 Since then has raised ski marathons all over the world in Europe and China Now runs Holly Brooks LLC - Counseling, Consulting, and Coaching. Helping high performers, especially women athletes, dealing with everything around the actual performance. Stress management, preparing for big events, transitioning, setting goals, team dynamics, etc. Rebranding her business Holly is a curious person – her niche was working with athletes at the intersection of mental health and performance as an LPC – but it has expanded Does speeching engagements, coaching, and therapy Takes the tenets of sports psychology and applies it to other areas of life Kids athletics today are all about early sports specialization and are trying to attain that college scholarship which often doesn’t exist. This has become the dominant model over the last decade in Holly’s view – which leads to mental burnout and physiology problems. Alpine skiing was recently said to cost $500,000 to get a kid from youth to the professional level. It’s prohibitively expensive. Sports performance is tied into all areas of life. Someone who comes to Holly to work on sports psych skills might be forced to address anxiety, outcome-driven attitude, strained parental relationships, and self-worth problems. Holly came from the polar-opposite of this high-pressure performance environment. Holly’s story offers hope to her clients because she didn’t make the Olympics until age 27. She is a self-proclaimed “mediocre skier” from Seattle, Washington. Holly uses the term “clients” rather than “patients” Most common struggles kids have with performing in sports is loving the process over striving for a certain outcome. An outcome perspective causes anxiety. She tries to implement the 95-5 rule – 95% of your thoughts should be spent on the process and just 5% on the outcome. The outcome is necessary and good for motivation, but most people should focus more on the process. Holly makes her clients figure out the process and write down how they get to a certain outcome that includes training, skills, sleep, diet, and overall health. She likes to work on a sustainability plan with her clients. What makes her clients happy? How will they do that? People can’t engage in their