William & Mary Tribe Speaker Series

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2020 has been a challenging year for college athletes. In this edition of the Tribe Speaker Series, Dr. McLaughlin was invited to speak to the Womens' Soccer Team at William & Mary. A few days previously, the soccer team had received news that their season was cancelled until further notice. Watch Dr. McLaughlin's inspirational message.

Here's a brief sample

Introduction by Host

“I thought it would be good just to shift gears and kind of get back to our Tribe Speaker series. I know we've had a lot of amazing people on and we feel very fortunate to be able to share our people with you, who are now your people.

Dr Mark McLaughlin was actually one of my classmates and also was in school with marsha and was a phenomenal wrestler. He's not only in the William & Mary Hall of Fame but also the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. He is an actual brain surgeon…, you know where there is a little to no margin for error. So an incredibly impressive person incredibly amazing athlete. He also has his hand in coaching. He started a a program a wrestling program in Trenton and has given back to his sport in so many ways. His bio goes on for days and lots of great little snippet articles that you can find on him. He’s written a book called Cognitive Dominance and so he's going to share some thoughts with you guys and then I thought we could do our normal routine of asking questions in the chat group.”

Dr. McLaughlin

“I wanted to lay out from the very beginning we're going to talk about writing books, we're going to talk about doing brain surgery, and we're going to talk about getting Rhodes scholarships so just plant those seeds in your mind. I tried to kind of imagine what you all were going through. I know that 48 hours ago you just found out that your season was canceled. I was trying to imagine what the seniors were feeling like just having that that precious year, you know taken away from you, and I just couldn't even imagine how frustrating, how angering.

You know how alone you feel with something like that and I kept thinking like, if I were sitting in your seat and I was a senior at William & Mary and I could go back in time and I could tell you as a 55 year old person.  What could I…, how could I help that 20 year old me, or that 20 or 18 year old you? What would I say to you? What would I say to the younger me and it really comes down to I would want to emphasize something called transformational moments.

I want to share three experiences with you and with the younger me. So…, first transformational moments. You know I was a philosophy major. I loved the Wren Building and I was really interested in philosophy and also psychology at William & Mary and I remember way back when looking at studies by Carl Jung (swiss psychologist) who I'm sure you've heard of if you're done taking any basic psych classes, and Jung was really interested in our pathways in life and what happens in our pathways in life.

What goes wrong with them? What goes right with them? And he had this little paradigm where we're all in this place of where we are and we're on our way to where we think we should be and we're all we're all acting in a way to get to where we think we should be, and along the way these events drop into our lives one after another, after another, and each of these events are what he called transformational moments. There are moments of something unexpected that happens that can either propel you forward and closer to your goal or they can get in the way of your goal and you have to figure out whether you need to navigate around them or you need to use them to get to your goal.”

Watch the video to hear more from this inspirational presentation.