Elle Nelson is a Mental Performance Specialist and former soccer player. Elle has turned her professional athletic career to helping individuals and teams harness the power of their minds for success. In addition to running her consultancy, Rise Over Run, LLC, Elle works with corporate clients through Limitless Minds. Brett and Elle get personal with conversations about their own practices for self-growth, and Elle leaves listeners with a challenge. Join us as she shares her experiences in personal growth, balancing priorities, and communication in parent-athlete relationships and personal settings.

[Powerpress]

https://youtu.be/HFkQDxHDDhQ
Brett Gilliland: All right. Welcome to the Circuit of Success. I am your host, Brett Gilliland, and today I've got Elle Nelson with me. Elle, how you doing?
Elle Nelson: Hi there, Brett. Good, thank you. How are you doing? 
Brett Gilliland: I'm doing great. I'm excited to have you today. We're gonna talk, um, for those listening and, and watching, uh, we're gonna have 50% of this is gonna be about us as parents. Uh, raising children with sports. Elle was a, uh, dual college athlete. You've played golf, uh, I believe in France, in England and the United States, uh, at a, at a very high level. Um, you, you know, you've done the college thing, so I want to talk parenting slash sports, and then I also want to talk business, mindset, culture, all that type of stuff. Sound good?
Elle Nelson: Absolutely looking forward to it. 
Brett Gilliland: Awesome. Well, you are with, uh, IMG. So that's, uh, anybody in the sports world probably knows who IMG is Down in, I believe in, was it Bradenton, Florida? And, uh, and then, uh, Limitless Minds is another company that you, uh, that you work with and you also have your own, uh, consulting company.
So you are busy and, uh, we'll dive into all that work that you're doing. But I'd love to kind of just pick your brain a little bit on what's made you the woman you are today. Uh, to wake up and get to, you know, kinda work for three different companies and run your own deal. 
Elle Nelson: Yeah, absolutely. Good question. Diving straight into it. So what's made me the woman I am today, I, I mean, I think a lot of that, of course we could start early on, like with my parents, we, we won't go into all of that detail, but I think I had parents who instilled pretty strong values in me from a young age, right? It's like if you start something, you're gonna finish it.
You're gonna give it all you've got. Um, Whole heart, whole head in the game. And uh, my dad came from a pretty heavy sporting background. He played hockey in college and up in Canada. So sport was something that I was involved in from a really young age. And then I ended up getting into, um, you may have said golf, but it was actually soccer.
Brett Gilliland: Oh, did I say golf? I'm sorry. I, I play golf, so.
Elle Nelson: No, it's totally fine. I figured that was the case. Uh, yeah. But I was like, oh, I'm pretty sure he knows that. But it's fine. Uh, so soccer was my main sport and I got into that from a pretty young age. I ended up doing the club thing, high school thing, traveling.
Uh, and then to be honest, I think like big picture answer, a lot of my mess up, a lot of my obstacles adversity that's made me who I am today more than anything else. Yeah. Uh, I, I ended up like getting into quite a lot of trouble when I was in high school. I was a pretty bad kid for a while. I think my mom even threatened to like put me into a group home.
At one point I ended up quitting soccer for a year, my junior year. And when I did that, I was also in a car accident. So I was just getting into a lot of trouble and. After that year, I realized what I actually wanted and I started doing it for myself. So I realized before that point, I was doing it for my parents.
I was doing it for other people to please them, and that for me, even today, I see that it's like a really big turning point. Where I started making my own decisions, uh, doing it with good intention, knowing that even the tough decisions and the decisions that scared me, like going away for college and playing soccer in college, I had a lot of doubt in myself, but I knew that I wouldn't regret it, that I would grow from it regardless of how it went. So from that point forward, I started making the hard decisions, um, becoming more resilient and choosing to go for what I wanted and doing it for the right reasons. 
Brett Gilliland: Yeah. And how do you think that you, you chose that? I mean, it, it's hard as a kid, right? I think you said your junior year, so you're, you know, clocking in at 17 ish years old and, and to make that decision to say, I'm doing this for myself now. What was it, what was that, maybe that light switch moment, that aha moment that made you think that? 
Elle Nelson: I think for me, it, it, part of me felt like at that age, I hit rock bottom in some sense. Um, like I, I had gotten in a car accident where I was drinking and I was just making poor decisions and acting out, and I didn't quite know why.
Uh, so when I got to this point where I was like, who cares? I'm not playing soccer anymore. I'm not doing anything for anyone. I don't know if I wanna, you know, stay in school. It felt like I had nothing to lose. And so when I got to that point, it felt like, Any decision I made, what's the worst that could happen?
I've already figured out what happens when I don't have any of it, and that's when I said, well, what is it that I actually want? Like, what, what is it that I want? Where do I wanna take things? And, and for me, that was the turning point where I chose soccer. I committed to school, and seeing where I could take both of those things, but I, I kind of needed that. Because it made me do it for me and not for anybody else. 
Brett Gilliland: So what would, what message would you have for that 17 year old, you know, Elle now, or that 17 year old girl or boy listenin' to this, or their parents are listenin' to this? What, what message would you have for them to not have to go through what you went through or your parents went through with that?
Elle Nelson: Yeah, I, so, I mean, I, I won't give advice to my younger self cuz to be honest, I don't think my younger self would've even accepted it at that time. 
Brett Gilliland: She might, whatever, buzz off.
Elle Nelson: If I could have tried. 
Brett Gilliland: Yeah.
Elle Nelson: If I could have tried, uh, or talking to parents and to younger athletes now, I would say to, um, You know, have open conversation and explore ideas.
Uh, I think sometimes, like when I work with younger athletes and I ask them, okay, why is it that you do this? Why is it that you play your sport? A lot of times the first answer is, well, I don't know cause that's what I do. And so we spend some time exploring that. Like, what is it that you like about it?
Does it bring you joy? Are you doing it for social reasons? Where do you wanna take it? And then having that conversation with parents as well, because sometimes there's a misalignment of goals. And I think for me, um, and it's not just about sport, right? This could be academics, this could be life. You know, what is it that you want out of your life?
Why do you do the things that you do? Sometimes with my parents, they wanted me to play sport for different reasons than I wanted to play sport. Um, they wanted a certain career path for me that was different than what I wanted for myself, but we never really had that open conversation. So there was just like some tension that existed because we just assumed that we were on the same page and we didn't have that open communication around what both of us wanted and how my parents could support me in that, how I could be understanding and kind of compromise some of the things that they wanted for me. I think that conversation wasn't really happening at that age, and I'm sure a lot of that was due to me not really wanting to have those conversations or realizing that that would be helpful.
But I would encourage that from a really, really young age cuz it can just help with support and kinda navigating the changes that are happening at a young age. 
Brett Gilliland: Yeah. How, how did you, like, how did your parents handle you? Cause obviously you were, uh, successful at your sport and, and you did take a year off and, and, um, and all that stuff. But how did they handle, like, what did they do well, and if you're open to it, maybe is there anything that they maybe didn't do well that as a parent and people listen to this, they're all parents with kids, what we could do on the, on the good and the bad side to help our child, uh, succeed in what they want to do.
Elle Nelson: Yeah, good question. I think, um, at, at first I would probably say that my, my parents took like the helicopter approach for a while. I don't know if you've heard that term, like the helicopter parent, where they were, you know, I was the first born child, so I was the one they were cautious with. There were a lot of restrictions.
Brett Gilliland: Yeah. Yeah. 
Elle Nelson: They wanted to make sure they did all the right things and so they monitored every little thing that I did to the point where I think I felt like I didn't have, um, I didn't feel independent. I didn't feel like I was making my own choices. And so I started to rebel. And I think part of that you can probably see in my career path now, like I, I like to choose what I do.
I like to do multiple things. Um, and so when they were telling me what to do and kind of trying to restrict me a lot of the time, uh, not that the, the rules were bad. I think that they were just constantly like, okay, who are you going with? Where are you going? How long are you gonna be there? Uh, let me talk to their parents.

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