#290: Mental Workouts make for a Better Mindset & Stronger Speaking — Sarah Centrella

Welcome to the Toastmasters Podcast, the official podcast of Toastmasters International. Hey, everybody, this is Greg Gazzin. From our early years in elementary school gym class, the importance of physical fitness is impressed upon us. But despite the wealth of knowledge shared by our teachers, we're never really taught how to train our minds. Our guest today believes that mental fitness, developed through intentional mental workouts, is the key to achieving goals of all kinds, both physical and beyond. She's Sarah Centrella, a life coach, executive coach, keynote speaker, and the author of four books, including the recently published Think It. Sarah has coached Fortune 500 companies, C-suite executives, professional athletes, and high performing teams, including leaders at Nike, Pinterest, Verizon, and Sony. And of course, Toastmasters too. Sarah was one of the educational presenters with her own future boards workshop at the 2025 International Convention that was held in Philadelphia this past August. Sarah's work has also been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Good Morning America, ABC News, Cosma Politan, Prevention Magazine, Inc. Magazine, The New York Times, and more. And if that's not enough, she also hosts her self-titled podcast, The Sarah Centrella Show. Sarah's article, Mental Workout for Speakers, To Achieve Your Goals, Strengthen Your Mindset with a fitness routine can be found in the January 2026 issue of The Toastmasters Magazine coming to us today from Parkland, Oregon, Sarah Centrella, welcome to The Toastmasters Podcast. Greg, I'm so honored to be here. Thank you so much. I'm very much looking forward to this conversation. Whenever we hear fitness, it's perfect for this time of the year, whereas we kick off 2026. Yes. To kick us off, Sarah, what is mental fitness? And it's not the same as mental wellness, is it? No, it really isn't. So for me, mental fitness is the ability to, number one, understand what I'm thinking, then ask myself a very quick question, is this something that I want to have happen in my future? If it's not, then having a skill set, just like you would if you were at the gym and you had a trainer who is like, all right, now it's time for squats, now it's time for arms. Your brain is very much the same. It's a muscle, it needs to be worked out like a muscle. And so if I notice that I'm thinking something that is destructive in any way, it could be hurting myself confidence. It could be tearing me down, it could be telling me not to take an opportunity. Any of those things, we're all thinking, I think the average is between 60 to 70,000 thoughts a day. So a lot is going on in our head. So once we notice that a thought is actually focusing on something that we don't want than the ability to change it and start focusing on what I want instead is to me the true definition of being mentally fit. Like I understand how to switch from the focus of something I don't want over to the focus of something that I do. And the visual that I kind of think about is if anyone has ever watched a practice, a football practice, or maybe a soccer practice. And the coach blows a whistle and you see the whole team quickly move from quick feet to bear crawls to whatever their next exercise is, that's really what we're doing in our mind. We're saying, wait a second. That thought is not helping me become a better speaker. That thought is not giving me confidence right before I go on the stage. So what do I need to tell myself instead? And nor there to make sure that this goes away. I wanted to go. This topic is so important. You'd think that they would teach this in a school. I know. Maybe they figure that passively you'll acquire this knowledge. But so interesting. I hope that this does change. I think there's a lot more awareness of how important our mind is and what a humongous factor plays in all of our lives. I mean, it is really the indicator of everything that we do. So I hope that that changes. I've coached. I'll be working with an executive and pretty soon they will say, hey, can you coach my teenager? And I'm like, yes, I can. So I do hope that that changes because if you don't know how to align your mindset with outcomes, you want then you're constantly fighting yourself. And that's what's happening for most people because they just don't know what to do instead. It's interesting that you mentioned C-suite executives. For me, the first thing that would come to mind would be Olympic athletes, but I guess it's comparable. Yeah, absolutely. I've worked with athletes. I actually started my coaching career working with football and basketball, so MBA, NFL, college level, way back 15 years ago. That is honestly where I learned a lot of my methodology was through watching what they were doing in a physical sense and thinking, hey, can I apply visualization to my life? Can I apply how I talk to myself to my life? And so a lot of my teaching in all of my books and in the new book too, the analogy of sports comes up a lot because I think all of us have some sort of understanding. And when you can understand a concept in a way that you're used to physically seeing it, like watching a basketball game, then my tool, offense and defense, you can start to see like, okay, if there has to be offense and defense in a basketball game under the for a team to win, then it makes sense that I need to play both in my mind as well. I have to defend my mind against the thoughts that are pulling me down or again, maybe ruining my confidence, maybe bringing anxiety or stress. But then I also have to play offense. I have to tell myself what I want instead. And I have to do that as a daily practice, the same way that I would go to the gym as a daily practice or my diet as daily practice, I'll say. Now you mentioned in the article that effort and action aren't enough. So for example, if you are practicing for the Olympics or you're practicing for a sport, you take the effort, you go out and do it and you do all the exercises, but that's not enough. How so? No, yeah, that's a great question because if you have ever watched an interview of let's say an Olympic athlete right after they've won the gold medal, they've crossed the finish line, they just beat in world records. And you talked to that person, they are going to tell you that they believed they could do that. They had seen it in their mind, they had told themselves they could do that. And if you really had time to sit down and talk with them, you would probably find everything that I teach in that conversation with them because you cannot cross that finish line and have been telling yourself your whole life and through every single workout and through every single preliminary, how terrible you are. And how everyone is better than you and how you're going to trip and fall and break your leg. In any form of excellence, whether that is a leader of a company, a manager doesn't, doesn't matter, any form of excellence, you're going to see that that person figured out how or had the ability to line up what they were telling themselves. In other words, their thoughts are what was going on in their mind to the outcome that they wanted. You just can never get the outcome you want at the level you want without doing that. Because otherwise your mind is fighting you at every single workout at every single iteration of the physical work you're putting in. And so you're just not going to get the output that you want. The two things have to be an alignment. I think for a lot of people, it's their natural reaction to things. Right. Most people, and I've been coaching now for 15 years. So I coached a lot of people over that time. I would say we are all wired with this amazing, negative ability, if you will, to go worst case scenario thinking. So it's very easy for us to immediately have an idea, maybe even a really good idea. I want to start a business or I want to go for a promotion or I want to hit a physical goal, let's say. And then their brain will immediately kind of go down this rabbit hole of, well, what if that doesn't work, what if you put in all this effort and you don't usually get what you want in the past. You know, so it goes in this whole dialogue that tends to, for the majority of people, be strong enough so that they never actually do the thing. They never start. They never take the opportunity. They don't get off the sidelines because that internal dialogue is so strong, it keeps them stuck. So now if you have a couple tools and I teach seven tools in the book for actually how you do this, because that was my biggest thing. I was like, everyone talks about, yeah, you should change your mindset, but no one is saying, what do I do in the moment when my brain is trying to take me down this rabbit hole? And I really do want to take action. I really do want to do the thing. What am I supposed to do? And so the tools that I teach help you move through those moments so that you are actually making progress and getting where you want to go so much faster and more accurately. Can you give us an example of a moment and then perhaps share a tip or two how people can apply these things that you speak about? Absolutely. I'll share one of my most well-known tools for changing your thoughts. It's called Mental Tennis. If anyone was at the workshop for the convention, I kind of broke this down there as well, but it's so simple. It's a very simple tool to use and apply. And it works amazingly well for getting you brand new results. You just have to do it. You have to practice it. So I will first set up a visual so that you can really understand what I'm talking about and also so you never forget it. So imagine you're out on a tennis court, you're out there to practice your serve, you're using an electric ball launcher. - Ouch. - Most people are not gonna stand directly in front of that ball launcher and just be pelted for an hour and a half. No one wants that, be covered in bruises. But if you think of your mind as this tennis court, all day long, these 60 to 70,000 thoughts a day are coming at you. Most people do not know what to do to stop that from happening. And so they're literally sitting there and allowing it to pelt them. And in that instance, that doesn't feel good, right? And so when you're standing there and you're absorbing the thoughts that are telling you, hey, maybe you shouldn't volunteer to speak at this next opportunity where you could get on stage 'cause you're not quite ready yet. Or other people are better than you or that person just killed it on stage. How can I follow that person? We all have voices like this in our head. If we don't know what to do about them, we're absorbing them, we're having conversations with them. We're saying, yeah, you know what, you're right. That's causing anxiety, stress, all of these kind of negative things. But just like on a tennis court, you are gonna run around and do the best you can to hit the ball back over the net. And it's not gonna be perfect, it's not always gonna be pretty. Some are gonna go all over the place, but your goal is out here working and I am doing the best that I can to return the serve over the net. So when you think about that in our mind, as soon as we notice a thought that is negative or causing us to feel negative, all I have to do to return that back over the net is to ask myself what is the opposite of this thought? So if the thought is they just crush that speech, mine is not good enough or mine isn't as good as that, immediately say, hey, what's the opposite of that? My speech is great, I've worked really hard, the audience is gonna love it. So I'm immediately rejecting that old negative dialogue that has been recycling in my brain for God knows how long maybe my whole life on some version. Instead, I'm actually taking a moment to say, hey, how do I want this to go? How do I really want this to go? I want the audience to love it. I have practiced, I am ready. This is my moment, I am so excited, I'm gonna crush this speech. So if I'm telling myself that right before I go out, what happens, my energy starts to rise. I start to feel good, I start to stand up a little bit stronger. My physical body starts reacting in a way that propels me to that outcome and then quickly my training kicks in, my memory, all of those things and I wind up crushing it on stage and having this amazing moment. That's kind of what I'm talking about, lining the thing that I've worked really hard for to go up on stage and crush this speech with what I'm telling myself so that I can actually get that outcome and feel that way versus fighting it every step of the way. - That's interesting. This mental workout is actually a virtual physical workout. - Right. (laughing) And I will tell you that every client I've worked with when we start doing this brain training in the beginning, the first week, they will say this kind of feels like mental warfare. Like yeah, 'cause it's probably the first time you've actually noticed your thoughts 'cause most of us don't, let's be honest. Most of our thoughts are running on a subconscious level or a barely conscious level in multiple layers. They're things like, oh, that conversation with my partner, DeNaca, well last night, I started obsessing and then, oh yeah, I need to get dog food. Don't forget dog food. And oh, you're about to be late for this meeting. You know, so it's just all this stuff. But when you start to hear it, you start to understand that my thoughts predict what I say, what thought has to run around in my head for a long time before I actually make it verbal. And when I make it verbal, I'm increasing the odds of that actually becoming my future. So when I see that as a math equation, A plus B equals C, all of a sudden I think, oh wow. I think I want to be an active participant in this. I don't want all of this to just be happening on its own. 'Cause it's not always getting me what I want. So let's start focusing. And let's start seeing if we can get what I want. You know, at a lot higher percentage. You mentioned how you can prepare mentally before going out on stage. What happens if I'm in the middle of my speech and then I get this panic attack or I get this o no movement? I just realized you answered the question by, if I'm in the middle of my speech and I go blank, I don't know where to go, transport my mind to the tennis court. - Yep, exactly. - And hit back. And take a big deep breath. You know, I know on stage there is that moment where you think, oh my gosh, do I just block out? Do I not know what's coming next? As all toast masters know, good pause can be a really good thing, right? That pulls attention really quickly. So taking that breath and just centering yourself and then trusting, you know? So if I've told myself in advance of coming on stage through every step of the preparation process, I remember things really well. I'm getting so much better at this. Every time I get on stage, it goes better. I'm really proud of myself. I'm improving constantly. This feels really good. I know that if I study my speech or record my speech or whatever my process is, when the time comes, it's okay if I black out because all the muscle memory is gonna kick in just like it does for an athlete. I trust that and I trust myself. And so when I am saying all of those things to myself, I am literally forecasting them. I am making them true for me in that moment. And then when you think of what is happening in most people's minds, that the opposite of that is happening, imagine how much harder it is to really go out and crush it when at every step of the way, consciously or subconsciously, I'm just ripping myself apart, doubting myself. And I'm being hard on myself and I'm not giving myself grace. When you just kind of look at it from a real logical perspective, I think sometimes that's the easiest way to see like, "Oh, this makes sense." It makes us, we've all been in that moment where we felt just on cloud nine, like we were just completely crushing it. This is how I get myself to that level, no matter what is going on around me. And I'm not waiting for something to happen to make me feel that way. I am actually internally creating it. So I get to a place where I trust that it will always be there for me. So always make sure you carry that tennis racket around with you. Right, get your mental tennis going. You talk about a GPS metaphor in the article, is this hitting that ball back in your mind part of that GPS re-roading? It is. There was about a 20 year period or so where people were talking about positive thinking a lot. Then people in the last maybe five or 10 years started realizing, "Oh, there's this thing called toxic positivity." In other words, if I'm just telling myself, "I'm okay, I'm okay, everything's fine, everything's great, everything's perfect." That actually is not doing anything. I'm just going round and round and round and actually probably stressing myself out more. If what I'm having a negative thought, if that's all I'm doing, I kind of think about it as going in a roundabout, when you're driving, you're just round and round and round. If I don't identify the thing I want instead, which that's the return the serve part of mental tennis, I have to take a second to say, "What do I want instead?" That's genius because that is the first time, probably, that I've truly identified how I want to feel, how I want to show up, the outcome that I want. That to me is like, when the GPS tells you take the third exit in the roundabout, and that will get you where you want to go. So now all of a sudden I have direction. Once I have direction, off I go, right? But if I get in the car and say, "Hey, I want to go to a stranger's house somewhere, "some place, I will be sitting in the driveway for a long time." I have to have direction. That offensive piece to mental fitness is I have to be telling myself every day as a practice, "Hey, this is who I am, this is how I operate, this is what I want, this is what's coming." And by doing that, I am creating the road ahead. I'm truly creating outcomes that I would not have ever gotten otherwise, but just kind of waking up every day and going to bed every night. Does it come naturally? Is there a point where you recognize when your internal GPS is rerouting you? It does start to come naturally. That I think is just the brilliance of the mind overall. It is quickly reprogrammed. Honestly, it really is. Neural science is so fascinating that when you start to tell yourself something, and one of the tools that I teach is IM statements, which are just this very powerful, very, very simple tool that I have all my clients do, where you write out 25 positive, predictive IM statement. I am a keynote speaker. I am an excellent speaker. I am successful. I am composed. I'm whatever. Those are all things you want to be. There are things that you don't feel currently, because you're using it as a tool to advance to up level. In the very beginning, it might feel like a complete lie. My brain might want to reject it, say, "You are not those things." I have evidence that you're not those things. But the crazy part about our mind and neuroscience is that it has shown that when I repeat something over and over and over, and I say it in a declarative sentence, it starts to change my identity. Because whenever I say I am X, that is me labeling myself. That is me creating an identity for myself. In about 30 days, I can transform from someone who thought that was a lie, did not resonate with that whatsoever to someone who is trying to to show up as that new thing. If I keep that up about three months later, I will get to the place where I truly, completely believe that I am that thing and I am showing up in that way and people responding to me in that way and it is now just a new part of my character. It's so incredible how quickly you really can change any part of yourself, your life or your future, would you just know what to do? Is it possible that these I am statements might bring out perhaps for some people a sense of arrogance, perhaps they are giving a speech, maybe take for example someone who has maybe been a toastmaster for maybe a month compared to a professional speaker. They say, "I am a great speaker when in fact, well, maybe you are an okay speaker. Maybe you need some work. I know for me I am a lifelong student so for me no matter how much better than I was when I first started, but I am always trying to get better at what I do." Yeah, I think that's a great question. Truly, if you are a person who is not walking around the world as that arrogant person that you know, nobody likes, the answer to your question is absolutely not, you know, because like that one percent person on the planet who we all probably know one person, they're going to show from that way no matter what, but for everybody else, this creates a process to that outcome that I want. So, in other words, if I'm telling myself I'm a great speaker, I'm getting better every time I'm proud of the improvements that I'm making, then truly every time I get up, I mean, I might have a bomb moment here or there that are the outliers, but for the most part, every single one of them, I will actually be building genuine confidence. And I think even the greatest speakers still have nerves, I definitely still have nerves before I go on. It's absolutely want to know that it's hit the mark with the audience and all that. So, I don't think that that ever goes away or that you would want that to go away, but what you are creating is creating that future where you genuinely feel very comfortable. Like, this is a state that you enjoy. It is something that you do start to really get good feedback on. So, it starts creating this iteration, if that makes sense, that each time it begins to become a self-fulfilling prophecy to the point where you, you know, could be one of the top speakers in the world. So, without that, the opportunity for you to truly get that end goal that you're after is from a percentage point just is so low. Because the entire time you're just fighting your brain the whole way. And it just makes every single thing you do that much harder. I think for someone like myself, especially where I began, at least at the beginning, I would need those clarifying statements to go along with the IM statements because otherwise, I wouldn't believe them myself. I would be skeptical. I go, this is ridiculous. I'm not going to do this. Yeah, but to the point, you actually tell every client the very first time you read your 25 positive IMs, it will feel super awkward. It'll feel like you're boldface lying. All of that is actually what you want for this exercise to work for you. So, you almost want that visceral reaction because that means that you've hit on sore spots, if you will, that do need to change. And so, we're trying with this exercise to remove the internal belief that I have that I'm not a good speaker. Because that's really what it comes down to. So, if me telling myself, I'm an excellent speaker, creates an emotional reaction that feels like, "Oh, I can't own that." Then what we are really doing and what's really powerful about this is that it's starting to change that very deep down, sometimes super deep-seated, believe that I'm not good. That is kind of this two-fer. I have to change that if I ever want to be good. I have to. So, this is doing both things at the same time and it's totally okay for it to feel fake. It really should. And it will for probably about two weeks. I have clients do this twice a day, morning and night. I make them have eye contact with themselves in the mirror when they do that and say it out loud. There's a lot of power behind it. But the crazy part is, is by week three, it doesn't feel weird anymore. And by week four, it feels kind of like, "Oh, hey, you know, so you can really start to see how quickly it changes your energy." And then eventually starts changing that deep-seated internal belief. And that belief starts believing that you can really be good. And that's what we always needed, no matter what, to be a good speaker. So we talked a little bit about mental tennis. And then we also talked about the I.M. statements. But then another quick tool that you can use is something that I call power models. And a power model is really addressing my core causes of stress. So everyone has around five from a topic standpoint, things that they stress about that run in a loop in their brain all the time. It could be finances, could be relationships stuff. But whatever your five are, I definitely suggest you grab a notebook and flush them out. Just name them. And ask yourself, what am I afraid of with these? Or what is causing the stress and anxiety? And then if you can write a quick statement that actually defuses that. So an example might be if my fear is of public speaking in general, and maybe I am new to chose masters. And so the idea of having to speak, or maybe it's my first time, maybe it's your tenth time, maybe it's your other time, and you are just, you get that anxiety, you get the butterflies, you just have maybe even a physical reaction to that. It's probably because there's some pretty deeply embedded thoughts in there, thoughts of like, I'm going to black out, I won't know what to say, people will think this of me, etc. So if I can kind of identify what those are, then I can write a statement that says, I am a powerful speaker that connects to my audience, my voice is steady and strong. I always remember what I want to say, let's say. So that would be, you know, like two sentences. And then what I want to do is I want to put that everywhere. I want to put it on my phone, as my screensaver, I want to tape it to my desk. I want to put it where I can see it, and I want to say that sentence as often as I possibly can, especially whenever it is that I'm thinking about speaking. So that starts to do two things. It starts to one, create all of those things as, as how I will be in the future, as how I will show up, as how people will see me, is actually how I will be on stage. But then the other beautiful thing it starts doing is it starts to stop the voice that was telling you all the other opposite things. And that's, that is mental fitness. That is me literally changing, just like I would if I worked out with a trainer changing my body. I used to be this way and now I'm this way. I used to maybe not be able to lift weights, and now I can lift more weights than I thought. So that is how we genuinely transform and change a belief that doesn't serve us into something that actually empowers us to get our outcome that much faster. It sounds like the I am statements give you the what and the power models give you the why. Yeah, I love that. Sir, we talked about playing mental tennis. We talked about the I am statements and the power models in the article you mentioned, sending really interesting under the recovery section and it's called daydreaming. Tell us how that fits in. Yeah. So daydreaming is such a powerful tool. You can call it visualization, call it a movie in your head, whatever kind of resonates the most with you. But it is the ability to kind of mentally check out and see an outcome that you want in every area of your life. It is how I've created the life that I live now. It's kind of the core of my future boards teaching. But I think it's also really great to apply for the speaker out there who are really wanting to hit some maybe big goals with speaking. So when you are thinking about that and you're saying these positive power models and I am statements around your speaking career, I want you to also visualize what each of the things you're saying kind of looks like in real life. So if I'm telling myself I am able to crush it on stage, I'm getting better all the time. My audience is connecting with me. I want you to really visualize yourself on stage, visualize that amazing outfit that you want to wear and the audience just loving it, right? That moment when all speakers had that moment where you are connected and your message is landing. So that is kind of what I'm talking about when I'm talking about daydream. It is predictive. And again, that neuroscience science part of our brain is so cool because it actually starts building when we start to build a very specific daydream like that or a visualization. Over time, it doesn't know that that experience has not already happened in reality. And so it is constantly looking for ways for that to happen in reality and you can call that manifestation or whatever you want to call it. But that is how we get those opportunities to come to us that much faster and that the opportunity actually goes the way that we had imagined it or visualized it. And that visualization should be just kind of a happy place. Don't put a lot of stress around it. Don't put a lot of tension. Just allow yourself to check out while you're loading the dishwasher or while you're driving in the car to start teaching you wouldn't that be amazing? Maybe to give a TED Talk or whatever some of your goals are and the more that you can do that, the more it starts to build all the good things in your favor. It starts to build your belief, opportunities, and to get those outcomes to line up with what that visualization is. It's pretty powerful. Interesting. So you don't necessarily have to be sitting at your desk trying to focus on something. You could be doing something else while visualizing. Yeah. Absolutely. It's great. Walk the dog and visualize. Being traffic. Yeah. Absolutely. Bring it in as much as you can. The more you bring it in, the faster it will happen. Wow. This has been quite the mental work out. I have to admit. Told you. Mental fitness is real. It's going to be the new self-care in 2026. I'm just putting it out there. This has certainly been a mental workout in a great way to start the year. And folks, if if you now feel that mental workout is just as important as a physical workout, I encourage you to share this episode with your friends and family and fellow Toastmasters. You can find the Toastmasters podcast at Toastmasterspodcast.com Toastmasters.org, Apple Spotify, and anywhere you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out Sarah's article, Mental Workout for Speakers, to achieve your goals, strengthen your mindset with a fitness routine. And you can find that in the January 2026 issue of the Toastmasters magazine. Sarah, before we go, if you could tell people where they can reach out to find more about what you do and how they can reach out. Yeah. Absolutely. You can go to SarahSentrala.com and you'll find all the information about booking me to speak. If you have an event coming up, my books, workshops, coaching, all the good things. So you can actually on the website, SarahSentrala.com, you can go to the shop and grab my companion workbook. And I will give it to you for free. Just use the code reader reader in all caps. And you'll be able to get the companion workbook. So you can do all of these exercises and learn each of these tools, master them. And just see how positively, literally every area of your life gets impacted. That's awesome. And we'll certainly put all that information, including the links in the show notes. SarahSentrala, thank you so much for starting me off. 2026 with a mental workout. I love it Greg. Thank you so much for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you.