Nurse Turned Pro Gamer EMUHLEET: How World-Class Esports Competitors Train their Brains

She leads a team in high-stakes global competitions.

She also leads a unit in one of the most pressure-packed environments imaginable: a hospital.

Meet Emmalee “EMUHLEET” Garrido— world champion in esports and a lead nurse in mental health care.

In this episode, Emmalee breaks down:

• What pressure really feels like when millions are watching…
• Why adapting fast under stress separates winners from everyone else
• And how anger, when harnessed correctly, can become a power tool in business, gaming, and life.

Want to stay composed when the stakes are highest? Start here.

Connect with Emmalee “EMUHLEET”:

💼LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmalee-garrido-29b479172/

✖️X (Twitter): https://x.com/emuhleet

Follow me for more:

🌐 Website: www.toughness.com

📸 Instagram: @paddysgram

💼 LinkedIn: Paddy Steinfort

✖️ X (Twitter): @paddysx

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Emmalee Garrido: Our game is not so much physical, it's more mental. Toughness to me is being confident no matter what. Almost fake it till you make it, even if you're not confident, but also having the ability to adapt around your situation. Starting off strong is so important in eSports because our game is so mental. You wanna get in their heads. Early on, throughout my whole career almost, I always. Learn something from a loss. 

[00:00:33] Paddy Steinfort: Today, we have one of the most badass performers I've ever worked with, but it happens to be a really different type of a story. Emmalee Garrido by day is a mild-mannered nurse, and I say that jokingly, but definitely not your average job, right? It's fairly high pressure. What really, really stands out about Emmalee though, is at night she is a five times world champion eSports competitor, and I've been lucky enough to work with her as part of the crossover work underneath Harris Blitzer Sports and Entertainment, the owners of the Philadelphia 76ers. Welcome to the show, Emmalee. 

[00:01:09] Emmalee Garrido: Hi. Thanks for having me. 

[00:01:11] Paddy Steinfort: Great. Great to have you on board. This is cool because a lot of the people who I normally interview aren't used to sitting on a screen with headsets on, et cetera, but this is your job. This is what you do. Tell us a little bit about, so for the, for people who don't know, 'cause there are gonna be a bunch of listeners who are like, wait, you can get paid playing computer games and there's world championships.

Like, there's a whole underworld scene, and it's not even underworld. Now I, I happened to go to the Fortnite World Cup a couple years ago, held out flushing in Queens, where that all the US open tennis. And I, that blew my mind. That was a moment where I'm like, oh wow, this is like probably gonna be the most popular sport in the world in the next 10 years, right? Mm-hmm. Overtaking everything. Let's come back a little bit. Can you, for the viewers, who are the viewers? For the listeners who aren't familiar with it? How does eSports, how does playing a computer game work on a global scale? Tell us a little bit about the industry that you, that you perform in. 

[00:02:09] Emmalee Garrido: Right, so I've been kind of at the very start of the whole eSports scene. I've been competing for over 16 years now. So a lot of people don't know that it has been there for such a long time competing in tournaments and also competing in world tournaments. But I think with the power of like social media and the ever-growing innovative technology, a lot more people are noticing the eSports world, and that's what's really helped our scene grow, that it's a career and essentially me and my team are practicing like a regular sports team, five, sometimes six days a week.

And then we have to qualify for tournaments. And we'll have to travel internationally to essentially represent our country. But now my team has a Canadian and a Brazilian on our team, so we're more of an international. 

[00:03:02] Paddy Steinfort: You represent the Americas, like the whole continent. 

[00:03:07] Emmalee Garrido: We're representing the whole continent now. And yeah, it's, it's a career. I mean, people, this is their full-time job. It is my full-time job, and I just always compare us to a sports team because that's what we are. Even though we're sitting down and we're, we're playing a video game. It's not a fun video game. It's a competitive, we have to win video game for me.

[00:03:29] Paddy Steinfort: Yeah. So lemme grab that name 'cause that's like. Part of the question, one of the early questions that we often ask is how the, you know, how'd you end up here? Whether it's Shaquille O'Neal, how'd you end up being one of the most famous athletes of all time? Or whether it is a Wolf of Wall Street, or whether it's a Wall Street Trader, or whether it's a Wall Street Journal reporter.

Like all of these people end up in places because at some point they had a crazy idea that probably not many other people are thinking, and then they just pursue it almost maniacally, um, almost like a crazy person. And the question, and for you is how do you go from, you know, I used to love playing computer games.

I think a lot of the bare listeners would've. Yeah. But how do you go from that to like, I'm not gonna do this for fun anymore. This is gonna be a job, and I'm gonna compete and be the best in the world. 

[00:04:17] Emmalee Garrido: Yeah. And again, comparing it to sports, like I like to go and shoot hoops sometimes, but I don't think I'm gonna commit my whole day and time to getting good at it and being a professional basketball player. And that's how, how you have to compare it when you're looking at video games is. One day you're gonna show up and play against people online and notice that this is a passion of yours and that you can win tournaments from it, and just ultimately devoting your whole day and time to improving and, and getting better at it.

I played soccer my whole life growing up, and I loved, loved the adrenaline rush of when we were playing in events and when it was all on you, I was vogue defense. So it was all on you to help protect the goal and stuff like that. And that type of adrenaline rush is what I get when I'm competing on the big stages at eSports events.

[00:05:09] Paddy Steinfort: Very cool. Was there a f, was there a moment? Can you remember a story or a moment where you're like, I. That's the point where I, where I decided I was gonna do this. Like that's where it stopped being like, oh, that that'd be a cool thing. To the point where you were like, I'm all in now. 

[00:05:24] Emmalee Garrido: I knew that I wanted to do this when I first started playing about 16 years ago. But the thing was, is that it was not a career back then. So that's why I went to nursing school eventually. But it was a thing that we were. I knew that it was gonna be big one day because you know, technology again was growing, and if you ever had gone to an eSports event, you'll know how into it. We are like, it's literally like going to a sports game, you know, we're taunting the opponents.

We have fans string first and the crowd. I just knew that one day it was gonna be big, and so that's why I couldn't stop thinking about the game. Like, even though I was still in like high school and stuff, I was like, I, I have to go home and I have to get better. I wanna be the best that I can be, and I want people to recognize m,e and I want a legacy. So it started off really young when I knew that this is something I was gonna devote a lot of my time to. And 

[00:06:18] Paddy Steinfort: There's so much more of that journey to explore because. It's one thing to make the decision, it's then like you said, I want to go home, I want to get better. I want to travel to tournaments. You're probably paying your own way early on. We'll get into that. But one of the questions we ask early of all of our guests, 'cause it kind of frames the rest of the show, is in your experience, and this is a cool, you're an extra cool person to ask this to because you have two frontiers where this applies.

So I'm gonna let you answer twice if you want. Okay. Might be the same answer, but you, you get to, you get to take two shots at it. What does toughness mean to you in your, in your fields? So at, in, in nursing, which obviously is a normally a stressful environment, but also the work that you do in eSports where you've devoted yourself to something that's.

Pretty tough. There's a lot of pressure, a lot of money riding on the big world championships that you've won. What's toughness? Is it the same across those two? 

[00:07:13] Emmalee Garrido: Yeah, surprisingly, they're both very relatable because in the nursing field, I am a lead nurse and there, to me, I have to constantly be tough, even in a very stressful environment and same thing in game and when there's a lot going on on.

A lot going on around me. I have to be able to handle that situation because I'm also the team captain of my team. So being a nurse, especially, you have to be able to think fast and critical thinking, and no matter what decision you make at that point you have to. Be confident in it and showing your confidence even as a team leader as well in game, showing your confidence and breaking of your confidence.

People feel that around you and your team will also be confident. Nursing field or whether I'm playing my, my video game, you know, so toughness to me is being confident no matter what. Almost fake it till you make it, even if you're not confident. But also having the ability to adapt around your situations 'cause that's something I learned from you too when you were helping us out, is sometimes things don't go the way that you planned or things you can't control, like lag online or something. I have to be able to handle that situation and adapt around it and use what I have to work with. Nursing gaming me.

For people who aren't aware, that might include me. I think I know what it is, but what's lad? LAD means what? 

[00:08:41] Emmalee Garrido: Lag. Lag. Oh lad. Oh gosh, my bad. Um, it's when you have, gosh, how do I describe this? Years? Is 

[00:08:47] Paddy Steinfort: it's like when you're on Zoom calls and someone's talking and they go all choppy and then like pauses? God, that pisses me off.

[00:08:54] Emmalee Garrido: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Imagine playing in a 20,000 tournament and you have. Yeah. 

[00:09:00] Paddy Steinfort: Yeah, I can see, I mean, I'm in, I'm in meetings that are, you know, we're working on stuff that's important, but whether they say the word now or in five seconds, it's probably not gonna cause us to lose money. And that already frustrates me.

So I can, I can only imagine if I was in a tournament and that was going on. You mentioned there the work that, that we did together over, over the course of a couple of years. And so it's, it's worth diving in on that. I want ask you a picture, 'cause I obviously had the experience of. Being asked to join, I think it was a camp that you guys would normally do where you came in a boot camp as preparation? And because the Sixers, the 76ers who are an NBA team, for those that dunno, have a full bevy of performance support staff. We would kind of drop in and help out where we could. And specifically, there was a request for, you know, do you have psychology or mental stuff? I assume that came from you or the, or the coaches.

[00:09:52] Paddy Steinfort: Why did you feel like that was important for you as a group and even just for you as a performer? 

[00:09:57] Emmalee Garrido: Well, once my team and I got signed by DTAs, who is owned by the Philadelphia Semi Sixers, and we had access to all the resources that the basketball players had, I quickly realized that. Everything that a professional basketball player had struggled with or had gone through is very relatable to us as professional eSports athletes. So I wanted to be able to dive into everything. And our game is not so much physical, obviously, 'cause we're sitting down more often. It's more mental. So to me, having psychologists or someone that can help us on the mental area was gonna be super important because it's, it's very stressful.

Some days we're crying, some days we're mad. Like, you know, that's all mental. And when we're playing in a tournament, we don't have time to figure out how to fix it then. So during that bootcamp, I wanted to be able to create tools that we could use to quickly relieve any mental barriers during a tournament.

[00:10:57] Paddy Steinfort: And it was really cool for me to talk with you girls, and I had the inkling, I probably shared the same view of you that it seems pretty relatable. You know, humans are humans, and when they're under pressure, they, they have to deal with similar internal obstacles, even if the external world's different. Mm-hmm. But it was really cool to hear you guys talk about it and be, you know, it kind of confirmed that thought. Is there a, is there an element of, of that stuff that you, you carried on and you're like, Hey, that's actually something that we probably still do now, like a few years later? Particularly with reference to, like you said, there's, there's probably two parts to it.

One is the in-between times when you're crying or you're mad or you're tired 'cause you're on tour. All the other shit that comes with being away or being in a pressure cooker environment. And then the second part is like in the competition, like when the game's on, like you said, you don't have time to think, you don't have time to feel. We just gotta do our shit. Is there one from each of those or either of those that you're like, you know what? That was something that we really, we really found worked for us. 

[00:11:56] Emmalee Garrido: One thing that we repeat often that you had told us is that the game doesn't care how we feel, and you just need to play because so many things come up that it's just like, okay, was this making me mad? This is making me frustrated. But you're right. The game doesn't care that we're mad. Like we, we just have to show up and we just have to give it our best, you know? Because if we don't give it our best, then all of our weeks of preparation was just a complete waste of time. And another thing that you told us is that we're here for a reason, and we're obviously good at what we do, so just do what we do.

It's as simple as that. And sometimes your mind is just blocking these thoughts from you. So that was. What are the best advice? I think you told us. 

[00:12:40] Paddy Steinfort: Yeah. That's, that's really cool. I love, I love it. I probably, I think if my memory serves me correctly and if my track record suggests correctly, I probably said it with a little worse language than you just said it. You did, but, but the essence is still there, and that's the whole thing. Like, it's about, like you said, these things are pretty simple. It's about just making them a, keeping 'em front of mind, but also making 'em work for you because sometimes. The strong language works for some people and other times it doesn't, and I'm sure my listeners have heard me say this with the language included before, but the game doesn't give a shit how you feel.

Right? Life doesn't give you shit how you feel. That's one of the regular things that I might talk about with performers, but the underlying essence of that is it's really just removing the shoulds from what we carry into a scenario. Like I should be feeling confident. Yeah. Why? Why should you? Like who said you should feel confident all the time?

I should, you know, the ref should make the right call. Yeah. Why? Like who said refs are gonna always make the right call? Like that's not a part of the agreement. And you mentioned something earlier that I wanna circle back to about, particularly the in-game mode, but I am sure it happens in nursing under pressure.

The concept of, you know, you gotta make a decision and then just go, you can't second-guess your decision. Once you've gone, you've gotta be all in on it. You can't like be half in on it and waiting for something else to play out. Right. And so I want to go all the way back to that time in your teenage years when you were like, Hey, I'm gonna try and make this a thing.

Right. It's kind of a crazy decision. 'cause even at that time, similar to what Jabba had a few weeks ago with a, a former WNBA player. Who, at the time of her teenage years going into college, there was no, like, you couldn't be a professional female basketball player. And here she's, she's played for 15 years now. At that point. It's kind of a crazy decision. And there would've been plenty of opportunities for you to not do that Right. To not persist, to not to keep turning up and, and all that sort of stuff. 

[00:14:40] Paddy Steinfort: How did you go about staying committed to your decision, even when it didn't seem like the right thing? At various points in time. 

[00:14:47] Emmalee Garrido: Well, when I made the decision to go to nursing school, I stopped competing for about a year, and during that entire year, I could not stop thinking about going back and competing. So I knew this. This was just more confirmation for me that competing in eSports is. It's what I love to do.

It's what I'm passionate about. It's something I will literally devote my entire time to. That point with when I was in nursing school was again, like just confirmation of, even though it wasn't a career at the time, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it even if I don't make money doing it. And it's just a bonus now.

[00:15:35] Paddy Steinfort: That's a cool, a cool feeling to have, and obviously you, you've got a supportive husband or partner helped you through that. One of we talk about during all of these interviews is that toughness. Sometimes presented in society as a solo act, right? And it is in essence, like when you're in the middle of a gun fight, a virtual gun fight.

Then there's elements of it that are like, you have to be good at your shit, and no one else can help you with that at that moment. But that's kind of a very narrow view, particularly when we're talking about life-sized toughness and dealing with things at work or in our life that are bigger than sometimes just the balance for you of, okay, you've gotta be tough yourself, versus having people around you who help you be tough in in other ways. 

[00:16:33] Emmalee Garrido: Well, so firstly, in terms of being a team captain for my team, for me, having my team trust me, is something that. Is super important because I want my teammates to be able to connect with me in-game and out and know that they can come to me for literally anything because that type of trust I can always rely on on a day that I'm not as tough as I should be.

And I know that they'll be there to back me up too. And that's what makes a good team, I think is. Just utter trust. And the same thing with my nursing environment. I want my coworkers to know I'll have their back no matter what. I will support them. I'm always there to help them if they have a question, no question can be a dumb question.

I wanna help. And so that's created a really good environment, both in-game and out. And then I have my husband, who is someone I definitely rely on a lot, on my really hard days because he's just. Totally opposite for me. I don't know how he's so calm. I'm just always like, I go, I gotta go do this. I gotta go over here and do this.

Like I am constantly multitasking. So I always go back to him as my support. Support is important. 'cause I always say, you know, I'm so strong, I'm so tough. I got the thick skin. But ultimately, some days we all just need a little bit of support. Somebody, and he's also the coach of our team, so that's helpful. We find a nice balance to be able to switch off work between our relationship, so when the computer's off, I can go and and do that. So that's nice. 

[00:18:09] Paddy Steinfort: That's cool. That's cool. Very unique. So how do you go about, as the captain or as the, as the lead nurse, how do you go about giving that support? Because some of the people listening are leaders in, in various disciplines. How do helping someone else who is probably struggling with what they need their mental or emotional strength for at that time?

[00:18:33] Emmalee Garrido: I definitely wanna let them know that they can. I'm always open and free and I've learned so many different tools throughout my life I feel like, of how to handle a hard question or stress if a teammate comes to me or a coworker.

So what I like to do is I'll sit down with them and I'm a very visual person, so I, I like to write out what a problem is if we can't figure it out talking and literally go through a bunch of different outcomes and what we're most happy with, and I think that's best because I'm helping them critically think different situations in their brain that they could have done on their own, but because they were so stressed, it was blocked.

So I'm able to communicate with them all different outcomes based off of. The decision that they make, and I think that's a really good way to help people, for me at least, to be able to think like, oh yeah, I did come up with this. Thank you. 

[00:19:26] Paddy Steinfort: That sounds like a little bit like coaching almost in your eyes, what's the key mental or emotional trait of top performance in either of the areas that you, either of the waters you swim in emotional trait?

[00:19:37] Emmalee Garrido: Would adrenaline fall down on that, like a fight or flight? Adrenaline. Is that something? Oh, 

[00:19:43] Paddy Steinfort: Absolutely. Tell me more. Like, you mean having that and being able to harness it or not having that so that you're cool as ice? 

[00:19:50] Emmalee Garrido: Well, I think for, I feel like as competitors we're always on that fight mode for the adrenaline fire flight. Like we never are gonna run away from a situation, and that's one of the reasons why I love competing is that's one of my favorite. It's not an emotion. It's one of my favorite ways to handle things is the fighting one. It makes sense. I don't know how to word it, but it's true. Like, anger is my funnest emotion. I think it's such a fun, fun way to handle things. If I can say. 

[00:20:21] Paddy Steinfort: Oh, you absolutely can. That's such a cool way to put it. Anger is my funnest emotion. The reason I'm, I'm picking up what you're putting down is because there's a couple of things. So in the psychology world, depending on what school you were schooled in, some of them talk about approach behaviors, and we kind of spoke about this with your group.

It's like, okay, things might be shit. But you can do two things. You can either do behaviors that try and avoid the bad feelings. Or you can do things that'll move you towards better feelings. The bad feelings are still gonna be there. You're gonna feel anger. You can't make anger go away unless you avoid what you're trying to do, unless you get out of the fire. Right. And so I hear you say that and it kind of, it it's, it's comforting for me 'cause it sounds like you've actually ingrained it, but there's also the element of being able to take your emotion and play emotional judo with it almost like that negative emotions aren't bad unless for your freedom.

Like bad, like anger can be really good. Anger can be invigorating. It can light you up. Now used the wrong way, obviously, it can be really bad, but it's just energy. Every emotion is just energ,y and all it is is, okay, what am I gonna do with that energy? 

[00:21:30] Emmalee Garrido: Oh my gosh. Talking to you right now. I feel so ready to play my tournament this weekend.

[00:21:35] Paddy Steinfort: So tell us about that. Like that's, I should have mentioned that at the start of the show. This is a very unique episode because. M is about to go and play in a tournament in what, an hour, two hours? 

[00:21:45] Emmalee Garrido: Yep. And then we have another one this weekend. Yes. 

[00:21:48] Paddy Steinfort: Right. So we're basically in pre-game mode, right? This is everyone just close their eyes and imagine we're in a locker room. Imagine yourself in sport. We're in the bellies of the stadium. The athletes are getting ready and here we are talking to the captain of a team who's about to leave her team out into, into tournament mode. Not only tonight, but also over the. Tell me what this experience is like, like as you get ready and I, I know that from playing and from being coaching and being around it for a while, that a quiet falls over the locker room. People get really focused. I. But there's this nervous energy, right? Is that what happens for you guys? 

[00:22:26] Emmalee Garrido: Oh yeah. I mean, definitely because especially because we're back-to-back world champions, we accept nothing less than winning, so not winning is almost unacceptable. I work way too hard not to win. I really do. I sacrifice so much time with my friends and family because I wanna win. That's my life goal, is just winning, winning, winning. In tournaments with my team, we work so hard, so of course you're gonna get a little bit nervous before you play, but instantly when I'm in the server, or you can think instantly when you're on that field, the nerves go away and you're ready to play.

And so, like I said, I have adrenaline rush just thinking about playing. It's one of my favorite feelings. It brings joy to me and winning brings that accomplishment feeling, which is also really nice. 

[00:23:14] Paddy Steinfort: Yeah. Oh yeah, that's, I think it was Will Smith who said all the best things in life are on the other side of fear, that like there's these bad feelings. If you, if you're happy to just sit with 'em for a bit or move through 'em, look at all the good shit. On the other side, there's the feeling of accomplishment, there's the adrenaline of winning. There's, all the good stuff that comes with moving through that. And I'm curious for you having been. In those environments, like you said, back-to-back world champion, playing on big stages for, you know, those big cardboard cutout checks that everyone sees.

People hold or see. You hold few of these. Yeah. So there, there's big things on the line. Big bright lights on a stage, people watching all you know, and not just people in the stadium, millions online. Talk us through that moment as your, you know, let's say using the hockey term, the hockey terminology. The puck is about to drop, or the ball is about to get thrown up in basketball for the tip.

Like what's that like? eSports where things are, they're about to press play. Tell us about that, those 10 seconds. Like, what are you feeling at that time? What's your attention on, how do you harness? Either your anger or your adrenaline or your nerves, like what? What's happening in that little special space?

[00:24:23] Emmalee Garrido: Well, to be quite honest, I probably have almost a big smile on my face because I'm like, yes, we're here and we're ready. We practice so hard, and I like to give a little bit of like a motivational speech to my team because I want them to feel my confidence going into a game, and I definitely feel like.

Pressure is a privilege, and that's a really good feeling to have is pressure and this anger if you don't win because it's gonna push me a little bit extra to go and. Push past whatever feeling I'm feeling to try to get that win. And when you're talking about like, you know, the puck's about to drop on the floor, like that's us.

When it's about to go in the first game, you wanna start off strong, and you want the other team to be shaking in their boots. So, starting off strong is so important in eSports because our game is so mental. You wanna get in their heads early on. 

[00:25:26] Paddy Steinfort: Hmm. I, I, I've heard you say anger or aggression or adrenaline, like, now that you've mentioned it explicitly, I've heard it coming out like five or six times. Right. I wanna, I wanna grab on that 'cause it is really cool. It's unusual to hear from. You've got such a petite voice and you are such a sweet girl that you're like, yeah, but I wanna crush him. So it's a nice dichotomy, but it's not unusual to hear that from elite performers. And, and here's one of the other things that I wanted to mention before, in a lot of the research around elite performers, let's say we we did one study that was over, I think eight teams in baseball.

So a bunch of different athletes and draft. By the time they made it to the majors, how were they like some of them flopped and some of them popped. And what we did by like digging right into the data was we found two or three things mentally that actually predicted whether someone was gonna, what they would say, return on the investment of the draft.

So we spent a first round pick on them, they should pay us back an all star. That's, that's what we should expect. And what we found was the number one predictor was competitiveness. Not how focused they could be, not how gritty they were. All these things were important, but the number one predictor was how competitive they were.

And in particular, here's a really cool bit for nerds like me and for ultra competitors like you, is that it was their ability to, regardless of the scoreboard and regardless of whether they were gonna recognize, they just wanted to keep fighting. And, and not, not about grit, like for goals. It's like right now if we're playing table tennis, I might be behind 19 to zero, but I'm gonna still be just as engaged in the next point.

And if anything, I'm gonna be more engaged 'cause I'm angry that I'm losing and I wanna fix it. And so it's the approach to continue to compete as opposed to, oh, screw this, I'm throwing my tennis racket and I'm outta here. Which I wanted to highlight because it, it, it's really you talking about the way you handle your anger. And that, that it's actually, you view it as a good thing. That's a really unique way to view it, but it can be the game changer. 

[00:27:34] Emmalee Garrido: Let me start off by saying it has not always been like that. So I am very, very competitive and you know, if I lose a game when, when I was younger, I lost a very important game and I did break my hand from punching a wall. 

[00:27:50] Paddy Steinfort: Yeah, hand. I was about to say, how many consoles have you broken, or how many controllers you broke?

[00:27:54] Emmalee Garrido: hand? My hand. My hand. I broke my hand. Like I said, like an, I have to be able to handle that anger, like there is a certain level to it. Now that I'm getting older, I've, I've learned to deal with it.

But when I was younger, I did punch a wall and I broke my hand right before a big tournament, so I didn't tell my team actually that I broke my hand for a while and I show up to the tournament and they're like, what is that on your hand? So I had a, a cast that I could take on and off. I told the doctor, I, I didn't want a, a hard cast, so, but I didn't want to make excuses for me not playing best.

So I still played, I still showed up even with the broken hand. And we won the tournament too, by the way. Uh, but being able to handle the anger is something I had to learn along the way. It's not something like. I cannot, I can't sit here and lie to you and say I was good with it from the start. 'cause I wasn't. But now I'm like you said, like I'm realizing it's what pushes me. Like, the anger is good. I have to be able to handle it from a level. It's what really, it keeps me from not giving up. When we're down it, it keeps me motivated. It's something that's good for in-game and competitiveness, but I have to be to control angry.

[00:29:06] Paddy Steinfort: My own journey as an athlete and I was super pissed between the age of maybe 16 and 19, and that was my super acceleration phase. Got drafted in the first round, like it really drove me. And then I kind of like, oh yeah, I'm pretty good now. And I feel like my edge went away a little bit. It came back pretty quick 'cause there was some other setbacks, but. If you are not angry, are you not as good? 

[00:29:32] Emmalee Garrido: Ooh, that's tough to answer. No, not necessarily, because sometimes a game could be, we're just smashing the other team, so I'm gonna be calm. I don't need to use all of my emotions, and we're just. Smacking a team, you know? So it, it really just depends on the situation. And my teammates are all different, so I have to be able to talk to them all differently. Some of them take anger as well. Like, I'm like, come on guys, like we work too hard for this to go down without a fight, you know? And others can't handle this. I have to be able to talk to each one person differently.

So as a team captain, I have to remember the situation, being able to adapt. It's so important whether you're. A competitor or not even real life, you have to be able to adapt with what's around you. 

[00:30:18] Paddy Steinfort: Yeah, it, I, I mentioned, I think I called it emotional judo before a mental judo, but really one of the key concepts of it, some of the stuff that, that I worked on with you guys was what we would call emotional flexibility. Like whatever the emotions are that come up, there's no, sure, there might be one you prefer, but generally you're gonna get different emotions on different days in different moments. And it's your ability to deal with all of them, whether it's your teammate feeling sad, someone being ecstatic, you feeling anger, whatever it might be.

So I think you've really summed it up well there. We're starting to get towards the end and I know you have to go and get your pre-game mark. So, uh, two more questions. One, is there a specific highlight that you look back on and you're like. Like we've talked a little bit about hardships, about how you learned from failure. You had to work out your anger stuff, et cetera. Is there a good time that you've learned from during your career so far where you're like, yeah, we won that and here's what I like? That was actually really helpful. It was a huge highlight, but also I got this out of it. 

[00:31:25] Emmalee Garrido: Yeah, I'm immediately thinking about a world championship tournament that we won. So someone's listening who's not familiar with eSports. With my game particularly, our match could last about three hours. Three to four hours. So, imagine playing in a big tournament for three to four hours for just one game. We might have three in one day. So of course this game was the longest game of the day in the finals, and it lasted to like the full length of time the, and we really gave it our all.

And there was a point in time where we were starting to lose a little bit, but throughout my whole career, almost. I always learn something from a loss, and so because we were starting to lose some rounds, I was able to tell the team, listen, like forget the score. We need to think of it as one round at a time, one goal at a time to get our way back up.

So, because if you have shorter, I dunno how to describe this one, but instead of thinking, oh, I have to get 10. It's easier to think, oh, we just need to get one. And then when you get that one okay. Just one, you know? So that's something that I learned along my whole entire career that I was able to apply in this grand finals to win the World championship of I am CTE in Poland. So that was a really cool moment to be able to think back. 

[00:32:50] Paddy Steinfort: That is very cool. And that kind of, that skips the, uh, the next question I was gonna say there. What, what's a simple takeaway that listeners can apply and that's really, you know, that's a great one, being able to chunk down your bigger goals, particularly if you're fallen behind.

Don't feel like you've gotta eat the whole elephant all at once. So last thing I wanna ask is, given what you've achieved so far, so like five World Championships, you're the captain of one of the best teams in the world. You've achieved so much. What are your goals? What's your hope? Like? What do you hope to achieve in both the rest of your career, but even by potentially coming on shows like this, like it's obviously an important area for you. What's your hope? 

[00:33:27] Emmalee Garrido: Well, I guess two things is one, for people to recognize eSports as a sport. Everything a professional athlete does in a sports team is what me and my team do. We work so hard for so many hours. Like you mentioned before, pre-game when a team's in a locker room, that's exactly what we do before we go on a stage.

We hype each other up. We at this music, you know, we're competitors and we wanna represent our country or continent proud and that just like in sports, girls can do it too. We work just as hard as everybody else and in terms of mental health, because that's the field I work in for nursing and the addiction field, I wanna be able to, my hope one day is to be able to combine nursing with mental health, somehow help people who might be struggling, just get people talking about it.

Just let people know. Gaming is a really good outlet to help. So gaming has done nothing but do good for my life, so, yeah. 

[00:34:26] Paddy Steinfort: Very cool. I know that gaming definitely helped me during the first shutdown of the Pandemic. I dusted off the old PlayStation and I was amazed at how good I still was at at Madden and uh, NBA 2K, not, not the real games, not not like what you play for a living.

And these are more just things that I grew up with as a teenager. But wow. It's funny. Someone said to me at one point when I was talking about the eSports industry, total aside. But they were, I was like, I wonder why it's, you know, it's so big and it keeps getting bigger. They're like, well, you never stop being a gamer if you're a gamer. When you're in your teens, someone does off a PlayStation and loads up that old game, you're like back at it. It's like, it was very cool. So em wanna say thank you for, for joining us, for sharing your experience. We share that, that hope that you have around specifically for you nurses and helping with the mental health of nurses, but also for the wider population.

And I'm sure some of what you've shared here, your own experience, you're a living example of someone who's gone to the next level, both in your performance, but also in looking after that area of your life. So hopefully, and I'm sure it has, that will inspire. Listen to take the same part. Thank you so much.

Good luck for the tournament. Maybe a month or two after we'd done our little camps saying, Hey, we won. Fuck yeah. Or whatever it might have been. You might have not have sworn, but I think I did fuck that, and so I'm looking forward to getting another one after this weekend. 

[00:35:57] Emmalee Garrido: Yes, me too. I will definitely let you know. 

[00:36:01] Paddy Steinfort: Thanks. Appreciate you all!

[00:36:02] Emmalee Garrido: Right. Take care.