Latest / The b.reathe Blueprint Podcast / Stop Telling Me to Rest
Transcript
- Katie Harvey: Welcome to another episode of the b.reathe Conversations. Today I am joined by Andy. Andy Baker works across behaviour, conflict management, and leadership training. He's an entrepreneur, an author, and a lifelong martial artist, and he is the creator of the Momentum Room, which is a way of understanding why we can look productive while operating from fear, pressure, or avoidance. What I find fascinating about Andy is that he does not just ask what we do under pressure, he asks who we become when we are under it. And today we're exploring whether success can hide a state of survival and what it really takes to change that. Andy, welcome to the b.reathe Blueprint podcast. Andy: Thank you so much for having me. It's an absolute honour and pleasure. I'm Katie Harvey: How are you today? Andy: doing good. Thank you very much. Doing good. I'm I'm excited about this conversation. Our initial chat, I felt we could have spent hours right there. So like we'll have to watch the time today, right? Katie Harvey: Yeah, definitely. It's for anyone listening, it's probably gonna be a long one. Why don't we dive straight Andy: Yeah. Katie Harvey: in? And the first question I've got for you is you were already a black belt when you were mugged at Knife Point at sixteen, which many people listening won't know. Did that moment teach you that being capable and feeling capable are two completely different things? Andy: So yeah, the easy answer is one one hundred percent. It was I I used that as one of those kind of defining lo moments in my life where it was kind of almost a a pathway to adulthood, I suppose. Suddenly there wasn't this, you know, protection and nurturing around me and thrown into this situation. And it was very different from a martial art dojo where there were people who knew me and practiced gently or didn't at times and but it was it was very controlled and obviously that situation was completely out of my control. and I think that's one of the unpredictability of it. There was things that I thought I knew about fighting or conflict or confrontation that I thought I'd picked up, either from at school or from from the dojo, that then suddenly went out the window when it came to that that real life incident. so yeah, the the perception of capability. I mean, I'm a I'm a big advocate and try and be self aware as much as possible in the Dun and Kruger effect and we all think we're above average at everything. So usually reminds us when we when we get there we realise that we we truly know nothing. And I think that's where I was and for anybody listening who's ever thought about you know, or or felt that black belt sounds impressive, I always I always kind of think, you know, a a black belt is a white belt who just didn't give up for one. which is why most people don't get to black belt. But black belt is actually the start of the journey in martial arts r rather than the end. and I think that's a philosophy in life that I try and work on, is that, you know, on on the journey the end is all that matters, but in the end, the journey is all that matters. And and black belt's one of those markers that most people see as a hey, I've got black belt, that's it, I'm done. I know it all now. And actually it was later on when I really started studying one psychology, but also exploring different martial arts, I realized Black belt's just where you know the syllabus and then from black belt you start learning. and and so yeah, that was a a big learning curve for me. Katie Harvey: I love that. I think that's gonna be my quote of the week. The the most important thing in the journey is the end, but the most important thing in the end is the journey. That's something I've never heard actually, which I love that. So Andy: If you never heard, it is it's my favourite quote. It's probably my favourite quote in life. Katie Harvey: Yeah, that's definitely up there with mine now. I I love that. And when you think about your own life now, what would Andy: Mm-hmm. Katie Harvey: you say is your earliest sign now that you've stopped working from curiosity and started working from fear? Andy: I'd done a lot of work on myself. again, I I'm full of quotes by the way. So you're gonna lie, is that you know you should always work harder on yourself than you do in your job. so it's it was this self-reflection all the time that I recognized, you know, I am a workaholic. I do work every hour, I don't sleep as much as I should, and when I wake up, my busy brain wants me to immediately go into something productive. I'm writing a book on the on the very subject of the moment calling Stop Telling Me to Rest because I I can't. So so I need to be productive in the way I rest. I have to kind of analyze it. So as far as the I think I often recognize that I was coming from a place of fear. You know, I was a very sensitive kid. it was easy to make me cry. It was e I felt overwhelmed a lot of the time. I was a perpetual people pleaser, wanted to be liked, wanted to be valued, felt like I needed to be interesting to be liked, rather than, you know, Del Carnegie's work in how to win friends and influence people. You know, you should be interested rather than interesting. So I had had it all wrong. I don't think I really understood human connection or how to socialize in difficult ways. I didn't have many friends, had a few friends, but not many friends. And I think that was a a journey that when I went into the working world suddenly I was in a state of prover all the time that I must be good enough to f be valued that I must work hard because working hard is an attribute that other people admire and like and and therefore there was this this constant aim that I couldn't stop working because then I'm a failure. I couldn't stop working because everything will fall apart. If if I stop working people are gonna think I'm lazy. So a lot of the time I was working really hard and being very good at being busy, not necessarily achieving much or being productive or making any changes in my life. But I was very busy and very tired doing it. And so I did a lot of work on self-reflection and working with some of my mentors and talking through the stuff, as well as obviously studying psychology for for a long time now, and recognized that. There was two states we can work from, and one is a state of curiosity and passion and growth, and one is from a state of fear. And our decisions are made best when we're working from a state of passion, when we're working from an element of curiosity. So that's where we can improve our decisions and our outcomes, and we can be strategic about what we do. We're either and and I struggle with this to give you a kind of a an insight as a conversation with my mindset coach, which was I don't understand how to motivate myself to do what I do, to be as productive as I am, to achieve as much as I have without doing it from a place of hunger, without doing it from a place of like, I must achieve this, otherwise I am not good enough, I am a failure. How else do I drive myself? And I use the analogy of like, hunger is the best driver to go and get food. It just is. There's no taking that away. So fear does drive certain behaviors. but it's been a long time since I recognize the two human motivators, biggest human motivators is fear and love. They're the two biggest drivers for all human behavior: fear and love. I tended to use fear, it's a quicker and easy one, and human beings are very motivated by fear because it's better to notice the snake in the grass and the flower above it. So we're always going to notice the threat and the fear, and it's going to draw our attention. So you have to work harder. And create new habits to work from a place of passion, curiosity, and love. But it ain't our happier place to be. it's more joyful, it's more exciting, it's more full of passion. And suddenly the analogy of food that my mindset coach went through me, following my analogy along was well, but sometimes you're just like going out for a meal and you'd want to try something because you just want to try it. You're just excited by trying this new item of food. You're not starving. You're not desperately needing food, so suddenly it's a whole different experience of enjoying that meal when you're approaching it from curiosity rather than from approaching it from fear and hunger. And and that's where my idea of the adaptive mindset model started to come from. And I've worked hard. I don't always remember it. There is tears of understanding and practicing this stuff to get to that that level of working from passion growth and and joy. rather than from, my God, people won't think I'm good enough if I don't Katie Harvey: It really does make a difference when you're doing something from a passion rather than from force almost and because you have to do it. Now, obviously under under pressure, a lot of people do perform better and sometimes that the fear does drive them. But why do some people, is especially capable people, default to a state rather than their stated goals? Why do they fall back into a different thing when they are under pressure? Andy: So the the the process works from, and this this isn't something I invented, this is comes from cognitive science, is kind of our beliefs create our thoughts, which create our feelings, which then create our behaviour, which then creates evidence. So you gave the example there of a lot of people do get to that state of pressure and then work well from there. And it was one of those there's a narrative I d I do I work well under pressure. and it's a narrative, which means that if you understand cognitive biases, which means every time that I achieve something when I feel under pressure and I feel like I have to achieve it, suddenly that creates evidence that, see, that's what I have to do. So people who leave their homework till the day before the exam is due and but they manage to then focus and get it done, it reinforces them. That's who I am as a person, that's how I work best. But that evidence isn't based on the alternative, going if you've been working on it systematically just half an hour a day over the previous however many weeks, you might have achieved still the same result. But you wouldn't you don't have those narratives to compare yourself against. So you then create this identity, this belief about yourself, being I have to leave things to the last minute to be able to achieve them. And that creates this feedback loop, right? And every time you do it again, you get more evidence. That's the only way it works. So you're never testing, we're never like if you think of of scientific testing, you've got a hypothesis and a null hypothesis, you're never testing the alternative, you're never doing a control experiment against them to go actually which way do will work best. So the idea is is recognizing sometimes that just because we belie you believe something doesn't mean it's true. The belief is what creates the thoughts, the feelings, and then the behavior. So if We put just something into interrupt that there, that rather than going straight from feelings to behavior, we recognize as a state of a state. And the state is just a way of kind of labeling the emotional and psychological state that we're in at that particular time before we start. So it's a summary of kind of thoughts and feelings kind of coming together, if you like. By labeling that in the book, The Momentum Room and in my adaptive mindset model, by giving that. a room by giving it a name, it allows us to create a concrete concept around something that's actually quite abstract. The abstract thing is like panic is different from all of us, right? We may not recognise panic as being panic. We may urgency, you know, I I've just got to get it done. But actually that's still a threat state. That's I've got to get it done rather than I'm enjoying the process of doing it, which is I am enjoying the journey. So by adding the room in, it gave a concrete way that this doesn't define you. It's not based on truth. It's not based on anything other than just this is a state or the room that you are currently working from. And rather than just automatically just continuing to work from that state, notice it, name it, and then maybe look at what could I do that would be slightly different, adjusting that slightly to change the room and work from maybe as as the model goes. From more workshop rather than alarm room, so you can enjoy the process more. And just that little movie, it's not about being perfect, it's not about recognizing a state and then hitting yourself, going, why am I always in alarm room? Why aren't I good enough? It's a case of, it's just a room I'm in. So if I'm just in a room, I could step out of that room and step into a different room and try it from a different state and just see what evidence it produces. And suddenly we then start creating different feedback loops. And the person who leaves everything to the last minute and then has like sleepless nights and loses her hair and doesn't eat and falls out with their partner terribly, the deadline before something, could suddenly go, huh, maybe actually when I did it this way, that actually improves the quality of my life, well being and the interactions and relationships with others. that that that's providing a whole new set of evidence that I can now potentially change my identity about. That suddenly I don't become the person who I have to w leave it to last minute to do otherwise I can't do it. It's a person who goes, actually I find that Little and often works really well for me now. Katie Harvey: Funny, you've just described the exact process I went through two years ago with feeling like I worked well under pressure and then recognising that actually I'd just been forced to work well under pressure and that wasn't something that I wanted to do. Andy: No. Katie Harvey: before we describe the rooms, because I'm sure many people are now going, What are these rooms that he's on about? How much of a Andy: Yeah. Katie Harvey: productivity problem is actually a state problem? Andy: I think massively. Busy work. So w within the rooms as we'll talk about, there's a state which is the shadow shadow workshop. And shadow workshop is where we are being very busy. We're not necessarily being productive and working in the things that we need to work on. And sometimes it's when we're it's that urgency state, isn't it? That suddenly yes, we can sometimes hyperfocus. Like I suppose there's a few different states that people go into and workshop can look different to different people. If I use it like the analogy of of kind of browsers. Some people, when they're feeling slightly panicked and agitated, will open up every project that they need to do on their browser all at the same time and suddenly they've got a hundred tabs open and one of them's playing a theme tune from the you know, when they were a kid in the eighties but they can't recognise which one it is, but they just have to go and check it to check what it is and then they're back again. And there's this state of urgency have in that. Other people, they're like one tab open, hyper focused, but it means they forget to sleep and eat and go to the toilet and and and stuff like that. They can't leave it alone. They can't step away from it. They're suddenly so embedded in that project that actually it's at the detriment of other parts of their life, whether it be partners or self-care or whatever it is, they fall into that trap. There's kind of one other, which is sometimes well I've got one tab open, but then a pop-up appears and I disappear on a rabbit hole journey, a side quest for about an hour, and suddenly get lost. They go, I was meant to be doing that. And these are all where sometimes we are being very, very busy. We are not necessarily that I might suddenly hyperfocus on an activity that is actually procrastinating the thing I need to do to improve my life. So a common one I get, and and people use where the shadow studios occur, like I could be very, very busy tidying my desk for the fifth time that day without sending the email to that customer that I actually need to send b because it's a difficult conversation. So that's then Shadow workshop. I'm I'm pretending that I'm working, I'm just not actually being productive. You've also got a shadow studio, which is more low arousal and it's more kind of an avoidant strategy, and it's more a case of, well, I'm gonna spend the next hour tweaking my website for the hundredth time because I'm not quite confident that that box is fully aligned, and I spend an hour doing it, and I think I'm being really productive, but again, actually what I'm doing is just avoiding. so I'm in cave. So so these are states where if we recognize ourselves in those, when we're doing those for a long period of time, we're all guilty of falling into them. Like, and and once I t this is a challenge for your listeners or or or or watchers. Once I tell you this, you are no longer in a state of ignorance. Okay, you're now in a state of ignoring. So you've got the awareness, you're then just choosing not to do it. But that's a first step. Knowing the rooms is a first step in the process. But then as you understand the rooms, you start to work in hindsight. I think I spent the entire morning in cave and I've got nothing done. Then it's starting to recognise in the moment I'm in cave. That doesn't mean you can change it. Because sometimes I I don't know how to get myself out of this. I'm not used to it. I feel safer in here than anywhere else. The next step is then being able to change it. And the last phase of the five rings is actually being able to plan your week around it. I'm booking time in to be in the healthy cave. rather than waiting 'til I'm burned out to be in the unhealthy cave. and and that's where the journey goes. Hopefully that answered your question there. I think I think I did. I answered something. Katie Harvey: Yeah, and now that we've got all of these different room names floating about, why don't you walk us through what the alarm room is, what the cave is, the workshop, the shadow workshop, and then the architect studio as well, what is this whole thing that you've created? Andy: Yeah. So basically if you just if you were to draw an axis, just like a a horizontal line and then a vertical line, making four boxes essentially. And you've got on the on one side you've got low arousal to high arousal, and then on the horizontal axis you've got from one end being threat to growth. And basically the four runes represent these four quadrants. So when you were in high arousal. And high threat, this is what we call the alarm room. And it's when you are you're in that state of fuzziness, you're in the high state of anxiety, you've got that tight feeling in your chest or the the pit in your stomach where there's an urgency and everything feels urgent and there seems a threat. And that that could be triggered from the moment you wake up, you know, you The alarm goes off, you pick up your phone and you see there's an email that you've got to deal with, or there's a problem that's occurred. And straight away you can feel yourself going into alarm room in that moment where suddenly life feels like a threat. And you're in your fight or flight state immediately, cortisol released, adrenaline released, alarm bells going off in the system, and you're in activation or mobilization mode at that particular point. The other thing that can happen though is on the bottom of that same axis, you've got then low arousal. And threat, which is your freeze fawn responses, which is, or even flop in there as well, which is where our parasympathetic nervous system is now kicking in. I can't run away on fire. I don't feel I can beat this, and therefore I'm just gonna almost shut down. And that could be so I I refer to it as numbing. There's like an unhealthy cave, and numbing like. ended up flopping on the sofa when I get home from work and then doom scrolling, thinking I'll do it for 10 minutes and then an hour later I'm still there. And and then suddenly I'm feeling bad about myself because haven't achieved anything. I haven't done anything I should have done. So then it just feels what's the point? And it can lead us into quite negative thought cycles. So that's your kind of the your threat side. And I've kind of touched on on briefly the difference between shadow workshop and shadow studio. I'll come back to those in a minute. On the other side Got workshop and the architect studio. The workshop is where I am doing, but doing stuff from passion, doing stuff from it that that creates achievement or creates movement or for joy. It could be creating a piece of art, for instance. It doesn't have to be work-oriented, but it could be as a founder or a manager, it could be I'm I'm sending the emails I need to send, I'm doing the actions, I'm booking the meetings I need to book. It's the It's a making the calls as a salesperson. Okay. At the bottom, then we've got the architect studio, which is the creative bit, the planning bit. This is my favorite space to be in because I love creating new ideas and creating new frameworks and creating models called the adaptive mindset model and stuff like that. And I love that creative side of myself. If I spend all my time in there though, I can come up with some great frameworks. But nobody ever hears about them. Nobody ever knows about them. I've got that wonderful piece of art in my head, but I've got to draw it on a piece of paper. So the workshop and the and the studio need to work together to continue that path. Because otherwise the architect studio with that creativity is suddenly go, I'm just thinking the idea and I need to tweak it a little bit here, I need to tweak a little bit of I end up in then Shadow Studio because I'm being a perfectionist. And it's actually come over phrase for threat rather than a space of growth. So I've shifted state and suddenly I'm waiting for perfection that will never exist and therefore not sharing my creative idea with anybody because I'm too scared about how people react rather than actually just the joy of the process. So that's where the the kind of the growth side comes in. But then sometimes your brain tricks you, like I just gave the example there of Shadow Studio. You think you're being creative, but actually you're being a perfectionist and you're procrastinating. You think you're being really productive and busy, but actually you're in a lar shadow workshop where you're actually being busy without being without achieving anything, without pushing things forwards in the way you want them to. So there you kind of four rooms and the shadow rooms within them. And then we've got what call the momentum room. And a momentum room is not a room we live in. A momentum room is a state where we just recognize the room we're actually in. And so the momentum room is about recognizing, wait a minute. I'm I'm in alarm room. Or I'm actually working from Shadow Studio here rather than from Genuine Architect Studio. So it's just noticing where you are, naming it, because name it to tame it kind of principle, I think from Dan Siegel. as far as just suddenly by naming it, it takes the emphasis, it takes the power away. But just recognizing where we actually are and owning it, going, This is this doesn't define me, this isn't who I am, it's just a state I'm in right now. recognising that, naming it, and then choosing a a simple move. It's not about perfection. It's not about jumping from room to room. It could be how can I take a step in the right direction. So it could be let's take a simple example. Like I'm I need to get the garage tidied, but every time I walk in there I just feel overwhelmed by it. So I'm gonna find other stuff to do in my house other than that particular thing. So essentially I'm in in Chad Studio where I'm planning something or alarm workshop because I need to get it done, but so it might just be case of, okay, don't don't try and go and do the whole garage. Let me just go and do one bit. Let me just go and do five minutes. Because that's a step in the direction I needed to go in in that moment. And the whole concept is about empathy towards my future self. So we are often making choices that our future self has to pay the invoice for. And that can be real simple, like, I'm not going to do the washing up now because I'm tired and overwhelmed. And then you come down in the morning when suddenly you're trying to get ready and the thing that you needed, you've now got to wash up in a urgency. So you've put yourself in shadow work shadow workshop or in in alarm room because you didn't do that thing. I the best analogy was from a lady who said, like when your when your car is nearly empty of petrol. You know you should go to the petrol station because you'll need it for the journey in the morning. But even though you're driving past a petrol station, you just go, but I just want to go home. I just want to disappear into cave. So you don't do that thing. And then in the morning you've forgotten you didn't need petrol. You get into the car at the time that you would usually go, suddenly panic because it's a case of, no, I need to get petrol now. And then the traffic's really bad and suddenly you start your day off badly. So your future self has paid the bill for the choice that you made the day before, 'cause you made it from one of the alarm room or or cave rather than from the workshop or the studio. Hopefully. Katie Harvey: I am so, yeah, I'm so guilty for doing that petrol thing. I run it down to about five miles left in the car. And then I'm like, yeah, I should probably get it filled up now. Andy: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Katie Harvey: Now obviously being you can be start becoming self-aware and you start switching rooms or start taking those small steps, but how do you avoid turning that into self-criticism? Because I imagine for a lot of high performers like myself, like you, to start with, it's kind of like it it's more frustrating than it is beneficial. Andy: Mm. Yeah. I think that's why I just I like the I like the use of the principle of the state in the rooms because it was just a case of like if we recognize so I do on a lot with principle of psychotherapy called acceptance and commitment therapy. It's one of my favorite kind of concepts. And the idea is that, you know, your your thoughts and feelings don't define you. They're not true. They're just thoughts and feelings, and they are like weather. passing across your life. but we are always the pure blue sky, the clear blue sky. You just sometimes have to raise above the thoughts and feelings to recognise who you are. And so I try and live by a valued life and I try and make sure that I'm working to my values. So one of my values is to work hard, to be the best me I can be, is is one of my fundamental life philosophies of my purpose in life is to be the best me I can be. But recognising that best me I can be doesn't necessarily mean trying to produce everything in the next five minutes. The best me I can be is to just do the best I can with the where I am at that moment. So there's no guilt in then going, okay, I need to maybe take a break. The big thing is where what what hopefully this does, it doesn't take control. It's not a stick to beat yourself with. It's a mechanism that you can now use to help gain that control. Because if I recognise the room I'm in, if I then just dwell on it and disappear, then all I'm doing is just stepping I'm staying in the in the cave, essentially. I'm just I'm not good enough. I can't do I'm or we're going into alarm rooms. So you're just still falling into the same trap. And it's not about perfectionists. Recognize a room that it doesn't it's not true, it's just a room. That's it, you're not it it's not who you are, it's a state. And then we can then move that room or learn to start moving the room. And it's th the the voices, the beliefs, the thoughts, whatever it is, there's a there's a principle, this wonderful analogy, which is so many of us, you know, these bad thoughts, these negative in beliefs and things like that, we we try and repel them, we try and fight them, we try and argue with them, but which means we're still focused on them. and sometimes we just need to relax. So the analogy comes from I I can't remember where it came from, but it's like imagine you've got a folder. With all of your negative thoughts and beliefs and ideas and everything like that about yourself, sit in this folder. And sometimes this folder is like here in front of your face and going, I'm useless, I'm a mess, like what waste of space. And and so what you try and do is go away, bad thoughts, go away. But you're still like holding the folder and it's still obstructing your view completely, and you still can't see where you need to go. So sometimes you just need to go, hmm, okay, just plonk that on my knee for a minute. Recognize yes, I do have these thoughts and feelings about myself. That doesn't mean that they're true. Th the thoughts are allowed to come and I'm allowed to go, but maybe not. and just let them pass. and actually the more there's a there's a song by an artist called Wren. And and I don't know whether anybody has heard it, but Hi Ren, Katie Harvey: Yeah. Andy: absolutely fantastic musical artist, but his analogy of mental health at the end of the song Hi Ren is one of the most beautiful, poetic things I've ever heard. Is that it is not a battle between you know light and dark, it is an ever-swaying pendulum between the two. And the more that we try and fight it, the more we try and fight against it, there is no winner, and we need to learn to dance with it. And it's that that just it doesn't define you, it is just part of you, and that's okay. And the more we try and force against it, the more that it affects us. so exactly that with the rooms, like just going. I'm just in a room. I can take a slight step towards a different room, and that's okay. Katie Harvey: I love that. And now this is something that I've I obviously wanted to delve into being a martial artist myself as well. Now, in martial arts, you do often get kind of pushed into alarm room, and that's a state that we choose to be in at that moment. And martial arts is probably one of the only places I would say that you can really learn how to stay calm under pressure in a safe environment. What would you say? your experience in martial arts has taught you about accessing skill under genuine pressure and how do you think that transfers from fighters to founders, leaders, people that are in business? Andy: Mm. Yeah, it's a s it's a strong one. There there's so much synonymous connection between, you know, martial arts and business. You know, you need to look at how many how many military books like The Art of War, for instance, and stuff like that, have been used now as business books. You know, we we we recognize the the nature of humans under pressure maps across in all sorts of different ways. And I think learning to cope with pressure in a different way in a case of I can't let this pressure overwhelm. Like I think a lot of people perceive like boxing and martial arts as as aggression. but actually aggression is is very, very controlled aggression. Because if I let the aggression take over, all of my skills will go out the window. If I let my anger take get the better of me, then all of my technique will be gone because I'll suddenly be relying on simple motor skills rather than complex motor skills. I'll start going into an intuitive headhunting mode rather than being strategic. And and I might get lucky, but I will fail more than likely as a result. I'll put myself in a worse position. And I think that's one of the things that martial art teaches you is mastery of emotions. That you can have that feeling, can feel that moment of anger. If you get punched in the face, there's a moment where of course anger's gonna kinda go, but if I Katie Harvey: Yeah. Andy: go back with that, I'll get punched again. So you learn very, very quickly if I try and attack from a state of anger, I get punched more. So you then have to learn going, okay, that hurt, manage your emotions, and then we come back with a, okay, so now I strategically, how can I approach this? Which is the equivalent if we're mapping it over to model, is I'm an in alarm room, but I don't act from alarm room. The momentum room moment is spotting the I'm in alarm, that hurt, didn't like that. But where do I need to work from? Which could be the studio going, What's my strategic plan here? How do I need to change what I'm doing to be able to manage this opponent? How do I change my pace or or my movement? How do I feint them? How do I you know, what what do I need to be watching on their movement that indicates to me what they're actually doing? And then the workshop is and then do it. You know, if I say in studio, I still get punched in the face, so it's still no good, right? But it might have to defend myself and keep my distance for a moment and Use something like within the martial art you do is use my teeth to keep them at distance a little bit. And then it's a case of right now I'm gonna go into the fighter I need to be in that moment, whether that be an aggressive fighter or an intercepting fighter or a counter striker, I can then map my behaviour based on what I need to be. I need to be all of them and none of them at the same time. Initially, when you're first learning any new skill, that is very, very consciously driven. And by the time you thought of it, it was too late. Over a period of time, it becomes just an automatic thing and you don't need to think about it anymore. Bruce Lee referred to it as the emptiness, where actually you're not even thinking of it. Like it's all the way that we learn skill, isn't it? Initially, like you don't know it, it's ignorant, and then you kinda you know it, but you still can't do it. And then you can do it, but you have to really still think about it. And then it becomes like driving, you just do it, and it is completely automatic, which means you can swerve or break. without any conscious thought and it becomes effortless. And that is where we're all aiming towards with any skill in life. And martial arts is one of the things that teaches you that to do it under and quite an intense form of pressure. Katie Harvey: Yeah, I've always said that Muay Thai taught me more about business than business ever did because the intense pressure that I was put under and the I was also forced to have to control it. It wasn't like I'm in there and I can lose my mind. It was I have to control this, otherwise I'm gonna get really hurt. And you kind of have to It's a funny thing. I think it's a it's a healthy thing, but you can also go too far in it. And I think it's the same with business. You can push yourself too far. You can start going too far. And that brings me to my next question, which is can you become too good at functioning in the alarm room? Andy: So I don't think so. We shouldn't function in the alarm room. And that's the point with the fighting is that you're n you shouldn't be fighting from alarm room. You should be fighting from workshop. So the alarm room is the warning. So the alarm room isn't bad. Cave isn't bad. If they have a reason. Like alarm room is there to recognize threat. And that threat could be genuine threat to your well being. So like if it if a tiger came into the room The alarm room's a really good place to be, right? Because it's gonna trigger a fight or flight. I don't want to be having a hmm, what would be the appropriate action here? Maybe I could try this, and maybe I could try that, or maybe try it's like, d do I run away or fight? So that instantaneous. Now most of the time the threat isn't something like a threat to life. It's often what we're coping with is threat to identity. And threat to identity is very different. So within martial arts, it's it's threat to life essentially. You know, I am being hurt or I'm being hit. In business, it's not a threat to life, it's a threat to identity. And they're very different concepts of threat. When you learn in martial arts that there is control, and this is why I I I don't like street fighting, but I'd happily step in a ring, because there is control, so you can learn that that isn't the same threat. And this is where martial art needs pressure testing under pressure, there is alarm room and coping with that. Because it's a different form of threat. But the The threat state isn't where I should work from it. It should activate you that something isn't okay here. What is the right room to work from? And it could be genuine threat, street fight, for instance. Why would I get in guard and decide, hey, I'm gonna try out my tie boxing right now? It should be a case of run, no matter what, because they might be better to me and there's no referee that's gonna tap to say you win. So it's just not the same. So the threat should genuinely be go. If, however, there is no option, then I need to go, right, I've got no option here. The alarm room is not the right state to be in, because this is where I'll lose control and I'll tire myself out. I need to be in the momentum room. Right now I'm in the fight, now I'm in workshop. So let's say that as a business owner, my bank account is so empty that I'm not going to be able to pay my bills. That's a genuine threat. So alarm room, I need that to warn me. You need to do something about this. But the decision shouldn't be made from alarm room. The decision should be made from moving to studio. Okay, what's the strategy plan here? How can I find money? Who could I talk to to help me get this? What actions could I take to get me some money in? And then workshop is now let's go and do it. So it's the journey between the rooms and them working together really important. The alarm room is a warning. If I stay in there, I won't make my best decisions. But I need it. And that's why it's it goes back to your further question, like judging yourself, no, the alarm's perfectly normal. Like like anxiety is is perfectly normal, right? it's just whether it is a genuine threat or whether it's just a threat to identity or we believe it's threat. Is it you know fear stands for false expectations appearing real? Is it just a story that I'm telling myself rather than an actual threat? And I think that's where that ties in with the martial arts side of things. Katie Harvey: Yeah, so for people that are listening, that there's probably definitely some people in here that are listening and going, shit, I've been stuck in alarm room for quite a while. What would their first now that they recognise the rooms, what would their first step be? Because severe burnout is essentially being stuck in alarm room for a a long Andy: Mm-hmm. Katie Harvey: period of time and not knowing how to exit. And it the longer you're in there, the harder it gets to leave and the harder it gets to kind of process the fact that you are in there. Andy: Yeah. Katie Harvey: What's the first step to getting out? Andy: Recognition is the first one because again it's just noticing it. You know, they they always say about addiction, isn't it? The first thing that you have to do is admit you're addicted. It's it's exactly the same thing because it's that suddenly it's something that you have rather than something you are. And it and it's a separation of those two, I think, is massively important cognitively. So that's one step. The neck the second is again Take the judgment away, as you've already kind of referred to, like it doesn't make you less of a person to be feeling an alarm. It's just because of scripts and schemas that you've had in your past that you feel are now a threat, or maybe there is a genuine threat to your well-being. It's it's the you know, the kind of the social environmental factors that are kind of impacting on this. It doesn't define you. The next step is then it depends, because The right room that I work from will depend on what the threat is. If I'm heading towards genuine burnout, it might be the first thing I do is I need to intentionally choose a cave. And the cave, again, isn't a bad place. But there's a a a a hiding cave and a healthy cave. And the hiding cave is where I just accidentally disappear into it and suddenly I'm just I flop, I shut down, I disassociate, I disconnect, I you know, don't talk to my partner properly when I walk through the door and just kind of they don't get the best me in that moment because actually I'm I'm shutting down, I'm disassociating. But I've also then there is a healthy cave. So sometimes it's not about the room, it's about the intention I go into that room with. So either I can choose to go into cave and go, if I was to go home for instance, and just ignore my partner and not talk to her and not open up, or I could go home and go, do you know what? I've had a tough day. I've been caught in alarm quite a lot. I think I just need a little bit of healthy cave time. I'm just gonna go and take ten minutes just to go and chill, take some time on myself, do something that I really enjoy, or could be half hour or whatever. And then I'll make my decision once I've come out of that state. Setting yourself boundaries and setting yourself like, I'll set an alarm on my phone, so in twenty minutes, when that alarm comes off, it's time for me to step out of that healthy cave, because otherwise we disappear into it and it becomes Shadow Studio, okay, it becomes unhealthy cave. But recognizing it and intentionally taking that step. But I if I stay in there, if I'm worried about paying the bills and I just disappear into healthy cave, well I just need to feel better about myself. Well, no, maybe there's some action you need to take that'll make you feel better. Maybe there's some planning you need to do that will help you feel better. And that's where it's not about moving to one specific room, it's deciding which room I need to be in to get the best outcomes. Had a one of my mentees, so I do business mentoring as well, and one of my mentees was talking about this, where she had recognized that she'd missed an appointment that she was meant to have and phone call. She'd also then not turned up at the wrong time for something. And there'd been a few things where she kind of recognized she'd made mistakes and she interpreted those mistakes, her beliefs, thoughts, feelings, behavior, forgetting things. She then provided as evidence, going, I'm getting overwhelmed. I'm getting burnt out. Is all coming too much. I need to take a break. And that's her actually communicating. I'm feeling too much and I want to disappear into hiding cave. She wasn't doing that intentionally. She was doing that's a hiding cave. That was from threat. That wasn't from choice. Now cave might have been the right choice, but she was doing it as a reaction rather than response. So I spoke about it and I said, the other day I missed an appointment. The other day I turned up to her massage the wrong time because I didn't check in my calendar properly. But I'm not creating a story about myself that I'm burning out. I've recognised maybe I've got a bit too much on and I just need a strategic moment in the studio to plan what's actually important and what isn't and set the things that are actually priority, put the things to one side and delegate them that aren't, and then step at the workshop and get a come of those things off my list so then I can function more properly. The instinct is sometimes go, I've just got to shut down. And this is where the book stop telling me to rest is, because sometimes I but I don't need rest. Rest, if I go and sit on the sofa now for half an hour, not doing anything, I will feel worst because that job list hasn't gone down at all. So actually I'm coming out in a higher state of stress. So actually maybe thing I could do is just get one thing ticked off the list. Maybe that's it. That's all I can do today, but that one thing ticked off would help me to feel feel better, take me out of alarm room state slightly. Again, hopefully I I explained that okay and said that all right. Katie Harvey: Definitely, definitely. Now, before we round off, the whole podcast is around one question, which is how much can a human being sustainably hold? After everything we've discussed today, what would your answer be? Andy: Resilience isn't a state. Resilience is a journey. and I saw a beautiful analogy of this, which is we're moving from not knowing to knowing, and that journey is not linear, it's up and down all over the place. And I think when life throws positives and negatives, we sometimes ride those waves more than we need to. So when we're high, we're like, yeah, and I'm not saying that we shouldn't enjoy the moments and we should take passion from the moments a thing, but then there's a a a Chinese fable which I which I love, where it was an old man and his son living alone, the horses all escape from his paddock and all the neighbours go, that's so bad, that's so terrible, I really feel for you. And he goes, Maybe. A few days later the horse sorry, the his favourite horse comes back, but then brings a load of other horses with it. And all the neighbours are going, Amazing, look at all those extra horses you've got now, that's fantastic and he goes, Maybe. The next day one of the new horses, his son's trying to train and the horse kicks him and breaks his son's leg and all the neighbours are going, that's so terrible that your son broke his leg. That must be a nightmare and the and the farmer goes, Maybe. The following day the army come to the village and they're recruiting young men to go to war, but his son doesn't get to go because he's broken his leg. And the all the villagers say, weren't you lucky he didn't have to go? And the farmer says, Maybe. And it's that state of sometimes we ride those waves too much when things are high. We then compare it against when things are low. And it's that that that clear blue sky again sitting along it. That it's not I can't control the the weather. It's about how I control and live by my values. And and so recognizing the state I need to be in and balance in your life, I think, is one of the most important things to be able to ride that wave. That when I struggled with my own mental health and potentially gone into states of burnout and anxiety in my own past, one of the things that I recognized I wasn't maintaining a good balance. And the balance was that maybe I needed to look, there's a there's a a a wheel. that we refer to. I can never remember the name. The life wheel of life or life wheel. How's my financial on a scale of one to ten? How's my health and fitness on a scale of one to ten? How's my diet on a scale of one to ten? How's my relationship on a scale of one to ten? How much am I socializing on a scale of one to ten? And and you draw out and you measure where you are in those. And if you're thinking, well, I'm not going to the gym very much in the minute, maybe that's a little bit low. I'm working a lot. Maybe I need to cut down the work and increase on the activity, that's when my balance is out. And I'm quite strict with myself now as far as I am as disciplined in the way that I look after myself as I am in my job. I am the best boss that I've ever had. I'm also the best employee that I've ever had. I work harder than any other employer will ever work for me, but I also stop myself from working when it's time to stop, because that's what a good boss does too. And I have to wear both hats and be the best I can be at both of those roles rather than just the one. which is where sometimes people made a mistake. The other thing I always recommend, and hopefully this this is okay, I'm not taking up too much time, Katie, one thing I think people forget to do with that wheel of life is they mark on a scale of one to ten where they feel they are, but they don't actually know what ten looks like. So if I feel my health and fitness is down at one, well doesn't it depend on what ten looks like for me? Because if ten looks like, well, I'm looking to be the next Mr. Universe and I should be training five days a week and spending essentially eight hours in the gym, then yeah, I'm at one. If however I should be going to the gym a couple of times a week, and at the minute I've only made it a couple of times a month, the the the picture isn't as bleak as I thought it was. I only need to go to the gym Once more a week, and suddenly I'll push myself up significantly. And it's it's recognition of where you are in your own values. What does success mean to you? What does healthy mean to you? What does a good relationship mean to you? Don't use the Instagram comparative, use what your values as a comparative. That's a answer to that question. Katie Harvey: Yeah, that's really relevant to me at the moment as well, because we're going through a process. We do it on Property Entrepreneur, which is where we spend three months. funnily enough, it's called the Cave, but it's not actually your it's not the same cave that we're referring to. And it's just reflective journaling, seeing where we want to go, seeing what our plans Andy: Yeah. Katie Harvey: are for the next year, for the next cycle, and we look at the wheel of life. and actually I'm just noting it down so that I don't forget to do this. I've never kind of looked at it that way, and that's quite often I I go year on year and I end up marking myself very similar scores, even though I've made progress. But the reason that I end up marking myself similar scores is because my my ten then is different to what my 10 now is. So although I have made progress, I've just stayed the same in relation to my 10. And that's something Andy: Yeah. Katie Harvey: that I do want to actually share with some people. This is going to be really Very shortly, so this will be very relevant to people that are going through this process now. so I love that, I really, really like Andy: Yeah. Katie Harvey: that. Andy: Well, I've I've always struggled to recognise myself as successful. Like if you look at me on paper, I think I sound quite credible. You know, I'm a a three time best selling author. I run seven different businesses. You know, one particularly a very successful business. four black belting four different martial arts. I mean, it sounds on paper, my C V is like learning. That's not how I feel about myself. I'm still trying to prove at times that I am successful and not where I feel I should be. I'm not a multimillionaire. I c I don't have to never worry about mi money ever again. I don't feel like I'm can I kind of financially wealthy. I'm don't be able to I can't buy my parents whatever I want to buy them whenever I want to buy them. So there's still always that marker where but but shouldn't have been more. I think sometimes you need to take stock of where you are in comparison to where you were and go, now the journey you've been on. And that's what I said at the very beginning quote of the the start there that have to constantly reflect back on is in the on the journey the end is all that matters, but in the end, the journey is all that matters. Sometimes we we I always got taught, and I still live by to a certain degree, it's better to aim for the stars and fall short than aim for the ceiling and hit your head. However, sometimes when we go to the stars, we suddenly realize there is so much further to go that we never feel like we're getting anywhere. And therefore sometimes we need to map that back. And within the in the Mentum Ring book, we've got what we call the horizon window. And the horizon window is rather than focus on the where you want to it's good to have an idea where you want to be in 10 years. Absolutely. But that's going to change. Circumstances change. Life changes. You can't guarantee that's going to happen. That's a compass. That isn't a satnav. If you then trace it back, okay, if that's my ultimate goal, Where do I need to be in 12 months that would evidence or provide the evidence that I'm heading in the right direction? Where would I need to be in six months to evidence that in 12 months I'll be in the right direction? Where do I need to be in three months to evidence I'm in the right direction? Where do I need to be in one month? Where do I need to be at the end of the week to evidence that I'm working in the right direction? And it's not about these, sometimes in a lot of the personal development stuff, you go, Hey, you can what do you want to be, have and do and write them all down and this is what your aim can be. But then sometimes for a lot of us entrepreneurs that, you know, we believe in that, we agree with that, but actually can then feel like we're never any closer and we overestimate what we can complete in a year, we underestimate what we complete in ten. Katie Harvey: Yeah. Hundred percent. And one last thing. Every guest on this podcast leaves a question for someone they've never met. It could be about pressure, identity, ambition, performance, anything that you've you sh think we should be asking about being human. I'll ask you your question first that was left for you, and then I've Andy: Okay. Katie Harvey: like a question for you to leave for my next guest. This Andy: Okay. Katie Harvey: is definitely putting you on the spot a little bit. Andy: Yeah, yeah. Katie Harvey: your question from Dr. Robert Carter. is what are you giving away today that you think you may need in the future? Andy: Deep. Okay. Now Katie Harvey: Hehehehehe Andy: I'm sorry to worry about the question I've got to create. That's a great question. Katie Harvey: Yeah. Andy: So what am I repeating again, what am I giving away today that I may recognise I need in the future? Yeah. I know I'm terrible for this because it's the one most valuable commodity and I know it's a cliche, but it's the most valuable commodity we have. It's more valuable than gold and money and whatever, and that is time. and I know that sometimes I am so focused on the stars or I'm so focused on where I want to go that I sometimes forget to make time for for the people that will remember me when I'm gone. My one of my big things is legacy. That I want to leave something behind because I I believe we die twice, which is the first time when we pass away, and the second time the last person says our name. and I would like that to live on as long as I possibly can. So sometimes, again, that's the end in mind, and I sometimes forget about those close to me that'll be the ones who remember me with the most fondness in the way they remember my words. So that's where. It can be I can be easily distracted and I find it sometimes I sometimes see them as a distraction rather than part of the journey. Katie Harvey: Wow. Wow. Very powerful. Andy: Okay. That's me being vulnerable as well. Katie Harvey: Very powerful. I think that will that will spark a few few thoughts to a few people, definitely. And Andy: Mm. Katie Harvey: what would your question be for our next guest? Andy: Let's let's relate it over to me. So if I could if I could go back in in time and speak to my sixteen year old self, as much as it wasn't a nice incident, as much as it was scary, as much as, you know, friends were affected by it, it was an incredible experience. Like even going to court and and all that stuff, it was it was something on the journey. It's a story to tell, right? So what is one event from maybe particularly that time in your life, the teenage years, where you'd love to go back and tell your younger you how that one incident might benefit you in the future? Katie Harvey: Great question. Absolutely love that. Thank you very much for being part of this conversation. And to everyone listening, remember, don't lower the goal, raise your capacity. I will see you next time.