Latest / The MindSets Podcast / Episode 47 - Sports Psychology Secrets: Robin Hughes on Mental Resilience

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Episode 47 - Sports Psychology Secrets: Robin Hughes on Mental Resilience · The MindSets Podcast

• 0:07
  Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Mindsets
• 0:10
  Podcast. I am your host, Angus Cook, and
• 0:13
  we are now on episode 47. Today I'm joined by another
• 0:17
  incredible guest, and this one I'm really excited for because
• 0:20
  we actually seem to think about things very similarly.
• 0:23
  And so I'm excited to delve into rambling conversations about
• 0:26
  that. But before I hand over to Robin
• 0:29
  to introduce himself, I just want to say welcome to anyone
• 0:31
  that's new and welcome back to anyone that's old.
• 0:35
  I massively appreciate the support we've had so far.
• 0:36
  The podcast has grown hugely in the last couple of months and
• 0:40
  that comes down to you guys. So again, big thank you.
• 0:43
  But then I will hand straight over to Robin to introduce
• 0:46
  himself. So here.
• 0:46
  You go. Thanks so much, mate.
• 0:48
  Yeah, So I'm looking forward to meandering conversations here.
• 0:51
  That's where I find my best stuff.
• 0:53
  But yeah, my name is Robin. I'm head of mental fitness on
• 0:56
  demand sports psychology app called Get Ahead with the
• 0:59
  official mental training partner for Haaretz UK.
• 1:01
  My background, I'm a fitness psychologist, fitness fanatic,
• 1:05
  and yeah, I guess that you'll find out a bit more about me
• 1:09
  throughout this podcast. Exactly.
• 1:11
  And the reason that he's kept that brief is because we don't
• 1:13
  do things normally on this podcast.
• 1:15
  We like to change it up. We like to keep you guys
• 1:17
  engaged. So the first thing that we do is
• 1:19
  we do the show and tell section, which was one of my favorite
• 1:22
  things when I was at school once a week, we used to bring
• 1:24
  something in that was random from home and you tell the class
• 1:26
  about it and that's effectively what we're going to do here.
• 1:28
  Now, the key thing that's interesting is as Robin gets his
• 1:32
  show and tell, I have no idea what this is.
• 1:35
  And I appreciate for some of you listening through the podcast
• 1:37
  platforms, you won't be able to see and that is where we're
• 1:40
  going to describe. But if you are listening to this
• 1:43
  and you're thinking how why would they do this section?
• 1:45
  It is also on YouTube. So if you want to go and check
• 1:47
  it out, mine says podcast on YouTube.
• 1:49
  It's all there, Robin. What is the show and tell that
• 1:53
  you've got? For us all right, good terms and
• 1:54
  back the truck up shall I like you got out.
• 1:58
  No, no, I got in my bag. OK ready.
• 2:01
  OK, so. He brought the entire rocks out.
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  I'm going. To press with it, first of all,
• 2:05
  OK, Because if I get out, it's going to just look like, well,
• 2:08
  it is, right? But there's a bit more to it.
• 2:10
  So I was thinking about a lot of things and wondering what should
• 2:13
  I actually grab for this? Like things are dotted around
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  like my house. I'm like as an athlete, I've got
• 2:19
  medals in lots of different sports.
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  And I thought bring the medal. What would that look like?
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  Just I'm showing off, right? But I thought there's a bit more
• 2:27
  meaning behind this. So let me grab and I'll show
• 2:30
  you. We've had, we've had a few
• 2:32
  medals to be fair, but like. This is the biggest medal that
• 2:35
  I've seen, all right, The biggest, the biggest medal.
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  But also this is a participation medal.
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  Is it? Yes.
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  As far as I mean, how big was the winner's medal?
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  Because like, what the hell? So basically.
• 2:47
  What for those like I said, I'll do an audio description.
• 2:49
  I'm currently looking at a medal is probably the width of a a
• 2:54
  large hand or the length of a large hand in width and it says
• 2:59
  PCA Physical culture on it is black but with silver is huge.
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  What's the the story behind this medal?
• 3:07
  So, all right, so this is PCA is a bodybuilding federation in the
• 3:10
  UK and I competed there a year ago, two years ago actually now,
• 3:16
  and this is as I say, it's a participation medal.
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  I've got lots of medals, lots of like newspaper clippings when I
• 3:22
  was a young kid, screenshots of like rankings in the UK.
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  And this stood out for me when I thought about bringing
• 3:30
  something. And the reason being is the so
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  when I first got into bodybuilding, I competed in the
• 3:36
  first show and I had no expectation.
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  I was like, I'm just going to do this for a bit of fun.
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  I was told I look good. So I was like, let's go see what
• 3:41
  I can do. A bit like beauty pageant.
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  Loved it. It was so fun, honestly, so
• 3:45
  enjoyable. I qualify for nationals.
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  Didn't really know that was going to happen.
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  But six months later I was prepping for that that show and
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  I was like, I can take a bit more serious now.
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  I was working like 9:00 to 6:00. I was, I'd have failed one of my
• 4:00
  exams at uni so I was like recessing that.
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  So I was revising on the training, revising at lunchtime,
• 4:06
  revising on the way home. I then get changed in my
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  trainers, run 2 miles away back from home.
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  Then I would cook, do all my meal prep, go to the gym for two
• 4:13
  hours, rinse and repeat every single day.
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  Naturally, as you can probably tell, that's a recipe for
• 4:18
  burnout. So I did I burnout and as we're
• 4:21
  probably going to detail, I've got an autoimmune disease which
• 4:24
  kicked my arse and I actually slipped into like my first sort
• 4:28
  of I guess and prove on my only sort of depressive states.
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  I've I've never really been in that point before in my life is
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  a real low. I put on a lot of weight.
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  I reverse dieted from being shredded to yeah, completely
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  over like overweight for me. I was incredibly unhappy.
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  I wasn't training, I couldn't do anything and I had a lot of
• 4:47
  unfinished business. So I sort of took the next year
• 4:52
  off and it was sort of COVID as well.
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  So forced retirement I guess and I came back the year later and I
• 4:59
  say 2 years now ago as I was a prep again I say I need to prove
• 5:02
  to myself I can do this, I can get to that stage, I can compete
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  because I competed for fun before.
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  So I want to compete and actually try and push for to win
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  the show because I came second in the first show.
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  So I went I competed great, prep went really well.
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  I did two shows in two week in one weekend.
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  On the Saturday I did a UKUP show, which is another
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  federation. I won that show.
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  I got my pro card in that federation.
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  I was thinking about bringing that today.
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  But the next day I did APCA show and I placed fourth.
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  So I got a participation medal, which was, it is quite big here.
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  But the reason why I brought that and I didn't bring the PCA,
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  the, the pro card for me was because that whole journey, the
• 5:44
  reason why I decided to compete was to impress others, prove
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  that I could do it. And in a subjective sport, you
• 5:51
  get caught up with like judgement of how people perceive
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  you. And when I think about like,
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  what was the best take away from that, a participation medal is
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  probably the best thing I could have got.
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  Because rather than being caught up in the whole idea of I need
• 6:07
  to win, I need to win, I need to be the best and something that I
• 6:09
  can't really control. I actually found that I need to
• 6:12
  check myself. I'm actually happy with what I
• 6:15
  did achieve. Like, And so I wrote on the back
• 6:17
  here, I went home after and I got one of those printable label
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  things and I've put 4th place on the back here.
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  I put the date as, but I looked awesome.
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  And that was for me that that was just a reminder.
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  Now I look here, it's like I don't need anyone else's
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  validation about what I've done. I put in so much hard work.
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  Two years ago, I'd have just killed to be on stage.
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  The fact that I got here and then also managed to compete and
• 6:38
  do really well for me, it's a reminder that I needed my own
• 6:41
  validation when I come into sport and that takes the
• 6:44
  pressure off of me when I compete and you know.
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  That is so cool. And also the first time when you
• 6:49
  pulled out, I didn't know that was on the back.
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  So like I looked awesome is like a journal, diary entry stamp
• 6:55
  sort of thing. That's wicked.
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  And like, I think that probably does come from your personal
• 7:02
  journey, especially with, as you said, you have an autoimmune
• 7:05
  disease and you've kind of gone through that.
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  And so you're taking kind of appreciation as you go these
• 7:10
  days, which is something that I feel like a lot of athletes and
• 7:13
  certainly myself has been guilty of not doing at certain points
• 7:16
  throughout their life for various different things.
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  So I love that. And I might start.
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  I might buy a label printer after this and start labeling
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  stuff. They'll take you down and get
• 7:24
  like engraved at local like trophy shop or what not you.
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  Know awesome, so let's let's go kind of go back to before I
• 7:33
  guess you knew you had an immune disease or maybe you didn't even
• 7:36
  have it at that point in time. So when you were younger you
• 7:39
  were quite sporty. I think a lot of people are it
• 7:42
  starts off and this is a standard thing I think in a lot
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  of education across the world, sport is part of education.
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  So you start off, but then extracurricular activities for
• 7:52
  me and I assume for you was pretty much any sport you can
• 7:55
  get your hands on you will do. Literally like, I think I was
• 7:57
  very fortunate now, pulled my hands up on my parents, could
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  put me through those things. And they used to not forced me
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  to, but gave me the opportunity to remember Flyers would come
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  through to join a club and a blur.
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  Do you want to do that? I was like, yeah.
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  And they had the facilities to be able to do it, which is quite
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  nice. You know, very privileged in our
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  regard. But I always said yes to
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  everything. Like I was the way that my
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  parents say like I was like running and walking before
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  anyone like in school and whatnot.
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  And I was pretty good at everything as well, which I know
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  like I blessed there was always that one.
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  Person at school that just happens to be.
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  Good at. I was like, guy, people hate it.
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  It's like bloody good at all of this.
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  Like pick everything up. One thing I wasn't good at was
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  football. That was the one.
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  Thing I was going to say, the standard thing when you're young
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  in the UK is everyone wants to be a professional football
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  player. Not for me.
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  Didn't want to do it. I like I honestly.
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  So I played rugby, I did karate. I the youngest black belt in my
• 8:48
  dojo's history at 10 years old. I started when I was five.
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  I did horse riding, I did golf, I did run in like, yeah,
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  anything and everything and all of those.
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  I was like county level with most of them.
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  So yeah. So this is a discussion I
• 9:04
  actually had with Olly Russell, who was the last guest of the
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  last episode. He was a bit of Jack of all, a
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  bit of a Jack of all trades as well.
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  But when you get to a certain age, you kind of have to
• 9:15
  specialize because not only do you not have enough time
• 9:18
  anymore, but you you kind of need to choose which is your
• 9:21
  favorite. Yeah, I had that conversation
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  with my parents. I remember it vividly.
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  It was when I was back going to secondary school and I just
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  thought about starting out swimming.
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  I'd done like council lessons where you go through hat colours
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  and whatnot. My brother was a competitive
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  swimmer and for me I was like, oh, he's the one in the water
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  and the one on the land. But when I decided to go to
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  swimming, my parents all sat down as I were.
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  You need to decide what you want to do.
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  Like I was 4 foot nothing. I was tiny.
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  I was always the smallest person.
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  I was skinny. I was underweight.
• 9:49
  I was, yeah, under like the doctors because I just couldn't
• 9:51
  keep any food in me. So my parents like rugby.
• 9:55
  You may need to stop doing that bag and begin get into contact
• 9:58
  now. I'd play tug, rug tag, rugby.
• 9:59
  They were starting to get into contact and so that's going to
• 10:02
  damage like the rest of everything else.
• 10:03
  So I think my parents were, they weren't like forcing me to stop
• 10:07
  anything, but quite good to think, all right, you need to
• 10:10
  slow down, like choose what you want to do.
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  And but I say slow down. You can go hard into that thing.
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  So yeah, I'm very grateful that they guided me in that regard
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  because then swimming became that thing.
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  Once I did everything else for a bit of fun, like basketball and
• 10:22
  whatnot, it was then swim was the thing.
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  I was like, OK, I'm really good at this.
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  Interestingly, within swimming as well, unlike a sport like
• 10:28
  rugby where you choose a position but you played the
• 10:31
  entire game of rugby and there's lots of elements and sometimes
• 10:33
  you have to cover for other positions, you have to have a
• 10:35
  diverse skill set in swimming. Pretty quickly you have a
• 10:40
  certain number or a select few distances or styles of swimming
• 10:43
  that you do. What was it for you?
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  Or did you try and do as many as you could for as long as
• 10:47
  possible? So when you're young and you
• 10:48
  start swimming, you're doing everything, Everything and
• 10:50
  anything, because like, you can't decide yet.
• 10:52
  You need to be able to do everything and swimming is very
• 10:54
  different to many other sports in terms of like and I will go
• 10:56
  as far as sake. So I've trained in lots of
• 10:58
  sports at a high level. It is the hardest sport to train
• 11:01
  of training really is honestly. You don't do the volume in any
• 11:05
  other sport, the amount of like hours you spend in a pool, like
• 11:09
  you stink chlorine all the time, right?
• 11:11
  I remember I was training morning and night, getting up at
• 11:13
  4:30, like training 5 till 7:00. Then in the evening, get back
• 11:16
  from school, train 7 till 9:00 and then not all 5 till 7, like
• 11:20
  rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.
• 11:23
  So you'd be doing like 18 hours a week in a pool, which is just
• 11:26
  like at that point that you're going to develop gills.
• 11:27
  And you're right, you know, going on Darwin like you do the
• 11:31
  if you're of evolution, you'd expect that would be the next
• 11:33
  door step. But so you do a hell of a lot of
• 11:36
  training. And for me, I realized because
• 11:38
  you're bio mechanics, you realize what you're good at.
• 11:40
  So for me, breaststroke was the stroke that naturally I just my
• 11:44
  body moved that way. And I guess we'll talk about my
• 11:46
  disability. One of them is hyper mobility.
• 11:50
  So EDSI was very flexible, which helped like the leg kick and
• 11:53
  whatnot. So yeah, that's what where I
• 11:56
  went and I realized I was in, I was in an endurance baseball
• 11:59
  before I was in cross country and whatnot, but I really
• 12:02
  enjoyed sprinting. Sprinting was what I really
• 12:04
  became good at. So 50 to 100 meter breaststroke,
• 12:07
  sometimes 200. That was sort of, I guess what
• 12:09
  I'd done, yeah. And again, we're not just saying
• 12:12
  that you were good, you were county level, you were very good
• 12:15
  at that when you what was what was the sort of ranking?
• 12:18
  So 13 years old, I was the fastest 50m breaststroke in the
• 12:22
  country. Like, so, yeah, I was pretty
• 12:24
  mad. Yeah, I remember.
• 12:26
  I would be. So my brother was 2.
• 12:28
  He's 2 years old than me. He's 6 foot three.
• 12:30
  I'm 5 foot nine. You probably can't tell I'm
• 12:32
  sitting down right now. You're very tall as well.
• 12:36
  I am, yeah. Vertically challenged.
• 12:38
  But say, when I was younger, I was even shorter.
• 12:40
  I didn't get my gross but until quite late and I'd be going up.
• 12:44
  So in swimming, when you go to galas, they do it in heats.
• 12:47
  And so fastest heats always last and I'd be rocking around in
• 12:51
  these final heats waiting in like they call it the whipping
• 12:53
  era, which sounds a bit weird now, but the marshalling area
• 12:56
  waiting to get rid of your race. And there'd be all these big
• 12:58
  boys like looking like ho ho, what are you doing here?
• 13:00
  Like what? Not like, are you going to be
• 13:01
  going to smash you? And then I had on my back, I had
• 13:07
  the nickname muscles given to me by like the eldest swimmers in
• 13:10
  my club. And they'll take poke fun of
• 13:12
  that take making me make out of me out of that.
• 13:14
  And I was always underestimated. But then when I got out of the
• 13:17
  pool and I beat them, it's just nothing.
• 13:19
  Food is better than that. Right.
• 13:21
  It's a sweet, sweetened taste of it.
• 13:24
  So then with with swimming and did that at the time feel like
• 13:29
  maybe I'm going to make a career and the whole future of my going
• 13:31
  to the Olympics, like all of that must have been coming into
• 13:34
  your head. I think that's what you think
• 13:35
  about it. But before I could get too
• 13:38
  carried away, that's when my disability started to really
• 13:42
  like kick into a gear and got worse.
• 13:43
  So I got older. As you go through growth spurts,
• 13:45
  naturally things happen. But then when you've got a
• 13:47
  connective tissue disorder, it gets a hell of a lot worse.
• 13:50
  So it was injury after injury after injury.
• 13:53
  My time in the pool reduced and that was that was a really
• 13:56
  difficult time to about to like keep at a sport being injured.
• 13:59
  But everyone knows that's the hardest thing.
• 14:01
  But also when you're at an age where like you can't be stopped,
• 14:05
  but you want to better. I can do anything can
• 14:07
  everything. You can't tell me what I can't
• 14:08
  do. So it was one of those where I
• 14:10
  felt like I fell off the pace and I was always because I was
• 14:13
  late to develop as well, like going through puberty, I was
• 14:15
  really late. So it was always this kid that
• 14:17
  would come, new kid every year when I went to like galas that
• 14:20
  would just come out of nowhere. They've grown to like 6 foot
• 14:23
  tall where they've got hair sprout on everywhere.
• 14:26
  And they were just powerhouses and they would beat me and then
• 14:29
  but I was always the one dotting around second, come in second,
• 14:31
  come in second like garters. And these people would come in
• 14:34
  one year, be gone the next year because for them, they hadn't
• 14:37
  actually put the effort in to know how to stay in this game.
• 14:40
  And for me, that's what I guess was one of the biggest things
• 14:43
  build laying the foundation's a strong mindset was I was blessed
• 14:46
  with being like held back my years in terms of like
• 14:50
  physically, I was always the way said that I had like I was 2-3
• 14:53
  years behind in my development. So for me, that was actually my
• 14:55
  biggest superpower men. I had to train harder for me
• 14:59
  when I was like going for that period of time when I was
• 15:01
  injured, It's like, well, I know I can get there.
• 15:03
  I know I can. And that's when I first got
• 15:04
  turned into like naively building like a mindset that
• 15:08
  today I help other people cultivate.
• 15:10
  And that was, I think it was a lot of athletes can sort of sort
• 15:13
  of compare to is I was listening to like motivational speeches.
• 15:17
  I'd be getting out of getting out of training early, getting
• 15:20
  out of Gardas early because I'm just injured and frustrated
• 15:22
  myself. I can't perform how I want to.
• 15:24
  I didn't care what other people thought.
• 15:26
  It was about myself. I had those perfectionist
• 15:28
  tendencies. I was diagnosed with OCD.
• 15:30
  So like I had like very perfectionist based tendencies.
• 15:33
  And the only thing that got me through that was listening to
• 15:36
  speakers like Les Brown, Inky Johnson, Eric Thomas, I.
• 15:39
  Was going to say these are, these are.
• 15:42
  This will come into a point later in conversation.
• 15:44
  Yeah. But yeah, I know I'm very, very
• 15:47
  well aware of those motivational speeches that you're probably
• 15:49
  listening to. Love them, like all of them
• 15:51
  just, and I got clips from like Rocky and whatnot and I would
• 15:55
  fill my brain with that information on the way to
• 15:57
  training during like I've seen what I'm doing.
• 16:00
  But like when I was like, if I got out early during gala days,
• 16:03
  I would fill my head with that information.
• 16:05
  And for me, that's what actually kept me going.
• 16:08
  It was like that underdog story that I think everyone loves.
• 16:11
  You know, interesting about that because like I said, I reckon it
• 16:14
  will come up again in this conversation.
• 16:15
  But I wonder in the way that we both have discussed so far on
• 16:21
  and off camera about how we think about certain things
• 16:23
  within the sports base. I wonder if it has is as a
• 16:26
  result of some of those videos because one of the things, and I
• 16:30
  don't want to get too far ahead of where we are in your sort of
• 16:33
  journey at the moment, but one of those things in those videos
• 16:35
  is they do teach you to be very self aware and how to think
• 16:38
  about certain situations. Now.
• 16:41
  Interesting that you discovered them around that sort of age.
• 16:43
  I think I discovered them when I was around 17 and for me that
• 16:48
  was my process of getting into university.
• 16:52
  Oh, really? So I've probably mentioned it
• 16:56
  before on the podcast because I feel like there's quite a few
• 16:58
  people that have actually had the set back in their life
• 17:01
  around this sort of point. But I came from a smart family.
• 17:07
  I'm very blessed to say that while there wasn't the history
• 17:11
  of university graduates or anything like that, there were
• 17:14
  smart people in my family. And so I had an ability when it
• 17:17
  came to education, things like maths and physics and all that
• 17:20
  sort of thing, but when it came to putting it down on paper in
• 17:22
  an exam, I just couldn't do it. Yeah.
• 17:24
  And so my ASI struggled my way through GCS, ES, the grades I
• 17:29
  got and came out with made a lot like, I didn't necessarily
• 17:32
  struggle, but I did a lot of retakes on the way.
• 17:34
  And then when it got to my AS levels, which I know it's
• 17:37
  different now, but then your AS levels counted and then your A
• 17:41
  twos also counted and they were separate entities.
• 17:43
  Now it's all one together. But my AS levels, I pretty much
• 17:47
  failed them all and I didn't get any of my university offers as a
• 17:50
  result of doing badly when I did all my applications.
• 17:53
  So then I decided to retake all of my ASS at the same as my at
• 17:58
  the same time as my a twos huge arguments with all of my
• 18:02
  teachers saying you're an idiot yourself, sabotaging you're not
• 18:04
  going to be able to manage the workload.
• 18:06
  And the only thing that stopped me agreeing with them and like
• 18:12
  refusing like help from tutors or available things at school
• 18:16
  was like, I think I can do this because Eric Thomas has told me
• 18:21
  this story about some guy that he like some guru that pushed a
• 18:25
  dude underwater. Like how bad you want it.
• 18:27
  Like all the and. Like as you.
• 18:29
  Breathe. There are some, there are some
• 18:30
  people that will find them incredibly cringy and like, fair
• 18:33
  enough. If that's not what gets you
• 18:34
  going, fine. But as a young 17 year old,
• 18:38
  those videos turned my life around.
• 18:40
  And I, I mean, I got into university, I got the, I got the
• 18:43
  rates I wanted because I basically put that into
• 18:45
  practice. So for you, with swimming not
• 18:49
  necessarily being the thing that's going to take you to the
• 18:51
  Olympics or anything like that, education is something that you
• 18:54
  can't ignore. You then probably had to start
• 18:57
  looking at universities as well. How did the motivational
• 19:01
  switches help you get through university applications?
• 19:04
  I resonate with everything you just said there, Angus.
• 19:06
  Honestly like to AT almost like parallel lives.
• 19:10
  It's an interesting thing. There's a lot of things there
• 19:12
  that I think I'd want to pick up on.
• 19:14
  Felt like to follow on for that conversation.
• 19:16
  Like, yes, people can see them as cringy, but do they evoke
• 19:20
  emotion? Any movie evokes emotion and it
• 19:22
  can have meaningful change and spark you to, I don't know, be a
• 19:26
  better parent, for example, or like, I don't know, be a bad
• 19:29
  person in your relationship. Like these things evoke emotion.
• 19:32
  It doesn't matter how they deliver it.
• 19:34
  It's there for you at the right time.
• 19:36
  And I think something like that, it arrived at the right time for
• 19:38
  you. Same for me and I think I think
• 19:41
  academically I was always like I never really I just have worked
• 19:46
  with a lot of athletes 1 to one in therapy sessions on my faulty
• 19:49
  beliefs and things that hold them back like being able to
• 19:52
  identify as an athlete and stuff like that.
• 19:54
  I identified heavily as a kid as not that smart because I was
• 19:58
  surrounded by intelligent people.
• 20:01
  But when I think about it, I was always on top tables that we
• 20:04
  should be a thing in high school as always in top sets.
• 20:09
  And I, I it was because, as you said there, I struggled with
• 20:12
  exams. I did really well, but it wasn't
• 20:16
  as well as I thought I could do. Like the result was never as
• 20:19
  good. I was like that's not a reflect.
• 20:20
  Like I was an A star student by got an A or AB.
• 20:23
  It's like that was exactly the situation.
• 20:25
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's not that's not
• 20:27
  reflective who I know I am. And I think there's something
• 20:30
  there that again, I found my first year of college as well
• 20:34
  and just literally straight U's and D's are just awful.
• 20:38
  And I had to think about what to do.
• 20:40
  And I think this is where the athletic background, like,
• 20:43
  please hear, like see what, see what you've done.
• 20:45
  Is that the athletic background There was the thing.
• 20:49
  It wasn't the fact that, all right, I need to get these high
• 20:51
  grades and he's get his high grades.
• 20:53
  It was the the mindset to be able to just keep going no
• 20:55
  matter what. I'd failed so many times as an
• 20:57
  athlete, but when I failed academically, like rather than
• 21:00
  being consumed by, it was like I'm going to do everything I can
• 21:03
  to try and find a way forward to be able to get to university.
• 21:06
  And for me, I went down the B.Tech route, which I know a lot
• 21:10
  of people may have misconcept hawk most sort of preterm
• 21:14
  conceptions about. But around the years I did my A
• 21:19
  levels in maths, chemistry, biology and physics because I
• 21:23
  was trying to prove to myself that I was smart.
• 21:25
  I got the grades from my DCSES, but trying to prove that I was
• 21:28
  smart. My friends were doing them.
• 21:29
  They're very intelligent as well.
• 21:31
  In reality, I was really good at psychology at school.
• 21:33
  I should have done psychology. I love PEI, should have done
• 21:36
  PEI, loved like I did enjoy math.
• 21:38
  So that was fair enough. But I should have chose my
• 21:41
  options a bit. And I loved history.
• 21:42
  I should have done history in reality.
• 21:44
  But instead I chose things. I thought I'm smart and this is
• 21:47
  what a smart person does. But I failed that first year and
• 21:51
  then I decided to do my the B.Tech and all the stuff, all
• 21:55
  the content was the same. But the difference was it wasn't
• 21:58
  like 1 focus point of like recording information.
• 22:01
  My memory is terrible. I struggled to record
• 22:03
  information and I hate doing that.
• 22:05
  I prefer to like show people my knowledge by doing project based
• 22:08
  work. I've always loved that.
• 22:09
  So I was. Big on coursework, huge on
• 22:11
  coursework. And the thing, the thing that
• 22:13
  always annoyed me about exams was that you don't really have
• 22:17
  exams in life. Like the whole purpose of
• 22:20
  project and doing coursework is that you put a piece of work
• 22:23
  together over a time period, admittedly, usually the 12 hours
• 22:27
  before the deadline. But like you have the tools and
• 22:30
  you have the facilities and you take the knowledge.
• 22:31
  You have to utilize other resources of knowledge to bring
• 22:34
  in and make a good piece of work.
• 22:35
  Whereas when you're in an exam, you can sit down and there's a
• 22:38
  question that you were absolutely not prepared for
• 22:40
  through full of your own or not. And that's, that's the story.
• 22:43
  That's that's where you lie. That could be where that career
• 22:46
  ends. At that age, literally, and I
• 22:48
  remember I studied mock exams so much that when I was sat down
• 22:52
  and the expressions weren't where I expected them to be, I
• 22:55
  was like, Oh, I didn't prepare for this.
• 22:56
  So I couldn't answer them. So that's where my grade, my
• 22:59
  grades just flunked. And what what I did when I did
• 23:03
  that two year B.Tech, I finished it faster than anyone.
• 23:05
  I was the person in class everyone went to.
• 23:07
  I got so I know like people have like distinction style,
• 23:10
  distinction style, whatnot. I got 100%.
• 23:13
  I didn't miss a single because you can miss piece of
• 23:15
  coursework. I didn't miss a single thing or
• 23:17
  100% in error think because I was just I've been devoted to
• 23:20
  it. I finished my course four months
• 23:22
  early before anyone else. So I spent the summer before
• 23:25
  going to university learning penny stocks that trading
• 23:28
  because I was just so that's the type of person I am.
• 23:30
  I was like, I'm going to do this early because why not like I
• 23:33
  can. I was teaching my teacher things
• 23:34
  they didn't know. I was taking the class and
• 23:36
  teaching people that weren't able to like understand certain
• 23:38
  concepts because I'd already done that piece of coursework
• 23:41
  ages ago. It was like going to the
• 23:43
  extremes or like we had to be doing astronomy and we're doing
• 23:45
  about like different constellations.
• 23:47
  I went to the point of like getting my camera outgoing into
• 23:50
  the middle of the field, getting what they called.
• 23:53
  I haven't done this in ages now. We tried to help remote open the
• 23:56
  remote shutter to always get like star trails.
• 23:59
  I didn't need that for my coursework, but I did it anyway
• 24:01
  because it was like I that's just the person I am.
• 24:03
  I was like, I just will do everything and anything and the
• 24:06
  grades that I got on my A level or my AS level won't be a
• 24:09
  reflection of me. And when I got into Loughborough
• 24:13
  for university, which Loughborough was the only place
• 24:15
  I was going to go to, by the way.
• 24:16
  And I fellow Loughborough line by the same.
• 24:18
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 24:19
  Like the sport, sport university, that's where I'm
• 24:22
  going to go. I want to do sport psychology.
• 24:23
  Like this seems perfect. I remember growing up I would
• 24:27
  see all the swimmers with the purple hat.
• 24:29
  So I was like, this seems like the place to be.
• 24:31
  So Loughborough nothing. That was for me.
• 24:33
  I wasn't going to go to university if I didn't go to
• 24:35
  Loughborough. And for two weeks I didn't think
• 24:37
  I was going to go to Loughborough because I got a
• 24:38
  rejection letter from Loughborough because they read
• 24:40
  my grades wrong on my report. Wow.
• 24:43
  They didn't, they didn't think I had the English grade.
• 24:45
  But my mum, like fortunately pushed me to like challenge it.
• 24:49
  And they came back like sorry, so sorry.
• 24:50
  We read your grades wrong. And then I went to Loughborough.
• 24:53
  Oh, because I wasn't going to uni for a short period of time.
• 24:55
  Just. The irony that they read your
• 24:57
  English grades are incredible, but one of the interesting
• 25:02
  things about that, because our journeys are quite similar, we
• 25:04
  both ended up at Loughborough. And something that I would love
• 25:08
  to talk about is how that mental side of things, and this is the
• 25:11
  whole premise of the podcast that people didn't understand.
• 25:13
  There isn't just a random capital S in the name mindsets.
• 25:17
  It's there because it's a play on words between mindset and
• 25:20
  mind and sets like when you're in a gym or when you're doing
• 25:22
  any training. So the mental connection and the
• 25:26
  physical connection in sport and in fitness.
• 25:29
  One thing that whole process using the motivational videos
• 25:32
  and passing those exams taught me was you can you have talent
• 25:37
  and you can have drive and if you put the two together, it's
• 25:40
  great. But the classic cringey saying I
• 25:44
  guess is that hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work
• 25:48
  hard. And that's, that's what it
• 25:50
  taught me. And so the way that I conquered
• 25:54
  my fear of the exam going in was I did between my mock exams, I
• 26:01
  did in, in January and when I took my actual exams in like
• 26:04
  June in, I didn't stop revising from my mocks to my actual
• 26:09
  exams. So I crucified my social life,
• 26:12
  everything. And I put it in the bin because
• 26:14
  I was kind of driven to do so. And it was seemed like it was a
• 26:17
  great idea at the time. But essentially what that meant
• 26:20
  was you can imagine that's quite a lot of days of revision and I
• 26:24
  had a limited number of subjects that I was revising for.
• 26:27
  So by the time I came to an exam, I had done every single
• 26:30
  pass paper, and we're not talking about the ones that are
• 26:33
  in the UKI had done all the International Baccalaureate past
• 26:35
  papers, everything at least three times.
• 26:38
  Yeah. So when I sat down in that exam
• 26:41
  and in particular my maths exam, maths was always the one I felt
• 26:44
  the most pressure on. I turned the page on my year's
• 26:47
  exam and the first page was a question format that had never
• 26:51
  come up before in the UK system. And I remember looking around
• 26:56
  and seeing all my friends packing because all their
• 26:58
  revision has just gone out the window on the very first page.
• 27:00
  And the only with that being the very first question was it just
• 27:03
  basically ruined the headspace of everyone for the rest of the
• 27:06
  exam. The problem was for everyone
• 27:07
  else or the the fortunate thing for me, I should say, is that
• 27:11
  that almost identical question format had come up three years
• 27:14
  beforehand in a French maths exam paper that was the
• 27:17
  international standard. So I knew exactly what I was
• 27:20
  doing and what that taught me. It wasn't necessarily that you
• 27:23
  get lucky, but it was if you do all the preparation you can do,
• 27:28
  then you'll succeed. Which is a, at the time,
• 27:32
  something I thought was so intelligent.
• 27:33
  It was like, I'm not massively intelligent, I'm just
• 27:35
  resourceful. That's what will carry me
• 27:37
  through life. And then I started to take that
• 27:40
  into everything I did, including sport.
• 27:44
  And the problem is life and sport actually doesn't
• 27:48
  necessarily work like that. It's not so black and white.
• 27:51
  So if we take the example, and I mentioned this to you
• 27:55
  beforehand, but I used to play American football when I was a
• 27:57
  laugh, bro. And I would be up until
• 28:01
  sometimes 2-3 in the morning the night before a game, watching
• 28:04
  game film of the other team. So that I felt when I got on the
• 28:07
  pitch, I had seen everything they ever did.
• 28:09
  Therefore, they could never do anything to surprise me.
• 28:11
  And I would almost know what they were going to do before
• 28:13
  they did it. And again, in one particular
• 28:15
  game exactly that happened. I knew they were going to do
• 28:18
  something. They did it.
• 28:19
  We scored a touchdown. Great.
• 28:20
  Happy days. Yeah, unfortunately what that
• 28:23
  ended up teaching me again and reinforced was that if I watch
• 28:26
  everything, I know what's going to happen.
• 28:27
  Nothing will surprise me. And like I said, sport and life
• 28:30
  doesn't work like that. So I would go into a game, I
• 28:32
  would expect something to happen, it wouldn't.
• 28:34
  And now I panic because I don't have a back up plan and you
• 28:38
  can't have a million back up plans whilst was having a
• 28:40
  million plan A's. So all of a sudden I started to
• 28:44
  discover that my sports performance was negatively
• 28:47
  impacted to a degree by my preparation.
• 28:49
  I was over preparing, which was causing me to fail rather than
• 28:52
  preparing. Well, the the other saying,
• 28:54
  which is if you don't prepare, you prepare to fail.
• 28:57
  Yeah, yeah. I was over preparing, which was
• 28:59
  causing failure. And so in the end, what I had to
• 29:02
  do was I actually had to take all of the technology that was
• 29:05
  available for me to watch film and study the other team away
• 29:08
  from myself 40 hours beforehand. So I couldn't overthink it.
• 29:10
  Smart. And then when I got on there on
• 29:12
  game day, the whole purpose was to be the athlete and like have
• 29:17
  an idea because you kind of know, but at the end of the day,
• 29:20
  you can only react to what's in front of you.
• 29:22
  Isn't that interesting how you've got 2 two sides of Angus
• 29:27
  there? Like you've got athlete Angus
• 29:30
  that like reacts on instinct and like in that moment and you've
• 29:33
  got like analytical like Angus. And it's a constant fight and it
• 29:37
  it happens today. We'll we'll get to this with
• 29:40
  hierarchs, which is as you said, you're linked with with get head
• 29:43
  mindset and you yourself are taking on high rocks.
• 29:47
  But it is a thing that I allow myself to be the engineering,
• 29:51
  which is what I studied kind of data nerd freak trying to
• 29:55
  understand everything about how to improve on those tiny 0.1%,
• 29:58
  so let alone 1%. But then when it comes to the
• 30:00
  actual activity, I have to switch it all off and try and
• 30:03
  have fun because that is the only way that I ever see the
• 30:06
  benefit of all the work that I put in on the side.
• 30:08
  Because otherwise I overthink a stress out and I lose the mental
• 30:11
  battle before the physical battle was even started.
• 30:13
  Yeah. And one of the things that I
• 30:16
  wanted to, I mean, we'll, we'll continue to talk about that.
• 30:18
  But you, as a result of what you were diagnosed with and that
• 30:24
  battle itself had to change your thinking with swimming when you
• 30:28
  got to Luffa University. And I, I wanted to wonder, as
• 30:31
  you move towards bodybuilding, she kind of got into a
• 30:35
  university with your course being sports psychology.
• 30:38
  Did you feel that you were almost getting psychological
• 30:41
  help in that process? No.
• 30:45
  Not at all. No, not at all because your
• 30:47
  degree does not prepare you as you, I'm sure most people can
• 30:50
  probably write to you do a degree, you learn a lot of
• 30:52
  stuff, but how much do you absorb and actually put into
• 30:55
  practicality like you just don't.
• 30:56
  It wasn't until post grad I started going, OK, what are
• 31:00
  these things that I need to apply?
• 31:01
  Like, yes, I learned a lot about theories, great theories, but
• 31:05
  nothing that was actually going to be like really, really
• 31:08
  applicable until I started learning actual application of
• 31:12
  psychology. What helped me more at that
• 31:14
  early stage was those motivational videos, But then
• 31:18
  one thing that they didn't do. So there you've So what you've
• 31:20
  just raised out. Thank you for sharing that
• 31:21
  because I think that's also. It's actually something that
• 31:23
  I've kind of wanted to talk about.
• 31:24
  I've not really had the and this isn't any shade on the other
• 31:26
  guests, but I've not had the right person to talk about that
• 31:29
  with. So yeah.
• 31:30
  I love that you shared that because what you've sort of done
• 31:33
  there is you've now gone back to actually the core route of where
• 31:37
  that belief or that approach has come from.
• 31:39
  There was a point in your life where there was like a failure,
• 31:41
  something didn't go right and the coping mechanism there was,
• 31:46
  I need to prepare for every eventuality so that whatever
• 31:49
  happens, I have the answer. I have the result.
• 31:52
  In that situation, in an academic scenario, that makes
• 31:55
  sense, I guess, doesn't it really like because you are
• 31:58
  being quizzed. But when it comes like a set
• 32:00
  play in American football, OK, there could be a quiz.
• 32:03
  What's the solution here? But that most of athletic sport
• 32:08
  is being flexible. I've been able to adapt into it
• 32:11
  to an environment and to what happens in front of you because
• 32:14
  human behavior is not predictable.
• 32:16
  It yes, we can predict it to a certain degree, but maybe not to
• 32:19
  the MTH degree that you were trying to predict it to which
• 32:23
  when we come to a paper, we can probably predict that because it
• 32:26
  is. It's just questions and answers,
• 32:28
  but there's more nuance in human behaviour.
• 32:30
  So it's interesting that coping mechanism worked so well in that
• 32:34
  field, but then started to undo in other areas when you try to
• 32:37
  apply it. And it's interesting now that
• 32:39
  that's become something that do you remember?
• 32:42
  Just out of curiosity, do you remember that sort of
• 32:45
  personality trait before college, before A levels?
• 32:48
  Did you have that? So it's interesting really.
• 32:50
  I in hindsight would say that I used to be lazy, OK, because
• 32:55
  when I played rugby I again, I wasn't bad once I discovered the
• 32:59
  position. I love playing fullback.
• 33:00
  At the time I wasn't tall, so they didn't force me into the
• 33:02
  forwards. I love playing fullback because
• 33:05
  I love the pressure of being the last person that could make a
• 33:06
  tackle, that kind of thing. But I had to be put under and to
• 33:11
  a degree still I have to be put under severe pressure to act.
• 33:14
  And so when I remember being 1415 and the head coach of my
• 33:18
  rugby team at the time was, you know, really pressing on us,
• 33:21
  getting in the gym, you know, that's going to make a
• 33:23
  difference. And I remember almost feeling
• 33:25
  like a victim, like being attacked, like, I'm 15, tell me
• 33:28
  I need to be in the gym. Like, who are you controlling my
• 33:31
  life? I do this for fun.
• 33:32
  You know, I'm here to play rugby.
• 33:34
  I enjoy it with my friends. And in hindsight, he was
• 33:37
  literally just telling us to prepare our bodies.
• 33:39
  I think that's what he was doing.
• 33:41
  And I took it as an attack because I was too lazy to put
• 33:43
  the work in around training. Training twice a week was
• 33:45
  already a lot for me at the time.
• 33:47
  And like, don't get me wrong, I loved sport, but it was like,
• 33:49
  I'm not a full time athlete. I'm not being paid to do this.
• 33:52
  Like who's doing that? And once I started to have
• 33:57
  failure as a result of my laziness and my inaction, that's
• 34:00
  when I started to turn like switch on and be like, this is
• 34:03
  literally, it's one of those again, it's the victim
• 34:05
  mentality. Like you might be a victim of
• 34:08
  something, but it is also still your job to to deal with that.
• 34:11
  It's your responsibility to take action and fix it.
• 34:13
  And that's really where that came from.
• 34:15
  But I think I almost went like to the opposite end of the scale
• 34:18
  as a result of it. And it's interestingly, you said
• 34:20
  that you need pressure to be able to like promote like
• 34:23
  action. And I think a lot of people fall
• 34:26
  on this spectrum in different points where they need no
• 34:28
  pressure. They don't need micromanagement
• 34:30
  or anything like that of that nature to be able to actually
• 34:32
  work or do whatever it might be. Maybe if it's at work or
• 34:35
  whoever, it's the training session, whatever, but other
• 34:38
  people need a severe amount of pressure to even get to that
• 34:41
  point of activating action and sounds for you, you found a way,
• 34:45
  a really intuitive way that's quite smart when you think about
• 34:48
  it from like a, a developmental perspective of like as a child
• 34:52
  of how to artificially create that pressure through your brain
• 34:56
  rather than externally having your coach 10 that you need to
• 34:59
  do these things. It was in your head.
• 35:01
  It's like failure is the outcome if you don't prepare to the NTH
• 35:06
  degree. And that in itself when we get
• 35:09
  to the root of that is now an anxiety based thing.
• 35:13
  And anxiety being, people say this all the time, it gets
• 35:17
  confused. But high function anxiety of
• 35:19
  like you need anxiety to be able to even perform or take action.
• 35:22
  Great. But where do we put the cap on
• 35:25
  it? Because it gets to a point where
• 35:27
  we overflow the anxiety and impedes performance because we
• 35:31
  get to this in your position, the anxiety sparks an over
• 35:35
  preparedness, which then becomes analysing things.
• 35:39
  So if it's set plays in American football, if it's in high rocks,
• 35:42
  it might be heart rate zones, for example, right.
• 35:45
  So when we're in that position, what we do is if that data is
• 35:50
  not just it when we see it, it's not just data.
• 35:53
  It actually has like a deeper meaning of like you're not
• 35:55
  ready, you're going to fail. That's what the outcome is tied
• 35:58
  to. Then when we see it, we
• 36:00
  naturally have that sort of over analysis that occurs in our
• 36:04
  brain and what can spark from that is inaction because we get
• 36:09
  to a point of buffering where we've got too much information
• 36:12
  as said to you earlier. So 7 ± 2 chunks of information
• 36:15
  is what the brain can actually process.
• 36:16
  That's high cognitive load. Pretty basic psychology, but we
• 36:20
  can't really pay attention to it when because day-to-day we don't
• 36:23
  really have to worry about the things.
• 36:25
  We let a lot of the information in our environment just bypass
• 36:29
  us and we try to focus on certain things.
• 36:31
  When it comes to race day savers, I'm in a horror
• 36:33
  scenario. There is an abundance of
• 36:35
  information and if you're someone who wants to be prepared
• 36:37
  and you're absorbing all that information, it's like the
• 36:40
  computer says no naturally and then you paralysis by analysis.
• 36:46
  I think like it's so nice to have everything.
• 36:49
  Well, it's it's nice to have a discussion and know that like
• 36:52
  there is a whole thing that is studied and I'm not just like a
• 36:55
  complete weirdo with it. Because I wanted to ask you in,
• 36:59
  in your personal opinion with your own journey through
• 37:02
  swimming, with being able to kind of have the excuses that
• 37:08
  you have an invisible disability and then moving into
• 37:11
  bodybuilding, getting on stage. And actually, I mean, clearly
• 37:13
  having done quite well from your show.
• 37:14
  And tell them what you mentioned about the IT being a whole
• 37:16
  weekend thing. But would you say as a person
• 37:19
  that you're driven more by fear of failure or by the attraction
• 37:25
  of success? Yeah, great question.
• 37:28
  If you'd asked sort of 1415 year old Robin, he had already said
• 37:31
  success, but the reality it would have been fear of failure
• 37:33
  without a shadow of a doubt. It's a good question because I
• 37:37
  think the one thing that the biggest lesson I've learned from
• 37:40
  my invisible disability, someone with OCD who is highly sort of
• 37:44
  like prepared and anxious about things.
• 37:46
  I was hospital hospitalized at the age of 17, not because of a
• 37:50
  physical impediment, because of a mental impediment that was
• 37:54
  manifesting physically. I got to this point where I was
• 37:56
  getting terrible cramps in my stomach, like horrific cramps.
• 38:01
  And there are certain sort of ways to say, OK, maybe it's my
• 38:04
  digestive because I've got IBS, got terrible digestive system.
• 38:07
  Maybe it was something to do with that, but my diet was fine.
• 38:10
  There's no problem with that. We're trying to figure out what
• 38:11
  was the problem and what sort of came out of it was I had an
• 38:15
  enlarged spleen. They've always appendicitis is
• 38:18
  an enlarged spleen, but come as a result of tension being too
• 38:22
  tight. Being in this fight or fly stage
• 38:25
  of my life, I was like sort of just always on edge, always
• 38:28
  anxious, always worried about things.
• 38:29
  And that was high performance in in the swimming pool.
• 38:32
  High performance like in any sort of form of training.
• 38:34
  But also like I spoke to you about with college, like extreme
• 38:38
  detail and like I need to set any standards excessively high.
• 38:42
  And I was walking around life with this boiling point all the
• 38:46
  time. I remember having breakdowns at
• 38:48
  some points as a kid because I was worried about what was to
• 38:51
  come. And like, I sort of the way I
• 38:54
  conceptualize it is I'm not afraid of what I like, what I
• 38:58
  won't become. Like I'm sorry, what I will
• 39:00
  become. I'm afraid of what I won't
• 39:01
  become because I've got this expectation of this is what I
• 39:04
  need to be, but this is where I need to be.
• 39:06
  And if I don't get that, then I haven't made it.
• 39:10
  So as if there's a lot of weight to be carrying around as a
• 39:12
  youngster. So I was in hospital for four
• 39:16
  days on morphine because I mentally was putting too much
• 39:21
  pressure on myself mentally, not physically, but it's manifesting
• 39:25
  physically. Two days later I got well.
• 39:29
  After three days, four days in hospital, I got released.
• 39:32
  It was the first time I qualified for nationals
• 39:35
  swimming. And I was like, are you going to
• 39:36
  go? I was like, yeah.
• 39:38
  So I guess I didn't learn much in that situation.
• 39:40
  Well, it's, it's kind of points now as well in society.
• 39:43
  There's so much overstimulation from, I mean, how many people
• 39:48
  listening to this are listening to this while they might be
• 39:51
  looking at a computer screen while scrolling on Instagram at
• 39:53
  the same time. And you've immediately got three
• 39:55
  things in there. While at the same time when
• 39:57
  you're talking about these 7 ± 2 thoughts, you might have a
• 40:01
  meeting coming up. You know, you need to send that
• 40:02
  e-mail before you go home from work, but you also need to
• 40:04
  decide what you're having for dinner.
• 40:06
  And all of a sudden all of these things are going on and you are
• 40:09
  stressing yourself out. But then at the end of the day,
• 40:12
  when you go back and you look at what you did today was work was
• 40:14
  well, today busy. Of course the natural response
• 40:16
  is, yeah, it was, it was crazy busy.
• 40:18
  But you think about this specific moment.
• 40:19
  If you were to reflect on this specific moment, if you are
• 40:22
  double or triple screening and then you're thinking about what
• 40:25
  you're having for dinner, all of these things, you would probably
• 40:28
  look at that point in a third person view and be like, I was
• 40:32
  really chilled out then because I was sat at my desk, you know,
• 40:35
  I was able to scroll on my phone while I was not doing any work.
• 40:37
  I wasn't sending those emails. And so you on paper or
• 40:40
  physically, physically you look like you're chilled out, but in
• 40:43
  reality, your brain is going haywire.
• 40:45
  You've got so much to juggle. And especially for athletes or
• 40:49
  people that care about their fitness, You then go to an
• 40:52
  environment where you try and perform physically and you
• 40:54
  wonder why you have a shit time. And it's because mentally you're
• 40:57
  drained. You're absolutely drained.
• 40:59
  And we don't learn from it. But look at the example of like
• 41:01
  when you went into an exam in school, you sat on your arse
• 41:05
  with one hour and a half, two hours, came out exhausted,
• 41:08
  needing a nap. You didn't do physically
• 41:10
  anything but move your wrist a little bit.
• 41:12
  Mentally you are drained, trying to recall information, working
• 41:15
  out your brain. In that environment.
• 41:18
  We know that there is a mental like energy expenditure.
• 41:21
  So in that situation, I think like if we're trying to attend
• 41:24
  too many things, natural brain is going to be like, mate, just
• 41:27
  chill out for a second, honestly.
• 41:29
  So as a kid, I was always hyperactive on that, like
• 41:32
  always, what is the next thing? What do I need to do?
• 41:34
  And then when you add in the pressure of like expectations on
• 41:37
  yourself, that's what I say. The biggest thing that my
• 41:39
  disabilities taught me was my disability taught me that you
• 41:42
  can't always show up and perform the way that you want to
• 41:45
  perform. And that was the biggest lesson
• 41:47
  because I remember like I sat down with a psychologist and
• 41:53
  when I first got diagnosed at age of 17, intelligently
• 41:56
  ignorant, energy beyond belief, the world like, and my
• 42:01
  fingertips, as you told me, you go get your expectations in
• 42:04
  check. I was like fuck off, but not
• 42:08
  necessarily to her face, but fuck off.
• 42:10
  Oh yeah, yeah. If she was smart enough to know
• 42:12
  that she knew you and me saying fuck off, yeah.
• 42:15
  I was like, OK, so at the moment I and I stopped going to see the
• 42:19
  psychologist. That was my first experience of
• 42:20
  psychology. I'm now a fitness psychologist.
• 42:23
  I guess I don't want to be that person.
• 42:25
  What I realize though now reflect on is what she was
• 42:27
  saying is true, but she just didn't deliver in the right
• 42:29
  message. I need to be.
• 42:30
  I need to learn these things. I need to learn it myself.
• 42:33
  And from my disability I've learned that one day I can be
• 42:35
  fine, the next day things are going to be real shit and real
• 42:38
  hard. If I'm always expecting 100% and
• 42:42
  I don't actually check in my my body and my mind to see what the
• 42:45
  actual percentage is that makes my expenditure each day.
• 42:48
  Like what do I have at my disposal?
• 42:50
  Sorry, then I'm always going to be set in an unrealistic
• 42:54
  expectation that's going to yield anxiety.
• 42:56
  And I use this for my athletes all the time.
• 42:58
  We call it, I guess the performance expectation gap.
• 43:01
  You expect when you go into a race X performance, let's say.
• 43:06
  I don't know, let's use just arbitrary numbers.
• 43:07
  In a higher ox scenario, I expect a 75 minute higher ox
• 43:12
  race. Let's say that.
• 43:14
  OK, so 75 minute high ox race. How much energy do you need your
• 43:17
  disposal to be able to achieve that?
• 43:19
  I don't know, like let's say 100% because it's going to be
• 43:23
  APB for me, right? OK, let's check in with you
• 43:26
  there. The race, where's your energy
• 43:28
  levels right now? Have you had a good night's
• 43:29
  sleep? Have you had a good week?
• 43:31
  Have you tapered down nicely? How are you actually taking in
• 43:33
  the environment and the stimulation as you spoke about?
• 43:36
  Are you 100% right now or have you creeped down to 90% maybe
• 43:40
  potentially or what? What is it?
• 43:42
  So we don't check in with where our energy levels are and I'm
• 43:46
  using a brace day scenario. This is for training too,
• 43:48
  because this happens every single day.
• 43:50
  We come in from work expecting a killer workout, but we don't
• 43:53
  have the energy to be able to do it.
• 43:54
  And then when we come out of the workout or in higher race, we
• 43:57
  come out of the race and we don't do the time we want.
• 43:59
  We get so frustrated because the expectation for performance was
• 44:05
  too high for what the actual performance reality we had, like
• 44:08
  the disposal, you only had 80% energy, so why would you expect
• 44:12
  100% energy performance? That is ludicrous.
• 44:15
  But our brains won't sort of process that.
• 44:18
  And in that gap, here is the anxiety.
• 44:21
  Anxiety stems. We get annoyed ourselves,
• 44:23
  frustrated because we're like overwhelmed with the fact that
• 44:27
  why can't I perform to my expectations that I'm setting in
• 44:29
  my head? And it's where you get the
• 44:31
  perfectionism, which I'm all too familiar with, of like you need
• 44:35
  to be able to hit those standards.
• 44:37
  And the perfectionist is going to hold you ransom to that
• 44:39
  unless you give it like an, an example of why you can't do
• 44:43
  that, a level the playing field and give it, like they say, a
• 44:45
  check in with, right. I've, I might, I'm mentally and
• 44:49
  physically drained right now. I'm not 100%.
• 44:51
  So why am I expecting 100%? And that can do more damage than
• 44:55
  good in that situation. So here's an interesting thing
• 44:58
  that I've started. Doing, yeah, through a bit of an
• 45:00
  understanding of feeling let down on the day to the point
• 45:04
  where even when I achieved and this is this whole different
• 45:07
  discussion, but let's say I'm the individual that says I want
• 45:10
  a 75 minute hierarchy time. I've built the entire training
• 45:13
  plan for it. Yes, it's had its ups and downs
• 45:15
  on the way, but the 75 minutes I think is a good target.
• 45:19
  Let's say on the day I feel 80% and I somehow performed to a
• 45:23
  95%. I really drag it through.
• 45:26
  I get myself across that line. I surprise myself for the given
• 45:30
  day, but I crossed the line and it's 74 minutes, 59 seconds, the
• 45:36
  person I am. Would look up at the clock.
• 45:37
  And be like, cool, yeah, I wouldn't be happy about it.
• 45:41
  I would feel like, so it I did the thing that was meant to
• 45:45
  happen and that's the sort of and then you don't get any
• 45:48
  reward from that. And then as a result of that,
• 45:50
  you set your expectations 5 minutes faster, let's say for
• 45:52
  the next time. And if you manage to do it, it's
• 45:54
  like another box ticked. You don't really get the
• 45:56
  enjoyment. One of the things that I have
• 45:58
  started to do now, which will be interesting to know if this is
• 46:01
  something that's recommended or if I'm actually potentially
• 46:03
  hindering myself, is I'm around about 3-4 weeks out now doing a
• 46:09
  particular race. For.
• 46:12
  Those that aren't huge on the knowledge of sports performance,
• 46:15
  a really good thing to do at this particular point in time is
• 46:17
  an intensification. So up the tempos make training
• 46:20
  quite a bit harder. Really get yourself race
• 46:23
  prepared and then you taper off so that your body has a chance
• 46:26
  to recover before you go all out in this particular event.
• 46:29
  Now, whilst I'm doing that, a large amount of this
• 46:32
  intensification is not actually 100% in terms of how intense it
• 46:38
  is. So I might be pushing my race
• 46:41
  pace, I might be trying to go slightly over that, but I'm
• 46:44
  counteracting that with rest periods rather than doing what a
• 46:48
  lot of people might be doing at this point is doing as many race
• 46:51
  simulations as they can to figure out where they're at.
• 46:54
  The reason? For doing what I am.
• 46:55
  Doing is so that I can understand what my 80% looks
• 47:00
  like, and by having an 80%, I know on race day, realistically,
• 47:06
  if my prep doesn't go right, this is what I'm capable of
• 47:10
  doing and I can hold myself to this standard whatever happens.
• 47:13
  However, on race day, if I feel good, now we're in unknown
• 47:19
  territory. And the thing that's so awesome,
• 47:22
  and if you haven't done this before, I would highly recommend
• 47:24
  trying to do it, is when you're in unfamiliar territory.
• 47:26
  It is the most fun because all of a sudden, a bit like when you
• 47:30
  got in the pool with people that were way bigger than you.
• 47:33
  There is nothing more satisfying than overachieving.
• 47:36
  And so being able to set myself up in a position to overachieve
• 47:40
  means that I might actually be on some of my runs.
• 47:45
  And I might be smiling. In a situation where
• 47:47
  theoretically is if you've been to a higher ox ratios, you won't
• 47:50
  see many people enjoying themselves.
• 47:52
  But there's a there's a great phrase which a couple of people
• 47:54
  that are very, very good at it. Previous guest Charlie Bottrell,
• 47:57
  very, very quick guy. He's having an incredible season
• 48:00
  so far. His main thing is fast, fun is
• 48:03
  fast. And it's that whole thing.
• 48:05
  If you sit in that band of overachieving in the unknown,
• 48:09
  you're constantly getting this hormone release of you're doing
• 48:12
  really, really well. And that reduces.
• 48:15
  And if we're talking about a psychological perspective that
• 48:17
  reduces your relative perceived desertion, your RPE, which then
• 48:21
  allows you to push harder, which then allows you to go faster.
• 48:24
  And you kind of get caught in this positive cycle rather than
• 48:27
  being caught in that classic cycle in endurance sports of how
• 48:30
  much longer do I have to do this exercise when it feels like I'm
• 48:34
  going to die and because of fear of failure.
• 48:36
  Because I need to do it at this time because that's the splits
• 48:39
  that I've worked out that I need to hit exactly so I'm now.
• 48:42
  Working off like an 80%, this is where this is where I would
• 48:45
  expect myself to be. If this is where I hit on race
• 48:49
  day, I'm OK with that. If it's slower than that, we
• 48:52
  might have need to have a better review of what I'm doing at this
• 48:54
  point, but it gives me the room to have fun on race day
• 48:59
  effectively. Yeah, I like to compare I guess
• 49:02
  to. That sort of when you don't feel
• 49:05
  like going for a run, like maybe maybe people who thought, let's
• 49:09
  go back to like your first time that you started getting into
• 49:12
  running. So you're going out for a walk,
• 49:14
  maybe a light jog. You don't really feel like it's
• 49:16
  I'm going to light jog anyway. And then you come back.
• 49:18
  Now you just posted like almost like APB 5K time.
• 49:21
  So that's pretty cool. Now that feeling feels amazing.
• 49:24
  And like you've artificially created that from what you're
• 49:26
  saying with your training, that you're artificially creating an
• 49:29
  environment that's going to allow you to sit in that almost
• 49:31
  that fun phase like of like being able to push myself hard.
• 49:35
  But when I'm pushing myself hard, I'm enjoying myself
• 49:37
  because it's having that sort of hormonal release of like, all
• 49:40
  right, you are like you're in uncharted territory here.
• 49:43
  You're doing the unknown for you, right?
• 49:45
  But I think it depends on the type of person.
• 49:47
  Some people for that when they're in the preparation for
• 49:50
  an event would be like, that's not enough.
• 49:52
  I need to be preparing for 100% and there's no questions asked
• 49:56
  like that is what I need to achieve.
• 49:58
  So I think it's like horses for courses.
• 50:00
  Certain people prefer that other people won't.
• 50:03
  Some people they'll want increasing the amounts of
• 50:06
  pressure to better perform. So for them like shooting for
• 50:09
  the stars, like they need to be able to do that.
• 50:12
  Shooting for 100% that will give them the pressure to better
• 50:14
  perform other. You need to know how much
• 50:16
  pressure is optimal for you. Pressure is on a spectrum less.
• 50:20
  It's not like emotions are on a spectrum, pressure is on a
• 50:24
  spectrum. You feel anxiety.
• 50:25
  OK, I feel a little bit anxious right now.
• 50:27
  Like I was coming into London, for example.
• 50:29
  Like it can be quite anxious, like people around, but I wasn't
• 50:32
  like shitting myself like 10 out of 10 anxiety, right?
• 50:35
  So I need some anxiety to make sure I was alert and I was like,
• 50:38
  make sure I was getting onto the right stop of the tube and stuff
• 50:40
  like that. When it comes to like race day,
• 50:42
  you need to be of anxiety to make sure that you're getting
• 50:44
  ready for your race, go into the right place properly, getting
• 50:46
  yourself prepared. But if you get seeps over that
• 50:49
  point of like in excess of anxiety, like you need to know
• 50:52
  where your threshold is. And for each person that
• 50:54
  threshold is different. So for someone like yourself,
• 50:56
  when you're explaining there maybe an 8 out of 10, you say
• 50:59
  80%, eight out of 10 anxiety is optimal for the best performance
• 51:04
  for an old person might be I need 10 out of 10.
• 51:07
  I need to feel so anxious, so much pressure, so much stress to
• 51:10
  then yield that best performance.
• 51:12
  That's when I really do the good work.
• 51:14
  And I I think I used to be I. Used to think I was a ten, yeah.
• 51:17
  And then through failure as a result and.
• 51:20
  And then recognizing that it was actually as a result of being
• 51:23
  A10 and just like, not able to enjoy anything I did because I
• 51:26
  was just stressing about it. And then even if I did the thing
• 51:28
  I was supposed to do, I was stressed about the next thing
• 51:31
  because. Yeah, and one of the things that
• 51:35
  I also want to relate back to some of the motivational videos
• 51:38
  that we you and I both watched you read my mind was the whole
• 51:43
  thing that they taught me was visualization.
• 51:46
  OK, so they put me one of the large things they do is they
• 51:51
  make you imagine a scenario. So we, we briefly mentioned the
• 51:54
  one with Eric Thomas where there's, for those that haven't
• 51:56
  watched it, go and watch it because I'm not going to do the
• 51:58
  story justice. Basically, there's a guy that
• 52:00
  wants to understand how to be successful in business.
• 52:02
  He goes up to his business guru. The dude's like, meet me on the
• 52:05
  beach tomorrow at 4:00 AM. He goes to the beach, the guru's
• 52:08
  there and he's like, I thought you wanted to be successful.
• 52:10
  He's like I do. He tells this dude to just walk
• 52:13
  out into the water. And he's like, this guy's crazy,
• 52:15
  but he does it. And he's like, keep walking out,
• 52:17
  keep walking out until the guru dunks his head under, holds it
• 52:20
  under until he's like really struggling to breathe.
• 52:22
  The guru picks up the guy out of the water and says, when you're
• 52:26
  underwater, what was the one thing you could think about?
• 52:28
  The guy beats around the Bush but ends up saying, I just
• 52:31
  wanted to breathe. And effectively, the guru says
• 52:35
  when you want to be successful as bad as you want to breathe,
• 52:37
  that's when you'll be successful.
• 52:40
  Another one, which is another bit of kind of external
• 52:43
  visualization, not necessarily for you as a person of yourself,
• 52:46
  but is a scenario to think about, which brought in the
• 52:49
  whole fear of failure for me was you imagine you're on your
• 52:52
  deathbed and into that room before you pass walks in.
• 52:57
  Every version of you that you could have ever been had you not
• 53:00
  quit on yourself or had you made it.
• 53:02
  And so if you wanted to be a professional football player
• 53:04
  when you're a kid, a professional football player
• 53:06
  version of you walks into the room and it's just staring at
• 53:09
  you. If you want to be a pilot, if
• 53:11
  you wanted to be, I don't know, a finance bro, at some point in
• 53:15
  your life, that version of you walks in and you're just sat
• 53:18
  there looking at all of these possibilities.
• 53:20
  Had you not given up on yourself?
• 53:22
  Had you not given yourself the chance to actually pursue it?
• 53:24
  And for me, that's where I kind of start to think like I just
• 53:27
  need to not quit on things because I don't ever want to.
• 53:30
  Have that thought. And sadly, having had that
• 53:32
  thought put into my head on my deathbed, that's probably
• 53:34
  exactly what I'm going to think about.
• 53:36
  But what that started to teach me was how powerful the brain is
• 53:39
  when it comes to what you can do mentally.
• 53:42
  To. Think your way into a situation
• 53:44
  in advance and that's something that I feel like I've naturally
• 53:48
  started doing when it came to competition.
• 53:50
  And I want to know from your side.
• 53:52
  You probably understand it from two sides as both as an athlete
• 53:56
  and also what you do in your work, which is actually how we
• 54:00
  met. So I guess I'll leave it with
• 54:02
  you there to to take on and we can kind of go into how we met
• 54:05
  and what what that kind of relates it.
• 54:07
  Yeah, Yeah, I think something. First of all, to note about that
• 54:10
  though, with the motivation of speeches and like how they are
• 54:13
  so powerful when they do create real vivid, powerful images in
• 54:17
  your minds that get you off and want to go.
• 54:19
  Especially when you got like such a powerful voice like like
• 54:21
  Inky Johnson, Eric Thomas, like it makes you want to get out
• 54:25
  your chair and just scream, right?
• 54:27
  And they do create powerful images.
• 54:29
  But then this is the thing to remember is what are they also
• 54:32
  instilling in your mind? And I think a lot of them is the
• 54:36
  part of them that didn't help me was that hustle culture.
• 54:38
  They do. It's like you're a go, you go
• 54:40
  want it more than anyone else. You want to actually like more
• 54:42
  than you want to breathe. Like you've got to like think
• 54:44
  about how bad it would be if you don't achieve this.
• 54:48
  Like they're very negative frames of like, like how to
• 54:51
  actually motivate yourself, which are really powerful in the
• 54:53
  star. I compare it to like the Star
• 54:55
  Wars analogy of the dark side, the light side.
• 54:57
  They're quite dark side forts. They're powerful, they're really
• 55:00
  strong, but you might end up like face down in a molten lava
• 55:03
  with like only one hand. Not ideal, right?
• 55:06
  You know, whereas at the light side you could turn into a ghost
• 55:09
  and live on in the force. That's pretty sick.
• 55:11
  So like like the light side forwards are really powerful as
• 55:13
  well, but they're slower burners.
• 55:15
  And and what happens if we're constantly those motivational
• 55:19
  speeches, constantly demanding, building images of fear in your
• 55:22
  head? You're not acting from a place
• 55:24
  of growth rather than run. So I use the analogy when it
• 55:28
  comes to anxiety, are you running towards something or
• 55:31
  running away? Are you the predator or the
• 55:32
  prey? And I think in those situations,
• 55:35
  it really sort of stems sort of like the prey mentality of like
• 55:39
  you're actually running away from something of the fear of
• 55:42
  not becoming. When I said earlier about I'm
• 55:43
  afraid of what I won't become again, it's that same mentality
• 55:46
  I've built like just from athletics, but also from
• 55:50
  listening to these like motivational speeches.
• 55:52
  Incredibly powerful. But they did also a lot of
• 55:55
  damage in that regard when it came to that, that sort of
• 55:58
  process of thinking. But on your note there, I
• 56:01
  thought I'd have to mention that.
• 56:02
  But on your note there about the images, it shows how powerful
• 56:06
  they can be and how as humans we buy into stories.
• 56:09
  That's how we learn things best and visualizing.
• 56:13
  Things. Seeing things happen, we're very
• 56:15
  like some people, like naturally humans with visual learners.
• 56:18
  We need to see things happen, right?
• 56:20
  For example, there is there a flat or round right?
• 56:23
  That whole argument. Well, I know it's round.
• 56:24
  So I've seen satellite images. I'm not going to get into the
• 56:26
  other now I I do actually. Agree with you.
• 56:27
  I want to make that clear. But yeah, I don't need, I don't
• 56:30
  need the lists to be thrown by that one.
• 56:32
  But like that, that's the we we see.
• 56:33
  Things and then we learn and we believe, right?
• 56:35
  And like creating images. So when you watch movies, they
• 56:38
  evoke emotion because you see things and you really follow the
• 56:40
  character. So one of those other
• 56:42
  motivational speeches, I think it's Eric Thomas or Inky Johnson
• 56:45
  telling the story of Buster Douglas and how he beat Mike,
• 56:47
  Mike Tyson and like how the fact that he's mum had passed and
• 56:51
  like taking you through that like period, like we watched X
• 56:54
  Factor or Britain Got Talent. So he's sob stories, right?
• 56:57
  But it buys into characters and that's what imagery does too.
• 57:01
  But it just puts you in the in the driving seat.
• 57:04
  You are the vehicle seeing yourself in different scenarios
• 57:07
  as that main character and feeling those emotions to try
• 57:11
  and evoke them and invoke change.
• 57:13
  So for example, I guess what we did when we saw each other is a
• 57:17
  get ahead, some pre race high rocks imagery, you know,
• 57:20
  preparation for London and they say got people sitting down.
• 57:25
  As soon as I saw them, I shot Let's do get some hand Zimmer on
• 57:28
  in the background. Quite literally, we all walked.
• 57:31
  Into a room and you were you were sit there and you said
• 57:34
  everyone just wants to take a seat or, you know, lie down,
• 57:36
  just just close your eyes. And immediately I thought, this
• 57:39
  is my kind of high rocks. And then and then, yeah, you,
• 57:43
  you put the music on and you started speaking.
• 57:47
  But this is so this is actually something I wanted to bring into
• 57:49
  podcast. This has never been done before
• 57:51
  on this podcast at least. And for those of you listening,
• 57:54
  if you've made it this far, you're probably quite intrigued
• 57:56
  by it, I would imagine. But I would encourage you, even
• 57:59
  if you're not sure about it, if you aren't currently supposed to
• 58:02
  be working in the office, maybe save this for later if you are.
• 58:05
  But give this a go because I think Robin's going to take us
• 58:10
  through 1. And I really hope that you guys
• 58:14
  get as much out of it as I did the first time.
• 58:16
  So yeah, I'll hand over to you to kind of explain it and then
• 58:19
  take it. Take us through it.
• 58:21
  Nice. Yeah.
• 58:21
  So. I hadn't completely prepared for
• 58:24
  it, but I've got notes on my phone, so I'm going to try and
• 58:26
  follow that to a tee. But the idea is we're going to
• 58:28
  do a Confidence Plus imagery. The idea of Confidence Plus is
• 58:32
  like any of your streaming platforms like Disney Plus going
• 58:35
  to take you on a journey of trying to unlock your
• 58:37
  confidence. I think competence is one of
• 58:40
  those states that can be quite fleeting for some and we
• 58:42
  struggle to feel it in certain moments and it can feel a bit
• 58:45
  like, well, how do I feel confident?
• 58:48
  This is a way to be able to bolster your confidence in those
• 58:51
  situations, whether it's going into a meeting, about to go
• 58:54
  compete in a higher race, join a new workout class, load this up
• 58:58
  for a 5 minutes before you're about to get into the class.
• 59:00
  Listen to this. And yeah, you'll be going in
• 59:03
  there more competent than ever. So should we, should we get
• 59:06
  started? Yeah, let's do it.
• 59:08
  I'm in. I'm, I'm not going to
• 59:09
  necessarily part A, I'm probably going to do the visualization,
• 59:11
  but I'm not going to do the thing where I sit at my eyes
• 59:13
  closed because I'd feel really awkward for Robin at the moment
• 59:15
  inside this room with me like that.
• 59:17
  Yeah, that better, but. I will put some nice.
• 59:20
  Calming Do you want calming music with this?
• 59:22
  Yeah, I like some it's calming music on that's.
• 59:24
  Going to start, you know. Now and in your own time, take
• 59:27
  us through it. Nice.
• 59:28
  So first of all, yeah. Find a nice comfortable
• 59:31
  position, sit yourself down, lay down, have your eyes closed and
• 59:35
  start to breathe. Now when you breathe in.
• 59:38
  We don't need to do anything complicated here, just a nice
• 59:41
  deep breath, breathing in for a count of 41234 and breathing
• 59:49
  out. For a count of. 41234 Now
• 59:55
  continue to breathe. As you breathe in through your
• 59:57
  diaphragm, fill and as you exhale through your chest,
• 1:00:02
  soften and relax. Find some comfortable breaths
• 1:00:12
  now as you continue to breathe. I want you to imagine the
• 1:00:16
  transported to your sofa at home.
• 1:00:19
  You're sitting down in front of your TV with your favorite snack
• 1:00:23
  in one hand and your remote in the other.
• 1:00:25
  Take yourself to that place. Now, as you sit down using the
• 1:00:35
  remote, you load up Netflix. Whether you've got Netflix or
• 1:00:39
  not, today you've got a subscription.
• 1:00:42
  And see all the top picks. Present in front of you all your
• 1:00:46
  suggested shows. As you start to browse all the.
• 1:00:56
  All the shows on Netflix, you start to realise that the
• 1:00:59
  thumbnails and the titles are from scenes in your life.
• 1:01:02
  You've got the dramas, you've got the comedies, you've got
• 1:01:06
  those thrillers and you've got those inspirational stories.
• 1:01:11
  Start to see those populate your Netflix.
• 1:01:24
  Now with your remote. I want you to navigate to the
• 1:01:27
  Genres tab and find confidence. Select that for me.
• 1:01:34
  And load up the screen with all these confidence thumbnails
• 1:01:38
  clips from your life. They could be back to things
• 1:01:42
  that you didn't school, achievements in your first team
• 1:01:46
  or academically, or it could be for your last High rocks race or
• 1:01:50
  from the training session. Bring all those thumbnails up to
• 1:01:54
  mind. All these little clips, these
• 1:01:57
  highlights where you have been confident.
• 1:02:12
  As you see all those scenes. I want you to navigate to your
• 1:02:15
  top picks. Start to think which one there
• 1:02:17
  resonates with you most. The one that really lights that
• 1:02:21
  fire in your belly. When you think of that, you feel
• 1:02:24
  confident. Try to grab that scene right
• 1:02:27
  now. Now hopefully you found that
• 1:02:40
  pic. With your remote, I want you to
• 1:02:43
  press play and let that scene unfold in front of you as if
• 1:02:46
  you're a family on the wall or if you are looking through the
• 1:02:49
  lens of your own eyes. Who's there?
• 1:02:56
  What are you doing? Where are you?
• 1:03:01
  Try to vividly. Bring.
• 1:03:03
  Scene by scene, that picture to life.
• 1:03:13
  Remember Eve Every. Detail.
• 1:03:19
  Everything that was said. Everything that was done in that
• 1:03:22
  moment. As you relive that image and
• 1:03:37
  you. Play it over and over in your
• 1:03:38
  mind. I want you to feel that tingle
• 1:03:40
  that starts to come in your fingers and your toes, that fire
• 1:03:45
  that starts to burn in your belly as you feel the confidence
• 1:03:48
  from that embark from that sea building bigger.
• 1:03:53
  And bigger you remember what it feels like to be.
• 1:04:03
  Confident to have. Self belief in.
• 1:04:06
  Yourself. To know that you can.
• 1:04:11
  Conquer despite the odds. Now as you sit there on the.
• 1:04:21
  Edge of your sofa. Fill to the brim.
• 1:04:26
  With elation from this scene, hold in one thing your mind that
• 1:04:33
  reason why you can be confident. You hit the power button on
• 1:04:42
  your. Remote and the screen goes to
• 1:04:46
  black. Nice.
• 1:04:51
  Wow, there you go. Like I said, I was trying almost
• 1:04:53
  not to. Do it, but at the same time it's
• 1:04:55
  very easy to slip into it for anyone who that might be their
• 1:04:59
  first experience of it. That's not the one that we did a
• 1:05:02
  couple of weeks ago and it was nice to to hear a different one,
• 1:05:04
  but could definitely feel those. Emotions when I when?
• 1:05:07
  I first did it, and I think it's what you highlighted at the
• 1:05:10
  time, is we do a lot of work training our bodies, but not a
• 1:05:13
  lot of work training our minds and doing that sort of thing.
• 1:05:18
  And and kind of thinking about yourself in that sort of way
• 1:05:21
  allows you to feel those emotions that can be often hard
• 1:05:26
  to replicate without really devoting time to it and training
• 1:05:29
  for it. Yeah, I think that's the thing
• 1:05:30
  with imagery. It's one of those where there's
• 1:05:33
  lots of different ways that you can utilize it, like you can
• 1:05:36
  utilize it when you need to build confidence in that moment
• 1:05:39
  or like say in a training situation.
• 1:05:41
  If you want to feel prepared for something, you can go through
• 1:05:44
  the motions of first experiencing anxiety, building
• 1:05:48
  anxiety in your body. Like feel that sensation of
• 1:05:51
  where is it is in your chest. Most commonly people feel it in
• 1:05:53
  their chest is in your stomach is in your head.
• 1:05:55
  How do you feel that anxiety right now pre race?
• 1:05:58
  Now let that grow to a point where it's like really starting
• 1:06:01
  to overcome. You now see that slowly subside.
• 1:06:06
  And we do that through that process of creative imagery,
• 1:06:09
  excuse me, to help you actually see yourself feel, feel the
• 1:06:15
  emotions of anxiety and then see it actually slow your regress as
• 1:06:18
  well. But then you can also go for a
• 1:06:19
  process like it's a Stoic principle called inversion,
• 1:06:22
  where you see things going wrong and then yourself actually
• 1:06:25
  overcoming them despite the odds.
• 1:06:27
  So we know there's things that can go wrong in a higher arch
• 1:06:30
  race. Let's say maybe it's someone
• 1:06:32
  grabs the weight in front of you and you're like rushing around
• 1:06:35
  to try and grab the weights or like you stumble and fall or
• 1:06:38
  like you go through the wrong, but in and out like it happens,
• 1:06:42
  right? You're tired.
• 1:06:45
  You can't really prepare for that until like you're in that
• 1:06:47
  moment. But imagery can be a process
• 1:06:49
  where you escape for a moment, imagine yourself in those
• 1:06:52
  scenarios, but then imagine yourselves overcoming it or
• 1:06:56
  feeling composed once it occurs. So that means that once we're in
• 1:07:00
  that situation, if we haven't experienced it already, we
• 1:07:03
  already have a million times in our mind.
• 1:07:05
  Like those past papers that you've done, you knew when you
• 1:07:07
  said on the exam, I've done all these papers before.
• 1:07:10
  Well, they're mock exams for a reason that you can do the mock.
• 1:07:14
  Well, you can do hierarch Sims, but not many of them replicate
• 1:07:17
  the same amount of pressure in the environment.
• 1:07:19
  So that's one way imagery can be used.
• 1:07:22
  Otherwise, like what we just did there was like building
• 1:07:25
  emotions, like confidence and stuff like that.
• 1:07:27
  Well, the impact that that. Had not only on myself, but on
• 1:07:31
  all the other people that within the room invoked the desire to
• 1:07:35
  get involved in what is actually the next section of the podcast,
• 1:07:38
  which is a listener question. So again, being a little bit
• 1:07:40
  different from some podcasts that are out there, but I love
• 1:07:44
  to have people that listen, get involved and ask questions that
• 1:07:48
  you know are really true to them or might hold a particular
• 1:07:51
  meaning. So I have 3 questions and I will
• 1:07:56
  go through them actually in order.
• 1:07:57
  I don't need to change the order because of our discussion in any
• 1:07:59
  way. I think I'm going to start off
• 1:08:01
  with Travis, who isn't actually a previous guest.
• 1:08:04
  If you aren't aware of who Travis is, he's, I mean he's got
• 1:08:08
  many records now for various things.
• 1:08:09
  Most notes would be burpees. He's just absolutely rapid, but.
• 1:08:13
  Travis has got a very. Interesting story himself and
• 1:08:15
  one of his biggest things that he finds he and other athletes
• 1:08:20
  struggle with is overcoming that voice that tells you to stop the
• 1:08:25
  mid event, mid competition, mid race when things are getting
• 1:08:29
  tough. So he his question is, what's
• 1:08:31
  the biggest mental tip for someone who wants to stop mid
• 1:08:34
  race God? They want to stop.
• 1:08:38
  Well, I think it's an interesting question.
• 1:08:40
  Like cheers, Trev, for that as well.
• 1:08:41
  I appreciate it. Always hit me the hard hitters.
• 1:08:45
  So I think that voice undoubtedly comes into your
• 1:08:48
  mind, right? And there is a point when
• 1:08:51
  sometimes our voice is cracked, but naturally we have a fear
• 1:08:54
  response that when our when our body starts to feel pain of any
• 1:08:58
  sort, it's going to start to come into the fold.
• 1:09:01
  It's going to start asking the question, should we stop?
• 1:09:05
  And I think naturally is building that relationship with
• 1:09:08
  the voice. And I think what you'll see
• 1:09:09
  there was study done with like ultra marathon runners and how
• 1:09:12
  they can actually push themselves to such like crazy
• 1:09:15
  limits compared to someone who like in pain, tolerating pain.
• 1:09:20
  And the reason why is because the when that voice comes into
• 1:09:22
  the head, it's not necessarily the pain threshold may not be
• 1:09:24
  higher, but it's actually being able to sit with a voice that's
• 1:09:28
  telling them to stop. And now for healthy reasons or
• 1:09:32
  unhealthy reasons, because for some point you need to listen to
• 1:09:34
  that voice, let's be honest. But my biggest tip, I guess
• 1:09:38
  would be to not beat around a Bush too much is that when
• 1:09:41
  you're actually in the race, it's quite hard to be able to do
• 1:09:44
  anything illogical. You are shattered, you're tired.
• 1:09:48
  The fear response is going to be the amiglar is going to be a
• 1:09:51
  thing driving most of your actions.
• 1:09:53
  So in this case, a lot of the work needs to be done prior to
• 1:09:56
  that sitting, getting to the point.
• 1:09:58
  Like remember that that whole Muhammad Ali quote of like he
• 1:10:03
  doesn't start counting reps until he's tired.
• 1:10:06
  Well, this voice doesn't come out until you're tired as well.
• 1:10:09
  And that's when the real mental work is done in the experience
• 1:10:12
  in that. And like anything, it's a
• 1:10:14
  relationship. Say for example, you had your
• 1:10:17
  parent shout in your ear attendees to stop.
• 1:10:19
  Imagine it like that type of scenario, separating from not
• 1:10:23
  seeing as this is your whole self.
• 1:10:25
  Your brain has many different thoughts, many different
• 1:10:27
  feelings, and not all of them are going to be reliable or
• 1:10:31
  helpful for the situation. As I say, it gets to a point
• 1:10:34
  where maybe you do need to listen to it, but maybe when
• 1:10:36
  you're starting to get a stitch in your side, do we need to we
• 1:10:39
  start to catastrophize. And what we need to go for a
• 1:10:41
  process of is the catastrophizing that actually
• 1:10:44
  getting checked in with. OK, I hear you.
• 1:10:47
  Because what happens is when we get these negative fours or all
• 1:10:50
  of us will do is suppress them and push them down.
• 1:10:52
  And I use the analogy of like a beach ball on holiday, you push
• 1:10:56
  the wall ball underwater, you sit on it and float around.
• 1:10:58
  But the moment you let go, it flies the surface even flies out
• 1:11:02
  and hits you in the face, right? I can't be there anyone who's
• 1:11:05
  done that, right? But it happens, you know.
• 1:11:07
  So let's imagine faults on the surface of the pool here and the
• 1:11:11
  ball is the fault. We push it down and suppress it.
• 1:11:14
  But then when it shoots up, it doesn't just come to the
• 1:11:16
  surface, it blasts pass as well. That's why in the race you'll
• 1:11:20
  you'll come back even more powerful towards the end, not
• 1:11:24
  necessarily towards the end, but later on in the race.
• 1:11:26
  So going for a process of acknowledging the voice rather
• 1:11:30
  than just shut up, get out my head.
• 1:11:32
  Maybe that'll work for a short period of time.
• 1:11:34
  And maybe when it's a Sprint, you don't, you don't need to
• 1:11:36
  worry about that. I worked with an athlete
• 1:11:38
  recently, short course. He had no problem with his
• 1:11:40
  negative thoughts because like in swimming, I mean short
• 1:11:43
  course, so like doing 50 to hundreds, but when it go to two
• 1:11:46
  hundreds or four hundreds, that's when the voice would
• 1:11:49
  start kicking in. And it's like, OK, you would
• 1:11:51
  have your suppression worked for a period of time in short races,
• 1:11:55
  but not in long term races. So tips get familiar with that
• 1:11:58
  voice. It's part of you.
• 1:12:00
  You can't eradicate it. So don't try to like just
• 1:12:02
  eliminate it or suppress it because if he tries to suppress
• 1:12:05
  it, it's going to come back more more powerful.
• 1:12:07
  So diffuse it, acknowledge it, hear it out, listen to it, then
• 1:12:11
  de catastrophize it. Say look like I understand why
• 1:12:13
  you're feeling this way because yes, I am in pushing my heart
• 1:12:16
  rate quite high here, but the reality is like I'm not dying.
• 1:12:22
  And I think that those would be the most I guess the process
• 1:12:24
  I'll try to follow. I wouldn't want to make it any
• 1:12:26
  more complicated during a race because you can't think about
• 1:12:29
  too many things during race. It's interesting seeing it
• 1:12:31
  broken down because the. Way that I've always thought
• 1:12:33
  about how I deal with the voice is bargaining I bargain so like
• 1:12:41
  and I guess that's me acknowledging it and so I mean
• 1:12:44
  if we take an example of something that a lot of people
• 1:12:47
  will hear that that specific point where it's like stop quit
• 1:12:50
  whatever it is telling you to just end whatever the race is
• 1:12:52
  now my I've. Had that.
• 1:12:55
  Feeling before I have it quite consistently when I train and
• 1:12:59
  you get very familiar with it, but it will be OK.
• 1:13:02
  Fine. Like I'll stop if I feel this
• 1:13:06
  way in 5 minutes time. Yeah, like that's fine.
• 1:13:08
  So I fine, I'll listen to you in 5 minutes.
• 1:13:11
  Yeah, you give me 5 minutes, I'll give you what you want. 5
• 1:13:14
  minutes comes on and I'm like, well that 5 minutes was fine so
• 1:13:16
  I'm going to give myself another two minutes or another 3 minutes
• 1:13:20
  and I'll keep doing that until I get to a point where I'm like
• 1:13:23
  look, in 10 minutes we'll be done.
• 1:13:24
  Yeah, so in 10 minutes you can run riot with whatever you want,
• 1:13:28
  but for the next 10 minutes I'm just going to get this done.
• 1:13:30
  And then you can, you can be whatever you want to be.
• 1:13:32
  And so I I feel like I'm constantly bargaining with
• 1:13:35
  myself, which don't get me wrong, can be exhausting
• 1:13:37
  mentally, but I'm not trying to shut it off and then have it
• 1:13:42
  reappear in a worse way. I love that.
• 1:13:45
  So what you've just done there is conceptualized the voice and
• 1:13:49
  that's what it is. You need to be able to make it
• 1:13:50
  tangible. The thing is, my main job as a
• 1:13:52
  psychologist is making the abstract tangible.
• 1:13:54
  Like we spoke about the stories and whatnot.
• 1:13:56
  We need to be able to see things.
• 1:13:57
  We need to see them happening. To have to actually first of
• 1:14:00
  all, be able to make a change. So what you've done there is
• 1:14:04
  hope you realize it is you've made that voice like a child,
• 1:14:08
  almost the maturity level of a child and you've bargained a bit
• 1:14:11
  the same as you would with a child when they're asking to, I
• 1:14:15
  don't know, for a treat or whatnot, or they want to, well,
• 1:14:18
  how long till we're there? Like I kind of don't want to
• 1:14:20
  stop walking. Like, OK, give it a couple more
• 1:14:22
  minutes and then we'll see you then.
• 1:14:23
  And hopefully they go a bit quieter.
• 1:14:24
  But at least you've acknowledged them.
• 1:14:26
  If you don't acknowledge your child, they'll throw the toys at
• 1:14:28
  the pram. They'll be kicking and
• 1:14:29
  screaming. And that I would argue is more
• 1:14:32
  mentally draining than doing the bargaining method.
• 1:14:35
  But that's a long term play, which for a lot of people, they
• 1:14:38
  don't see the long term play they want like a short, quick
• 1:14:41
  fix of, all right, I just need to get rid of it, eradicate it
• 1:14:43
  right now, get out of my mind. It'll come back kicking and
• 1:14:46
  screaming and that'll be more draining.
• 1:14:48
  Well, here's another mindset. That someone wants some help
• 1:14:51
  with. OK, so Jason, who's also
• 1:14:53
  actually another previous guest but far longer ago earlier on in
• 1:14:57
  the year, I'm aware from his personal situation, I'm not
• 1:15:01
  going to bring too much into it, but there's a bit of a career
• 1:15:03
  change. There's kind of a bit of self
• 1:15:05
  searching there to a degree. What advice would you give to a
• 1:15:09
  person that's got an all or nothing mindset and constantly
• 1:15:12
  finds himself flipping between the two?
• 1:15:15
  Yeah. I really do appreciate that
• 1:15:17
  because I've been in that situation far too often.
• 1:15:19
  All or nothing mindset I guess comes down to I guess that sort
• 1:15:23
  of perfectionist type of tendency, right?
• 1:15:27
  I mean, so that's we're talking about this in like a corporate
• 1:15:31
  session, right? Or just in general?
• 1:15:32
  This also also in life in terms of pick.
• 1:15:35
  Because not necessarily just for this, not necessarily just for
• 1:15:38
  Jason, but for a lot of people trying to pick a new sport.
• 1:15:42
  Yeah, Yeah, is. Is like a big one and I, I.
• 1:15:44
  Found, you know, I did American football.
• 1:15:46
  I was all in on it and then I went nothing on anything in
• 1:15:49
  sport apart from I just keep fit in the gym and then I don't want
• 1:15:53
  to be that guy. I found high rocks and like I've
• 1:15:55
  gone not all in on it. Like, I'm not trying to become a
• 1:15:57
  pro at it, but I've gone all in with my efforts in terms of my
• 1:16:00
  training into that specifically. So I think there's that as well
• 1:16:04
  as, yeah, people are probably doing the same with their career
• 1:16:05
  as well. Yeah, I think it's a matter.
• 1:16:07
  Of like everyone will have their own little processes that have
• 1:16:10
  to navigate all or nothing behaviors.
• 1:16:12
  But first of all, being aware that you're doing it one like
• 1:16:16
  knowing that I am the type of person that will just go into
• 1:16:19
  something health will ever and then stop.
• 1:16:21
  Good good awareness. First of all, pretty good
• 1:16:23
  awareness. But then moving forward, we need
• 1:16:26
  to be able to get to a point where we can actually almost
• 1:16:30
  like the bargaining method there of like setting realistic sort
• 1:16:33
  of milestones. I think people like that.
• 1:16:36
  What is harder for you is the harder thing.
• 1:16:39
  Just get like, I would posit that when you go into a New
• 1:16:42
  Year's resolution, you'll be the person.
• 1:16:43
  Yeah, easy. I'm just going to have like,
• 1:16:45
  dry, dry January easy. I'm going to do it super easy.
• 1:16:48
  Move on to the next thing. It'll be super simple for you.
• 1:16:51
  The harder thing for you, the more challenging thing, if we
• 1:16:54
  were to reframe the situation there, is to actually take it
• 1:16:58
  slow like that in terms of like, all right, I've got Monday to
• 1:17:01
  Friday, Monday to Saturday, Sunday here of like training
• 1:17:04
  days. I've just got into higher
• 1:17:06
  training. I'm going to go class on Monday,
• 1:17:08
  Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday, great.
• 1:17:11
  Love it. Next week.
• 1:17:12
  I'm burnt out, I'm tired, I'm exhausted.
• 1:17:15
  I can't make it anymore. I'm going to stop.
• 1:17:17
  Well, that in, in that sense, you're going to obviously burn
• 1:17:21
  out. That's the all or nothing,
• 1:17:22
  right? It's the same thing with
• 1:17:24
  dieting. It's like I'm going to go all
• 1:17:25
  in. I'm going to pick the best diet
• 1:17:27
  possible. 0 carbs exactly. And like do something that's.
• 1:17:31
  Not actually long term adherent adherable like we can't actually
• 1:17:35
  continue that because it's just not realistic.
• 1:17:37
  It's not got the balance for you in life, right.
• 1:17:40
  And I think for a lot of people that they experience that say in
• 1:17:43
  different areas, it's acknowledging that, OK, what is
• 1:17:46
  the harder thing? The harder thing is to actually
• 1:17:48
  taking it slow. Like I've got a look at my goal.
• 1:17:50
  My goal isn't short term here. It is a long term play.
• 1:17:53
  And what do I want? I think a really good life to a
• 1:17:56
  journal prompt for someone is what do I want my life to look
• 1:17:59
  like or my day to a general week to look like in six months time.
• 1:18:02
  So when you're starting this new thing in six months time, what
• 1:18:04
  do I want the week to look like? Now from that point of view, you
• 1:18:08
  can build up to that. That's like a is a goal.
• 1:18:09
  That's a process that you want to live, that life you want to
• 1:18:12
  live, I feel. So my experience with this has
• 1:18:15
  been that all or nothing behaviour being solved and you,
• 1:18:19
  you popped it on the story the other day is I was held ransom
• 1:18:23
  to a standard you. We spoke about expectations.
• 1:18:26
  If you have the all or nothing behaviours, you set an
• 1:18:29
  expectation for yourself that isn't realistic to maintain.
• 1:18:32
  So and what happens is you don't actually engage with that
• 1:18:36
  behaviour next week because you know if you want to go to the
• 1:18:39
  gym, you're going to have to go meet that crazy standard that
• 1:18:42
  you set for yourself. You're building resistance,
• 1:18:45
  actively building resistance when you really don't need any
• 1:18:47
  more resistance about to do something.
• 1:18:49
  So taking it slow, setting your goals properly.
• 1:18:53
  So making sure that they are like progressively overloading.
• 1:18:56
  We do this in the gym all the time.
• 1:18:58
  We know what progressive overloading is, we know it
• 1:19:00
  works. Slowly build things up.
• 1:19:04
  Yeah, I guess that would be the sort of the best advice that I
• 1:19:06
  would have. Awesome.
• 1:19:07
  And the final? Kind of advice someone would
• 1:19:10
  like, I guess is from Megan, who asks what is your best advice
• 1:19:15
  for someone to like pretty immediately or quickly reduce
• 1:19:19
  mental stress? Yeah.
• 1:19:22
  Pretty quickly, it's a very individualizing as well.
• 1:19:25
  I think all these questions, they're very individualized, a
• 1:19:27
  lot of nuance to them that you'd have to unpack with the person
• 1:19:29
  individually. If I say like for Megan
• 1:19:31
  yourself, like, first of all, it's understanding when that
• 1:19:34
  stress occurs, like what what is the actual like the antecedent
• 1:19:39
  to it? What what causes it?
• 1:19:41
  And then one of the things that you like to do that just like
• 1:19:45
  chill you out, like simply like, well, what is it that you'd like
• 1:19:47
  to read a book? Great.
• 1:19:49
  I want to hate books. I want to watch a YouTube video.
• 1:19:52
  YouTube videos are great. Is it music I was forgot about
• 1:19:55
  to evoke emotion? Taking some moments?
• 1:19:56
  About to just listen to some chilled music.
• 1:19:59
  I have so many playlists on my phone by my main ones I have as
• 1:20:03
  I've got a chill one and a hype 1.
• 1:20:05
  The chill one goes on as soon as I want to de stress and I just
• 1:20:08
  want to like zone out so. Yes.
• 1:20:10
  You've then got, I guess techniques from a physiological
• 1:20:12
  point of view, which is I guess breathing exercises, which a lot
• 1:20:15
  of people do. I found for me a breathing,
• 1:20:18
  breathing rhythm that works really well for me is the 478.
• 1:20:22
  So breathing in for four seconds, holding for seven
• 1:20:25
  seconds, and then breathing out for 8 seconds.
• 1:20:28
  When I was in hospital on morphine and I had these crazy
• 1:20:30
  cramps in my stomach, that was actually the breathing that got
• 1:20:33
  me to actually calm down and reduce it.
• 1:20:37
  But yeah, breathing techniques are really useful in that way.
• 1:20:40
  Classic things, basic practice of breathing, nasal breathing,
• 1:20:43
  diaphragm breathing. Don't breathe your chest.
• 1:20:46
  So many people breathe, do coastal breathing, which is
• 1:20:48
  breathing with your chest gives you back problems.
• 1:20:50
  But also it's a shallow breath, but then also sparks anxiety.
• 1:20:53
  When we like get panicky, we do this and that.
• 1:20:56
  We breathe our chest nice and quickly.
• 1:20:58
  That will cause stress. So a simple way to do that is
• 1:21:00
  breathe your diaphragm, pushing your stomach out.
• 1:21:02
  That's how we're meant to breathe or built to breathe like
• 1:21:04
  that. And then also a real quick one
• 1:21:07
  that I find like a cue is just slow my exhale, slow your exhale
• 1:21:12
  down. That slows your heart rate down,
• 1:21:14
  reduces your stress as a result. Amazing.
• 1:21:18
  All very good advice and. I hope that those three people
• 1:21:22
  are happy with the answers they got to their questions, but also
• 1:21:24
  if you feel like you have questions that you might want to
• 1:21:26
  ask a future guest, then that is the opportunity.
• 1:21:28
  So if you're not already following on at mindsets under
• 1:21:31
  score podcast on Instagram, Tiktok, everywhere, that is the
• 1:21:34
  place to get involved to keep an eye on those stories for future
• 1:21:37
  guests and other opportunities to get involved on that.
• 1:21:40
  I just wanna say if. Anyones got those questions I
• 1:21:42
  asked answered there? There's a lot of nuance there,
• 1:21:45
  so if you wanna reach out to me and get an actual bespoke answer
• 1:21:48
  and have a chat about it, then reach out.
• 1:21:51
  That is, get ahead. Mindset, I mean, you've got your
• 1:21:53
  person as well, but if you're struggling to find those, they
• 1:21:56
  will be in the description of the podcast.
• 1:21:57
  So you'll find it there no issue.
• 1:21:59
  Now the next part is where we stop being reflective of other
• 1:22:02
  people, and I'm going to look for some internal reflection,
• 1:22:06
  essentially. OK, so the three pieces of
• 1:22:08
  advice section is where I want you to remove me from the room,
• 1:22:12
  OK? And it's going to be you and
• 1:22:13
  you. Now, whether that's you and
• 1:22:15
  three different versions of you or you in the same version, I'd
• 1:22:17
  like to know three quick pieces of advice that you'd give to a
• 1:22:20
  younger version of yourself. Yeah.
• 1:22:23
  First of all, just chill out. Honestly, just chill out that
• 1:22:27
  you don't need to do everything before Well, depending on what
• 1:22:30
  age I am like before 10, before 20, before 30, like you don't
• 1:22:35
  need to do everything before that point.
• 1:22:37
  I think that's a massive 1. Just chill the hell out.
• 1:22:41
  I think yeah. Oh my God.
• 1:22:44
  Got me thinking now leading on to that, I guess.
• 1:22:49
  Yeah, I'm a very personal person, but I what I would say
• 1:22:53
  to myself is like, I do like to hideaway in my show this year
• 1:22:57
  I've done something that's really helped, which is joining
• 1:22:59
  communities like run clubs. So I would have told myself a
• 1:23:02
  little bit earlier on just get out there and start joining like
• 1:23:05
  fitness communities because they're so good.
• 1:23:08
  So, so good. They helped me get out of that
• 1:23:11
  sort of introverts sort of hole that I get myself into, which I
• 1:23:15
  do enjoy, but I can get stuck in.
• 1:23:17
  So that would be enough one get out there and enjoy those things
• 1:23:22
  and then I guess maybe like. Let me think think of 1.
• 1:23:26
  That's quite targeted actually. Maybe to the the kid when I was
• 1:23:32
  like 1514 years old and I was trying to decide, maybe younger,
• 1:23:38
  trying to decide my options. This leads into the chill out
• 1:23:41
  piece of advice. Like you can't control
• 1:23:45
  everything. Like you just can't I was
• 1:23:48
  planning out my options are going to choose what I do for my
• 1:23:51
  A levels. My A levels are going to choose
• 1:23:52
  what I do for my my undergraduate, which would
• 1:23:54
  choose like me if I don't master's that would choose my
• 1:23:56
  job. And I remember having nights of
• 1:23:59
  just breakdowns with my parents. Like what do I do?
• 1:24:02
  I had so much pressure on myself and it's like just go be a bit
• 1:24:06
  more flexible with it. Like you can't control
• 1:24:08
  everything. Control the controllables.
• 1:24:11
  Great advice and as a. Backup to that point I had the
• 1:24:14
  exact same thoughts. I went and did Aaron was called
• 1:24:17
  engineering and now I currently make gym videos for a living.
• 1:24:21
  So like, don't overthink it because you can spend a lot of
• 1:24:24
  time thinking you made the right decision.
• 1:24:26
  And then ten years down the line you tell your parents that
• 1:24:28
  you've quit that to go and make videos and talk to cool people.
• 1:24:32
  Yeah, and try and make that that career.
• 1:24:34
  So all solid advice. And that brings us to the last
• 1:24:38
  section of the podcast, which is the previous guest question.
• 1:24:42
  So we had all your Russell, as I mentioned earlier on the
• 1:24:44
  podcast, was the previous guest and pretty relative to the way
• 1:24:48
  he takes on training a lot of what he's gone through in his
• 1:24:52
  life as well. He's got quite an interesting.
• 1:24:54
  Question which? Is if you were going into a
• 1:24:57
  pretty savage partner training session, yeah, who would you
• 1:25:01
  pick? And they can be anyone from
• 1:25:03
  history, dead or alive. Who would you take with you and
• 1:25:06
  why? I mean.
• 1:25:08
  I feel, I feel like it's just obvious.
• 1:25:10
  Like, it's David Goggin. I knew.
• 1:25:12
  I knew. Of course it is.
• 1:25:14
  Like, love him or hate him. I had, like, I loved him for a
• 1:25:17
  period, fell out of love with him, and now I've fallen back in
• 1:25:20
  love with him. Like, in terms of as a
• 1:25:22
  psychologist, I think some of the things you need to touch
• 1:25:24
  take a pinch of salt. But like, why would you not want
• 1:25:27
  to train with this guy? Like, as a psychologist, I want
• 1:25:29
  to understand what the hell is going on under that hood.
• 1:25:32
  Like, yeah, crazy. Tell you another person that did
• 1:25:35
  come into my. Head though, when I was thinking
• 1:25:37
  about this was Ronnie Coleman. Just having someone shine a
• 1:25:40
  light would be incredible. When I'm doing a sled post or
• 1:25:44
  something like that, I'd love that.
• 1:25:45
  That's motivation right there. Great answer SO.
• 1:25:49
  And I agree with the answer wholeheartedly.
• 1:25:51
  But that means I need to ask you for your question for the next
• 1:25:54
  guest. And it can be as silly or as
• 1:25:56
  deep as you like. Yeah, OK, let's make.
• 1:26:00
  This one a bit more like a a prompt that I think everyone
• 1:26:02
  should really use. So yeah, for the next guest, but
• 1:26:04
  also like I think is maybe something that you should think
• 1:26:06
  about like listeners, viewers think about yourself and someone
• 1:26:09
  that I go back to. It's like, what would you end
• 1:26:13
  up? Like, what would you do if like
• 1:26:16
  literally money was no option? I know no option at all.
• 1:26:20
  I didn't didn't, didn't didn't matter at all.
• 1:26:22
  Like what would you actually be doing with your day-to-day?
• 1:26:24
  And that can be constructing it as, OK on a Monday, I'd be doing
• 1:26:29
  this at 9:00 and then go through your day what I'd be doing at
• 1:26:31
  each point in an ideal world where nothing ever mattered.
• 1:26:35
  Because that, I think for me is always been an anchor of what I
• 1:26:38
  just choose to do. And like, I've got quite an
• 1:26:40
  entrepreneurial spirit. So it's quite hard to keep
• 1:26:43
  focused when you're the ups and downs.
• 1:26:45
  So yeah, that's something I would definitely ask.
• 1:26:48
  How about that question? Would you care to answer that
• 1:26:51
  question myself? Should I give a time?
• 1:26:54
  I think what I realized recently is again, going back to this
• 1:26:58
  whole perfectionist stuff, like about have those standards I had
• 1:27:01
  for myself in sport translated over to business straight away
• 1:27:06
  though and and financial gain, Because surely that's a
• 1:27:09
  successive measurement, successful measurement of
• 1:27:12
  success, right? But there are years when I
• 1:27:15
  actually thought about why I'd want to be in like 10 years time
• 1:27:18
  is, as I said to you before, after the podcast, I want to be
• 1:27:21
  on a farm. I want to be what I can do is
• 1:27:24
  something like I love, which for me is creating, talking about
• 1:27:28
  psychology, something along those lines.
• 1:27:31
  I don't want to be doing it like with a family like that seems
• 1:27:34
  like for something, why not? Why is the family not like the a
• 1:27:38
  big goal That should be a big goal more than like your
• 1:27:41
  business or what not. I don't really, I would like to
• 1:27:44
  have a successful business, but at the end of the day, like as
• 1:27:47
  long as I'm doing something I really enjoy and I love and then
• 1:27:50
  in my day I can wake up at good time, take the kids to school.
• 1:27:53
  That would be awesome work during that throughout the day
• 1:27:56
  remotely. Like I have to go anywhere.
• 1:27:59
  If I want to go somewhere. It's cool events like in London,
• 1:28:01
  there's so many cool events and then be able to pick the kids up
• 1:28:04
  and spend the evening with them and take them to like they're
• 1:28:06
  they're not doing swimming though.
• 1:28:08
  Screw that honestly. They're not doing swimming.
• 1:28:11
  They can do any other sport, just not swimming.
• 1:28:13
  They'll learn to swim, but they're not doing swimming.
• 1:28:15
  That's just too much. I'm not doing that effort.
• 1:28:17
  No, fair enough. I think with the amount of
• 1:28:19
  training. As well as a parent dragging
• 1:28:20
  them around to that has got to be draining.
• 1:28:22
  I've had enough of swimming. Pools, Yeah, amazing.
• 1:28:25
  I think that's a very. Healthy response, actually.
• 1:28:28
  So yeah. Well, I mean, Robin, it's been
• 1:28:31
  an absolute pleasure having you on.
• 1:28:32
  I think you and I are probably going to talk plenty all, but
• 1:28:35
  these guys only tuned in for a podcast, not not on ongoing
• 1:28:38
  discussion for the next two weeks.
• 1:28:41
  So we'll round it off. I do want to say a massive thank
• 1:28:43
  you to you. And where can people find you?
• 1:28:46
  Where can they get more advice and everything related to you?
• 1:28:50
  Where can they find you? Yeah.
• 1:28:51
  Thanks so much. Honestly.
• 1:28:52
  Absolutely. Amazing conversation.
• 1:28:54
  So yeah, if you want to find me at Get Ahead Mindset, Get Ahead
• 1:28:58
  mindset.com as well. But yeah, Get Ahead Mindset is
• 1:29:01
  our mental training app. I'll be there on the socials.
• 1:29:05
  I've got a personal account as well, but reach out through
• 1:29:07
  there and I'll get get to you. Amazing.
• 1:29:10
  As I said, I'll link everything. So if you're not sure, you can
• 1:29:13
  check it in the podcast description, but likewise at
• 1:29:16
  mindsets under score podcast is where you'll find everything
• 1:29:19
  related to this podcast. If you enjoy today, please go
• 1:29:22
  and drop some love and make sure you're following Robin through
• 1:29:25
  all of those means and and checking everything out.
• 1:29:26
  Likewise, if you don't mind dropping a like a follow, even
• 1:29:31
  sharing this with some friends or some other athletes that you
• 1:29:33
  think it could benefit. You don't know how much that
• 1:29:35
  means. And I say that every time, but I
• 1:29:36
  genuinely mean it. I'm not ruined by the social
• 1:29:41
  media numbers. Like one person following is
• 1:29:43
  crazy to me and I love that. So I want to say thank you for
• 1:29:46
  that as well. Now if you want to hear the
• 1:29:48
  answer to Robins question to the next guest, that means you got
• 1:29:50
  to tune in next week. And with that, I look forward to
• 1:29:54
  seeing you all in the next next.