Learning from Mistakes and Taking Responsibility for Success W/ Anna Hemmings

0:00Welcome to the Big Success Podcast. Cutting-edge conversations on business and personal success, as well as how to level up. Here's your host, number one business coach in the world, Brad Sugars. Anna Hemmings has just blown us away with so many great tidbits. You know, when you're looking at someone that has won six world championships, Olympic medalist, but in the middle of her career, went through chronic fatigue syndrome, was told by doctors, she'll never, ever race again. How does resilience happen? How does these things? And it breaks it down for you and for me and helps us see how success happened for her.

0:40And not just, you know, some people, they win a championship, but to do six world championships, to do world champion in two different events at the same weekend. This is someone who totally understands success. Now, she's not just a speaker and a coach on the subjects of team and leadership today. She really does help us understand the psychology of where success happens. So dive into the Big Success Podcast, follow Anna, learn from her. This is a great episode. Remember, if you want to support everything we do, click that like button, click that follow button, make sure you're subscribed. Here's Anna Hemmings.

1:20So Anna, first question, what is success to you? Like how do you define success? so success for me has always been particularly when I was competing as an athlete about setting a goal setting a target um having a plan to achieve it and and ultimately achieving the target you know you might not always um the plan you might not always go according to plan and you have to be ready to to you know go in a little bit of a zigzag sometimes you don't always go from to be in a straight line. But you have a plan to how you're going to achieve that success. And then success is achieving the goal. Do you think your definitions changed over time?

2:04Like, you know, when you're in high competitive mode versus today, do you think it's shifted? Or is it still the same? So I guess success when I was an athlete was very clear cut. It was very tangible. It was like, you know, you, you know, the goal is to win the world championships. Did we win? Did Did we not? Did we achieve success? Did we not? So it was very, very clear cut. I guess in terms of what I do today, success is a little bit different because I don't go out and win gold medals for what I do or things like that. So it's a little bit different. But I guess success for me, like if I'm going out to do a speaking engagement, then success is about having an impact on the audience having a really positive impact on the audience ensuring that people have something that they can take away and apply immediately in their life um that I can inspire them that I can um inspire them to to do more to be more to to transform their mindset and so it's a little bit less tangible um which makes it a little bit more difficult to to define whether you've achieved that success or not um but when I walk away from you know if I'm doing a leadership workshop or high performing teams then you know it takes a little bit it's a little bit longer process um but getting to the end and and seeing a shift in in behavior in in performance of others um and I think today success for me is is much more about other people.

3:39Whereas in my career, it was, you know, it was about me, it was about my team. But ultimately, I was the one on the water, you know, doing the race, or together with a partner. But today, my success is much more about the people that I work with, and seeing them achieve success. Let's go back then. When do you think you chose success in life? Was there a specific moment was it as a kid was it from a coach parents like where do you think you chose that because you know going for that level of success you must have made a decision at some point what when I chose my standard of success do you mean my level um so I at a very young age discovered the Olympic Games you know sort of eight nine years old and you know seeing that on the TV.

4:30It was the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics watching that, you know, and I was just like, I want to be a part of that. I want to be involved in Olympic games. That looks like so much fun, so exciting. So, you know, I was aiming pretty high from an early age. And I guess, you know, even then it was, it was probably just a dream. But quite quickly, I was lucky because I, my sport was kayaking and I stumbled upon a kayak club called Elbridge kayak club and and they were a very successful club they were one of the best clubs in the country they had athletes there who were on the Great Britain team who were going off to the Olympics who were winning at world championships and so it it became quite apparent quite early on that this is possible like I want to go to the Olympics and this isn't just something people on the tv do this is something people at my club who I see regularly every day so it became more feasible to aim high because I could see people who were real to me doing that it wasn't these people who was just putting on a pedestal who you know who don't seem human um so that I think made it a little bit easier for me to go I mean it was still not everyone in my club aimed at that level and achieved it.

5:47That's, you know, but I was like, yeah, I want a piece of that too. So when you look at success, you must have over the years developed a formula for it or a way, how does success happen in your mind? What's the way it works? Well, so yeah, there were, there were a number of steps, I guess. It's not just a straightforward thing, but, you know, having a really clearly defined goal is the first thing. So knowing where you're going, why you're going there, and then getting people on board. So I learned, not immediately, but at a certain stage in my career that no one achieves success on their own.

6:28Like you just, that doesn't happen. And also there's no gold medal for the person who does it all by themselves. So we don't need to do it all by ourselves and we are better as part of a team. So we absolutely, you know, three minds, four minds, six minds are better than one mind. and so we absolutely need and I didn't embrace that in the beginning um I didn't learn the power of that until a little bit later on um so absolutely you know once we've got that clear vision of where we're going and how we're going to get there getting a team on board getting that team aligned to where you're going and everyone in the team understanding how they contribute to achieving the common goal is really really crucial um and then I mean I could take you through a whole bunch of steps but it's a mindset for me it really is a mindset of understanding what it is I need to do to get there but being almost relentless in your pursuit of that goal um asking yourself every day what else do I need to do to be better you know for me how do I make my boat go even faster than it did yesterday you know what else do I need to do um and because it's not just one thing you know and it's not just one time success winning it's it's an all it's a it's not just once in a while we do the right things you know it's like I've got to do the mental training eating the right foods every day I've got a stretching maximizing recovery every day you know I can't just eat the right foods once in a while and go I'll eat healthy again tomorrow So success comes with hard work and consistency.

8:11And so it's about getting the basics right and doing them right all the time, day in, day out, week in, week out, so that you can be to achieve that success. So, Hagan, let me then flip over because, you know, in your career, you didn't win every time. How do you turn failure or losing or coming second or third into success? What's your formula for that? How do you do that? So what's really crucial is recognizing that, yes, you're not going to win every time. And that's OK. You know, I was having this conversation with my son yesterday, who's nine. He's going, I've never lost a running race at school.

8:53I'm never going to lose a running race ever. I'm like, really, that's not going to happen. No, never going to lose. I love your passion for winning, but let's be real here. Let's not be afraid of losing because that's dangerous. It's great to want to win and his desire to, I'm never going to lose, but that can be dangerous because then we can be afraid of losing and then we don't try or don't push ourselves out of our comfort zone. to I you know I said to him if you're winning all the time then you're probably not challenging yourself and you need to push yourself harder and then and actually if you're afraid of losing you won't go for the competition that's too difficult you won't ever won't grow and you won't push yourself because you're afraid that you know he's like I've got a winning streak you know don't want to lose it so then you so then you don't you know you've got to fail everyone's going to fail and that's okay because that's how we learn so I think that that's the first thing about the mindset of recognizing that it's life we're gonna fail we're gonna mess up we're gonna make mistakes we're gonna lose but don't make the same mistake twice don't lose you know and come second you know so I won two silver medals at the world championships before I won gold two at the world cup um but but not for the same mistake every time and and so that's really crucial and so in order to prevent making the same mistakes every time or to keep learning, then we have to review.

10:26So that was really crucial. You know, win or lose a race, even when I'm really devastated, together with my team or people closest to me, we would review and we talk about what happened and why did it happen like that and what went well and what didn't go well. And what do we need to change? What do we need to do differently? What do we need to keep doing? Because even if it went well what do we need to keep doing but what do we need to do differently so just always reflecting and and being honest you know even when I made mistakes I learned to try not to justify my performance and and instead just acknowledge that I'd made some mistakes that I wasn't my speed wasn't enough that I wasn't fast enough whatever it is because without that honesty we cannot learn we can't understand how do we prevent the same mistakes again we can't we don't know what we need to change and and then the final thing would be recognizing that it's my responsibility you know if things go wrong there's only one person to look at and that's me it's not about blaming my coach or sports science guys or whoever it is there's only one person to look at and that's myself and no excuses.

11:40And I think that's relevant across the board. All high performers will take responsibility. They own up when they screw up and then they look for ways to improve. So that's, yeah, that's, that's how we learn. I love it. You're on the big success podcast. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be back with the Anna Hemmings and we're going to get into resilience, gold medal performance. How do we handle adversity and keep that consistency? Join Brad Sugars' landlord event and you will quickly see why real estate investing has long been the backbone of serious long-term wealth for so many. That said, so many try and fail at creating wealth because they simply don't learn how.

12:17Visit bradsugars.com and attend this program as a standalone or as part of a Brad Sugars' Entrepreneurial University. And you're back on the Big Success Podcast. I'm your host, Brad Sugars. This is Anna Heming's moment oh my god so many great championships so many gold medals how do you get that mindset for high performance ever the mindset for high performance um as i mentioned before does begin with that that attitude of you know what else what else can i do better and i think it's this constant desire to improve um for me you know i had this little acronym c-a-n-i constant never running improvement um that was what I was always striving for and it was about and particularly I think when when you've already achieved the goal when you've already winning when you're already number one that mindset of you know what else do I need to do how can I keep improving how can I keep exploring boundaries how can I keep um innovating you know going out of my comfort zone because no matter how exceptional you are we can always improve and so I think that's the mindset that you know making sure that everyone around you is constantly curious looking for new ways to improve um the path to continued success lies in the realization that there's always more to learn there's always room for improvement and I think learning is how we improve so um you know always being open to learning, always being open to finding new and better ways.

13:52Yes, we might have a strategy for success that worked once, but it doesn't mean we need to just replicate the same thing again. So a bit like I talked about, you know, in the review, but just constantly being open to other ways of doing things. And then I would add to that, look, breaking down the key parts of the performance so it's never usually one massive thing that makes the difference it's often lots of small things and so you know we looked at the the the physical training obviously on the water off the water the strength and conditioning we looked at nutrition we looked at sleep and recovery and technology and you know so all of these things added together can help make improvements so it was about what are the small improvements I can make in each of those areas so that constant desire to improve and I think that's that's what drove me you know I loved the sense of improvement every day to feel like I'm pushing myself harder and harder and and I can feel I can see the improvement and I love that sense of achievement I guess in improving it you know obviously at the end of the day it's about competing against other people but every day in training it was about how can i get that just a little bit better every day and that's what drove me is that is that sort of the fundamental of the consistency factor in there yes yeah so absolutely you know it's about every day looking at you know as i said you know the nutrition every day looking at um am i giving 100 in training every day am i really finishing every rep in the gym every day you know so it's it really is um high performance comes with consistent behavior consistent messages to your team consistent attitude consistent mindset um absolutely consistency so you stayed at the top of your game for a long time multiple olympics multiple mold how how do you handle the adversity and what's the key to resist resilience how do we succeed at being resilient through all that and staying at the top of the game for a long time so i think some of the things that we've discussed already are what help you to stay performing at that highest level the consistency the attitude the mindset um the seeking constant improvement those things are key and also recognizing that we're gonna have dips and you know my career yes I you know I won six world championships between you know in the space of uh how many years like eight nine ten years um but I also had some big down points it was a bit of a roller coaster and I think we have to recognize that that's going to happen You know, life, you know, we hit bumps in the road, we hit challenges, we fail, we hit rock bottom, we pick ourselves up.

17:01So sustaining that, not just the high level, but the ability to have a longevity, I should say, it's about resilience. It's about the ability to bounce back when things have gone wrong, setbacks, failures, whatever that might be. And knowing that that's part of the journey. um how did you Anna get like when you go through those down periods what's the way you get your head back in the game what's the way you do that what's your thoughts on that

17:37so one of the things that I I talk about a lot is controlling the controllables um so you know we can't always control the circumstances we find ourselves in you know I I had a big illness um that had me out of the sport for two years and you know we find ourselves in a global pandemic you know things like we can't control many of these circumstances but we can choose how we react we can choose how we respond um and you know there are many things that we can't control and you know so that's really important we but we can choose our attitude we can choose our actions our behaviors are you know the way we think the way we behave you know we can there's so much that we can choose our energy who we build relationships with and that's crucial you know when we're facing adverse situations or even pressure situations you know I think back to some of the races where I was the favorite um and when you're the favorite it's a lot weight of expectation people like yeah you're gonna Anna's gonna win Anna's gonna you know she's the favorite she's got this all of that and that's hard but I realized you know I worked with a sports psychologist for many years so I learned so much of this from sports psychology but I can't control what other people are thinking what they're saying what they're expecting like I can't control the weather conditions when it comes to race day I can't control the competitors and how fast they go but I can control my preparation leading up to race day how much I rest and recover and what I eat and sleep and and then come race day I can control my race plan my strategy for the race I can control um how fast I make my boat go so and that's empowering you know when we're facing adverse situations that we don't like or or any kind of setback there'll be things that are happening around you that you can't control so we focus our attention on where I can have impact who can I influence what systems can I change what can I do in my communication or whatever it might be my attitude um is where we focus our attention so let's flip it over a second you had to build a team not just to get to the championships but then when you hit chronic fatigue building yourself back up and winning more championships when you teach how to build a high performance team what are some of the fundamentals that we can take away from your teachings so at the absolute foundation of any high performing team is trust really it's just that's where we have to begin and I know that from the work that I've done in business but I've also been in teams in sport where there wasn't trust and and it didn't work and and I've been in teams where and I'm just I know the power of teamwork because I've been in teams where you know so I raced in the four kayak k4 um and and I was in one year where we were in a team and there were four individuals four girls in that boat who were the four fastest in the country and we didn't make the best boat we didn't make the fastest four because there was the teamwork the cohesion the trust wasn't there and there'd be four other girls from another country who were not as quick as us four individually, but were a better unit.

21:01And teamwork beats talent every time. And it starts with trust. And it starts with the ability to be vulnerable with each other, to know that I can put my hand up and say, do you know what? I don't understand. I don't know why we're doing this. Or, you know, I don't agree. Or, you know, I made a mistake. all of that knowing that I won't be judged knowing that it won't be held against me that it's okay if I show a weakness um which is a big thing in sport you know showing a weakness we just don't do that it's like game face on but if you want to build trust in the team you have to do that and you have to know that there's no judgment here um and every voice is going to be heard and listened to so that's that's really crucial for building the relationships in the team and knowing you know if you're sitting on the start line of the world championships olympic games i need to know that you've got my back i need to be able to share with you that i'm feeling nervous and that's okay um or if i make a mistake in the heats yeah i gotta own it and we're gonna it's okay no one's gonna judge me i've got to put my hand up and admit that so we can discuss it and we can work it work through it for the semis so we don't make the same mistake again you know it's that kind of trust that is so crucial in a team.

22:22Love it. You're on the Big Success Podcast. Anna Hemmings is going to bring us back and talk about going from good to great. Anna Hemmings is Britain's most successful female marathon kayaker with a staggering 11 World and European Championship medals, nine of them gold. She is now a leading inspirational speaker and coach on resilience and high performance. To learn more about Anna Hemmings, please visit AnnaHemmings.com. And you're back on the Big Success Podcast. We're going to look at good to great. Anna, you are possibly the best example of someone that can teach. What's the difference between someone who, you know, sets a good goal and someone who sets great goals?

23:03Like someone could go for one gold medal, but, you know, multiple championships, world champions, six times, multiple. how do you go from that mindset to that mindset what's your thoughts um so how do you go from good to great um you know so much of what we've talked about already is really relevant um but i think you know some of the things around team are really important you know we talked about trust in a team but one of the things that helps a team to become really optimal is things like what I talk about healthy conflict. So if we want to get optimal solutions, the best ideas, take the best strategy, then we need to hear from everyone in the team.

23:51And we need to be able to have a really passionate debate and discussion, argument, even in a healthy way, not mean-spirited, destructive, but be able to challenge, to question one another. um the best teams that i was a part of you know when we were you know arguing about the race strategy and arguing about the training and and what was the best way to do this what's the best way to approach that and knowing that it's all done with positive intent and that we're just trying to search for the best answers the best solutions and you can't do that if there's only you know one person who's dominating the conversation you know how in teams you know You know, there's eight of you and there's always two or three who are the loud ones.

24:36But sometimes it's the quietest ones who have the best ideas and they put forward the idea and it just gets knocked out of the park because they just don't stick with it or they are not heard even. And if you want the best solutions, we need all of the voices. And if you want ultimate commitment from the team, then everyone needs to feel heard. And that's really important that everyone's had a voice, everyone's felt listened to and we're all going to buy in. So that's really crucial. I want to ask you direct. Most people would be, you know, happy with one world championship or one gold medal. What did it take for you to set the goal of massive numbers, you know, of doing it year after year after year?

25:20How do you think differently to a lot of other people? So I never started out at the beginning with the intention of winning six gold medals. I started out with the intention of one. And, you know, I wanted to become an Olympian. I wanted to win medals at Olympics, which I didn't. My world championship discipline was different to my Olympic discipline. But I wanted to become an Olympian. I wanted to win world champ. I wanted to be world champion. And it's not until you've won one. And then even when you've won one, you don't go, oh, right. I've won one. I'm going to win six now. You know, it's almost like, OK, I've won one.

25:55well I'm gonna win again next year uh okay let's win again next year um and so it's yeah there was never an intention and it was never an I don't think there's any other well there was never an intention to go right there's the record is five I want six there that was it wasn't really like that but I guess it was just um you know back to what I was saying you know the same performance is never good enough to win the following year so again there's a challenge there's this you know in sport like in business the performance levels the standards and they're always rising yeah you know no one's standing still you've got to keep moving forwards and and when I won the first world championships that wouldn't have been good enough to win the sixth one yeah so so there was always this right if I won anyone again I gotta get even better I gotta go faster I'll go faster next year um I guess at a certain point there was the big challenge for me was you know coming back from two years out with illness just I just want to get back and prove to myself that I can win and then it was like oh what if I could do consecutive years that would be really cool um back to back um I guess there was just no no limits um no in one one world championships I won the singles and the doubles in one weekend so singles k1 one day 24 miles it wasn't another 24 the following day and it was just like yeah let's try it let's give it a go I guess there was just no I didn't put any barriers in my way that you know some people have limiting beliefs about what's possible and and it wasn't just at me in fact it was my coach who suggested that at the time he was like well why don't you do you know there's there's let's do the k1 and the k2 let's do both okay let's give it a go and so okay i'll just win two world championships yeah yeah okay it's just just a throw away thing yeah let's do both yeah i love that i mean i i didn't know i knew i i felt confident i could win the singles but doing back to back and doing the doubles i'd never done that you know i didn't know but I but my my attitude was let's just try let's see what's possible um so rather than saying just no it's not going to happen that's not possible it was let's give it a go let's see what we can do let's see where the limits are let's where are the boundaries and there was yeah so it was just let's just take opportunities and when he you know he says that okay yeah let's do it let's figure out a plan let's find a way to make it happen it was that kind of attitude I I suppose.

28:37Why not? It's not me. The companies you work with and you coach their leadership and that sort of thing from Red Bull or British Airways, Amazon, these are big companies. What do you see as their mindset that makes them achieve so much? What's the difference between them and a company that doesn't go massive? Oh, that's a good question. Yeah. Yeah, I think that the think big, the extraordinary goals, you know, I think that the companies that are really leading at the moment are challenging their own beliefs about what's possible, challenging their own limits, setting those stretch targets, you know, right, we hit the targets this year.

29:28And this is what I get brought in a lot for, you know, sales teams. You know, we've hit the targets this year. We smashed our targets. Brilliant. Now they've stretched the targets again. They're raising the bar. How do we do that? Because that's what I had to do, right? You know, year after year, raise the bar, raise the bar. So how do we do that? And so it's the companies that are prepared to, who also recognize that we don't want to just hit the target. We want to smash the target. Because a lot of the time people, I work with a company recently and they're like, yeah, we just about made it to the target.

30:01But I feel like if we just about made it, what if we'd made it a bigger target we probably would have hit that you know so the ones that are struggling themselves all the time believing that there's more there's more in the tank and the companies that are doing really well are the ones that are doing training for their teams yeah the ones that are recognizing that you don't just this stuff doesn't just happen by magic you know they're bringing in the speakers they're bringing in the coaches the leadership development the team development they're recognizing that that is how we we need to develop our people you know as much as we need to develop our products we need to develop our people because it's our people who drive this and if our people are not hot you know a great team is made of great individuals so every individual needs to be working at an optimal level and the best organizations recognize that we need the best teams to drive forward our organization We need the best leaders.

30:58And so I think that's that's a big factor in the ones who are succeeding, excelling. So let's dive into a quick fire round. Just some quick ones. How do we succeed at health? At health? Yeah.

31:17Oh, we need to prioritize it. I think that's the first thing. you know not everyone prioritizes their health and we cannot perform without our health and I learned that the hard way um so we absolutely need to prioritize our health and it's easy you know when you're on the treadmill of life and work and you've got these relentless goals that you're trying to pursue that we just you know let health slip to the side but if you want to be you know I've been doing a lot of work with the NHS recently and doctors surgeons consultants registrars and and I'm saying to them you know they're very much all about serving others and I'm saying to them listen if you want to serve your patients if you want to be in surgery and you want to make great decisions you also need to take care of yourself you need to be on it you need to be focused you need to be alert you need to make sure you get breaks take rest eat you know do all of those which is so hard for them because their shifts are just relentless but we were talking about finding ways to prioritize that it should be non-negotiable if you want to be at your best so managing energy managing health is crucial prioritize it you succeed at self-development growing yourself again recognize that it's important um find coaches around you trainers people who you can learn from be reading be you know that constant curiosity to learn to develop recognizing that we we always there's always more to learn um how do we succeed at it though yeah I mean I think you know one-to-one coaching um I would say that I'm coach um you know it's it's we can do a lot of self-development but I think we also need to see our blind spots we need to have people there to challenge us to support us and challenge us um to help us with those limiting beliefs to help us just to have that space to think out loud you know so I think it's so crucial that you know I would never have got to where I did in my sport without a coach without a team of people supporting me helping me develop um so yeah final question what's the best advice you ever got or the best quote you ever heard on the subject of success

33:44big one um what's the best advice on the subject of success um

33:58it's really tricky actually um I can't I'm trying to think of the best piece of advice I was ever given I guess a lot of the advice that helped me succeed came from my sports psychologist and and I think that um focusing I was told you know to build my confidence was at the root of success I think is at the heart is at the root of high performance and and I was always encouraged to focus on my strengths to to understand what I was great at because if I'm going to sit on the start line and focus on everything that I'm bad at my weaknesses the things I need to avoid I'm never going to perform at my best so if I want to be successful I need to have my strengths on the tips of my fingers and you know I'm from England it's a British culture we don't talk about our strengths we don't talk about what we're great at we can reel off our weaknesses really well but strengths oh yeah but that is so crucial if you want to build confidence and achieve at the highest level and perform at your best.

35:07This is a big success podcast. Anna Hemmings has blown us away here today. If you love what we do, support our work, click that button, subscribe, follow this podcast and make sure you keep on focusing on your success. And that's a big success podcast for today. Hopefully you took a lot of notes and hopefully you learned a bunch and hopefully you're going to take action on it and refer people. Remember, if you haven't subscribed, click that subscribe button now. Be with us every week on the Big Success Podcast. BS, Brad Sugar's Big Success. Take action. Check the show notes for all the links. I'll give you all the links for everything that your speaker had.

35:44Make sure you follow through and keep the learning going. Remember, you got to grow into your goals. I'll speak to you next time on the Big Success Podcast. You've been listening to the Big Success Podcast with the number one business coach in the world, Brad Sugars. To learn more about how to achieve business and personal success, as well as how to level up or listen to past episodes, visit www.bradsugars.com.