Told You’ll Never Change? Here’s Proof You Can | Ross Anderson

0:00My uncle gave me cannabis at the age of 11. When I'm 15, I'm taking ecstasy, speed, cocaine. The magistrate was stating two years in jail minimum and that was a compounding of small offences over time from the age of 15, 16, product of my environment on top of having two unintentional overdoses. That moment when I was gifted a second chance, I started for the first time in my life listening to my authentic thoughts who I really was listening into them and consciously crafting me and my life and not being a product of my environment there was a number of events that were so heavy and so challenging that encouraged me they were like wake wake up wake the fuck up yeah and take action hello and welcome back to the courageous

0:49Ross Anderson:leaders podcast brought to you by the change creators where we strengthen leadership teams creating environments where people and profits can grow together. I'm your host, Joanna Howes, and today's guest is someone who's redefined resilience, Ross Anderson. A psychologist and founder of Beyond Baseline, Ross has overcome addiction, mental illness, and even a prison sentence to become a global thought leader in human flourishing. He now works with Fortune 500 companies to engineer real behavioral change and elevate performance from the inside out. So let's dive in. Ross, welcome to the show. It's an absolute honour to have you here.

1:26Ross Anderson:Thank you. Thank you. I'm very excited for this conversation. And as you know, we go straight in. What has been a courageous moment for you in your life? I guess the first one that springs to mind is the one that was the very beginning of my journey. Obviously, the beginning of all our journeys as birth. I think most of your listeners will resonate with this. there's a kind of programming that goes on and then an unlearning and a relearning and a conditioning and a reconditioning and the most courageous moment for me I guess was when I was 23 I was at a bit of a crossroads in life I was facing two years in jail um not your typical path um and that was a compounding of small offenses over time from the age of 15 16 product of my environment on top of having two unintentional overdoses.

2:20I wasn't trying to take my life. I had two unintentional overdoses. I guess the result of living a very toxic life. And then panic disorder, feeling as though I was having multiple heart attacks every single day, autoimmune issues, losing friends to heroin, crime, suicide. I could go on and on, you know. Home life wasn't the best. My mum remarried an ex-SAS soldier who had PTSD issues. He was an alcoholic and there's only room for one alpha in the house and that was not me that's the way he saw it and so it was just a compounding of things over time and here I am staring down the barrel of two and a half years in jail and the year prior to that I'd narrowly evaded jail I'm painting a great picture of myself here right off the bat and yeah I was, I went for a secondary opinion, a tertiary opinion from lawyers and the response was the same you know because of this compounding of offences you've used all your jail free cards you know you're gonna have to to walk this path um fortunately for me i didn't go to jail there's a whole story behind why i can elaborate on that um but that was that moment when i was gifted a second chance i i guess for the first time in my life and this had already been happening a little the year before but for the first time in my life you know we all have these authentic thoughts these thoughts that you have when you're out walking your dog or you're out walking alone or you're on the loo or in the shower you know I think the shower is one of the most honest places in the world because it's usually free from distraction especially digital and we have these thoughts and I was who I was supposed to be when I was born and growing up but when I was let's say 11, 12 you know the spirit of the times was something you know it was dance music and hip pop and ecstasy and cannabis and playing football and chasing girls and if you weren't doing those things you were called certain names and you were ostracized and because of that environment low socioeconomic status background for me to single parent household some challenges with my dad my dad rejected me because of that we all have these deep-rooted psychological needs so my background is in psychology specializing in you know psychological disorders neuroscience deep psychology so on and so forth and we all have these deep-rooted psychological needs and one of them is to to feel a sense of belonging and I didn't know that as a young boy at 11 or 12 I didn't know anything about psychology you're just doing this subconsciously it's within you at your core and I'm just trying to fit in and so I'll do anything to fit in and I was compelled to just go with the flow and of course there's fun in that too but it leads you down an unfruitful path and that's what happened with me and then you create this you to fit the environment and you keep doing that and you evolve into that and then you've created this false identity which is not you but it is in a sense also that was me from 11 to 22 and then I started to experienced so much crap in life I thought this isn't the way and then coming back to the point I was going to make was I started for the first time in my life listening to my authentic thoughts you know and I started having the courage to act on them but there was a number of events that were so heavy and so challenging that encouraged me they were like wake wake up wake the fuck up in a sense and listen and take action and so to answer your question what was the most courageous moment in your life it was actually taking action on those authentic thoughts who I really was listening into them and consciously crafting me and my life and not being a product of my environment and the conditioning and the social norms of that culture if you will.

6:20Ross Anderson:Thank you for be saying open and sharing your background and i just wanted to know when you reflect because that was you know a big period of your time a lot of highs lows pains a lot in that you navigated and you know you can sit here today and quite clearly articulate like this is what happened to me when you do reflect that how connected are you to that person at that time or is that so much of your past now that it is quite easy for you to talk about if i sit on it long enough i can reconnect with those feelings i can reconnect with that person and i can zoom out and see the error of that person's ways but the more you know obviously doing all that there's a process that you have to go through a grieving process of changing your identity of of forgiving yourself but the more you learn about psychology the less likely you are to judge both yourself and others because you realise that you're just a product of circumstance.

7:18That becomes more challenging. That philosophy becomes more challenging to apply to certain situations depending on how far gone you are. If you commit murder, for example, it's more difficult. Unfortunately, I didn't go down that path. I reflect on it and I always feel a sense of connection with that person. I don't want to let go of that. It's important to stay aligned with that, especially given the work I do now. because I can see because of, you know, I'm not Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos but I've realised some success for me success is distance travelled and because I've travelled quite the distance you can't lose sight of the past you don't want to live in it but you want to understand who you were and it keeps you humble, keeps you grounded and that's inspiring And for me, I understand I've helped people walk through that path too.

8:15And yeah, I don't know if that answers your question, but yeah, I'm somewhat connected to that past me.

8:22Ross Anderson:This is really interesting to see your take on it, because I know there's a lot of people that their past self can still stop their future self. Yeah. And I had a moment in my life where I had quite trauma. I lost my dad quite young and it was quite a traumatic event. And for years, I let that define me. And then I was like, no, my past self can't keep getting in the way of who I want to become. Or, and it's going to sound quite easy for me to say that, it doesn't want to become an excuse not to go and do something or not to believe I could do something. But I think as you've really nicely put it, that connection is important to know the path you've travelled, but not to let your past dictate who you can become.

9:02And it's scary to go on and craft on yourself.

9:05Ross Anderson:Yeah. You know, if you want to do all these things, if you want to realize your potential everyone has passions again the authentic self the authentic thoughts i'd like to do that i'd like to try that i'd like to explore that but in order to do something you've never done you're going to have to become someone you've never been reinvention which means doing things differently which means discipline which means effort utilizing your brain it means potentially saying goodbye to friends family members which i've done over and over again because growth and improvement is lonely. It can be until you find people who are like you, who share your values.

9:47And that's courage. That's courageous is to say, I want something or I have an inclination. You don't even have this big plan or this big vision. You just need to have a compulsion, an inclination. I fancy a shot at that. I think I'll try that. But the thing is, so many people think those thoughts but don't act.

10:10Ross Anderson:I do want to go to what happened after your second chance. I just want to get clarity on how do you know, how could you recognise what was an authentic thought versus what would you say is an inauthentic thought? How did you start to work out the difference of which one to listen to? That's a difficult question. But some things you just know. You know, I could sit here and, you know, attempt to utilize my psychological understanding or awareness to answer that question but sometimes you just know and I think there's a feeling and a sense in all of us when we are connected with the best of ourselves we're when we're aligned with you know the highest versions of ourselves whatever you want to call it the most virtuous version of yourself um you just know it's fulfilling on a biological, psychological, and a spiritual level.

11:00As a youth, I am not thinking that way. But you just know there's some things that you can do. You want to explore. For example, with me, I was very interested in writing, writing music, writing my thoughts, writing poetry. I love music, all forms of music. But did I tell my friends that I loved Spice Girls and classical music, you know, and not just, you know, Tiesto or something like that. No, I did not because I would have been ridiculed, you know. And then when I'm alone and I'm in my room, journaling is a big deal now, but it wasn't, you know, back in, you know, the late 90s or whatever, the early 2000s.

11:45So I would journal, I would write, I would write music, I would write loads of poetry, and I really enjoyed that. You know, but that was hidden. but it was fulfilling in the same sense too. So no big fanciful answer, I guess, just, you know, so you'll have things that you can do effortlessly. I guess it's the things that, the thoughts that come effortlessly.

12:09Ross Anderson:Just a quick reminder, if you haven't already, to please hit the like button and subscribe to the channel. It's a small action that makes a big difference. You'll be the first to know when new episodes drop and your support helps us create meaningful content for leaders like you. I'd also love to hear from you. So if you have any thoughts, questions or ideas, pop them into the comments. And if you're curious about how my leadership coaching or training could support you or your team, just drop me a DM and we'll set up a call. Thanks so much. Now let's get back to the episode. I'm very in my head a lot of the time.

12:43Ross Anderson:So I'm doing a lot of work at the moment to kind of listen to my heart and my gut more because I've become very over-reliant on my head. and I keep then questioning in my head with my thoughts to go is that a thought that's the true thought is that the thought because I'm comparing myself to others and I'm being influenced by others and that's what I think I should do yeah um or is that an ego thing so I'm always working out going is this really what my gut wants to do my heart wants to do or is it coming from a place of fear to then not do something because I think it's fearful versus I should go for to do sometimes I get all these thoughts but I keep then maybe overthinking it to go where's that thought come from and is it a thought that's going to help me or is it a thought that's keeping me safe and could then stop me doing something because I'm going to the safe option does that make sense yeah and maybe to retort with something a bit more substantial I think questions are powerful the quality of the questions you ask yourself determine the quality of your life and if you ask yourself questions you've never been asked before there's a good chance you're going to get response elicited in your mind that you've never had before and for you that could be your data to dig into your fodder for forward momentum and your knowledge for navigation in a sense and so like for example let's say you've got someone who is like well i kind of fancy that and i like the look of this and and i'm not too sure what should i do what shouldn't i do like questions like imagine you know you are your fearless self like fearless motherfucker right that's what i like to think of this question being termed, but you're a fearless mother ever, right?

14:18And in this makeshift scenario, everything you touch turns to gold, you cannot fail, you only deal in the language of success, but with that mentality, that fearless mentality, what one to three things do you chase the next year to 18 months? You know, you don't think about judgment, you don't think about money, You don't think about any of those things, resources, inner demons or whatever, seatbelts. You just go on what you truly want if you were your fearless self. And so there are little tools like that that can help you navigate your true north. And also I think there's a lot to be said. look if you look at the landscape of the world we're in right now you look at technology and technological devices we are in the midst of something completely abnormal with regards to laptops and phones and social media and the abundance of media and the attention economy and we're really creating the playbook on something right now.

15:26So it really in the last 10 years two decades max we're just in this space where there's all this technology and it just it can be quite consuming so I think the average 13 to my knowledge the average 13 to 35 year old today in modernity consumes upwards of four and a half hours of media per day upwards of four and a half hours of media both traditional and social now we're not talking needle moving material here. Like if someone was to sit and watch one of your podcasts for an hour, because that would be it would give them a perspective shift, it would give them an insight into the real world, whether it's entrepreneurship or an artist or whatever it may be it's browser blackout app amnesia, unnecessary consumption of toxic content the doom scrolling.

16:19And by the way, back in 2011, the average person spent 90 minutes consuming media

16:24Ross Anderson:90. 2019 2019 pre-pandemic it was two and a half hours. Post-pandemic 2021 it was three and a half hours and now in modernity the average 13 to 35 year old spends upwards of four and a half hours of their waking day consuming media not the needle moving stuff. That's almost a third of your waking day. That's daily. A third of your waking day which means people are throwing away a third of their lives in a sense. We also sleep a third of our lives. We spend a third of our lives on a mattress. So sleep a third of your life thrown in another third of your life and then think of all the other distractions in life.

17:00So to my point, when it comes to making decisions, I think a lot of people would be in a better position psychologically and they would be more fulfilled if they sat in stillness and sat with their own thoughts. That's a scary thought for many people. But a good litmus test for how happy and contented you are is can you sit in stillness for an hour?

17:27Ross Anderson:And probably the answer is no for a lot of people. And until I started to explore stillness and detachment and meditation and degrees of separation from our technological devices, I couldn't either. You get agitated, you get very fidgety. There's actually a form of meditation that's really powerful. So you've got all this physical training. But I love mental training. Training the mind. 100 % of our lives is lived through the mind, but yet only 2 % to 5 % of people train their minds. and the reason I've got that statistic the rationale behind that is I've delivered now over 500 keynotes all over the world and no matter where I ask the question when I ask the question to whom I ask the question who in here does some form of mental training on average around 2-5 % of people raise their hands but 100 % of our minds is lived through 100 % of our lives is lived through our minds so I think when you're deliberating which path should I take because you can work hard but you can work hard in the wrong direction and this is why learning to be sagacious and prudent prudence is the ability to make the right decision I think there's stillness and detachment and sitting in silence and asking yourself questions like that, that could be your one question and you could sit and ponder that for half an hour and strong determination meditation is sitting down for periods of 30 to 60 minutes and beyond, sometimes a half day, which is an interesting experience in absolute stillness.

18:57So when you sit down, you set the intention to sit for a long period of time, usually it's an hour, and you can't move a muscle. You can't go to the loo. You can't engage in any voluntary movements. Of course, if your eyes twitch in, if your belly rumbles, if you break wind, rudely, you can't help that. That's just happening. You can't engage in voluntary movements. So back in 2018, in the gallery of modern art in glasgow i sat in stillness for a few hours and i was like i was the art show in a sense i was the exhibition and i had a plaque explaining the power of strong determination meditation and the intention was if i can do it for three or four hours in this way then you can do it for a minute or two um and i was eyes closed and there was hundreds of people around me meditating and i'm a big ambassador of presence and stillness and detachment these days I just don't think if you look at all the forms of addiction you know alcohol drugs pornography gambling I think the worst one that's just not discussed enough is our phones and our devices most people are closer to their phones than they are their partners these days in proximity

20:07Ross Anderson:and it really is quite challenging I think we're losing so much of what it means to be human yeah and I think that's the sadness and it's so interesting even you just saying the words of stillness detachment calm it i will my whole body already feels calmer just the idea of just going actually just sit with something just be still like you and i are just sitting right now it's just nice it's just so much calmer and if you said is we don't prioritize that we don't allow ourselves to have that time yep what i'd love to do is just to go because that i know the mind work for you has been so important for where you've got to today where did that really kick for you so I know you were given this then second chance from jail when did that moment where your story really began in this mind training and becoming who you are today it was due to a psychologist when I was 19 a friend of mine died in front of me it was really intense I was 19 he was 36 and he was one of the first male role models male mentors that I had had in my life so So throughout my life, you know, yes, I've been exposed to men, but my uncle, my uncle gave me cannabis at the age of 11.

21:19When I'm 15, I'm taking ecstasy, speed, cocaine with my uncle, who was around about my age, 38, 39. And I have nephews now around the age I was, so it's a bit odd for me. So anyway, I didn't have the best male role models, right? A lot of womanizers, wife beaters, drug addicts, alcoholics. and then a lot of my friends had big brothers who had older brothers and I only I was the only one I had a younger sister impressionable rejected by his father Paul who was my friend he gave me different perspectives so I was working in construction he would pick me up first he would drop me off last so there'd be other guys in between but we had these silent moments these conversations like you and I are having now and he's much more mature than me he's lived a little bit of life.

22:09He had a daughter at 17, a daughter at 14. And ultimately, long story short, he fell out the van one day. He was complaining of feeling a bit unwell. He wasn't a complainer. You know, he did like a cigarette. He did like some vodka. We knew he had some challenges with that. I didn't know quite how challenged he was, but the guys were winding him up saying, oh, you're back in the fires, you've been back in the drink again. and you know how it would get in that construction based environment just a bit of cheeky banter but it was worrisome for me and he was getting in and out of the van and then he said I think one of you has to take me to the hospital and knowing that he wasn't a complainer that's when alarm bells started ringing for me and the van was parked on a big wind curb which is a deep curb so it was elevated and he took a deep breath in I was sat behind him I couldn't see him but I was sat behind him and then he fell the van door was open, he fell, and he fell onto his face.

23:07So I opened the door, and it looked to me as though he was taking a fit. So one of the guys in the front beside Paul, he ran to get the site health and safety, and the other guy calling beside me, he went to get a signal to phone an ambulance. So I was 19, on my own, with Paul, thought he was having a fit. His face was all smashed up, bleeding. I turn him over I prop his head up I'm trying to talk to him and he's just grunting and covered in blood and then he stops breathing. I had never gone on a first aid course I'm using the movies as a reference point for what to do you know and I'm trying to resuscitate him and perform mouth to mouth and then nothing and then the ambulance comes, takes him away, we're told to down to us and go home and And I come home, I tell my mum, I still lived at home.

23:59I got a shower, come out the shower, and my mum had just put the phone down. She said, Paul died at the scene with you. And I had some ambient anxiety back then. I had some neurotic tendencies. Let's say our house, I had a lot of love for my mother, by the way. I don't come from nothing. But my mum's psychological state was a little bit unbalanced, or sometimes a lot. and my dad rejected me and there was another partner involved. So sometimes it was a bit intense. So that coupled with me taking drugs and not living a healthy lifestyle and having some neurotic tendencies. And then this crisis triggered panic attacks in me.

24:38And anything that Paul did, I then stopped doing, even if it was classified as healthy. So he would eat apples, I stopped eating apples. I avoided Rice Krispies because he ate Rice Krispies. and it felt, I genuinely felt for almost three years and it got worse and worse and worse that I was having heart attacks every single day and the only place I felt safe was crying in my mother's arms or strapped up to a heart monitor in the back of an ambulance on the way to a hospital which was also confusing because you're extremely vulnerable but bearing in mind I'm still selling drugs I'm still a product of my environment and I was in that world quite deep so it was a very confusing time and I started to become a recluse and the panics were getting worse and worse and worse and it was becoming hard for me to navigate maintaining the old Ross, the Ross that was created to survive that environment and I was just breaking and breaking and breaking and then finally my mum said, enough is enough, I'm taking you to see a doctor and she basically said, I'm not leaving this room until my son sees a psychologist.

25:49there's something seriously wrong with them and then finally I get referred to the psychologist her name was Rona I spent eight weeks with her I feel significantly better and she taught me the basic psychology 101 mindfulness meditation, CBT you know, how to architect a new belief system and the power of subconscious beliefs and so on and so forth and I just was healthily obsessed with it so I was going home old school dial up internet going to the library, hiring renting all the books I could reading, consuming up to 1, 2, 3 in the morning and then I decided to educate myself again because misguided energy in school I was born to be an entrepreneur but that's not in the curriculum and I was like many put outside the class or whatever and I'm also dyslexic in school, it was difficult for me so yeah, misguided energy, didn't get to realise my academic potential and here is this psychological thing and I was just all about it no one in my family though had ever gone to college never mind university so for some people university is a given path but from where I'm from the family that I'm from, not so much so college felt a bit and I was a mature student and I was also still navigating a difficult relationship I was with a girl who had bulimia she was addicted to drugs she was also addicted to T5s if you know what they were so basically they were big in like the the fashion industry particularly hairdressing and all these spaces so it's basically drugs that are fat burners that are laced with speed and her mother and father were swingers which sounds laughable but for her when you go on the internet and you find pictures of your mother in her underwear with other guys it was very disturbing and our dad was abusive toward her mother and there was all sorts going on.

27:51And my home life wasn't great either. It was really intense. I'm having all these challenges with my stepfather and he's got baggage and his four kids are moving in and out and it was just so much that I was dealing with in my head and then street life. There was a lot going on there too.

28:06Ross Anderson:So then this is all still happening after you've done the eight weeks of psychological care. Was this all still the environment you're in? This was in the build-up and as I'm going through this transition. So between 19 and 23, it was a big transitional period for me where I start to wake up a little bit. Cool. And also, if you look at the neuroscience of the brain, it suggested that between 22 and 24, our brain fully develops, which I think is interesting because I think the more conversations they have with people, they start to... You know Eddie Abu, black gentleman? He talks about wake the fuck up.

28:46People start to wake the fuck up between 22, 21 and 24. And you could say psychologically it's because their brain's developing, but at least anecdotally, observationally, when I have conversations with people at that age or adults looking back, there does seem to be a pattern there where they start to try and, maybe they've experienced enough of life where they're like, this is, I need to change me, but maybe it's a psychological thing. Maybe your brain hits a particular critical mass or something. Who knows? But yes, I found psychology. I enrolled in a social science course to study psychology and philosophy of the mind.

29:24I go to college and that's where things really changed for me. So talk about mentorship. While I had Paul, and Paul gave me a lot of advice, the gentleman that passed away in front of me. These were real mentors. These were my Mr. Miyagi's. You know, they helped me transition a lot of self-limiting beliefs. You talked earlier on about how your conditioning and your thoughts and your past life can be like a seatbelt and prevent you from moving forward. I had a lot of limiting self-beliefs. Even when I was there and I'd taken that action to put myself in that growth-orientated environment, I still was thinking, well, you're just some wee guy from the back arse of nowhere, some village.

30:06Why should you be studying academic topics like psychology and philosophy of the mind but through their actions and their words they helped me be so much more and this was a unique course and that if you really applied yourself if you maintained the right attitude you could if you rose to the top 10 % or 10 % of the class you could gain access to university which was really appealing to me I wanted to study psychology and at the time if you've got all the universities in the UK I don't know if this still stands but the closest university to me with the best psychological department was Glasgow Glasgow University was number four ranked number four for the neuroscience and psychology department so I wanted to go there but that whole process of getting there was challenging I get into Glasgow University but the joy was short lived because the court case was one month into my time at Glasgow University and again the magistrate was stating two years in jail minimum the first lawyer, the second lawyer, the third lawyer they all said the same, they're looking at two years in jail for this but the thing that got me off with it was those three Mr Miyagi's, Del Stevie and Robert unbeknownst to me, each wrote letters to the magistrate to talk about who I was given ample conditions to flourish I didn't find this out till six months after post court, post that day in court and yes I had to deal with a lawry load of consequences, I was denied access to America which I've only just combated way over a decade later I was put on a list where they weren't allowing me to work with vulnerable adults or kids which makes you sound like a bit of a PDF file which I'm not and also several hundred hours community service which is you're associating with some crazies tag, probation you name it, but it was far better than the alternative you've got to pay the cost as well you know and that's another wake the fuck up moment but it gave me the energy that I needed to move forward and that when you're talking about courageousness I realized then I know who I want to be again you know you may have a vision the vision isn't clear but behind I guess a stone clad wall is a beautiful tapestry of a life that could be and maybe you can see some of that tapestry because you've had some realisations but then to reveal more of that, to know the way you must first walk the way.

32:40So you've got to, you've got an idea and an inkling, you've got to have the you've got to be brave enough to move toward that and in that day in court I made a new pact with myself a belief of better and sometimes that's what we need to begin the transformational process, belief of better and the will to act in accordance with that and I decided to learn as much as I possibly could about how to navigate this world as best I could and that's when I really thrust myself into being an experimenter embracing my Anna Einstein throwing a metaphorical lab coat and goggles and jumping in and learning about psychology and then you know, that's all she wrote

33:14Ross Anderson:It's a remarkable story, thank you for sharing it with us and I just love that belief in better because that belief in better might mean something different to what your belief in better is but just to have that belief, to have better, to be better, to want to show up better yeah i think that's just just a lovely belief for anyone to have and beliefs yeah are when you think about beliefs right and the effect of a belief it's kind of hard to really think about it psychologically but i'd love to give you a little practical example right so um this shows for me this shows the power of your beliefs so you are where you are because of your programming and your beliefs.

33:54I am where I am because of my programming and beliefs. I was where I was because of my programming and beliefs. Whether they're conscious or subconscious, that's the truth. I like to showcase the power of a concept tangibly. So I'm always thinking three ways to do that. And this exercise I'm about to share with you, I suggest you do it with a group of friends. I've done it in corporate. I've done it with athletes and groups of athletes. I've done it with a lot of school kids as well. And I frame it as being like a plank challenge. You know, when you get down and you plank, everyone knows how to plank, I'm sure.

34:31So like a core ab exercise. But the room is in on the joke or the kind of, I guess you could say manipulation. So let's say you have an audience, right? So they're in on it and you reveal some information to them. But then you have your experimental group. Group A, you're talking to them. Group B on the right hand side, they've got their fingers in their ears and they can't hear what you're saying to group A. So you ask them if they know how to do a plank and you show them how to do that. And then you ask, you know, what do you think, how long do you think the average person can plank for in your age group?

35:07And then they give you some answers and I'll say, well, it's actually one minute, right? So then, okay, they're all good. Put your fingers in your ears, wax earplugs, whatever it may be. you walk over to the other group, take your fingers out your ears okay, can you do a plank? Yes your age category, how long do you think the average person can plank for and they're like blah blah blah, and I'll say okay it's actually three minutes so obviously both situations are receiving different information and there isn't really an average, there's not been too much research conducted on that but it probably is something like a minute and a half to two minutes but there's differences across gender and age and whatnot.