Lessons from the month with Kevin Sinfield, Edwin van der Sar, Tom Grennan and Matt Willis

0:03Hey everyone, welcome along to an episode of High Performance. It's fast becoming, actually, one of the most popular episodes we release in any month, which is a chance for myself and Damien. Hi, Damien. Hi, Jake. To sit and reflect on the brilliant conversations that we've had over the past four weeks, you're about to hear a clip from our chat with Kevin Sinfield, the former Manchester United goalkeeper and CEO of Ajax, Edwin van der Sar, the singer, Tom Grennan, and the musician, Matt Willis. We're just going to pick out a moment or two from those conversations and just delve a bit deeper into them.

0:34And we're going to start with Kevin Sinfield. We'll talk about it in a second. But first, here is Kevin talking to us about the power of purpose. I realised pretty early on that you probably got the best out of me when I backed into a corner. I hate the fact that it's like that, but it's probably true. When you really stick me somewhere I don't want to be, then I'll fight and I'll come out and you'll get the best of me. So for people out there who are going through some things that they don't want to face. They would find it particularly difficult. Life's tough. Nobody has it plain sailing. I would say this as well, because I remind myself of it all the time, there's always someone worse off than you, no matter how bad it gets, there's someone worse than you.

1:24So Rob helps with that, with the perspective. I've actually... I actually enjoy being in those tough, difficult, dark moments. I don't have to be in there long, but as shown in the 101 mile, I were in there for seven hours. And it's a long time to be in there. But again, there's people doing a lot worse than I am. And my job is to try and get from A to B in one piece to try and raise a load of money so that the specialists and surgeons and the best M &D people across the UK can get their heads together and try and find a cure. and I think when you've got something like that that is really powerful then it's really easy to do it but I say to people out there find out why you're doing it what is it what is the one thing that'll prevent you stopping or turning around and when you find that you can go now this is a good time to have a conversation about purpose because we're recording this on a Thursday afternoon and last night we were live on stage at the Hackney Empire with the All Blacks legend, Dan Carter.

2:34And actually the conversation with him was really all about purpose. And I think we need to talk about the fact that you can have something that you do in life, like host a podcast or play rugby or be a parent or, I don't know, make a million quid, whatever it is you want to do. But that's not purpose. That's the thing that you want to achieve. Purpose is a far greater conversation than that, isn't it? Yeah, it's not what you do. It's who you are when you're doing it, who you become and what I found really interesting in the chat with Dan that we had last night was when we had a beer with him afterwards in the dressing room and he was talking about the ridiculousness of retiring from sport and even that very word retiring that he said so if you chose to leave a profession you don't retire from that profession to do something else you just change careers and yet with athletes like Dan and like Kevin that we've just heard from we often think about what you're gonna do when you've retired well actually they've just changed careers in Kevin's case he's gone to become a coach with Steve Borthwick in England in Dan's case he's gone on to become an author he's an advisor to businesses and you know he's a philanthropist in many ways so I think you're absolutely right Jake it's who we are is what our purpose is driven by not what we do and it's fair to say that when you do something as incredible as what Kevin did which was be one of the greatest ever Leeds Rhino players the world's seen or when you're one of the greatest all blacks the world's ever seen it's very easy to allow that to become your purpose and there will be people listening to this who do incredible jobs who have incredible things in their lives and i suppose our message to them is don't allow that thing that you do to inadvertently become your purpose because there's one sure thing guaranteed in life and it's that great thing you do at one point you won't be doing it and therefore your purpose has to be so much bigger than that so that when you pivot when you change when something falls away when you actually do retire when you leave a job when you leave a role when you no longer have the responsibility you have today you're not less of a person for not having that in your life definitely I remember talking to a leader of one business that uh I worked with who had his sense of purpose was to enrich lives which I thought was really interesting and in the business that he ran the product that he sold was about enriching people's lives but I remember him saying to me if this business fails I'll go and run old people's homes I'll go and build wells in Africa I will still enrich people's lives through the actions that I do so it was almost not defined by the nature of the work it was what he became and and the difference it made on the back of it and I think that leads into the conversation we had with Kevin and if you remember we were at tricking him on the day of the Gallagher rugby premiership final where Kevin was there with Steve Borthwick and the England staff and he was signing copies of his new book and then he came in and spoke to us at the end of the day and his day sounded like it was pretty frenetic and full-on and yet when he came to us he still had that energy that exuberance that passion for the conversation and I think that's a great example of somebody living a life on purpose everything he was doing was about enriching lives making lives better raising awareness inspiring people and making a difference so his energy levels were so much higher than somebody just doing a job because i felt i have to do it i love that conversation with kevin and actually it was a busy couple of days because 24 hours before that we all landed in amsterdam by the way how good were those pancakes those dutch pancakes we had for lunch guys oh fantastic wasn't there food of the gods yeah we all put on about six stone yes after 12 hours in Amsterdam um but we were there to speak to Edwin van der Sar um and he is the former CEO of Ajax because only two days later was it announced that he'd quit his job he'd resigned as the CEO we spoke to him about that job we spoke to him about his life in football he was an incredible goalkeeper for Manchester United but it was mainly around the struggles of the job that he does today that the conversation focused before we talk about it here's a clip give us an insight into the hours you work

6:49it's continuously it's hard whatever you have your phone you have your laptop, you have the calls you have your dinners you have your work, you have your time you go to games, you want to be you want to go to commercial partners it's events it's shit, things are happening you need to fire someone, things are not going well there's a crisis there's something happening on European level, it's something with a new media deal it's constant at a certain point it's not a drag it's fucking hard and that's something that friends of yourself say, Jesus and Edwin why do you need it? you have your money, you have an easier life and of course something something goes that goes that through your mind but in one way you have yeah you want to be success success sometimes also addictive you want to achieve things and that's something that you carry with you all your life and if you play different sports or with your friends you always want to win so I was really frustrated annoyed angry and let down with myself when I saw that two days later he'd left his job because just to set the scene we were in a hotel room overlooking in the Johan Cruyff Arena.

8:08And do you remember when he walked in the room, we were waiting for him, as you normally do with these guests. We were set to go, cameras were running, mics were rolling, and I just said, hey, Edwin, how are you? He went, shit. Yeah. And then sat down. How at that point did we, as interviewers, not realise just how much he was struggling? And he kept throwing in little comments about how hard it was. And I think that maybe, let's just be totally open here, I feel maybe we missed a bit of a trick in that interview that we still went down the road of the things that we decided we were going to do 24 or 12 hours before, and we allowed that to blind us from basically what he was saying, which was, I can't handle this job anymore.

8:49It's crazy. Yeah. I think you're right. I think our careers as investigative journalists, like Bernstein and Woodward, haven't quite got off the starting line. But I think on a serious point, I think you're absolutely right that we're learning as well, and I think it's great that we can sort of stop and pause and go, you know what, we did miss something there. There's a great saying of there's often the words, the music and the dance, and it's the music and the dance that really tell the whole story, not just the words. And I think Edwin, his whole body language, he looked exhausted, he looked frustrated.

9:24You know, he was kind and courteous enough to still commit to doing the interview with us. But you're right, I think we did miss a trick. that and I don't know I think I've reflected on it as well I think sometimes it was the fact that we knew he was pressured for time we knew that we were coming in on the weekend before the last game of the season that was going to be seminal of where Ajax finished in the in the final place into the season so I think the context of that meant that I almost didn't want to piss him off we were sort of treading carefully on what we thought he would want and maybe that wasn't what he wanted he would have given us more than we got yeah well i still think there's a value to the conversation we had but i just think talking to him about what was cristiano ronaldo like you can have that conversation at any point in his life if we had just said edwin thank you so much for finding the time but i'm going to be totally honest you look exhausted you look tired you look drained and the season isn't even over please tell us how are you feeling because we have many people that listen to this podcast who will feel the same they will be really stressed out by work and life and family and everything else and they are hanging on by a thread and that could have been really valuable for those people and we miss that and i think that you know what do we say high performance is doing the best you can where you are with what you've got i still believe we did the best we could where we were with what we had but i now think we have more and i think that it sharpens both of our brains to be like the interview that we're planning to do with this person if we do that interview then there's a chance we've missed something those questions we've pre-prepared are backup questions yeah they are not the central questions well if you think about some of the interviews that we've done over the last three and a half years jake where that we still often refer back to they're often the interviews where we went completely off our scripted questions for whatever reason whether the interviewer like Like Johnny Wilkinson, when he first came in, just said, I can't answer these questions.

11:24So it forced us to think on our feet, whether it was someone like Dame Stephanie Shirley that was coming in at 90 years old and got tired and exhausted quite easily during the interview, and it forced us to slow down and sort of adapt. I think they're the ones that sometimes, it's that old saying that common sense is what you do when you don't know what to do. And I think sometimes if we'd have just decided to throw away what we'd planned and just respond in the moment, I think we could have got something different. But it shows the value that that had for us. And I still hope that it carried a real value for the people listening.

12:02I'd love to hear from people. Yeah, I think so. I think what I would say is that I did notice that he did visibly relax, didn't he? So again, context for listeners is that we'd been told really clearly he had just an hour of his time to give us, and yet he stayed for nearly an hour and a half. and I think that was emblematic of, I think some of the conversation we had of going back to his career and some of his experiences of leading from behind, as he said, sort of gave him probably a bit of comfort in what was a troubling time for him when he was, you know, telling us about, you asked him, what was it like sharing a dressing room with Cristiano Ronaldo?

12:39I said, what was it like for Cristiano Ronaldo sharing a dressing room with me? I thought we saw little snippets of the bloke that he really is when he's at his best, confident strident and somebody that's knows where his boundaries lie yeah okay let's uh let's talk about another guest who was with us this month the singer tom grennan i really liked him didn't you yeah he was brilliant and not just because he was a united fan which would be shallow but i'd like to i thought he just came in and you know you might have an image of what a pop star is supposed to be like and i like i did i thought it'd be quite loud quite brash quite blingy and he wasn't he was quiet he was humble and really engaging and i think this conversation plays exactly to what we try to do with high performance i'm sure you will have an opinion about tom grenon whether it's you like or don't like his music like or don't like his dress sense like or don't like his social media account or the way he acts or blah blah blah but none of that's really important because your opinion, our opinion becomes valueless compared to the empathy that you develop for someone when you get to know them.

13:47And when someone sits in front of you and talks about therapy and talks about how that's changed their lives and talks about some of the traumas they've had and how they had to reframe those, then you listen, then you learn, and then you grow. Here's just a couple of clips from our conversation with Tom. I was so annoyed at myself for listening to this little other voice who was saying, wasn't good enough that I thought to myself I'm gonna be spontaneous and I'm also gonna just throw myself in to something I never thought I'd ever do and see if I could swim and I ended up being able to swim in it and I thought this is wicked and I've also flipped the thought.

14:30I do a lot of therapy now and I still and I have this thing of flipping a thought which really really helps me in my day-to-day life anyway go on explain what you mean by that so if i have something that's given me anxiety say if i'm like i can't do this or i feel like i am sinking inside or something like i'd be like no i'm not i'm actually floating and then that makes it a positive thing straight away and it changes the way you your thought and it also it changes what that little voice inside your head is saying so you're kind of like shouting at that other voice saying nah mate that's not what I want to do I want to do that and then you're actually doing it I got jumped and that wasn't like you say just this little scuffle it was something that humbled me massively but also affected me massively where like I couldn't leave my house like I said I've always been that guy who's i've got energy i'm always and i think this is the first time i ever understood what mental health was what like anger really really was what revenge really felt like all these different emotions where like i couldn't cope with what was going on in my head and what precipitated the attack it was random wow so that's what i think that's what why has it happened to me why why have they done this to me that was like I say the first time where I was like I can't I don't know how to be me anymore you've just completely changed me and not only that you changed my family's life too so I think that also gave me the fire when I could navigate my my thoughts and and what I wanted to do of like I'm gonna really become something bigger and better and being able to say like thank you very much mate you've just absolutely created something that you never thought you and you never see me because you don't know me but you've just created something unbelievable so thank you so you flipped it again yeah look i love that thought process of flipping yeah flipping a negative into a positive well i think it's a valuable tip for anyone listening to this because what he describes like the attack when he was a young lad when he just got randomly set up on um it was a random attack and he describes how he tried to make sense of it why me what happens and this is an important principle of it's an organizing principle of how your brain works it has to make sense from the chaos that our lives often would be like if we didn't have this overriding narrative but our brains are also wired to be negative so it goes to the worst possible solution why did it happen to me because you're an idiot is what your brain will instantly throw up so what he's describing there is a powerful technique of how do you just present your brain with an alternative perspective and the idea of just getting into the habit of flipping it and trying to see things from a completely different angle can often allow a chink of positivity to come into what can seem a dark situation and i think that's what he's done for his whole career of like what like why me why should i be a pop star well there's millions of people competing from that but then flipping it says but why not me why shouldn't it be me why don't i have something that's unique and is a talent we can all apply that to our lives whatever the situation we're facing and you know on the same theme of flipping i actually really liked it when he talked about envy and he talked about the sort of inspiration that he gets from other people doing really well we've heard this conversation quite a few times actually from various different people like we're taught that envy is a bad thing envy is not envy is your focus it's your north star it's it's something to aim towards it's a it's a direction to point yourself and i just think that's a really valuable thing for people to just understand that reframing isn't just reframing how you live based on the things that happen to you it's reframing how your brain naturally reacts to stuff happening around you all the time yeah there's a billion sport psychologist called dr josephine perry that talks really well on this she talks about the power of emotional literacy so when we say i'm envious that's quite a lazy emotionally term to use and so you explore it and you go you know what i feel a little bit piqued that somebody's getting an opportunity that i'm not so describing rather than just saying i'm envious or jealous i'm piqued by it it sort of just slightly offends me then is a more illiterate term so you can go and explore well what is it that you're offended by and it's like well why haven't i got that chance so then you can work backwards and say so what do i need to do to put myself in the position of getting that chance then gives you a sense of power rather than just feeling crippled by some of these emotions and what tom described is just being very emotionally literate in the way that he describes his emotions and what they mean for him Well, I hope that from listening to that podcast, you feel you know Tom Grennan, not better than before, but in a totally different way than before you heard that chat.

19:52Talking of the hidden struggle, the hidden fight, the hidden battle, Matt Willis is a man who hid his battle for a long time until he could hide it no longer, wasn't he? Yeah, he was. And he came to us just days before there was quite a revealing documentary that he starred in about his addiction that was aired on the BBC. and he was a little bit nervous, wasn't he, about how it was going to be received because the documentary and the interview that we did with him really sort of exposed a lot of vulnerabilities. This is a guy that has, you know, he's had number one best-selling albums and records, he's had sell-out tours, and yet battling the demons of addiction, whether that's to drugs, whether that's to alcohol, that he was facing, sort of reveals something very human about him.

20:40Well, that was the changing moment in my life, you know, because I can't really, like I said, I never meant to be in a band. I never meant to go to drama school and be an actor or anything, but I kind of, I always wanted to be a dad. You know, when I think back to everything in my life, the only thing I ever wanted to be was a father. I had the image of them in my head. I kind of could imagine myself being a dad. I knew what I wasn't going to do, you know, a very strong opinion on what I wasn't going to do. and what kind of father I was going to be. And I had my daughter and she was about eight months and I missed her crawling for the first time and my wife's birthday party because I was out getting fucked.

21:21And the next day I kind of woke up and Emma came in. She didn't shout at me. She didn't yell at me. She just told me what I'd missed and that she wasn't going to stand for it. And it hit me all of a sudden that I was going to be a terrible father. And it was the one thing that I had always planned not to be, the only thing I'd ever planned not to be. And I was going to do that. And I was going to do that to this little person who I loved more than I'd ever felt in my entire life. And I was going to repeat that cycle of shit. And it made me drop to my knees and ask for help. I think one of the things that stands out for me here is a reminder of the power you find when all is lost.

22:10And I think that for so long he struggled until the moment where it was so bad and it was so low and it was so hard that he decided that now I do something about this. And I think there's a strong message for people. If they're listening to this and they're struggling and they feel like the struggle is futile, there will be a moment. There will be a moment. And if you can grab hold of that moment, then that is the point at which you can turn your life around. and nothing is lost until it's lost. Yeah, and I know we're not addiction therapists or specialists on this topic, but Matt was really interested in where he said that a lot of the genesis for addiction therapy is that it's often said you have to hit rock bottom before you can make your way up.

22:52And he challenged that and said, you don't have to get to that dark place before you can start to turn your life around. And I found that really interesting to explore it with him because I feel we all have moments where life maybe feels a bit hard or a struggle, but just accepting that we can start the change at any time by almost being vulnerable, just allowing ourselves to be open to the fact that we are struggling and to be able to go and speak to somebody, to get help, to go and seek support wherever it is. In his case, it was the power of the relationship he had with his wife, Emma, that there was that lovely bit that really resonated with me when he said that day when he was staying over with his wife and he said, what are we doing today?

23:39And it was like, we're just going to hang around and drink tea and just chat. And it was also like, well, what do I need to do? Who do I need to be to impress these people? And it was a sense of you don't have to be anybody other than yourself. Made him realise just where he was and the dark place he was in. I think sometimes moments like that, very human, mundane, everyday moments, can actually remind us of being human. And being human sometimes involves struggle. Very good. Thank you, mate. Thanks, mate. I love these. You said it at the start that I'm delighted people enjoy listening to this because I enjoy doing it as well.

24:20this is the pause for us in between these conversations where we can reflect on our learnings and take them away and hopefully people if they want to go and explore it can go into these episodes from the last month and listen to them in more detail and just remember you've got the best part of 200 episodes to go and review and to listen to again and i i would encourage you if you listened to one of the early conversations two or three years ago go back and find it go Go back and see what those people say, but think about how differently you react to it based on the things you've learned from listening to High Performance over the past few years, because being a lifelong learner is one of the best things you can be, and we all hope that these podcasts are helping you to be a learner on a weekly basis.

25:03Thank you so much for the continued support. Please do subscribe to this podcast. Subscribing to High Performance allows us to grow our channel. The bigger we can grow it, the greater the names we can attract, and the more impact we can have for you. You can also watch them on YouTube as well as listen to them wherever you get your podcasts. But thanks for listening. Keep sharing what you're hearing and we'll speak soon.