The importance of adaptability with Neil Fachie

0:00Hi there, welcome along to another bite size edition of the High Performance Podcast. this is where we take a previous guest who's joined us over the last well almost 200 episodes would you believe and we just take a little nugget a little moment of inspiration a message from them and i'll talk about it with professor damien hughes hey damien hey jake you're right yeah really well so we're gonna hear from someone who joined us actually during covid when we weren't able to get to these guests and do you remember all the fuss of trying to make sure that our internet connection was working and that we could hear and see each other but it was always very different when we weren't in the same room as our guests but actually in some ways it it allowed them a bit of freedom i think didn't you just uh just to talk to a like a camera as it was then and just really be free and open and be themselves yeah definitely i think for people to almost have the opportunity to speak and be lit and listen was uh really powerful and uh i think it was a real privilege to be able to get to speak to neil at the time because he was in the process of preparing for the commonwealth games yeah this is one of the positives i guess is that you know using technology allowed us to get to people we couldn't normally get to and as damien quite rightly points out neil fasci was preparing for the paralympics he's a 2012 paralympic champion reigning world champion and tandem kilo and flying 200 meter world record holder who was selected for his third paralympics in tokyo an amazing guy an incredible athlete but also someone who has had to really find resilience and he's had to flip the challenge of his disability to be a positive in his life and that's what he spoke to us when he joined us on the High Performance Podcast as episode number 50.

1:44Here's a small taste of what he told us. I've realised looking back that yeah that ability to problem solve has been incredible for me so like my air condition gets worse over time so I've faced the realistic probability at some point in my life I'll go totally blind at this point I still have some sight but it's quite blurry and when I was younger it was much better so I've constantly had to adapt how how I go about in the world how I how I was educated at school that was constantly changing and it's just problem solving that I've kind of really learned and I actually really enjoyed problem solving now that ability to overcome something and find a way to do it I find really exciting so yeah I think in many ways I'm quite lucky.

2:27However, if you were to offer me my eyesight back, I'd probably snap your hand off, to be honest. But the word disability, I don't know. I don't hate it, to be honest. It's something that's often discussed, but I don't really see it as a negative myself anymore. But that's probably because I'm surrounded by other people with disabilities who are excelling at what they do. So can we explore this idea then, Neil, about you described it as problem solving and I described it as the ability to not remain stuck. Would you break that process down because it sounds like it's something you've had to learn from quite a young age of when you're faced with a challenge how do you go about dealing with that yeah interesting question I like that it's um for me initially I think it was that case of just trying to prove people wrong um I said I didn't really accept my disability I wanted to I wanted to do the things that other people did so for a long time I used that kind of almost chip on the shoulder mentality where you know people said uh you know someone with your eyesight shouldn't be doing these things and oh um i just wanted to prove that i can and this was just that fighting attitude but to be honest in later life it's kind of changed a lot where now it's that ability to to reflect on situations that are tough and i've gone through quite a lot of my sporting career where i've hit real low points and um you know you've had to take that you don't always just bounce back straight it away and it's not that easy that you're just a resilient person who can take a knock and just carry on but now it's a case more of you take that time to almost go through a group grieving process where you take the loss on board take that step back and look at it from a different perspective and I think that's the key thing I've learned is taking different perspectives taking a step back from the emotion and looking at things logically and then just realizing that there's a bigger picture there's more more opportunities there's more angles you can approach things at And it's just, I find that ability to step back and look at it and take on board what other people kind of suggest from a different angle as well.

4:27So it's just not being that one individual who's in it. You know, that old phrase, you can't see the wood for the trees, is pretty common, particularly in sport, to be honest. A lot of it's quite individualized. I was reading something the other day and it said that when you stumble across problems in life, 90 % of struggling with that problem is the way you react to it. 10 % is actually only the problem itself. And that's kind of just redressing this something that we talk about a lot, which is fault against responsibility, not being a victim. That's what this is about, isn't it? It's about focusing on the 90%, the reaction to the problem, rather than quite often the fact that the problem itself is possible to get through it and get past it with the right mindset.

5:12Yeah, something I often realise is that the thought of doing something is far harder than the actual doing as well. So it's that initial step, which is the hardest. And I find that every day, to be honest, in training where I get up in the morning, I look at my training programme and think, oh, not again, you know, it's hideous. And the thought of actually getting up and doing it is just so hard. But if you find a way to kind of create that mindset that just helps you take that first step, it's incredible. Once you get that momentum going, how much you can just plow through it. So I think that's where that 10 % really comes from.

5:48It's just finding that first step. And it's almost as simple as that. You take that first step. And once you're on the journey, then generally people don't stop. So that's something I've had to train my mind how to overcome. and accept fear and, you know, just roll with it, to be honest, because you realise that that's where the kind of, the good things lie at the end of that path once you actually do take those steps into the unknown. In many ways, Damien, I love these bite-sized episodes because it reminds us of the amazing lessons and learnings that we've had over the past few years. I remember we were joined by Jo Malone, and she said that when she'd recovered from her cancer diagnosis, the lessons of that time slipped through her fingers like sand.

6:28I often think it's the same with this podcast. And just rewinding and hearing someone like Neil, who joined us years ago, is a great reminder of the gold that was in that episode. Yeah, I mean, I sometimes get people that will approach me and say, oh, it'd be great if you could get such and such a body on, and you go, they've already been on. And I think you're right. To have the chance to go back through the archive and find these gems is as helpful for us as it is, hopefully, for anyone listening to this. Well, let's talk then about the research, the psychology, the science behind reframing.

7:01I think it's a really powerful one for our audience, because there is sometimes this feeling that we're fixed, our reaction is already predetermined, the life that we live is not down to us, it's down to the things that happen to us. But if Neil is able to reframe something as huge as losing his eyesight, then surely we should all be able to reframe the things that happen to us on a weekly, monthly or yearly basis. so I wonder why we find it so difficult yeah it's a really good question I think the answer is we all develop what's known as mental models or in psychology speak it's called a heuristic and it's almost like a reference point that we have a rule of thumb for how we interpret the world to be so many of us are brought up with the idea that if you work hard you get good results so when they don't get the results they want our instinct is I need to work harder when actually that that might be an unhelpful heuristic so I often see it when if I work with a coach that's going through a period where they're getting lots of bad defeats and they say I'll get the players on the training ground and I'll work them harder and sometimes you have to challenge them and say well what you're doing isn't working so maybe you have to work smarter instead that's another way of getting people to reframe a challenge that they have so you think about someone like Neil that you know he started to lose his sight and then the initial early part of his career was to be a sprinter and then he reframed the challenge and said maybe I don't have the power to run 100 meters in a world record time but I can translate that onto a bike and suddenly start to make a significant difference his whole ability to interpret both his disability as something that he can overcome has been carried out and the ripples of it have existed throughout his whole career and I really hope that for you listening to this you can think of things in your life where actually your reaction to it is the determining factor, not the thing that has happened.

8:51You know, all of us have got through COVID together, right? COVID wasn't your fault, but it was still your responsibility to deal with COVID. And actually this conversation about fault versus responsibility plays nicely into this. It's not Neil's fault that he lost his eyesight. Sometimes it's a hard truth to hear that it's still your responsibility. So if you're carrying a trauma from your childhood, not your fault, but still your responsibility. If a partner has walked out on you, not your fault, still your responsibility to deal with it if you get a medical diagnosis that you're not expecting not your fault but still your responsibility it's a difficult one for people damien because i think once we accept that we're taking 100 responsibility for things it leaves us no excuses it leaves us nowhere to go but actually removing the excuses brings the learning definitely so one of the key messages that so many of our guests tell us is about responsibility rather than culpability so rather than invest our time and energy looking to point the finger of blame and work out who was to whose fault was it and who can i uh rail against sometimes just accepting that it wasn't my fault but it is my responsibility gives us one of the key pillars of high performance motivation which is autonomy, the ability to feel that we have some degree of control over life and how we respond to it.

10:14So if you take a really simple example, Jake, like when people play the lottery, you're playing a game of almost infinitesimally small chances. And yet 90 % of people that play the lottery play the same numbers every week and they'll attribute it to things like it's a special line or these are numbers of significance. And what they're essentially doing is showing you how powerful choice is in this and giving people the sense of autonomy and control over a situation. We convince ourselves, even in a situation where we don't control it, we create an illusion of control. So when we can learn to do it in life in general and cut out the irrelevant stuff to the stuff that actually we do have a real sense of influence over, that makes us feel more powerful.

11:01And when we feel more powerful, we feel that we're able to give our very best in every situation. Really good stuff. And I would just encourage you listening to this to think of all the things going on in your life at the moment and think actually the things that are bringing you stress or challenge or worry or fear. How much of that stress, worry, challenge and fear is the thing itself? And how much of it is your reaction? What was the brilliant equation that Johanna Conta came up with? Oh yeah. So Joe Conta came up with this in conjunction with Juan Cotto, her coach who said that struggle times resistance equals pain so she said that she found herself that when she might be struggling in a game to get into it and she'd fight that and convince herself i shouldn't be finding this as hard as as it feels the pain tended to be huge so when she learned that if she just reduced resistance to zero and instead embrace acceptance it meant that the struggle the pain that she was going through became so much more manageable there you go how much of the things that worry you is you railing against the things that are happening i can't tell you enough how powerful it is for you to understand the difference between fault and responsibility and for you to realize that life is how you react to the things that happen not just the things that happen if you want to hear the full conversation with neil fasci it's episode 50 of the high performance podcast but i just hope that that is a really good example for you that lessons and learnings and understanding and growth lies in every episode of this podcast.

12:34So have a look through the back catalogue, see what you can find, and we will see you very soon for another episode of High Performance.