The Mindset Shift That Won Ash Barty Wimbledon | ft. Performance Coach Ben Crowe

0:03Hi there, welcome along to another episode of High Performance. It's a Wednesday, so it's myself and Damian sitting and chatting. Hey, buddy. Hi, mate. You all right? Very well, thanks. So we've got a bunch of guests who we're going to hear from, previous High Performance guests. We'll share some interesting clips from them, and they're all around a similar theme. And the theme is why the world's best athletes stop trying to be the best. and it's not just us talking and not just us hearing from former guests. We're actually going to be joined by someone and you're going to speak to a man who can give us so much richness and depth and information in this space.

0:37I suppose, first of all, you should tell us why people should stick around to hear your conversation with Ben Crow.

0:42Jake Humphrey: Well, we're coming up for Wimbledon, Jake, and this is a man that Andre Agassi recommends. This is somebody that Ash Barty worked with before she won Wimbledon. Steph Gilmore, the eight-time world surfing champion, credits him with transforming her career. He's an Australian performance coach. His name's Ben Crow and he's never told any of his clients that they're the best. Now there's a couple of parents who spend our lives telling our kids they're the best and they go and do great things. That kind of seems counterintuitive or it's not the kind of thing we hear a lot when it comes to trying to get others to reach their own version of high performance.

1:14So why does he not tell his clients that they're the best?

1:18Jake Humphrey: Well he helps them separate who they are from what they do. Now I know that might sound simple but most athletes most people have never actually done that you know think about one of the first conversations you'll meet when you meet a stranger is what do you do not who are you do you know i mean and the cost of not doing this is exactly what we're going to talk about with ben today okay well before we get on with the episode just to tease you excitedly whether you're walking the dog out for a run or driving the car um here is what you can expect from ben crow a bit later on here's a here's a little teaser talk about this idea in your billing book about separating what you do from who you are why do so many of us find that such a difficult thing to to uncouple in recent times yeah the worlds have gone so external and extrinsic money fame status and recognition rather than internal and intrinsic to get to know who we are the human being that is not the human doing so we learn unfortunately that we believe if we do something and achieve something we will be someone you know we'll be someone well before we hear from ben we're going to hear from three tennis players who've been on the show boris becker what a conversation joe conter one of my favorites and conan nyland who might not be a name that trips off the tongue but the conversation we had with him was fascinating all of them talking about the struggle of professional tennis what it actually feels like from the inside and then of course we'll frame our conversation with Ben as the antidote to that struggle because that's really what he's there for.

2:50So where should we start and why, Damien?

2:53Jake Humphrey: Well, why don't we start with Boom Boom himself, Mr. Boris Becker. We went out to Dusseldorf to meet with him, you know, do you remember when he walked into the room with us and his charisma, his sort of force of personality and just his strident views on the world sort of filled the space, didn't he? He was a force of nature. But it was interesting to listen to him reflect on his career when most people remember him winning wimbledon at 17 futa what happened when he reached the age of 25 absolutely because i think that we look at this as wow what an amazing young talent he went and dominated the world but as he told us on the show by his mid-20s he was exhausted not physically although probably also physically but mainly psychologically Here's Boris explaining more.

3:43Boris Becker: There was a time in my mid-twenties where I was burned out, I was tired of tennis. And maybe in hindsight today I would say at 25, take a break. Take a year off, see what you want to do, if you're still willing to pay the price to be the best tennis player you can be. Smell the roses a little bit. So I didn't do that. I kept on and I had contracts, there was responsibilities and so forth. So I played that up until I was 32. Maybe I would have played longer if I would have taken a break at 25. You lose control over your life and everything is decided for you. Some people have good interests, of course they do.

4:25But you no longer can go, okay, I'm tired for tomorrow's practice.

4:30Boris Becker: You have to give a press conference because you're not having the practice tomorrow. because the tournament sold the practice seats. People are watching your practice. Or when you don't want to play a tournament, you get a fine. Then you have to explain to the world, my shoulder hurts. They go, show me evidence. So you have to go to a doctor, and he has to give you medical. So everything you do is judged. Now, considering all that, I did well a long time. but I think at 25 or so 24 25 I thought for the first time maybe it's time for a break because I'm too much it's I want to live I want to have a social life and I want to I want to be normal now that's so interesting because the very thing that gave him everything he ever wanted took away the one thing that he needed which was the energy to carry on and I think so often we have a podcast called High Performance we talk to high performers but we don't actually really go too deep on the cost of high performance and that's really Boris telling us that

5:39Jake Humphrey: it almost cost him more than it gave him yeah definitely and also as well I found it interesting about not having that courage or the confidence to go and say I just need a break from this I need to step away because he was almost on that hedonic treadmill of the more he played the more money he made the more people wanted to sponsor him and sometimes that willingness to say I just need to stop this and that allowed him that would have allowed him he argued to go and find the pleasure and the passion that he'd had playing when he was a young boy and that would have then sustained him to have a far longer second half of his career I mean how often have we have we chatted with people that say I wish I'd have enjoyed it I wish I'd have found the moments of joy in what I was doing and if we get caught on this idea of what's the next achievements what's next it can often blind us to what's right in front of us and I thought that was interesting from what Boris spoke about and especially given the context of what subsequently happened in his life about the prison sentence that that two-hour conversation we had with him was was dominated by in many ways but he talks about um he talks about finding the joy in small moments and I think his career stole that from him and so many of us are not allowing ourselves to feel the joy until we achieve great things and it's only when you hear from Boris saying that it was the great achievement that stole joy or when you speak to Johnny Wilkinson as we did who said he was happy for 30 seconds after winning the Rugby World Cup it's a great reminder that we can't create the next generation of young people attaching achievement to self-worth?

7:14Jake Humphrey: Well I mean I often point to the research of a psychologist called Barbara Fredrickson who explored this very topic of joy because she argues that an emotion like joy is actually an evolutionary puzzle like what does it give us as a species we understand fear it gets us away and allows us to survive but what does joy do and barbara frederickson's work basically concludes that it broadens our perspective and it builds our confidence so having moments of joy where we can just get off the treadmill and stop and just appreciate where we are gives us a sense of perspective of what we're doing where we where we exist in the universe but also gives us the ability to reflect on what we're gaining what we're what we're acquiring by by pursuing some kind of task and we've actually spoken to a lot of high achievers who are so scared of the moment that the high achievement no longer gives them the high thrill i think we should talk about this because we were joined by johanna konta yeah she reached top five in the world but she told us that age 24 she was crying on her bed telling her mom she knew she wasn't meant to be famous and she couldn't understand what was happening please remember this is someone who is a high achiever from a young age and as a parent everywhere i look i see parents desperate for their kids to be achieving great things at 10 11 12 13 years old thinking that's going to set them up for a great life.

8:36I'm afraid to say everyone, the messages that we hear on this show tell us quite the opposite. So what was going on with Johanna Conte? Have a listen and let's find out. My parents left their lives in Australia. They racked up a load of debt moving over during the financial crisis while they both lost their jobs. It was a whole family dynamic of sacrifice. and knowing that having, for me, I felt personally responsible for that. And so I think it was trying to deal with my dream and what I hadn't yet achieved, coupled with, well, we're also in this state because of me. Pain times resistance equals suffering.

9:18So if I'm in pain, let's say at a 10, and I'm resisting at a 10, my suffering is going to be 100. but if my resistance is zero then my suffering's zero this idea Damien of pain times resistance equals suffering so if we can make our resistance to anything zero then our suffering becomes zero that's not just a formula for tennis that's a

9:45Jake Humphrey: formula for life yeah well Albert Ellis the famous sort of psychologist talks about so many of us suffer from an excess case of musterbation and you heard that right it was musterbation rather than trying to be vulgar musterbation is where we tell you what i must be successful i need to do this i have to win rather than i'd like to it'd be great to or it'd be nice if that was the case because when we sort of change our language to be strident i have to do this i must do this i need to do it we start to make pressure moments feel even more acute than they actually are we keep the pressure on ourselves and as Johanna explained to us and the work she did with her psychologist Juan Cotto she was creating the pressure that was so acute she was sabotaging herself she was actually reducing her capacity to just play and enjoy and be good at what she did any of us can start to just catch ourselves in the moment using that kind of masturbation language and just try and change it I don't I haven't got to do this I get to do it yeah just that one change of a letter freezes up and liberates us.

10:51And I love the fact that she ended up putting those words on her grip, play, love, power, focus, because we haven't heard from him yet, but those were exactly the things that Ben talks about with you, I know. We'll hear from him in just a couple of moments, but she'd kind of found the same solution. She'd found herself beyond the results of that tennis match. Let's hear from someone else now, Conor Nyland. And I think this is a particularly interesting one, Damien, because if you say Johanna Conter, people would be like, yeah, I think I've heard of Johanna. she was a great player in her day. If you say Boris Becker, they've definitely heard of Boris Becker.

11:22Most people wouldn't have heard of Conor Nyland, but it's a reminder to us that sometimes the guests that you haven't heard of on high performance can carry so much value.

11:29Jake Humphrey: Yeah, his book, The Racket, was brilliant because I didn't quite appreciate the context of what 99 % of the world's tennis players operate within, going on the challenger tours, having to fund the way around it, often arriving jet-lagged and having to get up the next morning and find a practice partner. And the demands of that world, when you read the book, are relentless, but also almost like I couldn't find much joy in it. You've got to really genuinely love your craft to want to subject yourself to that. It's almost like a rite of passage for all the world's tennis players to go through. Let's listen to Conor describe what he describes as almost like that sense of purgatory of what that world can sometimes feel like.

12:13I guess, and that was one of the things that I felt a relief when I finished playing was the self-analysis, the constant self-analysis when you're a tennis player, probably with every sport, kind of went away. It's the 24-7 nature of it. It's tied to who you feel like you are. If you're winning you're happy as i said earlier when i'm losing i'm not um so yeah that self-worth it was absolutely tight it always makes me laugh when i when you hear the top players um when they say they've won one wimbledon they say it's the greatest moment of my career they never say it's the greatest moment of my life and i don't know whether they're trying to do some sort of a psychological trick with that wording as if their career and their life are very separate like clearly winning Wimbledon when you're 23 has to be the greatest moment of your life so far but they're quite keen to to show and maybe it's a little bit of a posturing that this is only the greatest moment of my tennis career it's not the greatest moment of my life so I find that I always find that wording quite interesting um so for me it was so wrapped up and entwined in who I felt I was

13:26Jake Humphrey: I like the fit there where he's chuckling at that wording the greatest moment of my career and not my life because there's something really quite painful underneath that sentence because the reason players say it that way is they've been told that they need to separate the two and most of them can't now for connor it was the winning and the losing and who he was as a person but for a while they were all the same things and that's exactly the kind of problem that ben crow has spent 30 years investigating and now his life helping people solve I think it was a really cool conversation of course you can listen to any of those chats by going into the back catalogue of High Performance the links are in the description to this episode and I think that the moment we stop mistaking success for self-worth we can become pretty dangerous right because suddenly we're chasing growth rather than chasing applause absolutely, listen to those clips there three different tennis players, three different versions of exactly the same problem where their identity starts to become wrapped up around the results they get so pressure then replaces the play the sport becomes something that you need to survive rather than to thrive in and that's what I'm saying to you Ben Crow spent 30 years helping the world's best athletes solve exactly this conundrum so in Wimbledon week it felt like the perfect moment to contact Ben in Australia and hear some of his wisdom so here he is then an Australian performance coach he's worked with Ash Barty, Steph Gilmore, the eight-time world surfing champion, Dylan Olcott, two-time Wimbledon wheelchair tennis champion.

14:59He's worked with the NBA teams, Australian cricket teams, Andre Agassi and Esther Perel, no less, vouch for this person. And I think the key moment here, Damon, is this isn't someone telling people that they're the best. This is someone telling people the total opposite. Absolutely.

15:15Jake Humphrey: He asked them to understand who are they beyond what they do to separate their identity from the results that they get. and he asked three questions that I think are really powerful. Who am I? What do I want? And how do I want to get there? And what comes out of the process has been proven to win numerous Grand Slams. There's also a nice moment where he asks you a question. Make sure you stick around for that as we hear Damien Hughes talking to Ben Crow. We'll be right back after a quick word from our partners. When you and I were growing up, Damien, expectations used to mean things you can control 100%, right?

15:52Like I can want the sun to come up tomorrow, but I can't control it. I can't guarantee it. There's no expectations that the sun will come up. But today, either because of greed or focusing on what other people think, expectations today loosely has been defined as something we can't control and yet we still want to control it, which is also the definition of pressure. So today's definition of expectation is also today's definition of pressure, which is why you'll always hear those two words used together when you're watching sport on the weekend. They'll always talk about there's so much pressure, there's so much expectations because we've kind of bundled the two words together like these two nasty cousins that follow each other around.

16:32And once you realize that, you can't uncouple it, you can't unsee it. So whenever I hear the word pressure, almost always the person has an unhealthy or unrealistic relationship with what is expected of them or what isn't expected of them. So the quickest way to remove pressure from your life, like right this very second, is to reframe what is expected of you and I and what isn't expected of us. And thinking we have to live up to someone else's expectations is not our life task. Like, that's not our responsibility in life. Like, we can't control what other people think about us. So believing we have to, or expectations of outcome, that creates outcome pressure.

17:11So once you can identify that and you reframe expectations as things I can control, You actually remove pressure. And it's quite extraordinary when people have that kind of aha moment. And so, yeah, it's been almost a journey for me to kind of identify where the distractions are coming from.

17:28Jake Humphrey: So if we use the example then, because there's a very clear before and after with this word expectation in the world of Ash Barty, would you describe your work with us? So, and we'll start, if you wouldn't mind, Ben, telling us about that collapse at the French Open? What did you see happen? Yeah, absolutely. So Ash, this is her first Grand Slam semi-final at the French Open in 2019. And she started on fire. She's got her kind of A-game words, which was calm, confident, clear, focused and sharp. So whenever, at any moment in a point or in a game, she can go back to those A-game words to remind her of the best version of herself.

18:11She's 5-1 up, 40-15 up in the first set. And suddenly she tightens up rather than lightens up. And there's a rain delay and she gets distracted and suddenly she loses the point and loses the point and then she loses the game. Then she loses the next game. And then she loses the next game. And then suddenly it all spiraled out of control and then suddenly she lost the unlosable set and then she's three love down in the second set. And I distinctly remember when she sits down and three love down in the second set, she goes back to her A-game words, but talking to her after the match, she has this epiphany.

18:47She suddenly realizes, she almost says to herself, and if you ever see highlights of this game, Damien, you'll see what I mean. She starts almost laughing at herself. She goes, well done, Ash. Clearly you're going to lose this match today after being five left up in the first set. But you're letting the conditions of your environment determine your mindset. And she kind of says to herself, hang on a sec. I decide my mindset. Like I decide my attitude. I decide my self-worth. I decide, which is kind of the definition of agency, right? It's not what happens to us. is how we respond. And in that moment, that epiphany, that perspective shift, she walked back on centre court and she goes, okay, I might lose this match today, but I decide, right, rather than letting the conditions of her environment determine her attitude.

19:27And she broke the girl's serve for the first time in nine games. She then held her own serve for the first time in nine games. She won the next six games in a row. She won the set 6-3. She won the next set 6-3. And the next day, she wins the French Open, right? And two weeks later, she goes to Birmingham, England. And she becomes the number one tennis player in the world. And she stayed there for the rest of her career. And her life at that moment, right, will never, ever, ever be the same again. But if you go back to that moment when she was three love down in the second set, she had a choice to make.

19:57She could have let the conditions of her environment determine her mindset. She goes, uh-uh, I decide my mindset. Yeah, I decide my attitude. I decide my self-worth. Once she realized she had that power to take back control, it didn't guarantee she'd win the match, but it did guarantee she'd be authentic. You know, she'd be able to control the things she could control. And with that perspective shift, yeah, kind of her whole life changed around. No, I'm intrigued by the A-game words that you describe. Yeah, so when I work with an athlete, the process, first and foremost, it's kind of really to answer three questions.

20:30The first one is who am I, where you kind of, she connects with herself and the words and mantras that best represents the best version of herself and make sense of her story from her inner fan, not her inner critic, right? Because as humans, we're really good at saying what we're not, not good enough, loved enough, smart enough. And we kind of suck at saying what we are. Like I am strong, I am worthy, I am enough. So part of the journey was to make sense of her story and to separate what she does from who she is and realise that, you know, playing tennis is what Ash Barty does, but it's not who she is.

21:01And once she can connect back with the human being, not the human doing, then she can learn to be like, you know, totally committed but fully detached and not attach her self-worth to whether she wins or loses a game of tennis. Once she does that, the second question she needs to answer is, okay, I've worked out who I am. Now, what do I want? Like, what do I want from this crazy thing called life? What are my goals? What are my dreams? Like, what's my purpose? What are my values? What are my needs? And then the third question is, how do I get there? What are the tools from a performance point of view that can help me get there?

21:33And when we get back to performance mindset, the process is learning to accept the things we can't control and focus only on the things we can control. And she realized that there's so many things she can't control in a game of tennis. The big ones is expectations of others, you know, the opinions of the media or social media or, you know, the Australian fans or a coach or a parent. The second one is expectations of outcome. Like she can't control the results, but she can control the process. She can't control the weather. She can't control, you know. So you develop an acceptance list of all the things you can't control.

22:08Once you can identify and acknowledge and then accept and let go of all the things you can't control, that acceptance list is this beautiful boundary that creates freedom, you know, freedom to compete, have fun and play. So that's the first part of the process is really, because we're so bad at accepting things we can't control, especially athletes, right? That's stubbornness they think they can control. So then once they've developed an acceptance list, then they develop a focus list. And the focus list is what are all the things I can control? And typically, there's three things an athlete can control.

22:38The first one is intention. Like, you know, what do you want? What's the goal? What's the strategy? Or what's my role on the team? The second one is effort. Like, how hard am I prepared to work or train or study or practice? And the third one is mindset. When it comes to mindset, we help an athlete develop a set of words that represents the best version of them in that performance, right? So if Ash is focusing on being calm, it's like medically, scientifically impossible for Ash to be anxious at the same time. But the opposite is also true. If she's anxious because she's focusing on the outcome of this serve, then it's impossible for her to be calm.

23:15So she identifies five words, five A-game states, if you like, that represents the best version of her. And then she practices those words, you know, in training and before matches and in matches, right? And it's more instinctive than anything, but at least she can come back to these anchor words that represents the best version of her. And typically calm and present and confident are words that a lot of athletes use. LeBron James uses those words, for instance. Andre Agassi had these A-game words. And Ash Barty was able to develop hers. So at any moment, she could come back to that authenticity.

23:49That's brilliant. Thank you for explaining it.

23:50Jake Humphrey: But can we go back to question number one? Because you talk about this idea in your billing book about separating what you do from who you are. Why do so many of us find that such a difficult thing to uncouple? Yeah. Well, in recent times, yeah, the worlds have gone so external and extrinsic, money, fame, status and recognition, rather than internal and intrinsic to get to know who we are, the human being that is, not the human doing. So we learn, unfortunately, that we believe if we do something and achieve something, we will be someone. And, you know, you can blame media, you can blame social media, you can blame materialism or consumerism, but it actually starts in grade three.

24:38In most countries around the world, the education system, in grade three, that's when grading gets introduced. and that's when kids go from intrinsically playing with numbers and playing with shapes to extrinsic. Suddenly there's grades and suddenly my parents are interested in my grades and suddenly I'm not in that class anymore, I'm in that class, I'm not in that team, that team. And a nine-year-old boy or girl, it's too young because they believe from that moment on they have to do something or achieve something in order to be someone and the same thing happens at secondary school and colleges.

25:12So if we can, and I noticed at Nike that, you know, we did a really bad job of educating athletes what was real versus what wasn't real. And I saw these athletes get so distracted by extrinsic motivations and they forgot the intrinsic reasons these little boys or girls fell in love with sport in the first place. And so, but I noticed at Nike that athletes that went internally, not externally, and Andre Agassi is a great, great case study. they're able to separate what they did from who they were. So their identity became less about being an athlete and more about their core values or their intrinsic motivations around play and purpose and learning and growing and helping others and being part of a team and seeing what was possible.

25:54We call these things intrinsic motivations and we can control those, right? But if our whole identity is a human doing, not a human being, then our self-worth was dependent on whether we win or lose a game of tennis, right? And that's a lot of baggage to take onto the tennis court. It's hard enough to win a game of tennis, right? without attaching our self-worth to our results as well.

26:12Jake Humphrey: Which sort of leads me into, there's two billion stories in your book I'd like you to recount for us, if you don't mind, that sort of captures that essence of focusing on the intrinsic rather than the extrinsic. Tell us about Roger Federer and then tell us about Steph Gilmore. Yeah, yeah. Well, first and foremost, Roger Federer, he focused his whole life on three words. Humility, gratitude, and humour, right? So, humility. So, you know, even if he beat a player, six love, six love, he'd still say, yeah, great, great player. We love him in the locker room, right? Really humble. Gratitude. I'm so grateful to be here, right?

26:58You guys are the best. He's always, you know, so appreciative and grateful of his fans and the support. And humour. He'd always have that kind of that beautiful Swiss giggle, right? And these have nothing to do with playing tennis, but in my opinion, have everything to do with him becoming one of the greatest tennis players of the modern era in terms of his perspective about what was important and what wasn't important, so forth. But he also got into the play state, you know, the older he got. We call it neoteny. Neoteny means the older you get, the younger you become. Oh, I love that word. Neoteny.

27:32Neoteny, yeah, it's a beautiful word. But it's, yeah, it basically primes us. It's a gene that we have. My father had this gene, right? He was just a larrikin from Australia. Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, in my opinion, has this gene, right? That the older he becomes, the younger he gets in terms of his attitude. And one of the reasons I dedicated that play chapter in the book to Nike and to Phil Knight is because I learned a lot of these lessons, A, through Phil and my relationship with him and Nike, but also through the athletes like Roger Federer. But Steph Gilmore, yeah, she was probably the first athlete that I guess all the perspective shifts in the book, I applied them to Steph back in 2012.

28:21She just won her third world title in a row.

28:24Jake Humphrey: So would you just explain for people that are not familiar with Steph just who she is and her incredible achievements, Ben. Yeah, so, yeah, Stephanie Gilmore is the greatest surfer of all time. She's eight-time world champion surfer. And back in 2012, after just winning her third world surfing championship, she got viciously attacked by a drug addict out the front of her apartment randomly who was on ice and attacked her with a hammer and broke her skull and broke her arm. And she sadly went off the tour. And through her parents and through her sponsor, family reached out to me. And we started working together in 2013.

29:14And Steph went on this beautiful hero's journey to make sense of that adversity. And it's one of the most beautiful truisms that I know you know very well from listening to your podcast over the last few years. But all my clients know, and I know personally, but obviously Steph knows this truism, and that is your greatest growth always comes from your darkest times. Your greatest learnings in life always come from your most difficult times. And there's a reason for that, right? There's a reason your greatest failures can lead to your greatest success. In Steph's case, it unlocked two beautiful superpowers.

29:52The first one is humility because it just grounds you in the brutal facts of your reality, right? Life sucks. These are the cards I've been down, right? It just grounds us, right? She's just been attacked after winning three world titles. She lost her innocence through that process. But then it also unlocks this incredible curiosity. This curiosity to turn this adversity that you're facing with possibility. Like, okay, where to from here? How do I get through this? Like, you know, who can help me? and that's what led Steph and I start working together. But the other reason your greatest growth comes from your darkest times is it also unlocks your core values because you've got to dive down into some energy source to get you through this crucible moment and it could be love, it could be courage or perseverance or resilience or positivity or optimism, right?

30:43But when you dive down to this energy source to get you through this, you're starting to connect with your authenticity and once Steph did that, She could be able to kind of find herself, the human being that was, not the human doing. And through that adversity, she was able to then work out who she is and what she wanted out of life. When she came back second time around, back onto the tour, her perspective has shifted so beautifully. And she was able to kind of dedicate her surfing to her family and the people in her corner. She'd found her purpose just beyond achievement. She found this sense of fulfillment in terms of why she surfs, which was to inspire other young girls to have the courage to get out of there.

31:21comfort zone and follow their dreams. And then from that place, she went on this incredible journey and won another five world-serving championships. But the great thing about Steph's story, in my opinion, was to win her eighth world title, she got into the play state in the most beautiful way and traded the whole thing as play, as like this fun competition to remove the pressure and the expectations that for a lot of athletes, when they become successful, I think they have to repeat that and they often get caught up in that pressure that we mentioned. But Ash, sorry, Steph was able to get younger and younger and younger attitudinally and find that play state.

31:58It was so beautiful two years ago when she won the world title again. What a beautiful story.

32:04Jake Humphrey: I mean, would you tell us about that play state? Because there's a line in your book that I underlined when I read it where it said that most adults are underplayed rather than overworked, which really resonated with me. Yeah, I'm obsessed by this word at the moment. because everywhere I go in the world at the moment, it's probably the biggest distraction I see in organizations is fear. And we don't call it fear. We typically call it pressure. And the opposite of pressure is freedom. And the opposite of play is fear. Most people think the opposite of play is work, but it's not. It's fear. And as humans, we're designed by nature to play.

32:40Like it's pre-verbal. Before we learn how to speak, we're in this kind of playful nature. And there are a few other species that are the same as homo sapiens. But today we've become play deprived, which is a bit like being sleep deprived. You know, when you're sleep deprived, you're, you know, cranky and frustrated. Well, it's the same when you're play deprived. There's this incredible study in the US where they studied the most hardened criminals in the criminal system to see what they had in common. And the number one ingredient they had in common was that when they were kids, they were play deprived.

33:13And I've been working in sport for over 30 years. and I've never seen a dynamic right now. The amount of athletes whose job description is to play but they're not in the play state. They're in the fear state, caught up with emotional pressure or outcome pressure. And play is also the number one ingredient why anyone in the world goes to work. This study's been going for over 100 years and I think it was the 1980s, the University of Rochester and then Harvard, Stanford and they were able to codify the top six reasons why anyone in the world goes to work. And what I find so fascinating about this study is the number one motivation is play.

33:57Now, play is not table tennis. Play is finding the time and space for creativity and experimentation to flourish. Purpose is number two, as in, you know, the play that you do, the work that you do has a reason and that reason really matters. There's real purpose and meaning to it. And the third one is potential. Potential means learning and growing and getting outside of your comfort zone. The most amazing thing about those three intrinsic motivations, Damien, is we can control those three intrinsic motivations. Like what does play look like for Ben Crow today? What does purpose look like? What does potential learning and growing look like?

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35:34The next three are extrinsic motivations. You can't control them, and they actually decrease productivity. And they are in order, emotional pressure, which is expectations of others, outcome pressure, which is expectations of outcome. And the sixth one is inertia. Inertia means I haven't got anything better to do, I might as well go to work. I'll get my paycheck, but I'm not going to rock the boat. I'm not going to be political. I'm just going to do my job and, you know, and just go about my thing. So if you can help people get back into the play state and organizations getting back into the play state, It creates the most incredible freedom to, you know, compete, have fun and play.

36:15And in the book, I talk about the three types of play that organisations can. And the simplest one is curiosity play. Just simply making questions celebrated rather than berated. Like it's political suicide for me to ask a question if I'm not allowed to. But if you make curiosity in asking questions, it's the most. And I tell the story when Nike was signing Michael Jordan, you know, every basketball shoe in the world was white. and Michael and Nike wanted to create a black and red one, but they weren't allowed to because the NBA would ban them and, you know, fine him$5 ,000. Until one of the young designers in the room said, well, what if we did it anyway?

36:50Like, what if we put more black and red in the shoe and what if we paid the fines and what if we made a television commercial, right? And then within six months, it became one of the biggest shoes in history, right? Not the number one basketball shoes, but the number one shoe in the world. And so that's an example of curiosity play. Spontaneity play is my favorite where you just notice more things and everything's on offer, a bit like improv acting. And you notice yourself saying, hmm, isn't that interesting? Isn't that interesting kind of pattern recognition wise? And in the book I tell the story when, you know, when Boris Becker started playing on the tour, he was, you know, pretty much unbeatable with his serve.

37:25It was, you know, boom, boom, Becker, right? And the first couple of times that Andre Agassi played Boris, he just got ragdolled from one side of the court to the other. But the second time Andre played Boris, he noticed something, you know, thinking about spontaneity play, He said, you know, every time Boris serves, he sticks his tongue out. And if his tongue's to the left, he serves to the left. And if his tongue's to the right, he serves to the right, right? And if his tongue's in the middle, he serves down the line. Now, Boris didn't know he was doing that, but Andre figured it out, right?

37:52Now, Andre played Boris another nine, ten times in his career. Andre never lost another match. And the hardest thing was not doing it on every point, right? And when Boris retired, Andre told him the truth. And Boris goes, oh, my God, I used to go home and tell my wife, it's like he can read my mind. He was just reading his tongue. So that's like spontaneity play. And the third one is called nonsense play. So think of Paul McCartney and the Beatles coming up with crazy, you know, Sergeant Pepper's, you know, fictional characters and started mucking around with synthesizers and Indian music and sounds and so forth.

38:29They're literally mucking around because, you know, he thought a roadie said pass me the salt, you know, the Sergeant Pepper instead of Salt and Pepper on a flight. And when you tap into nonsense play, like, you know, I could have written a whole book on the billions of dollars of commerce once people understand what, you know, how powerful these play states can be. But at the moment, as I mentioned, there's so much pressure and fear in the world today that, so I ask my clients, you know, to ask themselves, you know, as many times as they can throughout the day, am I in the play state or am I in the fear state?

39:00Fear state. We'll be right back after a quick word from our partners. And if they're in the fear state, regardless actually of how they answer that question, the second question can always be, what does play look like for me here? Sometimes play looks like being really still and present and problem solving. Sometimes it looks like really hard work. Sometimes it's having fun. Sometimes it's curiosity or experimentation or imagination. But as long as we're in the play state, we're not in the fear state. and you can kind of catch out yourself. And then, you know, what we do when I'm working with someone is we teach them what their play state looks like.

39:38So, you know, Damien, if I asked you off the top of your head, you know, can you think of an early play memory? You know, when you were a young boy growing up, it might have been playing in the street with kids. It might have been on a family holiday. It might have been climbing a tree, right? But we all have play memories, right? These beautiful memories when time stood still. So what I do is I help people identify. and it's a beautiful exercise to do, right, finding your early play state. Off the top of your head, Damien, can you think of an early play memory when you were younger? Well, the one that comes to mind, Ben,

40:11Jake Humphrey: is I sat with a blank piece of paper and a load of colouring pens and I still love it now. Like when I get a blank piece of paper and just the idea of playing and creating something completely from my imagination is what, But as you're saying it, it brings me real calm. I remember doing it when I was a kid. I used to love sitting at the kitchen table and just sort of doodling away. And even the Boris Becker, the tongue would come out while I'd be sort of focusing and concentrating. And occasionally now I still get the chance and my wife will catch me and she knows that I'm in a place because my tongue is coming out while I'm focusing and drawing or trying to scribble ideas down.

40:54Well, the good news is Michael Jordan sticks his tongue out when he performs and so does Kelly Slater. and a lot of the greatest actors. Oh, make great company then. There you go. But Damien, how old are you roughly in this memory? Probably say about seven. Okay, so go back to that little boy, that little seven-year-old boy who loved drawing and colouring and call out the words that best describes how that little boy was feeling in that memory. Try and come up with about five words for me, please, if you can, just off the top of your head. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

41:25Jake Humphrey: Playful would obviously be a word. Yeah, playful, absorbed, calm, like, pleasured, you know, like, pleasure would definitely be there. And just, like, creativity. Beautiful. Creativity and imagination. Yeah, I love it. So if I then, if we were doing a, you know, a session and I got you to find another play memory and started to call out those words, right, and then another one, you'll start to see this consistency of language. And I've done that exercise, you know, literally thousands of times. And typically, there's five states that often, you know, that come up. One is playful. One is free or carefree, you know, or a derivative of those.

42:17One is excited or adventurous or a derivative of those. one is safe or warm or connected or, you know, belonging. Yeah. And the fifth one is loved. And I was at a conference a few years ago, actually in the UK, I think it was, and there was a psychiatrist in the audience and she said, Ben, why do these same five states keep appearing when people do this exercise and find their early play memory states? And I said, I don't know, it's above my pay grade, right? But maybe, just maybe at its core, that's who we are in our authentic state before we get pimples as teenagers and we think we've got to fit into a tribe, right?

43:05Before that happens, when you find the memories before the memories, right? Because in that moment, you didn't have to do anything or prove yourself to anyone, right? You were playful and absorbed and safe and excited and adventurous. And we often forget, right, as we get older, We think that life is serious and we think we have to conform to, you know, a certain set of ideals and so forth and we lose that authentic playfulness. What's also incredible is whatever we love doing, our play states younger has often formed or informed what we've done later on in life, right? So, if you were playing with a Lego as a kid, there's a good chance you got into, you know, engineering or architectural design.

43:44or if you did play dress-ups as doctors or nurses, there's a very good chance you ended up in the service industry and in some way, shape or form. So it's incredible that not only our play states, but our play history can often inform what we do later on in life. And once we join the dots, it's quite exciting to go back to when we feel like there's something missing in our life. In my opinion, as I mentioned, bringing play back into our life in whatever shape or form that actually looks like. The reason I'm obsessed with it though at the moment and the reason, you know, there was a reason I wanted Andre Agassi on the front cover of my book because he was the first athlete that truly understood vulnerability in my opinion and was able to make sense of his adversity and make setbacks.

44:29Adam Grant is on the back cover of my book. The reason I wanted Adam Grant is because he helped me understand how to simplify complex issues and so forth and give me the confidence to get going, not being a trained psychologist in the way. But Esther Perel is also on the front cover of my book and she was the first person to help me understand the correlation between play and love because there's a school of thought in psychology that there's only two emotions, right? Love or fear. And every other emotion is one of those two states, like, you know, confidence, excitement, passion is love and anxiety, stress, worry is fear.

45:05And again, it's above my pay grade to argue whether that's right or not. But what I do know is it's exactly the same with play because the opposite of play is not work, the opposite of play is fear. So I thought, okay, if the opposite of love is fear and the opposite of play is fear, then the correlation, as Esther helped me understand, between play and love is extraordinarily close. And it suddenly dawned on me when I was writing the book that, wow, maybe love is the noun and play is the verb. Maybe love is the intention and play is the action. Maybe play mobilizes love. And maybe, just maybe the Beatles were only half right.

45:49As human beings, yes, all we need is love. But as human doings, all we need is play and play mobilizes love. And I firmly believe that. And because the world's become so extrinsically obsessed with money and fame and status and recognition, we do not understand in my opinion just how powerful it is getting back into the play state if you can find purpose and find potential and learning and growing in my in my opinion that's the closest you are to getting into flow right in terms of the ingredients for flow in terms of the sense of autonomy being really playful in the present moment doing something that really matters in that sense of purpose but also that sense of mastery you know kind of realizing your potential So to me, those three Ps, play, purpose and potential, correlate beautifully to what it means to get into the flow state as well, which is why I'm kind of obsessed by these interesting questions at the moment.

46:44Jake Humphrey: So, I mean, this has been an amazing, fascinating chat. So thank you for giving us your time, Ben. I suppose my last question for this is, what would you say is one practical tool that you would want a listener to walk away from listening to this to know, to do, to understand on how they can introduce more play into their lives? Yeah, how to bring more play into their lives. Well, first and foremost, if I have to give someone advice very, very quickly, it's sometimes I ask them to create a to-be list rather than a to-do list. If they want to connect with the human being before the human doing.

47:22And you can do it like tomorrow morning, you know, before you get out of bed, rather than write a to-do list as I get them to write a to-be list. And your to-be list might be, I want to be playful or grateful or kind or courageous. The great thing about that to be list is we're in total control of those words, right? There's so many things in life we can't control, but the human we want to be is not one of them. And that can be one of the most cathartic ways just to create freedom and to find success differently. On success, a lot of people are obsessed by success thinking, you know, when I get that promotion, then I'll be validated.

47:58Once I'm in that relationship, then I'll be loved. And we're in this gap mentality. And the gap mentality means I'm here, but I want to be there. And there's a gap between where I am now and where I need to be in the future. And it never works because the goalposts just keep moving around. It creates this cortisol, this pressure. But there's such a better way to live your life. And that's to measure backwards rather than forwards in the gap. You measure backwards into the gains. Because if I gave you a sheet of paper right now and I said, righto, let's go back to when you first started in your career, Damien.

48:29and you can measure backwards three years, five years, 25 years, right? It doesn't matter. But if you measure backwards to when you first started to where you are right now in this studio, and if I asked you to write down all the little wins, all the little successes and all the little gains you've had from when you first started to where you are right now, and then I said, okay, how do you feel? You'll typically say one of five words. You'll say, Ben, I feel grateful that I've had this beautiful life. I feel successful. I've had all these successes, right? I feel confident, I feel happy, and my favorite word at the moment, I feel content.

49:07Now, I'm not done yet. There's all these goals and dreams I want to chase down. But it means everything I go after from this moment on is a want, not a need. So the way to redefine success, we teach this to young kids, is rather than saying, I know I'll be successful when, you know, when I get that promotion, when I get that degree, when I get that job, whatever. But get them to say, I know I'm being successful when. Because if you answer that you're success list from that point of view, I know I'm being successful when, you're bringing success into the present moment. So you don't have to wait to be happy and you don't have to wait to be successful.

49:43You might say, I know I'm being successful when I get eight hours sleep or I have a belly laugh with a good friend or I watch my kids get out of their comfort zone or I have a crucial conversation with someone at work or I learn something new, right? or I get every green light on the way to work, or I watch a beautiful sunrise. It doesn't matter. What matters is you're starting to determine what success looks like for you and only you. And when that happens, we start to become self-determined. But today, we're socially determined for our success because I'm comparing my journey with someone else's journey, which is creating all that anxiety and that pressure in today.

50:20So I get kids to, yeah, redefine success into the present moment by developing quite a different type of success list. And then they can start to redefine what a win is as well, right? So, you know, what are three wins I had today and what three wins I'd like to have tomorrow? And again, I define what a win is for me and only me. So, yeah, we teach them these little things that are quite profound in terms of perspective shifting.

50:45Jake Humphrey: Well, Ben, like Will, our brilliant producer and myself, we both said that this morning, it's a bank holiday here in the UK. so we both said this morning when we woke up that we get to spend some time chatting with you and it's been an absolute treat and again I'd encourage anyone that's listening to this that's enjoyed this fascinating chat that you get to read Ben's brilliant book that's out in the UK in July so thank you for sharing your wisdom your experience and some really valuable tools on how we can all be a bit more playful. My pleasure Damien and yeah look forward to actually meeting you in the flesh one day as well.

51:24So good. He's got a book out, right?

51:27Jake Humphrey: Yeah, the book's called Where the Light Gets In. It's been published in the UK from the start of July. So you should be able to get it any time now. It's a brilliant read. Really good. As you heard in the interview there, we talk about not just sport, we talk about Teddy Roosevelt, we talk about the lawyer that stood up against Donald Trump fairly recently and a whole range of other topics about where Ben's wisdom has helped them find the joy in what they do and ultimately delivered their definition of high performance. Fantastic. Have you managed to get to that point in your life where you don't wrap up your success either as a podcaster or as an author or as an academic?

52:05Yeah.

52:06Jake Humphrey: Yes, I've tried to, definitely. It's hard sometimes, isn't it? I think I recognise it's often in moments of insecurity where you sort of fall back on. but where you fall back on what you might call achievements or successes that you've had and just learning to recognise that my kids don't give a shit. My kids want me there for just being their dad. My wife wants me around for being a husband and that's enough. Have you? Not even close, no. Everything I do here is about numbers. I just can't separate the two. so I have a bad week if not many people have watched or enjoyed an episode of high performance and I get like this burning anger inside me to change things and disrupt stuff and what's the problem and I don't have to calm myself down and like I will look three or four times a day at the download numbers and the listener numbers and the follower numbers and I sometimes just go on this mad loop of just flipping between all the different platforms you can find high performance but then do you then start to think that that diminishes who you are though?

53:17Jake Humphrey: No, I don't think so. No. Because you can focus on... That's just the professional side of me. Like I've got a whole other world. Yeah. As a dad, as a friend, I love other things, but I think what it is, when I'm in professional mode, I'm like absolutely desperate for this to be the best it can possibly be and get really wound up when it isn't. Yeah. But then it doesn't dominate. I don't wake up in the morning. Or maybe I do. Maybe I do wake up in the morning. Yeah, maybe. I don't know, man. Yeah, but I think... He's probably a bit wrapped up. I think you're further along the path than what you initially said because the fact is you can want to win without wanting to win at the expense of all things.

53:59But I'm also 48, not 18. Like, if I was 18, I think it'd be a real problem. It probably was a real problem when I was 18.

54:04Jake Humphrey: Yeah. You know, I was like 24-7 obsessive then about my work. I'm probably in a better place. but it's still I think it's I think it's okay for it to matter that's the other thing like it's okay to really want to be fucking brilliant at something and be annoyed if you're not but just to not let that eat you up yeah that you can walk away at the end of the day and you've done the best that you could yeah I think so thank you mate thank you mate I hope you enjoyed that conversation I really hope that it held value for you if it did please like please subscribe please let someone else know about the kind of great stuff that you can find for free thanks to us here at High Performance.

54:42Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.