The price of high performance

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1:38Hi there, you're listening to High Performance. Welcome along to another little Friday episode with myself and the Professor. Hi Damien. Hi Jake. We're going to talk about sacrifice because when we first started this podcast, the whole point was to open up the lives and the lessons and the learnings from people that have done incredible things but we also have to talk about the fact that quite often there is a price to that high achievement there is a sacrifice there is a sadness there is often collateral damage and when you look back at the 200 plus episodes that we've recorded we see it often and i feel if we don't talk about it then we're actually doing a disservice to our audience like there's a truth that it costs high performance You're right, Jake.

2:18We'd be dishonest if we don't talk about this. Everything has a price. Every decision we make has a consequence, you know, for every action. There is a reaction. And I think so often what we try and do is just unpick it, that we get blindsided by the outcome. And yet what we're interested in is the process and what that costs. And so many of our guests have been really clear and explicit that it doesn't come for free, that there is a price that sometimes they question, has it been worth paying? Yeah, I mean, I remember Eddie Jones saying high performance isn't for everyone. And I think it's important we talk about this as well, because there are too many toxic messages out there in the moment about hustle culture, work 24-7, never take a break, you know, wake up early, go to bed late.

3:03And that's not what this podcast is about. this podcast is saying that of course you can chase high performance you can achieve incredible things and we take the lessons and the learnings from those people but it's not all about rainbows unicorns and red roses like there's a lot of pain as well from the guests that we've spoken to so where do you think we should start i think let's go right back into the archives and let's listen to the interview we did with dame kelly holmes 2003 i got another nigger i just thought oh god I thought I was cursed. I thought someone is there to set to try me. Somebody doesn't want me to achieve.

3:38And so this period of time, I was getting ready for world champs. I went into our, like we were in a camp and I went into the bathroom and basically broke down, crying inside, screaming inside. You know, when you see somebody in pain, you see their heart breaking, but you can't shout it out because people were outside. Saw some scissors, starting to cut myself. I became a self-harmer that day, didn't know anything about self-harming, didn't know about depression, didn't know about breakdown, did not want to be there. I mean, how I didn't do something else was because I still had a dream. And when half of you is, I try to articulate it on stage, when half of you is actually dying inside and half of you wants to be successful and driven, that's the hardest fight.

4:25it's not necessarily the fight of what you're doing because at that time it's red mist black dog black hole tunnel whatever but i had such something inside me i always believed i'd be olympic champion i don't know what it was i always believed i'd be olympic champion even through the depths of despair even through the injuries i had rupture calves tornicules you know stress fractures glandular fever all in my international career i always woke up thinking i'm going to be champion and i don't know why that was i always believe in fate i mean you know there's a big thing in fate i believe that went through the journey could have given up didn't then i get two gold medals you know so payback you know but yeah there's little things which make you as a high performer because also different i think something different in an individual sport has to be some resolve inside you that can go through a pain barrier and that's whether that's physical or emotional that kind of can push to that next limit push to see how far you can get push to know where you can take yourself and I think I just kept pushing those little milestones and obviously the breakdown was because I'd never really reflected on everything before it's a different era back then do you think that what Kelly is talking about there is that so much of her self-worth was wrapped up in achieving success and as she was struggling to achieve that success it challenged her mentally absolutely the fact that her validation came from feeling that an olympic gold medal would only validate the person she was meant that most of her career when she was suffering with injuries or near misses or you know bad luck that that then started to impact on her sense of identity that she felt she was a loser that she didn't have any value that her worth wasn't as high as it was and yet she was in an elite company of being in the top five athletes and yet still felt like she was a loser and that then impacted on her mental health which led to the lack of self-worth meaning that she looked at self-harming just to feel something as she said and and that was an incident that she spoke about of having to really correct herself and most of her post-athletics career has been spent working on loving herself far more effectively than what she necessarily did when she was competing as an athlete.

6:46I agree. And I look at Dame Kelly Holmes now and I see someone who loves herself for who she is and what she is. And actually, we are never the person that achieves something. And I think that's a really clear message for listeners at the very beginning of this episode is that you are not the job you do. You are not the car you drive. You are not the house that you live in. Because, you know, as Johnny Wilkinson explained to us so well on this podcast, if you allow yourself to be lifted up and if you allow your own self-worth to grow when you achieve great things then by default when you struggle and you're not achieving those great things you of course have to then allow yourself to believe you're less of a person you know he said that for him doing the washing up is now the same as winning the rugby world cup because if it isn't the same then he's by definition less of a person so there's a really strong message there at the start of this episode that you are not what you achieve that is not who you are that is simply what you do let's go to another clip here is Stephen Hendry and this is really interesting we asked him about the sacrifice or the price that he's paid for his career I had a girlfriend who became a wife then you have a family life changes and I always I always fought against that people say oh you're gonna get mad that's it that's the end of your career and all that's you know you have kids that's it um and i always fought against that i was i i still kept practicing determined to keep practicing the reason why there's so few people can win relentlessly is is they sacrifice even family to get to you know snooker's my life is number one that came first even before my wife my kids everything obviously they ended to detriment of a marriage and everything you know it was all about me it's very cold but it has to be that if i look at all the top sportsmen individual sportsmen many of them are still married to the same women very very few very few very few obviously it ended up the breakdown of your marriage and you probably don't see your children as often as you would have done when you were in a house with them every single day would you still have that same approach to life if you did it all over again do you think you couldn't have achieved what you did as a snooker player without that yeah definitely I couldn't have achieved I couldn't have been the winner I was and and being there as well as so here's an interesting one then if you had your time again would you win less games of snooker, be at home more, and be married to your wife still and have a sort of family life?

9:09Or is the winning, which we spoke about right at the beginning, the thing that you feel you were put on this earth to do, to be a winner? Yeah, definitely. I mean, there's going to be a lot of people watching us thinking, what an absolute cold son of a bitch. But that's, yeah, that's what I was putting. I was putting us out to win snooker matches, win world titles, and be as dedicated as I was to be the best. And yeah, given the same decisions, I'd make the same decisions again. Whether that makes me a horrible person or not, you know, other people can decide that. But for me, I made that decision.

9:42And you're certain you couldn't have done both? Who can tell, but I don't think so. I don't think so. Only looking at myself, looking at the other people that I admired, you know, the Tiger Woodses, the Faldos, Steve Davis, they wanted to be the best and dominate the sport. and to everything else. Not that we didn't care or love these people, but that has to come second. That has to come second. If you want to do what I did. So the question there is, has Stephen Hendry paid a price? If he's happy with the life that he's living and if he tells us that he would do the same thing all over again because he was put on the earth to play snooker in many ways, has he paid a price?

10:21It's an interesting question, isn't it? I think that leads us into looking at, for him personally I think his answer was really clear and transparent no I haven't but if you look at the people around him and I think that's one of the things that we often have to consider the collateral effects that pursuing high performance has on our family whether it's a partner or children or parents or friends around us I remember when we interviewed Dr. Rangan Chatterjee on this and he spoke about so much of the advice that he gives isn't about dispensing medicine i remember the example he spoke about a guy that was so intent on high performance that he was suffering with some consequences of that and rongan's prescription soon was go and spend more time with your friends and he joined a football team and when he came back six weeks later the impact it had on his health and well-being was significant so i think sometimes when we talk about high performance you have to think of it almost like an ecosystem and not just see it through a through our own lens or from a selfish perspective but see where the high performance brings other people along with us on the journey and that plays very nicely actually into the conversation we had with rylan who at the height of his success as rylan was sacrificing ross which is the true him because that's who he is he is ross he's not rylan and as rylan grew and became more and more successful ross was struggling more and more I know that feeling of people trying to help you and your loved ones, like my mum, my family, my friends trying to help me people saying snap out of it, ain't going to help you but one thing I have learned, I had therapy I was lucky enough that I could afford therapy I had antidepressants they didn't work for me at first that's a very trial and error thing I don't even take a paracetamol when I've got a headache I like just getting on with shit I was very anti all of that do I think they helped me in the end?

12:20yeah I think they did I'm not on them now I managed to come off them which I'm really happy about but the one thing that I know and I can say hand on heart is the only person who will get you out is you 100 % and if you're not at that point that's alright sit there and stew feel like you can't get out of bed don't get ready don't have a shower that's what I did That's exactly what I was going through. And I understand being in that situation, you might as well be deaf and blind at the same time because you cannot see and you cannot hear. I had two weeks when my speech completely went slurred and my mum thought I was having a stroke.

12:59I could not control my speech. Everything happened to me. But what I look back on is little things and it sounds really embarrassing and it sounds really condescending, but you need to look at yourself like a toddler. going to the kitchen and pressing the button on the kettle is a step that sounds really ridiculous because it's something we do a million times a day it's really not difficult i couldn't make my mum a cup of tea i had the fear i couldn't do it i couldn't listen to music and i couldn't watch tv they're my job so i thought i was over the day that you go i'm just going to press the button I'm not making the tea, let it boil, fuck it off.

13:40The day you do that, that's a little step. And the reason I say toddler, because you sit there and applaud yourself for that. You go, well done, babe, well done. So there's Ryland talking about suicidal thoughts because he hadn't paid attention to the person that he truly was. And exactly as we just spoke about, there can be, there's collateral damage that we don't even see happening all around us when we chase high performance. And it's so important for us and for the people around us to make sure that, like, high performance can be there. We can all reach our own version of high performance.

14:11But we also have to be really mindful of the price. Yeah. And the message I took out of Ryland's interview was the importance of authenticity. You know, in his case, that he was a young lad that had grown up with his mother and his brother. And, you know, he was that shy, awkward kid that was coming to terms with his sexuality as he grew up. and then the fact that as he adopted this persona, which worked so well for him when he said on X Factor, when he knew people were laughing at him and he decided to reframe it and say, this is going to give me some extra time in the spotlight to make a career.

14:47Or when he first started presenting, then he got his teeth done. And he said that distracted the public from realising that he wasn't very good at presenting for the first few weeks. They were all great advantages, the persona of Ryland, but not taking care of Ross and making sure that he was being heard and treated with respect and dignity eventually came to, as he said himself, blow his life up. And that's an important thing, again, of we can't get caught up or high on our own supply. We have to be true and authentic and surround ourselves with people that remind us of that. Yeah, and he is a brilliant, bright broadcaster and so much more besides.

15:25And, you know, I'm so pleased that he's able now to come on a podcast like High Performance and talk in that way, because I think that actually admitting it and discussing it is the thing that nurtures Ross, actually, and puts Ross at the forefront of the conversation, which he needs. Yeah, and so many people got in touch with us, didn't they, after that episode to talk about how hearing Ryland talk so openly and candidly about his challenges with his mental health and neglecting to take care of himself had helped them as well. So I'd encourage anyone listening to this, go back and explore that episode.

15:57Yeah, and thank you, Ryland, for sharing so much with us. Right, we're going to finish this short episode with this great story from Sir Ian McGeegan, who is the former coach of the British and Irish Lions. It sort of came from my own experience of the support I got at different stages in my life as a player and a coach you know a father who put five pounds in my pocket when I was still at school as an 18 year old so that I could buy the rounds and stand at the bar after a game and still buy around with everybody else. What I didn't know until after he died was he had to walk to work the last two days of the week.

16:44And, you know, people came across like that. I always, you know, have that in the back of my mind, that there's a lot of people did a lot of things to actually allow, you know me to to be able to to do and and think what what I've been able to do and and I think you know with with players and that understanding that the best teamwork is appreciating that a lot of hard work goes in with a lot of other people you know what I love most of all about that is that it's a reminder that life is a team sport and actually in many ways that is the thing that can keep us safe as we're doing well and we're ploughing our own furrow and we're getting excited about what our future might look like or the things that we're achieving I think we have to remember that none of it happens alone and particularly in this era of kind of promoting the self-made success story or the self-starting millionaire like no one does anything without the team without the people around them yeah so Ian's story like really choked me up when he first shared it with us just because of the power of it the sacrifices dad was making quietly so that he could go and fit in and belong at the community and I think it's a reminder for all of us that there's always people around us giving up their time and their energy if it's a like I get saddened you know when you read about young referees being abused on Sunday morning football and those people are giving up their time to make sure the game can exist or coaches not being respected and thanked for giving up their time to look after other people's children you know we see the sacrifice going on all around us and I think it's incumbent on all of us just to go and acknowledge that sacrifice when you see it yeah and I would finish just by saying that high performance doesn't have to cost you everything like I know that some people live a life of extremes and that that extreme success in one area can lead to extreme sacrifice in another but that is someone who's got the balance wrong like you can have extreme success and you can find a balance the key is to do the work the key is to make sure that you still look at the areas that need nurturing all the time um and remember that like we're multifaceted like if you're a great business person or you're an elite athlete you're still a parent you're still a child you're still a partner you're still a friend and as soon as you neglect those true areas they're the true areas because what are we when we retire?

19:12What are we when we're in an old people's home coming to the end of our days? We're not the thing that we did with the person that we were and I think as soon as you lose sight of that you're in trouble. Well that's a really interesting point Jake. I remember when we were lucky enough to sit down with the Lord General Richard Dannett who told us that he'd missed most of his family's childhood you know and he recognises now that he's got the chance to be engaged and involved with his grandchildren but it was a sacrifice that he said that he was very conscious of. So I think we're not telling people there's a right or wrong way to do this.

19:43I think that's really important. I think what we're saying is whatever decision you make, be aware of the consequences that that decision will inevitably entail. Thank you very much, Professor. Thank you, Jake. Loved it. And if you would like to hear those episodes in full, then just take a look at the description to this podcast. The links are all there. Thank you so much for listening. Remember, hit subscribe. It really does help us out hugely. And we'll see you soon for another episode of high performance.

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