The Secret to Feeling Calm When Out of Your Depth

0:02Hey, welcome back to one of our favourite episodes actually here on High Performance. when myself and Damien, hey Damien. Hey Jay. We get to do something that we very rarely get to do which is just sit and talk about some of the guests that we've had on the show and maybe we should start by explaining the way that things tend to work here at High Performance, right? You live in Manchester. Yep. Unlucky. Obviously joking. I live in Norwich. I'm not going to say anything other than... You were getting ready to. When they go low, you go high. That's the Michelle Obama philosophy. Well done. So anyway, if you're not in the UK, I live a long way out east.

0:34Damien lives a long way north from London, but London is where we record the episodes. So, so often we find that we get a train early in the morning, we get in, we record two, three, sometimes four guests in a day, and then despite, you know, the best will in the world, we need to get away quick to get back on the train and get home to our families. So, for us to sit and actually reflect on the stuff that we've done on this show is a pretty rare thing, but when we do get to do it, it's special, and today we've decided to share with people some of the best clips from the last six. Can you believe six, five, six years, of how we deal with feeling out of our depth, whether that's someone listening to this because they've started a new job or there's something on the horizon, or often, I think, Damien, people for whom change has been forced upon them rather than they've made the decision to change.

1:21I mean, we wrote an entire book, right, about change, called How to Change Your Life, because quite frankly, dealing with being out of your depth is a key tenant to high performance, right? Well, definitely. I mean, pretty much every one of our guests has spoken about the imposter syndrome, those moments where you find yourself plunged into a new environment, a new set of challenges and demands, and you're working out, can I cope with this? Am I going to be able to thrive rather than just survive? So we've also been fortunate enough to be able to unpick what they've learned, what they passed on to us about how they managed to eventually find their buoyancy when they felt out of the depth.

1:58And it's always worthy of just sharing it for us, as well as for anyone that's kind enough to listen to us, that they can apply it and pass it on to people in their lives. So if you're struggling at the moment, even if you're not, you never know what's around the corner. So we've got a really interesting episode for you today. We're going to hear from Petr Cech, the former Chelsea and Czech Republic goalkeeper, Alex Greenwood, who's a Lioness, Nick Cox, the former academy coach at Manchester United, and free climber Alex Honnold. But we're going to start, Damien, with a conversation with UFC fighter Tom Aspinon, who, by the way, had one of the worst-looking injuries I've ever seen in a UFC fight last week.

2:38But that's actually relevant to this conversation because you would think, if you're going to go into a UFC octagon with someone where that kind of thing can happen at any moment, I mean, death is a reality for a UFC fighter, right? That you obviously have no fear because you still do it. But one of the biggest sort of awakenings for the two of us when we spoke to Tom was the very real fear that he feels before every single fight. Yeah, I think the power of what Tom shared with us is just his willingness to articulate his emotions. He had the ability to say, I feel frightened, I feel scared, this is incredibly intimidating.

3:15And I think that's the first step that anyone listening to this, that is facing those moments of taking a big leap, can make it articulate how you're feeling. Because what we know is, even speaking to Professor Steve Peters when he was on the podcast, he spoke to us about if you can get it out of your head into the domain whether that's you writing it down or you can share it with somebody else the power that it has immediately becomes diluted you're able to be to face it and to be able to rationalize it whereas if you just keep it inside your mind it almost becomes bigger and more encompassing than it needs to be so let's listen to Tom talk about how he's learned to articulate the emotion of fear I'm actually one of the rare UFC fighters that I'm aware of that will sit here and look you in the eyes and talk about fear because a lot of UFC fighters like to pretend they're not scared now I've basically spent my life in gyms and backstage at events and in these changing rooms and listen I've never seen I'm yet to see a person who isn't scared but it's very rare that like you'll get a UFC fighter who will talk about fear now because it's a taboo subject people want to be this big alpha guy don't they who's like I'm getting in there having a fight in a cage with somebody listen if you're not scared then you're either a complete idiot or you're lying like I'm willing to step in the cage with we're talking about John Jones here who is the most dangerous guy to ever fight in MMA so I'm talking about potentially the most dangerous man unarmed on earth right who I'm potentially going to fight with now Now, if I'm sat backstage getting my hands wrapped, knowing that he's over the opposite side of the arena getting his hands wrapped, we're both going to walk into the arena in front of 35 ,000 people with millions watching around the world and one of us is going to get separated from our consciousness quite literally and you're not scared of that, then, like I said, you're either a complete idiot or you're just lying.

5:22So fear is extremely present in what I do. So that was the top UFC heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall there talking about articulating his emotions. And that's validated by the work of Dr. Matthew Lieberman at UCLA who published a paper in Psychological Science back in 2007 that was titled Putting Feelings into Words. How effect labelling disrupts the amygdala activity in response to effective stimuli. So basically the research tells us that it's the people who are able to label their emotions compared to those who simply experience the emotions are better able to control them. Brilliant. And I think the reason why this matters actually, Damien, is I think that we slipped into this world where if we label our emotions, then we're vulnerable.

6:11If we're vulnerable, we can't possibly be brave. And this is a guy that's telling us he does label his emotions, yet he still goes headlong into the arena and takes these things on. You know, it reminds me of, as you know, I failed my A-levels at school, right? Have I told you the book that I was given the day that I failed my, or a week after I failed my A-levels? Was it by a family friend? It was. And what was it called, do you remember? It was Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers. I mean, isn't that one of the great books around this conversation? Yeah. If you've never read it, I suggest you do.

6:41It's not very long. It was so valuable to me. And I think the reason why that book was so important at that time in my life was that I didn't even realise that I was running away from stuff. And I wasn't even in a UFC octagon, by the way. I was just doing school exams. But I wasn't going for trials to be in the school football team and I wasn't going to try and be in the school play and I wasn't going to try my best in the classroom and I wasn't going to put myself out of my comfort zone to speak to new friends because of a fear of failing. Yet I had never labelled that that's what was going on.

7:10I just kind of told myself that I don't do those things. And the reason why I wanted to share that story is I think sometimes people will hear Tom say, oh yeah, I label my feelings and they think, well, really, does it actually make a difference? But when you think about feelings that you don't even realise need labelling, then you suddenly start to sort of see your life in a different way. And that book and changing that emotion honestly changed everything for me. Brilliant. Well, and again, we referenced Steve Peters earlier. Do you remember the analogy you used of juggling apples? And it went, everyone can juggle two apples.

7:43Very few can juggle three, but nobody can juggle four the first time of asking, unless you're a professional juggler, of course. And the point he was making is that these worries just keep going round in your head and your ability to almost get them onto the page, to write them down or to share them with somebody, stops them sort of dominating, you're almost getting trapped into that cycle of constantly dominating your thoughts and allows you to be able to look at them with a more rational point of view and then work out how do I change that emotion, how can I make myself feel better. And that I guess comes down to acceptance.

8:16So can I share a clip about acceptance that we had on high performance? Go on, who do you want to ask? I want to go to Petr Cech. Oh, yeah. Who I thought delivered one of the great conversations on high performance. You know, it was one of those ones that was a couple of years ago and you forget the gold that's in so many of these conversations. But one thing that I want to pull out is how he explained to us how he used to deal with bad moments in football. And let's just acknowledge as well, this is a guy doing this in his second language. always impressive yeah here he is when I was about 12-13 I was very stressed about playing a football game in goal because I had the feeling to concede you know you almost feel like an ultimate failure all the time you concede so that first goal you just go I don't want to concede I want to clinch it this is what it's all about you're not supposed to concede the goal you're not supposed to fail so it put a lot of stress on me and then I realized that I was very stressed and then if somebody scored that all this part of okay now we conceded so I will not have a clean sheet so I can just get on with it I was 13 and then it started bothering me because I'm thinking you know and then I play much more relaxed and better game the moment I concede so I almost felt like if I put in my mind that we are 1-0 down maybe it will sort of switch a little bit and that will go a little bit you know not not to be so focused on not conceding rather than what I'm supposed to do.

9:48And then when I was 14, I figured out that if I just ignored the score and ignored all the stuff I couldn't control, so the referee, the decisions, if my teammate missed a penalty or big chance, in the end of the day, I realized that it had nothing to do with my job. So from that moment, when I was 14, I literally put in my mind, okay, my job, there is no score, there is no problem, there is no referee there are no people there is nobody watching there is like okay you do your job and and from there actually my career really i found myself in it because it actually helped me to be consistent i had the same approach in like a match system which started two hours prior to the game and i went through with no disruptions so i just thought that was a fantastic clip right from Petr Cech because it's this reminder that so much of the struggles that we have in life, we are creating.

10:51And there will be people that saw the title of this episode and thought, hold on, that's exactly what's going on in my life. I feel out of my depth. Well, do you feel out of your depth because you're doing things that are big and are brave and are bold? Or are you feeling out your depth because you're doing things that are big, brave and bold and you're fighting it? you're sort of creating a resistance to those things because of fear, because of anxiety, because of catastrophizing. And I just think that message on Petr Cech that it doesn't matter what the score is, the score simply doesn't exist.

11:20Well, the score also doesn't exist when it comes to jobs and relationships and pressures. Do you remember when we spoke to Mo Gowda and he said that when something goes wrong, your brain physiologically changes for 90 seconds. Yeah, that's right. if you are still feeling angry, frustrated, or bearing a grudge after those 90 seconds, you're choosing to revisit it. And I know this is a hard conversation for some people, but I think it's important for them to think about how much of their sense and their pain of being out of their depth is created by the fact that there is some sort of fight. And if they can just let go, they can just accept, this is where I am.

11:56I'm going to do the best I can in this situation. There's nothing more I can do. They will find that suddenly they can go deeper, they can go harder, they can go further. well the Mo Gowdart checklist that he shared with us about the first thing if something goes wrong I don't remember that what was that yeah he said well is it true and then you go well yes or no and then it's can I do anything about it yes or no you move on from that and then how can I live with it despite its presence and then once you've answered those three questions your ability to process whatever's happened is so much faster I mean there's a brilliant book that I often refer to by an author called Ashley Merriman called Top Dog, where what she did was went and looked at diary entries for over 12 ,000 participants in a research experiment.

12:43And what she found is the ones that tended to be successful despite setbacks, despite feeling out of the depth were the ones that focused on just small daily habits rather than looking at the outcome. And that's a great articulation of what Petr Cech shared with us, that don't worry about the final score. It's still nil-nil wherever you are in the game. So you just focus on doing the next right thing. Yeah. And actually, life is always nil-nil, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, whether good things or bad things are happening to us, there's no determination of what the future looks like. It's still nil-nil.

13:15It's like, some people have a very bad day after a very good day and some people have a very good day after a very bad day. Absolutely. I think the next clip I'd want to share is a conversation I had with the brilliant Alex Greenwood. Alex was really reflective in that conversation but she wanted to dwell on when she fell out of her depth which was when she's chosen to leave Manchester United when they just got promoted to the Women's Premier League and she chose to go out to Lyon in France and we're going to hear her explain a little bit about the struggle and then we'll reflect on what she learnt from that I would say France made me the player I am today and the reason I say that is because I was so far out of my comfort zone than I've ever been that it challenged me in ways I never knew was possible and I was at Man United at the time I was the captain at Man United and genuinely I live five minutes away from the training ground I agreed to go it was obviously a really hard conversation with Casey who was the manager at the time which she somewhat understood and once I agreed it's really weird but I had an instant feeling of regret which is crazy I was like what have I done?

14:24Like, I'm leaving me home. I'm leaving Jack. I'm leaving me family to go and play in France. Like, what am I doing? Like, but I was like, okay, you're just feeling a little bit anxious. Like, it's normal. You're going to live in a different country. I'd never felt like that before, ever. It was really abnormal feeling. I was, but I was going to play for the best women's team in the world. And at the time, the best contract I'd ever had. and all these great things that I've always aspired to want to do and win Champions League and play abroad and have a different experience. I've outspokenly said I want to do all these things and then it got to it.

15:02I'd agreed to do it. And I had a feeling of, like, regret. I think the important thing that I took out of this, Jake, was that sometimes we have to choose to go into the deep end ourselves. You know, she was going from English football to going to play for a team that became the European champions. that season and it was the reminder that she'd chosen to put herself in that environment it wasn't done to her that gave her the strength to persevere and to eventually thrive in that situation you know um i've told you about my first boss of iron tv who told me never sit in the comfy chair when i was going to go to london and have a have an attempt at making it as a tv presenter i think this idea of embracing the hard step is a real challenge for people i mean we both loved the conversation with James Clear.

15:51What did he say about going to the gym? The heaviest weight is always the front door. And I think that represents life, right? The biggest challenge that is in front of so many people right now is not actually what's going to happen on the journey. It's taking that initial first step. From all the conversations you've had with various sports people and the research that you've seen over the years, is there anything that you would advise someone to do if that first step right now, it just feels too big, too daunting for them? Yeah, so it's shrink the step. Make it as small as possible. Just like James Clear said to us about just go into the gym.

16:26If you're going to write a book, just write the first line of the book. If you're going to deliver a speech, just practice the first line. You know, whatever it is that we're doing, just take a small step. So rather than raise the bar, lower the bar and just make it easy to get over. Because what we know is that momentum follows action. so once we take that first step of action momentum will then start to work in our favour I remember reading years ago that the biggest predictor of what you're going to do in the next five minutes is what you're doing now so if you're sat doing nothing now in five minutes time you're likely to be doing nothing other than sat in the same chair so just taking one small step to do something different creates momentum that can work in our favour I also wonder you know and I've got no chance to back this up at all go on right whether life over the last few years has somehow given us all messages that it should be easy and if it isn't easy then we're doing the wrong thing like i actually think life should be hard like i think it should be a challenge i think it should push us it should um ask questions of us and this feeling that i'm only in a good place or i'm only going to be happy when i'm not doing any of those things i don't think is healthy because i can't think of a single valuable thing that I've done, I'm sure you feel the same, that wasn't at some point difficult.

17:44There's that great phrase you use, isn't there, that how good you're willing to be depends how long you're willing to be shit at something. Or I like the idea that, and I say this often to the kids when they tell me they can't do something, I say, you know that every single thing that you do now you once found hard. And Florence and Seb, they look at me confused. I'm like, could you put your pants on when you were six months old? No. Could you put food in your mouth when you were a year old like you do? You know, could you do ballet and gymnastics? as you do now as a 12-year-old, Florence, in the same way you could when you were a three-year-old, not even close.

18:16So if you hadn't spent the first, you know, think about that, the first sort of 10 years of our lives, it's a constant challenge. Challenged in the classroom, challenged at home, challenged physically, nothing's easy. And look at the rate of development. And I think then we get to a point where we think, right, I better avoid any challenges in my life. Well, okay, you'll avoid growth. Yeah. There's a brilliant book by an author called Steve Magnus who titled it, Do Hard Things. And it's almost that idea of that when you do hard things, you give your brain evidence that gives it confidence that allows you to continue to keep stretching yourself and doing it.

18:51He has this great line, Jake, because he was quite an elite endurance runner himself. He coaches people now. And he said he used to have a coach that would say to him, in today's session, we're going to go and meet God. And he said occasionally he'd take them right to their edge of their physical and psychological capabilities. Not because it made them any better in the short term, but because it proved to them that they could do hard things that would make their daily existence a lot easier. And if someone's listened to this going, well, why would you want to do hard things? Because they're hard, therefore they're not very nice.

19:25I think it's important to remember that if you voluntarily choose to do hard things, then you're putting yourself in a position to build your resilience or your growth so that when you don't have the choice about whether you need to do the hard thing, you can lean on that evidence and go, well, I know I'll be okay. Like, let's say you get a really horrible piece of news about yourself, a family member, a friend or whatever, or your boss delivers something that's not what you wanted to hear. If you haven't done those hard things voluntarily for years, then obviously you can be derailed because you've got no evidence that you'll deal with those moments.

19:56But if you're voluntarily challenging yourself daily, well, what happens when someone says, I'm about to challenge you? You go, great, well, I've been doing it to myself for 20 years. So bring on what you've got for me, you know? Well, talking about sort of bringing on challenges, why don't we listen to Nick Cox, who at the time when we spoke to him was the head of the academy, the famed academy at Manchester United that has developed so many young players that have gone on to have careers at the club and in professional football, where he talks around how they would deliberately throw people into the deep end just to watch how it developed their character.

20:33How do you develop character? How do you develop resilience? Well, it's lots of little micro doses of finding stuff hard along the way. If I can expose you to lots of little struggles and traumas, things that are a bit too difficult, things that might go wrong, you build those qualities. You build resilience and you build the ability to learn and you build. so if we talk about parents who rescue too quickly when you rescue kids from a difficult situation you're basically saying i'm taking that learning opportunity away from you i'm going to solve the problem for you whereas if you just leave them to it it's an amazing opportunity so not getting picked or driving to wales to not play not pleasant not nice i wouldn't advise that someone experiences that every week but if you experience it once it's okay it's a learning experience how we're going to deal with it what sort of conversation could you have with the coach at your next training session about the experience you've just had if you do get on the pitch how are you going to behave how are you going to warm up like a world-class player all those types of things it's a great opportunity rather than as you say helicopter parents diving in rescuing their kids from a difficult situation when you rescue them from a difficult situation all you're doing is depriving them of a of a learning experience I remember hearing him say that and I hadn't thought about the importance of that I mean in life at the time but certainly in terms of like youth football but what I do remember really sort of struck a chord with me was the getting the balance right it was that kind of stretch and reward thing that he talked about where yeah of course you challenge people of course you push them to their limits of course you need to find the breaking point but you can't just constantly find the breaking point you can't constantly be at the limits you can't constantly be out of your comfort zone because that is actually not a great existence.

22:27So I guess that is actually a good reminder for all of us that if we're trying to find our limits or we're trying to find our edge or we're trying to become comfortable with change or challenge, that's great. But not 24 hours a day, seven days a week. But there also needs to be the comfort moments as well where we kind of recharge our batteries, prepare ourselves for battle once again, and then we go. That's exactly as Nick was doing with those young players in the Man United Academy. Well, it's interesting. I was looking at research recently when we were chatting with Joe Cole, because he spoke about a seven or more month for him, was where the academy manager at West Ham sort of tore a strip off him.

23:01And I was looking at, can negative feedback of having that strip torn off you be detrimental or can it work to your benefit? And the research says it can be really useful every now and again, as long as it's followed up by nurturing support afterwards, which echoes the point you're making, Jacob. Sometimes we can be pushed and stretched as long as we have that nurturing environment that encourages us and gives us the arm around the shoulder and the encouragement to get better. So I think what Nick's describing, the kind of culture he was trying to establish there is that, yeah, sometimes you do need to feel exposed and vulnerable, but then you need to have somebody behind you that helps you process it and learn from it.

23:43Also, I like the idea of the regularity of it. You know, it was a nice moment recently when Zac Brown, the McLaren boss, came on to High Performance and he said that every single week he talks to his drivers about what he called the elephant in the room, you know, the close gap that they're currently battling with in the driver's championship. And it was only after we said, so the fact you talk about it all the time totally normalizes difficult conversations. He was like, oh, yeah, you've unlocked something there. Yeah, I think you're right. I think that's exactly what's happened here. But obviously it's the same in our own lives as well.

24:15We don't have to take these huge, like, death-defying leaps of faith all the time, but little micro doses, as Nick was delivering really, of challenge, is really good for all of us because it means that challenge isn't something that is abnormal to us. There's a phrase that sports coaches sometimes use called the Goldilocks zone, where you think about the Goldilocks story of like the porridge is either too hot, it's too cold, but you want it to be just right. I think sometimes if it's too easy, you don't learn anything. if it's too hard, but you don't learn anything from that either. But when it's just right, when that level of stretch is just at the edge of your ability zone and it forces you to just stretch that a little bit further or push yourself more than you thought you could, that's the just right bit.

25:02And I think for all of us, I think sometimes we need to ask ourselves, am I coasting because it's too easy? Or am I sort of pushing myself too far? The sense of the impossible is too dominating. Whereas if we can find that just right zone, I think that's where our stretch, our ability becomes a lot more comfortable. And as a final clip, if we've encouraged you during the last few minutes to think, yeah, maybe I'm ready to test myself. Here is free climber and all-around amazing guy, Alex Honnold. I want you to hear what he has to say. If you're really trying to think about leading a high-performance life, I would think honestly about what's holding you back from it and then sort of rationally evaluate whether or not.

25:44I mean, because so many people are held back by fear in different ways. Is that fear founded? Does that matter? Like, maybe you should just do the thing you've been wanting to do. It's like, what's to lose? Yeah, like you've been wanting to sign up for a marathon, but you're sort of afraid because whatever. You're like, who freaking cares? Sign up. You can literally walk the whole way. It doesn't make any difference. Like, just do the thing. Just like take that step forward. I love listening to Alex Arnold when we met him in Las Vegas. But there was a bit that really intrigued me. at the end of the interview, because we'd sort of had these clips where people had studied his amygdala and found that he didn't respond with the terror that we would do if we were at the top of El Capitan.

26:24And he was at pains to point out to us, he goes, everyone thinks I've been born as this genetic freak. And he went, he said, but what they don't see is the 10 years of me traveling to El Capitan and being frightened by it and just choosing to expose myself to the idea of it. Eventually, I've managed to reduce that fear because I've normalized it. I've been able to look at it and to process it and rationalise how I would do it. So that's why I don't feel the terror. And I feel that exposure to sometimes just testing ourselves to the edge of our limit is where we eventually realise we can swim rather than sink.

26:59Brilliant. And I think that's a really good final and strong message for all of you that have listened to Damien and I just chatting about this for the last little while. And it's that we are not saying leave that partner, quit that job, move to that country, change that fundamental thing in your life. We're not saying you have to do that right now, otherwise you're living a life that isn't of any value. What we are saying is that maybe, for some of you, those kinds of really big decisions is where happiness lies. But the only way to get there is to slowly drip feed some difficult decisions. You can pack a parachute, as we often say, you can put the things in place so that if whatever big decision you want to make goes wrong, you can reverse that decision and you can make sure that you're okay.

27:40You know, you've got people to look after, mouths to feed, all that sort of stuff. But I think what we are saying is that what you don't want to be is on your deathbed with those ghosts of missed opportunities floating around saying, if only you'd have believed, if only you'd have trusted, if only you'd have done that thing you always wanted to do. Because, you know, as we know, 400 trillion to one is the chances of being born, right, Damien? And we're all a miracle just by being here. And it's a waste of this miracle that we've all been given. if at times, not all the time, if at times we don't just see where the limit is and if that limit is on the other side of fear, it shouldn't mean that we don't find it.

28:18Absolutely. That's an incredibly stirring message and I think, again, to emphasise that we've done over 500 of these interviews. I don't think we've met anybody that hasn't had to pass through that doorway that's marked fair. But what they've found on the other side of it is a life and riches and success that they couldn't have imagined before they chose to do it. So there we go. Acknowledge the fear. Control only the things that you can control. Embrace the fact that it will feel like discomfort. Expect anxiety, as our guests have told us. But finally, just start. You will never, ever live a life free of fear.

28:56But you should be able to live a life where you trust yourself enough to do those things that are just a little bit scary. And the more you do, the further you go. Damien, thank you so much. thanks mate loved it good aren't they I really enjoy it yeah and don't forget if you hit the link in the description to this show on whatever app you're listening then you can listen to the full episodes from the guests that we've just shared those clips from and if there's someone in your life who you think you know what I know exactly the person that needs to hear this conversation they need to hear it now just send this on to them ping it over ask them to have a listen and we'd be so grateful make sure you hit follow and subscribe on whatever app you're listening to this show on and we'll see you soon for some more from myself Damien and the high-performance team.