WHY we started this podcast

0:00Hey, it's Jake here. Just a quick one before we get going with today's episode. On Monday, we welcome to high performance Peter Attia, MD. He's just written a book called Outlive, The Science and Art of Longevity. It's a New York Times number one bestseller already. And we discuss nutrition. We discuss techniques for optimising exercise and sleep and for looking after your emotional and your mental health. And also making sure that you're doing the things today that means in the final few years of your life, you can do the things you want to do. It's a brilliant conversation. But if you'd rather not wait until Monday and hear it when everyone else hears it, then it's available right now.

0:37If you just download for free the High Performance app, just go to your app store, download High Performance and make sure you use the code HPAPP for access.

0:52Hey everyone, welcome along to the High Performance podcast. I'm here with Professor Damien Hughes. Hi everyone. And what we thought we would do, because we've been going for how long? three and a half years, three, nearly four years now. Oh my goodness. So we've done over 200 episodes. As Damien says, four years of this podcast. So we thought we would just rewind really and go through a few of the biggest moments, the biggest names, the biggest lessons from the very start of the high performance journey. Now, if you've been listening since the very start and with us for the whole journey, I think you're really going to enjoy being reminded of some of those key moments.

1:26But equally, if you're totally new to high performance and you think, what's that about? Well, let us explain like should we start with our why like why we started this podcast yeah I think it's a really important one so it the origins I think for people to understand is when we first met down at Norwich City and we both saw high performance in the same place but from two very different angles so your perspective came from the pit lane and the studio of Premier League football clubs it did it came from spending time with really incredible elite individuals and I used to get frustrated with seeing close up the hard work and the talent and the effort and the desire and the sacrifice and then at the same time seeing people in the media or fans on Twitter just caning and slating and criticizing these people that are just literally trying their very best and I thought there's a real disconnect here we need to try and understand high performers better why are we treating them in this way because I don't think it's healthy for us I don't think it's healthy for them and something needs to change so this podcast was about removing that opinion and trying to put empathy at the forefront i mean it has by the way in my mind changed quite a lot from just talking about the hard work and the effort and the talent and the sacrifice yeah to actually talking about the struggle and the doubt and the fears and the challenges but it's still the same thing i want people to understand individuals better than ever before to find their own version of high performance because high performance isn't great achievement high performance is probably great satisfaction yeah definitely well my perspective of it came from being around the dressing rooms and the gyms of high performers whether that's in boxing or rugby league or rugby union or even premier league football where i've worked and what i wanted people to understand is exactly that point that you know we're not talking to football players we're talking to people who just happen to play football we're not talking to business leaders we're talking to people that just happen to run businesses and i think what i wanted to shine that light on was the human element of it and when we understand a human being as you say that's where connection happens and empathy can spring from and understanding and appreciation and that's what i consider to be the privilege of our position of doing this jake but also for listeners to be able to get a bit closer to the people that they might see at the top of the podium and actually understand the journey it's taken to get there and i think that's the key thing for you at home like we're not having conversations with high achievers so they can feel good about themselves and we can all pat each other on the back and say wonderful well done the why for this podcast has become what can it do for you listening to this at home.

4:11So it doesn't matter who is joining us on the podcast. What matters to us is the takeaways that you can get from it. So let's start by talking about Tyson Fury, for example. I think the reason why this is really valuable for people listening is that you assume once you've won multiple world titles, once you're a multi-millionaire, once you're globally famous, all the crap stuff melts away and all that remains is happiness. The really strong message that came through in this conversation and actually repeats itself in many of our conversations is that moment never arrives so we all need to reframe our thinking around happiness and stop delaying it yeah so tyson was a great example of it that he described to us really powerfully how the night he beat vladimir klitschko in 2015 to achieve his lifetime ambition of becoming the world heavyweight champion he lay in bed that night and he said there's nowhere left to go i've conquered everything i ever wanted to achieve but that was only a fleeting moment And what followed from that was the sense of despair, the unhappiness.

5:08And basically he got himself into a position where he was driving his car at a motorway bridge deciding that his life wasn't worth living. So you start to see that the view isn't always worth the climb if it's not accompanied by happiness, contentment and fulfilment along the way. Let's have a listen to a clip then from our conversation with Tyson Fury. with every big high there's always an even bigger low for me so this character will morph like a power ranger or a an anime character i'll morph into this this guy and then there's always massive lows afterwards like big depressions and anxiety and everything after these big events even now even now yeah so after the Wembley fight obviously it was the higher the highs the lower the lows will always be for me, but I've figured out how to manage this over time.

6:00So what I like to do now is, I know it's coming after these big events, I'm going to be down. Most of the time to have suicidal thoughts, which is kind of crazy even to sit here and admit today that after these big events and these big successes, I'm like proper suicidal for a few days. I mean, to hear someone like Tyson speak to us so vulnerably and openly and honestly, to me is a good indication of how we've changed as interviewers as well so if we go back to one of our early episodes where we interviewed ant middleton somebody that has achieved an awful lot in his career being a member of the special forces becoming a household name through his tv series when we first interviewed him i sometimes think of the parable of the wind and the sun so that story when the sun and the wind were having a conversation about who could be the one to get a man to remove his coat and the wind said well watch me I'll blow really hard and the more they blew and the more fiercer the wind became the man just held his coat closer to him it was the sun that said let me shine on him and just gradually he began to heat up and eventually the man removed his own coat himself and I think it's a good example where if we would go after people like a little bit we did I think with Ant Middleton where we challenged him a bit more we just couldn't get into our heads how he said that he would only reveal 60 of who he really was to his wife and how he didn't trust anybody we sort of were like the wind with him and the more we blew the fiercely we came in defending his position whereas i think when we stopped trying to have an opinion and started to see people from through the lens of empathy it's more like the sun and like tyson demonstrated there they're more prepared to open up when they don't feel there's a judgment or some kind of statement or opinion that's going to follow and i think the thing that we're most proud of is that people feel that high performance is a safe space to come and be totally themselves you know we like a good example stephen henry telling us that selfishness is one of his non-negotiables or that he wouldn't swap winning a world title to improve relationships in his personal life like what was his phrase i was put on the earth to you know to play snooker effectively like i just think that if someone says that like that's what they believe and all we can do is provide a place a non-judgmental place to have those conversations our role is not to decide good or evil positive or negative successful or failure it's just literally to be the foil for these people and do you remember on the same day that we interviewed steven henry we had johnny wilkinson on the podcast and i honestly think that if we tried to be the wind and tried to impose our own thinking on Johnny we would never have gone where we went to with him which was to some absolutely remarkable places and again you have to applaud his bravery for wanting to talk in a way that he did well what always gets me about Johnny and we'll listen to a clip of him in a minute is the fact that he came along and like you say he obviously felt safe enough to come and explore and be curious with some of these ideas and almost think out loud but it was only after we'd finished recording that he asked us please don't edit this to make me look silly so he gave us his trust without demanding it up front he came and demonstrated that trust is something that you can give and then it's not something that you have to earn and I think the response from both of us and the rest of the team was that we wanted to treat that with the sensitivity and discretion and respect that it deserved here he is i've made an analogy that about how when i was younger i'd be like oh you know playing a world cup final that's important and now you know the idea about doing the washing up would have been like don't you dare and now i'm like i love doing the washing up and he couldn't believe it was like it's rubbish i said well what is it you love about what just define being a triathlete to me and he was saying about doing the run and then the swim and then the cycle whatever i said okay right now break that down for me what are you doing well i'm i'm moving my body to get to a goal i said right what are you doing when you're doing the washing up moving my body to get to a goal so why is one good and one's bad because of outside opinions and influences i suppose because of old ideas that i've decided that this is something i like doing because i plug into this because this is what i enjoy doing so all those it's a really tricky one and there's obviously going to be likes and dislikes but whether or not you fully engage comes down to how you are on the inside does that make lifting a world cup more important than doing the washing up no what i loved about that conversation with johnny is is a reminder that we're all on a journey you know we're not fixed right there'll be people listen to this they go well but um i'm an anxious person or i'm a negative person or i'm a stubborn person or i'm a positive person like that's not how we're born right society shapes us in certain ways and there are certain parts of our lives and the way we operate that we suppress because of society and Johnny for a long time I think suppressed this kind of thinking because he was seen as Johnny Wilkinson the rugby player and as he openly said to us he chose the path of struggle thinking it would lead to the moment of enlightenment and all that the path of struggle did was lead to even more struggle so really I would implore people even if they've heard that conversation with Johnny before to go back and listen again and just realize that nothing is fixed yeah and if people want to almost see that in practice go and then listen to the follow-up episode we did with him which we recorded two years later because johnny even critiques his own interview that he did with us and talks about i believe this then but i now believe something else and he's almost the epitome of everything that he preaches which is be curious and keep exploring i loved him who should we talk about next i think the next episode we should talk about is somebody that reminds me of one of the classic experiments in psychology.

11:52In the 1960s, there was two psychologists called Robert Rosenthal and Leona Jacobson. And they went into classrooms where they said they could predict using a simple psychometric test who the high performers were. And they did the studies, gave the names to the teachers. And at the end of the year, they came back and they effectively proved that their tests worked. The ones they'd identified as high performers indeed were top of the class on all the measures they could possibly want to identify it was then they revealed that they'd picked the names at random and what they'd done was demonstrated how when you have a belief that somebody's a high performer they tend to live up to it you tend to look for opportunities to praise and recognize it and i think that's a really important thing to it's called the pygmalion effect after the famous george bernard shaw play but i think the pygmalion effect is in great evidence in some of our guests that people haven't necessarily heard from but i've got examples of where somebody's believed in them at some stage in their life and they blossomed and flourished and the best example for me was dame stephanie shirley how often do you get the opportunity to sit down with somebody that is nearer the end than the beginning of their life but they're still able to distill and share the wisdom the lessons and the experiences they've learned in a true life worth living to tell us how they've flourished and how others can do so as well she came over on the kinder transport she then was fostered in the uk set up a tech business sold it for billions gave lots of that money to the people that run the business for her who by the way were all women she then was the first person to voluntarily fall out of the sunday times rich list for giving away her money to autism charities after having an autistic son she is the most remarkable individual her name should trip off the tongue her name by the way is stephanie but she calls herself steve because when she was making her mark in the world nobody took women seriously let's hear a clip from dame stephanie shirley aka steve when she joined us on high performance giles changed over a matter of days between being a calm happy baby to being a wild unmanageable toddler, hyperkinetic, totally unaware of danger, lost eye contact, and he went through what's called a regression.

14:19And there are a few illnesses and things that have regression and autism is one of them. I cracked up and had a good old-fashioned nervous breakdown, finished up in hospital. And because I was the carer for Giles, He also had to go to hospital and he spent the next 13 years in mental health, an asylum really. It is the spiritual things in life that matter. Friendship, music, literature, poetry, nature, friends, love. These are the things that really matter, all the non-material things. i mean we had um we actually had a few guests do you remember from the bbc and watching that recording yeah all of them emerged with tears in their eyes didn't they yeah definitely i think her story can't fail to touch anyone that listens to it i remember coming home that night and telling my 10 year old daughter about dame stephanie shillian she was equally gripped at how she'd gone on to achieve what she'd done and like you say i think she's somebody that's a great example she might not when you're scrolling through it if you've never come to high performance before you might not know who she is so you might decide you'll skip that for a more well-known name but sometimes it's when we go exploring those that we've never heard of that we find the real gold and i i love her approach to risk what does she say risk is not as risky as it might seem yeah wonderful wonderful uh should we hear from eddie howe i'd love to because i got a buzz out of this because sometimes we record these episodes and we put them out there into the world and don't necessarily always know how they land or what people do with them we do get some incredibly kind and generous messages from our listeners but the opportunity to go and interview somebody that is a listener to the podcast who told us how he's taken some of the lessons that he's learned on it and applied it when taking over one of the biggest football teams in England was incredibly humbling.

16:28Here he is, Eddie Howe. We're going to run through our quickfire questions. The three non-negotiable behaviours that you and the people around you have to buy into. Quite basic, if I can remember them. Bear in mind, I presented this to my players. So on the back of your podcast, this was one of my first meetings I had with them. I recommended they listen to it. So I sat them down and said, high-performance podcast, both your faces at the front. and I said, listen to this podcast. It's amazing. And I said, they've got this section on their three non-negotiable behaviors and these are my three, so you understand me more.

17:01Always give your best. Very basic. Be willing to learn and improve and put the interests of the team before your own personal interests. Did you ever ask for theirs? Well, Jacob Murphy, who listens to your podcast as well, he gave me his. Don't ask me to remember them, but yes, a couple of them came back. Nice. What advice would you give to a teenage Eddie just starting out? I'm going to contradict myself with my answer here. So I would say back off yourself a little bit and enjoy it a bit more. Go easy on yourself. But as we said earlier, that's enabled me to get to this position, which when you consider where I was at 16, I would never have believed it possible what I've done in my life.

17:43So I'm not sure if that's the right advice, but almost along the way, just try and take it in and enjoy it a bit more. But do you think you could have got to the same place if you'd have been a little bit kinder? No, I honestly don't. No, I've had to push and work and sacrifice to get here. And I don't think I could have done it another way. I mean, you know, when he says, I wanted to come on the podcast and thank you for helping me when I was out of work or when we went to speak to Gareth Southgate, what did he say? Your podcast got me through lockdown. down i mean it's a reminder that you know everyone can grow at any time you know it's easy to think well gareth southgate's the england manager eddie howells the newcastle boss surely these people can't grow closer towards high performance but the truth is we're all on a journey and i think this podcast if it stands for anything it stands for reminding the audience that they should be lifelong learners definitely and eddie gave that great example on it where when he'd left Bournemouth having got them in the Premier League, kept them there and then got them relegated.

18:50He took a year off and he decided it was going to be a full calendar 12-month period. And during that time, he recharged, he spent time with his family, but then he went back and revised his approach. He went back to challenge what he thought he knew, what did he need to get better at, how could he improve in other areas. And I think that's a lesson for all of us. This is a guy that most people would regard as one of the great of this generation of managers in soccer. But the fact that he's still prepared to invest in his own development says if he can do it, any of us can. And hopefully the High Performance podcast can be part of your diet of self-improvement.

19:31And of course, you can also download the High Performance app for exclusive content from lots of these guests. Let's have someone else from the sporting world, my former world, Christian Horner. ah brilliant so this one we went to the red bull team factory at milton keen's and you know it's very rare that someone in formula one gives you a full hour of their time because they've got so much going on um but it was an episode we recorded relatively early in the life of high performance yeah um but it was one where again like just asking christian to open up to share to talk about his struggles but to talk about his successes it just brought a really rounded view of a man that everyone seems to have an opinion of these days but listen to this episode and you'll hear the truth about that guy yeah i mean the fact that he was even telling us about the pearls of wisdom that his wife jerry halliwell shared with him i still quote the one of a pat on the back is only a few inches higher than a kick up the arse as one of the messages that jerry tells him on a regular basis to keep him grounded and not to get too carried away with the success but to me it was the fact that he was coming at a time when he was enduring his own struggles with Red Bull so I know they've won the last couple of titles but at the time he was he was coming in the slipstream of Mercedes and yet he was coming and he was equally prepared to talk about the lessons from those difficult years as much as the lessons he'd learned from when his drivers were standing on top of the podium here he is so what lesson would you have taken from the journey you've been on that you pass on to your children now then i think to not be afraid of chasing your dreams to not be afraid of shooting for the stars because you might land on the moon you get one life and you've got to go for it we're here for such a small percentage of time don't waste it go for it you know you Whatever it is, whatever gives you a passion in life, chase it and don't wait because it might not ever get the chance again.

21:35So you've got to grab it, embrace it and pick it up and run and enjoy it. That's the other thing. I enjoy what I do. I'm just fortunate I get paid for something that I enjoy doing. And I think if you're doing something just for the money, that's not right. Like you're never going to get the best out of something if it's just about the paycheck at the end of the month. You've got to love what you do. You've got to enjoy what you do. And then if you do that, you're going to do it a lot better. And that conversation about Formula One is Christian's take. We've also had George Russell on High Performance talking about life as a Formula One driver.

22:13I mean, the Toto Wolff episode is one that has, you know, it impacts people all the time. and actually we've recently heard from the brilliant Fernando Alonso this is a man that isn't prying to giving out interviews and yet he sat down with us for an hour and shared the lessons that he's learnt from quite humble origins in Spain to again the summit of Formula One and he talks about preparation I mean I loved that conversation with him about preparing and what does it be said I wanted him to go really emotional when I said so you're sitting on the start finish straight the lights are about to go out it's the beginning of a Grand Prix you put your visor down what are you thinking and he just went robot i just thought perfect that is his version of high performance um well i really hope if you're new to the podcast that was really helpful for you um and if you listen to these regularly i just think that's a great reminder that you know you can listen to an episode take a lot from it learn from it but actually sometimes the best thing is to go back and have a listen again because you will be a different person to the person that listened to johnny or eddie or stephanie or christian or tyson all those months ago so maybe try that out go back have another listen and see how you've changed yeah because we certainly have changed on the journey that we've been on over the last 200 plus episodes i think we started out like i say being quite like think of it as that parable we started out as being the wind looking to challenge looking to try and find out what was it that drove them i think we're now aiming to be more like the sun and try and step into their world and see it from their perspective and what we're finding is we to get richer information that comes back really enjoyed it thanks a lot damien thank you jake and by the way thank you all so much for listening don't forget you can watch on youtube you can also download the high performance app see you soon