The Neuroscience Of Elite Performance: Cognitive Strategies For Success In Sport & Life With Dr. David Spindler

30:31Yeah, does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, I understand that. Yes, but finding your why is the cool thing to do. Sure, and it basically narrows the decision tree, right? Yeah, totally. Like once you know your why, you understand your purpose, you're clear on what your values are, it's easier to figure out what to say yes to and what to say no to. And then from that, what are all the branches or the roots of a tree that make that tree stand as solid as possible? Right. What are the other questions that you need to be asking yourself at the same time? how to watch, what behaviors do I need to change?

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34:43One of the things that came up when I was talking to Mike Gervais the other day was the importance for elite athletes, elite performers to have other things in their life or have a sense of where their life is headed when their career is over. And he quoted some statistics that I can't remember right now, but when, I think it was either NBA players or NFL players, when they knew what they were gonna be doing once the sun set on their professional career, they were not only happier, but they actually performed better as athletes. And I think this overlaps perfectly with some of the stuff that you talk about.

35:24It's so interesting because you think the predisposition of the elite athlete is to be so tunnel focused that to indulge in the idea of what life might look like afterwards would be to take your eye off the ball of what's driving the best performance that you're capable of. But in fact, it actually works the opposite. And I would imagine this plays into allostatic load. Like when you don't know what you're gonna be doing later, especially when your contract's only for a year, the kind of background static stress that an athlete is walking around with that level of uncertainty has to be, you know, a negative input on performance.

36:06And so to the extent that it feels indulgent that you would be diverting any kind of attention away from your sport to what you would be doing after actually reduces that stress load and allows the athlete to feel more grounded and kind of safe and confident and secure in the pursuit of their sport. Yeah, I think to that regard too, once athletes have a partner and family at the same time, that tends to facilitate a little bit more. What am I gonna do after? It will sort of direct that on its own. I get a lot of those questions of, oh, no, I'm solely focused on my athletics or I'm solely focused on my business, whatever it is, from a younger demographic.

36:55Once you've had that family, that kind of focus, you tend to do that anyway. But from the question that you were saying before is I 100 % see that all the time. So they're solely focused and all they're worried about is their overall performance down to how many watts that they do within the session. If that's not what they think it's going to be, that ruins their day when it's really one session. Because that's all there is. That's all there is. There's no there there beyond that. No, no. And that's, or, you know, like that one session is not going to make or break a world championship. It's not gonna make or break whether they win Roubaix or whether they sign a contract within their business.

37:47That one little small little perspective. And then the accumulation over time. If you are making too big of a deal off of one day's training performance, you're holding on so tightly that that's its own form of stress. Yeah, absolutely. And that creates that anxiety in that fight or flight response. you're constantly in the spidey senses tingling pretty much and that also creates an overall detriment to performance moving forward for sure. Explain this idea, because it's related, that you have called happy watts. I mean, this is a very cycling thing, but I think it's applicable broadly as well.

38:31Yeah, like you can produce better performances when your neurotransmitters are in the right place or right spot or you're emitting them at the right times or timeframes at least anyway. So dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, epinephrine, it's also called adrenaline, noradrenaline. How and when they're released over time, so a happier, more content but still driven athlete can produce better performances than one that is highly stressed over time. It makes sense. But I think the real tweak there to really drill it home is this idea concisely put that I heard you say, which is happiness increases time to exhaustion.

39:23Yeah, it does, 100%. So the happier you are, you're actually able to sustain a higher physical output for a longer period of time. Yes. Which is kind of an amazing revelatory concept. Yes and no, the military have been doing it for a long, long time. But from an overall performance perspective, your time to exhaustion is how long or how far you can go for whatever it is. Your ability to dopamine and serotonin are modulated by acetylcholine and some chemicals within your brain that make you say, I'm done, I'm finished. So that time to exhaustion or when you quit pretty much. And the more happy chemicals or better thoughts that you have to create those happy chemicals or more content that you are in general, your ability to withstand pain increases, your ability to be able to modulate

40:38overall output is also better and more efficient. Literally because you're in a better spot, you're in a better space overall time. Yeah, so. In other words, when you make that decision, when you're in physical pain, because you're running or riding your bike or whatever it is that you do, and you finally make that decision, I've had enough, I've gotta ease off the gas here. That is not a reflection of your physical capacity. It is entirely the result of a kind of a mental calculus based upon the regulation or dysregulation of your hormonal landscape. Yeah, so if you were cramping and there's some physical conditions, that that's not the case, obviously.

41:26However, almost all of the time you see someone quit some type of physical activity, if you wait 10 seconds, they can go again. So that capacity is still there, right? So it's an inbuilt brain mechanism that it is - It will shut you down before your body really needs to be shut down. Yeah, it's why people can lift cars when there's children underneath it. and like your body can do amazing things if that mechanism's removed. And that's kind of what the brain, what you can do to the brain and will help the brain do moving forward. And that's what modulates that time to exhaustion extension. So the lesson baked into that is that if you really wanna unlock your ability to go harder, longer, further, you've got to look at your entire life and balance it out and learn how to become a happier, more grounded person who understands, you know, what's important in life and is taking care of themselves and going to sleep on time and like all of it, right?

42:35Like it's a gateway into like everything almost. Yeah. But long-term stress is obviously really, really bad, but acute stress can also produce performance. That's not what anyone is saying. Like it's, there's been plenty many of times where an athlete has found out that their partner is something's happened to their partner and then produced a performance. Sure, anger is an effective fuel source. It's just not a sustainable long-term strategy. Yeah, so from the overall, get your shit sorted out. Yeah. And try and find happiness, whatever that is. And it actually doesn't matter what it is. It's gonna be really individual to every person, every athlete, every CEO, it actually doesn't matter.

43:19Yeah, happiness is really important in life. But the pursuit of it is, you don't have to be happy all the time. That's also not something that needs to be. Right, happiness isn't a static emotional state, nor should it be the driver of your decisions. It's an elusive thing that's a byproduct of these other kind of firmaments of your life. Thoughts, behaviors, and actions. Purpose, values, like all that kind of stuff, right? But then reflecting back on Cavendish, like he seemed really happy. And then you think, well, he's lost his edge, right? But I don't think he has. And there's something really cool about that.

43:59Like, I can't wait to see what he's gonna do because he just struck me as having just a relationship with what's to come this summer,

44:12where he's, I wouldn't say like distant from performance results, but very clearly he understands that whatever happens is not a reflection on how he feels about himself in his life, which is the place you wanna be. You wanna be that healthy person who can also perform when you need to perform. And of course you want it to go well, but when it doesn't, it's not a referendum on whether you're a good or bad person or have any kind of worth in the world. No, I think that revelation has a lot to do with Peter, his wife. She's very grounded. He's got an amazing family. The children are great. And his worth as a dad is not reflective of whether he wins another Tour de France stage or not.

45:06Of course. And that understanding and that. I mean, Jesus Christ, he's done it. He's got 34. Like, you know. Yes. Yeah, but. It's like, I have the record. Yes. I have all the records basically. But when Mark, what's created Mark to be Mark is the fact that that's not enough. It's like, it's actually never enough. That even if he got. But the point being that it felt like if it doesn't go his way. He's okay with it. Yeah, he's okay with it. He's not like, I have to keep going because nothing is never enough for me. Like that's not the energy that I got from him at all. Oh, 100 % not. He's overall worth as a human is now not connected or it's not as connected as it used to be with Mark Cavendish or Cav, the athlete.

45:59He understands now that, or he's content with the fact that now he's the human that he's enough. He is enough. Yeah. So, because he was told for such a long time that he wasn't good enough, regardless of, or he's finished, or it's not just Mark, there's lots of athletes that that's happened to outside of cycling itself. But his ability to be able to bring those people around him, to be content with who he is, is possibly his strength in general. And that's definitely the growth that I've seen in him since 2019, that's for sure. Well, job well done, mate. Oh, that's all him. That's nothing to do with me at all.

46:48I knew you would like push that away. We talked a little bit about the common sort of mental health challenges that you see in working with these athletes, but flipping that, what are the common things that you see amongst people performing at the highest level? Like, what is it about these people that is consistently showing up as a trait or a behavior or a disposition that is fueling that greatness that is perhaps something that doesn't meet us directly, like that we wouldn't see on face value, but is absolutely critical as a driver. Drive, actual drive. Yeah, so what it is that makes them want to produce a performance that rings themselves dry pretty much or is as perfect as possible.

47:41Perfectionism is a trait that lots of elite, almost every really highly performing athlete and it's really highly correlated to elite performances, but it's actually precision over perfection is what what they're looking for. Explain that distinction. Well, perfection is an unattainable goal. It's not something that can ever be delivered upon. There's always something that an athlete can do better or slightly continue on, but precision is the best that they can do at the time, as precise as possible. so regardless of what's going on around them they've delivered a performance that is on that given day given that set of circumstances as precise as as humanly possible and they've delivered so that's what they do really well um but their perfectionistic tendencies also um a highly obsessive compulsive.

48:52There's lots of the traits there that go. I mean, there's part of that that is fueling. Yeah, absolutely. When you set an incredibly high standard for yourself and you're intolerant of, you know, not being able to reach that, that's sort of an aspirational mindset, but at the same time, it can also be paralyzing. Oh, 100%. Their ability to perceive what is a good performance also changes over time. So from a golfing perspective, a good shot for a professional golfer from, say, 80 meters is four feet from the flag. But you do that with an amateur that's a 20 handicap, and that's 25, 30 feet from the flag, and they're happy with that.

49:42So what, but they were also happy with that when they were that level two, when they were younger, you know. But as they get better, their perception of what a good performance is narrows to the point where it almost needs to be perfection. Or I think it needs to be perfection. And you're just boxed into this corner. Yeah, yeah. So from that, again, you need to, to be able to be as precise as possible, you need to control the controllables, be able to remove as much allostatic load as possible within 10 days of performance get those around you in your performance bubble to remove as much of that allostatic load or take that extra load on as much as possible and usually there's someone who's good at certain things that you can give that to.

50:32And understand that the fueling portion, so nutrition,

50:41hydration, but also sleep as a fuel at the same time, because without sleep, you actually, it doesn't matter how much fuel you put into yourself. It's a regenerative process overall is really unbelievably important. One of the really big things is you get high-performance athletes that don't actually sleep the night before. So if your big competition is every four years like the Olympics, the fact that you think that you're going to sleep the night before your competition is actually quite – usually doesn't happen. So what we try and do is get their attentional focus and their ability, their arousal levels at their height, their highest around the time that they're competing.

51:32So they're not actually going to get great sleep the night before and it's actually okay. There's lots of research that says that you don't need as much sleep as what you think you do the day before or the night before. However, you do need it consistently for the weeks to 10 days before that. Yeah, absolutely. Well, a lot of that happens around the stress of it. Like when you're not sleeping, thinking I've spent like a decade getting ready for tomorrow and I can't sleep. And then this cycle of anxiety occurs. So if you can disabuse people of the urgency of that and calm them down, like, look, you're not going to sleep, like already accept that now so that you're not agitated when it's two in the morning.

52:12Yeah, and it's okay as well. Yeah, it's going to be all right. Hey, for example, what are the chances that Yulep Kipchoge slept really well the night before the sub two project? Yeah, who knows? Pretty slim, pretty slim you'd think. Although then I look at him and I'm like, he probably did sleep like a baby. He's such a cool cucumber, that guy. Outwardly, I would say, but inwardly, that's the basic human function to be, to have some type of fear of failure. Right. So he would have been concerned even though he would have had been outwardly projecting. I know that I can do this, but there would be some, yeah, absolutely.

52:52There's no one immune to some types of fear of failure. That's a basic human function for sure. It's comforting to hear that. Yeah, well for me too, I have the same thing. So if you have an athlete with an unhealthy relationship to perfectionism and a little bit of OCD, maybe dusted on top of that. How do you take that person and move them towards a precision perspective on themselves in sport? Because that's, I would imagine very difficult because that person who has that perfectionist default setting, I'm sure is absolutely convinced that that is a piece with their success equation. And so to get them to loosen the reins on that is a threat, right?

53:43It could be perceived as a threat. Yes. It's more of an education piece as well because they're already doing the precision portion. They just think that's wrapped up in perfection. Yeah. So I'll ask them in general, like, okay, well, what is it? So give me a performance that was absolutely 100 % perfect. yet that that question's yet to be answered so so from that i say okay well this was a detriment to performance this was a detriment to performance this was a detriment to performance but you've produced a world record how and again they can't tell you because they're so so pushed into that perfectionistic tendencies portion so it's all it really is is a removal of of the whole that perfection has onto their performance and moving the language across to the precision side of it.

54:42Nothing changes. And when you're able to do that with an athlete, what is the byproduct of that? Performance, yeah. They let go of the thought that they have to control everything. Everything. That's again, those OCD behaviors and the other thing. You actually don't have to control everything. You can farm that control out to people at times and it's okay. Do you find that that is harder with triathletes than it is with cyclists? Yes. So the answer is - Because triathlon is an individual thing. It's like you got the, but you have, it's all data and numbers and you don't have a Peloton or a lead out man or any of those other kind of uncontrollables.

55:29It's just like, it's just me and this machine that is my body and the machine that has a seat on it that I'm riding for part of this thing. But every single time that that happens, they'll say, I didn't put my wetsuit, I didn't take my wetsuit off properly. I've got to lose 10 seconds in transition. I tripped over my, you know, whatever. Triathletes are, sorry, trampling your words, but like they, in general, this is not everybody, of course, but like they're not great at kind of rolling with unforeseen circumstances, whether it's a flat or like, you know, those kinds of things are very jarring to the typical triathlete.

56:07In cycling, shit's gone crazy all the time. Like those athletes have to know how to roll with all kinds of weirdness happening in every single stage of every race they do. Yes, but then you go to track cycling. Oh, that's the ultimate. And it goes to more to the triathlete side because the variables are less, the overall variables. So they try and control more of the performance. The more that can be controlled, the more that can be. The more that tendency comes out. Well, it's self-selecting too, because the athlete who loves that is gonna move towards that sport, right? Or even the 5K runners that do better time trials and then overall, they're better off getting paced.

56:51And then the last 400, the pace, or the last K, the pace that comes off and then they race rather than someone who gets into a championship and races. And it may be for 5K, 35 seconds slower, but the racer is going to win more often than the fittest person there. Yeah, the person who's obsessed with control is really good in a time trial setting, but doesn't know how to race because that involves letting go of all that stuff. Yeah, to learn skill to the two. And trusting yourself, trusting your body. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But also on top of, you know, in this discussion around like traits that are shared among the best of the best is also I've heard you talk about this idea of people who are really good at self-regulation.

57:39Yeah. So explain what that means. It's your ability to understand where your emotions come from and where your thoughts, behaviors and actions, what they do to yourself and then how they're projected onto the world pretty much. Um, and that regulatory system, um, the, their abilities to pace, um, to pace, whatever athletic endeavor in crew improves because they're actually better at understanding their body in general. Um, that's where that comes from. That's what self-regulation is, is, is your ability to regulate the self. It is, it's in the name, but yeah.

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1:00:01There's a possible potential and I'm sure it's very real conflict that can come into play when your job is to service the organization versus the individual athlete and you kind of the team and you know it's a lot of the team access its optimum potential, that potentially might not be the same goal that Mark Cavendish has, right? And that probably puts you in a bit of a, what we would call in the United States a pickle. Oh, very much so. So a lot of the work that I kind of have to do is keep the trust, for me, it's the athlete first and foremost. If I go into a meeting in regards to the overall team, I have to go in knowing that I could get sacked given some of the things that I have to say.

1:01:06Which is weird, because that's kind of what they hired you for, to get the hard truths and identify the blind spots. Yes, but cycling in general, it's not Formula One. There's a differentiation between

1:01:25higher levels of team building as well. The athletes are less of a, they're the product pretty much. And they're expendable and I refuse to see that, for me that they're not expendable. There's so much baked into that. I mean, we were chatting before the podcast, like, you know, cycling in so many ways is so archaic in terms of the kind of ways that they hold on to certain traditions and ways of doing things that are at cross purposes with what might work better. And they're very entrenched in a certain kind of culture that makes it very difficult to innovate or bring new ideas or modernize, you know, their approach to performance.

1:02:19And then on top of that, the expendability of the riders, like even somebody like Cavendish, like absolute legend is fighting for his job. And these contracts are typically only like, I mean, the longest is like three years, right? A lot of them are just like a year. So every person on that team is in constant peril of, you know, not making the team getting cut. I mean, this is not unique to cycling. This occurs in the NBA and the NFL and the like, but that doesn't really help the circumstances. And then on top of that, it's a team sport. The team is most important. And yet all of these individuals who are contributing to the team all live in different places, trained by themselves most of the time, only come together at certain times of the year for camps and then show up at these races and have to operate as a unit with shared goals and values and a sense of purpose, which is a very difficult puzzle to assemble.

1:03:14And it would seem to me that every team would benefit from having someone like you on board full time all the time and not just like a whole staff. Like this should be a line item in the budget that is not like, oh, an afterthought, but really at the top of the page as one of the most important things if you're really serious about not just winning, but like staying at the top or having everybody perform to the best of their abilities. I absolutely agree with you. But it's not just the athletes either. It's how the staff deal with the athletes. the athletes are the ones that are producing the performance, but how the coach interacts with the athlete,

1:04:04someone like myself or there's other people in the world that do this as well, but the interactions, if a coach is having an issue with an athlete, then all that coach has to do is ring someone like myself and go, I'm having this issue. you know for some reason using cavern as an example he's not he's not doing the training or he's he's over training or he's he's doing something i don't know what to say to him to be able to change his thoughts behaviors and actions um well enough um and what would you do given your your knowledge which is a little bit more intimate than mine as a coach how would you how would you do this?

1:04:47And then giving them the strategies to be able to help the athlete as well. Right. And that I'm sure involves tough questions with management and the coaching staff, because, you know, maybe their language isn't right. And when they come to you and they're like, we want you to go to Cav and fix it. They're thinking like, we're, you know, we're, we're good over here. Like you just need to solve this problem. When in truth, the solution to the problem involves a team approach where everybody is on the same page. There's a shared sense of purpose and values. The communication is open. There's a sense of safety and permissiveness around being vulnerable and having the hard questions that are necessary to untangle any kind of like mental health knot so that everybody can move forward appropriately.

1:05:33And that's not an easy job. That's like all the neuroscience in the world. Like you have to, that's like having to really understand people and have a deft touch in how you're communicating with everyone to make sure that you're not creating additional fractures. Yeah. For me, in the way that I do it, I start with myself being vulnerable and allowing myself to be vulnerable as well. It's on the record, I've had massive mental health problems through all of my sort of teenager all the way through to my mid thirties. been in hospital for nearly a year of my life. Oh, wow, I didn't know that. No, no, I kind of...

1:06:13Depression or...? Yeah, so bipolar disorder. Wow. And yeah, kind of didn't want to be here for a very significant period of time and tried not to as well. And I'm very glad of the fact that that's no longer the case and life's different now than what it was when I was younger. um so i'll allowing myself to be that person and they know that whatever they do i'm not here to judge it's not a judgment-based conversation just let me know if it's if it's an issue i'm not here to i'm not here to fix it either that's their job i'm here to give them advice on pathways to be able to to to to help themselves um and and help others around them so that self self-awareness piece is really important from an athlete perspective.

1:07:08Athletes in general don't usually have a really high sense of self-awareness of what their actions do to other people and how those actions then apply to those people talking to themselves at the same time. Is that because elite performance in that level requires a certain level of selfishness. Yes, absolutely. That's exactly what it is. That kind of blinds you from. Yep. Yeah, yeah, totally. The impact that you're having on other people. Yeah, yeah, the lack of self-awareness, it's also a safety mechanism from the same. Right, if you actually were connected to the downstream impacts of your behavior, you wouldn't be able to do your job.

1:07:53Totally, yeah. And also the majority of them have been told they're amazing since they were 12. Right. It's true. You can do no wrong. Yeah, exactly. Like when it comes to high performance sport, the initial portion of it is the best physical specimens come to the front of the pack. And that doesn't necessarily mean that the best psychological specimens come along with them. They're the ones that get dropped off first, usually. So if you look at it as a continuum, the highest psychological capacity within sport is doesn't necessarily have the same value as high physiological. Right. Yeah. But the vector or the variable that's missing in that is performance over time.

1:08:52Yep. Because if you could be physiologically the best, but if you're psychologically tweaked, how long is your career gonna last, right? The thing that doesn't happen is really high psychological capacity, low physiological capacity, where opposite way, high physiological capacity, low psychological capacity can still make high performance sport. Right, and if you're just running like a hamster wheel where cyclists or athletes in whatever sport can just come in and out like widgets, then that's not really gonna be a priority to address. Yeah, it's why I think, and there's been studies on it, where the majority of athletes sit further along the spectrum.

1:09:39If we just look at autism spectrums, they fit further along that spectrum than the norm. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, because it takes that type of behaviors to be able to - Right, to tune out - To tune out all the rest of the stuff. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you need that drive. You need to be, you need to have focus as well. Yeah, but the person who's been told they're amazing since as long as they can remember also is at risk of over-indexing their self-worth and identity based upon the external approval of others. And I had Dr. Michael Gervais in here the other day, basically wrote a whole book about this.

1:10:22and his, you know, first, you know, literally the first book that he published on the subject of mastery is all about decoupling yourself from having an overindulgent concern for the opinions of others. Yep. Because it is all that noise that can lead you astray or undermine whole body health because everything that you're about and everything that you've achieved when suddenly that doesn't exist anymore, you become a shell of a human being. Oh, absolutely. And was that at play with like Cav when you were working with that? Because it feels like that wasn't quite his issue. So yes, with the rise of social media, everyone has an opinion as I'm quite sure as you've got larger in the public domain.

1:11:15And you'd like, if you get 90 % or 95 % happy feedback, you're actually doing really well. But that 5 % is the one you worry about. Sure, of course. And that's also, Mark was exactly the same. I kind of flipped back and forward between Cav and Mark and always have, because Mark's the person and Cav is the persona or the athlete that kind of removes himself. He's a different person. Why not then the person I know is different than the person most people see on the television. And the person that I met when he came on the podcast was very different than I expected. Yeah. I expected this, you know, sort of alpha personality who had a great command over, you know, how to language his relationship with performance.

1:12:07And instead what I found was just a really sweet grounded guy who seemed like he's in a really good place with his life and has a very healthy relationship with performance and his role as a professional cyclist in the world as somebody who's a public person and felt really content. And I was curious around whether that's always been the mark that we don't know because there is this performance persona. the person that shows up in front of the cameras or, or, and, or is that a result of all the work that you've done with him to get him to a place where he's coming from, uh, you know, a mentality of, of gratitude and groundedness.

1:12:52He knows what's important in his life and everything else is just kind of play. Um, I think Mark in general has, has matured, um, but he's matured in front of camera at the same time. So I think parts of his personality is extremely perfectionistic. And when you get told, if you tell somebody 10 times that this is the way that you like something and that doesn't get done that way, he tends to blow his stack for want of better words. And someone the likes of Rowan Dennis was exactly the same, where it's more of a communication problem when it comes to that stuff is just maybe communicate to that person differently if you if you tell someone 10 times that you want something done is it the way that you're communicating to them it can be three things the communication portion from the person how they're listening to it or they just don't care and they're going to not going to do whatever.

1:13:54So as an educator at a university level, if I don't communicate what the subject matter is and my students aren't inputting that information, it's my job to be able to input that information differently for them to be able to get the subject matter. So it's exactly the same when it comes to athletes giving information to, maybe they just need to go in through a side door and just tell them differently and then they'll get it and then they won't forget it, whoever they're telling. But if it's the last one of that is they actually don't care, then... Well, then you need to replace that person. That doesn't happen a lot in high performance sport, unfortunately.

1:14:43Right. Right, I'm interested around how much the culture of cycling has shifted because the sense that I'm getting is that you're brought on as sort of a triage specialist. Like you come on, hey, we got this problem athlete or we have this thing that we need you to fix that's already acute on some level. Like there's sort of a damage control relationship with your specialty, as opposed to prioritizing all these things that you understand and care about that are related to optimal performance and blending them into the culture so that you're creating an environment in which everybody can like, a high tide lifts all boats, right?

1:15:31And if this was sort of blended into the DNA of a team or an organization, that seems to be a better approach to engendering these principles on a team level and having it percolate down into all the athletes so that they all have toolkits so that you avoid all the acute sort of damage control scenarios that you're brought in to like fix after they've been percolating or metastasizing for longer than they should have. Yeah, I agree with you. Um, so the, it's a lot easier to fix something that you're involved in than, um, than coming into something, uh, that's a hurricane already. That's for sure.

1:16:21Um, and in the movie it was, I went to the Isle of Man for, for 10 days. I actually walked into a hurricane. Um, it was a lot of the cyclists on the Isle of Man had been out and, um, and Mark had kind of changed what he was feeling about professional cycling at the time. He actually didn't want to race anymore at the time, and he'd lost his love for something that he shouldn't lose his love for. It's his sense of freedom. You do sport in general where you start the sport because you love it, and it may turn into a job, but you can't lose the fact of why he did it at the start, And that happens quite a lot in professional sport because people say they fall out of love with whatever sport it is.

1:17:11And it's cause they're not having fun. So let's find some fun. That's kind of, yeah, from that part. At least in the way in with Mark was when you guys found yourselves at a playground where he first learned how to ride a BMX bike or something like that. Yeah, it was, yeah. Yeah, I was on a scooter, like a 125cc scooter because I couldn't keep up with him on a bike, obviously. And yeah, so I'd ride beside him for 10 days and one of his best mates, Cal Crutchlow, he's a MotoGP rider, he was at the time, he does super bike stuff now. One of Mark's best friends would come out. Does he do the Isle of Man race?

1:17:53I think he has in the past. Oh my God. Yeah, like - That's the gnarliest race in the world. He is, what he does for a living is something else. But yeah, so I refused to speak to Mark until he spoke to me. And yeah, we kind of - And was he, did he welcome you on the island, man? Or was he like, I gotta tolerate this dude? I think, yeah, I wouldn't say he welcomed me. Not by any stretch. Were you staying at his house? Yeah, it was, yeah. Wow. I got picked up by his mum actually or his mother who's a lovely lady. And, yeah, and he'd gone out on the town the night before with a heap of his friends and was not in a state to drive.

1:18:42And he knew that I don't drink. Alcohol's not in my life anymore. And so there was really a sense of him letting me down as well. But he also, he did it to be, it was kind of a power struggle too. A little bit of fuck you energy. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. And it took a couple of days for that energy to leave. And I'm okay with that. That's fine. And he's allowed to do that. there was a really highly complex situation that I found myself in. And yeah, all I wanted to do is make him, is get him Mark Cavendish, the human happy again. But you coming in realizing you're at this playground, here's my crack, here's my opening, understanding that what's missing here is that connection to joy or, you know, what made him fall in love with this sport to begin with, that's a starting place.

1:19:50Yeah. Then how do you build on that to kind of rewire an athlete like that's relationship with what they do professionally and all the expectations and pressures and, you know, doubts that are coming into play as he's at this, you know, crossroads and whether he's gonna even continue to do this thing. I'll put it back onto him. I didn't want him to be able to deflect what the reasoning was. I actually said, well, it is what it is. How are we gonna fix it? Exactly the same as what you would do if he had a knee injury on a bike or he'd had a concussion or a crash. Like, how are we gonna fix this?

1:20:35Like, it's not just on me. Right, you're not gonna be able to fix it. He has to take ownership and responsibility. Absolutely, 100%. And then you have to provide him with a sense of agency for how he's going to do that. Yeah, and that's what clicked in him. Because every person he'd seen before is like, oh, okay, we can try this, this, and this. And he never got a pushback on him. Well, you're the one that actually this pertains to. It's your career, it's not my career. How I'm here to help you. I can help, I can, you know, give you the tools and provide you with the practitioners if you need to be able to fix whatever it is that you need to fix.

1:21:17However, this is not going to be easy and it's quite a long road. And if you're willing to do that, I'm willing to give you as much as you give me in return. And he was willing. Yeah. In the end, yes. Perhaps a little begrudging at the beginning, right? Yeah, I think he was under the assumption that I was there. What was written on my T-shirts at the time was who I was beholden to, which is that sort of team athlete interface. Can he trust you? Yeah, exactly. What are you gonna report back to management? Is this going to imperil my job if I tell you the truth about how I'm actually feeling? That's a problem.

1:22:04Oh, 100%. Yeah, that trust portion is really undervalued in sport. So how do you engender trust in an organization? Trust is something, I mean, first of all, there's an obvious kind of evolutionary piece here where we're sort of born and bred to be part of a certain kind of tribe. And the tribe is going to survive when everybody trusts each other and you're operating as a group with the group's overall best interest at heart, as opposed to whatever the individual's self-interest is. Exactly. And the connective tissue is trust. Trust is something that you have to build. If trust is violated, it becomes very difficult - And toxic as well.

1:22:47To repair, yeah. It's almost impossible to repair. So how you actually build that is just exercises in releasing oxytocin, it doesn't matter what it is. So the old school in men's teams was to go out and drink and cause that's - Bonding exercises. But also it's an emotion inhibitor. Right, it provides a pathway into vulnerability. Into vulnerability, yeah. And the ability to be able to be vulnerable to each portion of those teams is that oxytocin release. It's really, really important. I really can't stress that highly enough. And the best teams in the world, regardless of whether that's athletics or Fortune 500 company or whatever it is, I don't just work in athletics, I do some work in the business world as well.

1:23:43And that's exactly what it is, is how you build a team, how that team then works together. They will give more of themselves because they know that the person next to them has got their back. It seems like it's a situation in which, you know, maybe decades ago, if you just get a group of people together and they're working alongside each other under intense circumstances where they're all clear on what the goal is, that trust will just become a byproduct of that without any kind of interference. but it seems much more optimal to understand the importance and the nature of how trust operates to create an environment and structures and systems from a leadership perspective all the way down to create the best scenario to breed that kind of trust.

1:24:36Yeah, exactly. So if you are a leader or you have some sense of power within any organization, you would become better at your job if you learned what produces oxytocin and what behaviors within yourself and others make that oxytocin release happen. And so what would be some examples of that? Well, an ability from, if we just look at from the cab thing from my, is me actually saying to Mark, I really struggle with my mental health and it's this. And I gave some of myself to get some back from him. And an ability to be able to put yourself in somebody else's shoes and say, it's okay, how can I help you?

1:25:28Or from that perspective. If you, to your point, if you lead with vulnerability, you're demonstrating an anticipation of trust to the other person, which will hopefully be repaid with vulnerability and trust in kind, doing hard things together where you have to rely upon on each other and being of service to another person in a selfless way. It's what the military did really well. Yeah. And you can do it from a leadership perspective, if you have an amazing coach or I don't know, Lieutenant General, if you're in the military, that person can set the tone and create an environment that's conducive to that type of trust building, but it can also work the other way around.

1:26:26If you have a really bad leader or a toxic leader or like the team can kind of band together in opposition to that leadership figure and that creates its own level of trust in opposition. Yes. But that's not a healthy environment. No, that becomes quite toxic. And as soon as two or three of those key players leave for somebody else or for greener pastures or however you wanna put it, that the whole structure falls down. And you see that quite often in teams, the really good leaders get poached and they go to the next team or go to the next organization and they build that organization. And the other one falls by the wayside because of the organizational structure change.

1:27:13In the case of CAV or it could be anybody who's in a position where trust doesn't come easy, you develop a certain level of trust with him you make progress with him together but that doesn't extend to the level of distrust that he has with the organization that employs him his level of distrust at a high management level there was really high and i had to tiptoe around that quite quite a lot actually and there was a a real power struggle within that team itself as well. At that, at a higher level, that created quite an environment that was very difficult to be able to produce performance because you're a by-product of your chosen behaviors, really.

1:28:06Right. And performance also should be the by-product of those chosen behaviors. But if those chosen behaviors are manifested by something that's not of your doing, if you get told that this is behavior, it may not be a complete choice performance, that's a pure performance decrement at a time. So understanding that a pathway to trust is to create an open channel for oxytocin to flow. Yeah. Also means that you want to sidestep or avoid behaviors or dynamics that inhibit the flow of oxytocin. So from a neurotransmitter perspective, like understanding things that get in the way of oxytocin, like, are you stressed?

1:29:03Like stress is gonna shut that down, right? Like what are the other factors that come into play that either promote or inhibit the trust building that you're trying to do. So from that, you actually have to figure out where that overall stress is coming from because from a management perspective, it may be sponsor stress or money or whatever that is. And that may be brought into play within the athletes or within the people underneath that, with that person. So it's more of an education piece when it comes to that as well. Like, if you educate the reasons why behaviors actually happen the way that they do, and not necessarily the way that you want them to, but the way that other people have learned behavior over time.

1:29:58Going to Mark, say, and say, oh, if he's having an issue with another cyclist, you go, well, okay, well, what is that behavior that you don't like? Is there any external pressures that are unforeseen in the first place? And what could they be? Is it the fact that they're just a whatever word you want to, a four-letter word you want to call it? Or is that behavior getting manifested by pure stress in the first place? And has that has that always been the case? Does that make sense? Yeah. So in other words, performing a bit of an inventory on one's history with that type of behavior or that other individual to kind of remove the blind spots and see is it really that behavior or that person or is there something going on with you that we can control?

1:30:52We can't control whatever that other person's gonna do. And you're suffering as a human and as an athlete because of your fixation or preoccupation with whatever this other person is doing. Let's focus on what we can control. Yeah, control the controllables. Like it's such a cliche, but it's so true at the same time. It's a cliche for a reason because it works. Yeah. And it's really something that's how you do control whatever the external stimulus is to then maybe remove that cortisol or increase the reward pathway activity, the HPA axis, the hippocampal, pituitary, adrenal axis, which is fight or flight response pretty much.

1:31:43How we remove that stress from there to be able to produce that performance because what cortisol does is actually limits time to exhaustion as well. So higher stress, you can't go as hard for long. So that's overall time to exhaustion is minimized because of really high stress environments. And understanding kind of oxytocin and controlling the controllables. Protocols around that, I would imagine involve not only like taking a look at your life and how can we sort of remove stressors that are unnecessary through different systems, et cetera, but also does mindfulness, meditation, other kind of anxiety reducing behaviors that create neurochemical changes in the brain, I would imagine that's part of your - 100%, yeah.

1:32:40So I think you had Chelsea Sedaro in here not so long ago. Well, if we have a look at Chelsea, she was Iron, I don't know if the Iron Woman champion or is it Iron Man woman champion? Well, I think it's still called the Iron Man. She's the Iron Man world champion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So she exploded pretty much when she won that world championship. Everyone wanted a piece of her. It was a crazy moment that transcended the sort of small subculture of triathlon because she was this new mom. Her story found its way to People Magazine and all these places that don't cover triathlon. Yeah, then all of a sudden everyone wanted something.

1:33:25So there's almost a want for external validation, but when that external validation becomes overwhelming, then that high cortisol came into place. All your neurotransmitters are just blown out. Yeah, like she just needed time for a bit there. And to be able to take a step back and be really happy with the performance that she put together, but also her baby, her husband, all of the performance bubble that were around her at the time. Their ability to be able to do that, given the stress of what actually was a new mum,

1:34:14mental health struggles at the time. This is on top of this backdrop of an anxiety disorder that is pretty debilitating, like more severe than I realized. Yeah. Yeah, but she's such a lovely character and all she wants is for others to be happy around her. So mother hen type of - Yeah, but that can be exhausting. 100 % that's exactly what it is. Yeah, the brain doesn't care whether it's getting stress getting stress from a physical perspective or a mental perspective. It actually doesn't. The stress is exactly the same. It's fatigue, overall fatigue, body fatigue. And she was specifically putting all of this cognitive load onto herself but also trying to keep the physical load and just slowly putting herself further and deeper and deeper into a hole.

1:35:06It's so interesting, this idea that the brain can't tell the difference. It's like if you're stressed out because you've got all this emotional stuff and pressures and anxiety, et cetera, the brain is interpreting that exactly the same as if you're training at threshold or you're - Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but it doesn't, it's really bad at knowing the difference between physical and cognitive load. So what we're trying to do now is to remove a lot of that overall allostatic load pressures, especially around performance. um she's got a lot of extra sponsor load on top of her as well um which is great because all she's now these are quality yeah exactly what people call first world problems but they're actually they're not they're just they're a part of her job um and there's also now putting herself out there a little bit more because she's got um in her contracts she has to do x amount of social media, which means that X amount of social media also gives that 5 % worth of people that are like, oh, you're a sellout.

1:36:12Or it's not just Chelsea. It's every athlete has this too.

1:36:18Or, you know, there's some comments there about her motherhood as such. Right. You know? Of course. Of course. Yeah. From that part, that mental capacity or that overall mental load was just overwhelming to the point where the stress was so high that decreases that motivation portion to be able to deliver the training load that you need. At what point did you come into her equation? Only fairly recently, actually. Yeah, so she had a bit of a struggle at Kona this year. She had a bit of a knee injury just before then. Yeah, there was an extra stress, too many people within her performance bubble.

1:37:09And her manager, a guy named Adam Ackworth, who's Christian Blumenfeld. Yeah, I know Adam, he's great. I think he's the one who introduced us. Yeah, I think so, yeah. Yeah, but he's also Chelsea's manager. Right. And Adam got in contact with me and said, look, this is actually happening. Do you have a capacity to be able to help?

1:37:34And it was a 100 % yes. So without putting you in a position where you're divulging things that are just between you and Chelsea, you talked about reducing that allostatic load. So it's part of that I would imagine, and look at the life, okay, what are things we could rearrange here to kind of calm you down and alleviate some of that stress? But then also what are the proactive things that you could do with your own mental health from that mindfulness kind of perspective? Box breathing is one, is a really big one. So do you know what box breathing is? A little bit, but explain. So it's breathing out for a certain period of time, holding, it's the sort of draw a box or a square.

1:38:19Box is the wrong word for it. It's actually a square. So you go down one line of the box, you breathe out, hold for the same length of time as you breathe out, and then you breathe in for the same length of time, and then hold. And you do that for as much time as you can feel that the stress is being alleviated as such. It happens The military, SAS in Australia do it quite often, three times a day actually, religiously. Wow. That's one thing. And what's going on in the brain when you do that? It's, so the easiest way to put it, it removes the fight or flight response.

1:39:06The emotive area of the brain, the hippocampus and the amygdala are calmed. and the vagus nerve and the phrenic nerve, which comes from the brainstem at the top here, goes down, are getting controlled to the point where your central nervous system's taking over. And yeah, so that's actually what it does. Yeah. But I interrupted you. You were onto another thought around other stuff. Yeah, like about maybe working with Chelsea or just mindfulness practices in general. Yeah, but what we're also looking at as well is who has access at the same time, who has access to Chelsea in and around performance.

1:39:54The week, 10 days beforehand of a major competition is really important. But also helping her coaches is Dan Plews and helping Dan and Chelsea work together in a more conducive. One lives in New Zealand, the other one lives in Reno. So how we can help that interaction a little bit better as well. So the communication between the two improved that because there was a lot of, not a lot, but there was some deficiencies in just overall communication. He said this, or actually Noah didn't, that's what I meant, but it was written down you know so how how the interaction of the two um and and the messaging is is really important at the same time so that was another thing yeah how's she doing now she's awesome yeah um yeah so um she's super cool i don't i'm sure this that my episode with her will probably go up before hours um so people will already be familiar with her story yeah but i mean that's how the performance bubble works together is really important especially in that individual portion um i did a lot of work um previously with with a um a cyclist named rowan dennis um two-time yeah two-time world time trial champion and uh and how we worked with that performance bubble um neil henderson was his coach um bradley mcgee who's an ex-cyclist is one of my best mates was his overall performance director within the Australian system and how we produced a performance bubble to be able to get Rowan to get where he needed to regardless of what else was going on in his life.

1:41:44Yeah, that was possibly the most fun I think I've ever had. It's great. Yeah. So you're currently working with team UAE. Yeah. And there's a certain cyclist on that team who anybody who follows cycling knows of Tade Pogacar. Does he share those traits? Like what makes him so extraordinary other than his physiology and the fact that his power to weight ratio, all of that I'm talking about from a mental game perspective. Does he distinguish himself in a certain way? When it comes to all of that, at the elite level, everyone's talented. And I hear quite often other athletes talk about today and say, he's just talented.

1:42:34Well, he's not. He works bloody hard at the same time. He works as hard as, if not harder than the majority of people. So he has that drive. He has that innate focus of when he needs to focus, it's 100%. And there's intent, there's pure intent into everything that he does in relation to his athletics. But external to that, he has the ability to be able to switch off and be happy. and the persona that you see is a happiness portion. He has that in himself. But that self-regulation portion of him, he knows where his body is. He knows how far it can go. And his ability to regulate that emotive state is really superior to a lot.

1:43:34probably only bested at the moment by the person that beat him in the Tour de France, he only thing ago. That self regulation portion on his behalf is by far the best in world cycling at the moment. Wow. And how old is he? 25 or something like that? 25. Today. Yeah. What's interesting in watching him and not really knowing anything else about him is he really challenges or disabuses you of the idea that you have to at least put on display some kind of crazy killer, take no prisoners instinct. Because he does look happy. Like he looks like he's pushing himself and it's a race and all of that, but he actually looks like he's enjoying himself.

1:44:19And I think, does he have enough of that killer to like actually, you know? And then his relationship with Jonas seems like they're, that those guys actually really like each other. Yeah, so the rivalry is only one on the bike. That's from my understanding, at least anyway, they're very cordial, they quite like each other and it's very hard not to like either one of them. They're really nice people. But when it comes to today, he's an absolute killer. Like, yeah, you don't, he knows again where his body is and how it's going to react within certain situations. And he races on pure instinct as well, which is also a double-edged sword when it comes to that as well.

1:45:09Yeah, he does seem like a gut racer. Like he'll make moves that then he gets criticized for, like, why'd you do that? But clearly he's acting on some kind of instinct and he's a racer in that regard. He's not just looking at his watts. Yeah, but also that creates a lot of - Chaos. Some chaos, yeah. From a team perspective. Yeah, I think the team work around that and understand that if that's been removed, that also removes a lot of - Right, this is part of what makes him great. So how do we channel it or at least - Into the right direction. Put guardrails up around it, that's moving the team in the right direction.

1:45:51which is like rafael micah it's uh david a formula who's not not in the team anymore but um but these people who are around him he's got he's got really trusted people around him that he listens to on the bike and and um and look to but they they know each other's strengths and weaknesses and um you know they they engage those strengths but acknowledge the weaknesses at the same time and go, okay, then how as a whole do we move and make our overall performance better, which is the team perspective here. So you'll be at the Tour de France this summer? No. Oh, you won't? I won't be. No, I will be training camp for Paris.

1:46:37Oh, interesting, that's right. I keep forgetting Paris. This is, are you gonna be in Paris for the Olympics? Yes. Interesting. Yeah. And how do you balance from your own mental health perspective and having a really good understanding of what you need to be well and being a family guy. You have two kids, right? You live in Australia. Your heart is also in cycling, which takes place mostly in Europe. This is stressful in its own right for you. Yes, I'm on my way about 200 days a year. Wow. And one of the things that I haven't said is my 10-year-old daughter is autistic, special needs. Oh, wow. And I have a 12-year-old boy who's the most rad individual I've ever met in my life.

1:47:28He's the coolest kid. And because of that, actually drives me to do what I do because it's not my son's burden, and that's the wrong word for it, to be able to look after my daughter when we're not here. So as a parent of a special needs, child, you actually have to be able to deliver when you're not here anymore. So from that perspective, my wife, who I call the chief operations officer in our business, our business is our family. And I sell time away from that family. So what I actually have to, what we have to do is understand why I'm away, how I'm away, and the reason why dad does what he does.

1:48:21And from a mental health perspective, I've got the person I said before, his name's Adam Metcalf. It's been my best mate since we were three years old. Ring him very, very regularly. I have my own psychiatrist. I have my own psychologist. I have other people in my life that are in my performance bubble that I can actually have a conversation with if shit hits the fan, pretty much. I can actually have a conversation and go, I'm struggling here for whatever reason, or I've heard something, or I'm overstretching myself. I just need some time. What does that look like? So yeah, I do. um what does it look like moving forward um i'm going to keep on pushing um because i know what i do makes a difference um i'm really passionate about making a difference within um athletic performance and but also mental health at the same time um yeah if if i can in 20 years time i've done this for long enough now that i'm now getting athletes sort of ringing up saying, who are no longer in sport, saying, oh, you helped me from, in this more than what you'd know.

1:49:41If I can get that in 20 years time, then I've done a good job. Yeah. Well, I think you're well on your way. I mean, all the things that you care about and that you counsel these athletes on are really Trojan horses into general wellbeing. It's just, you know, through the lens of performance and it's sort of immediate impact on what they're doing. But the principles themselves are like life lessons that we carry forth. And I wanted to kind of end this with some translation around taking what you've learned from the elite athletic world and how is it applicable to the average person who likes to be fit and get out there or whatever, but can only be inspired by what they see when they watched a tour to France, like how does this work within the context of improving their lives?

1:50:37You already sort of answered it by just sharing your own example. Like I have my bubble and these are the people that I talk to and I check in with this and I have a therapist. Like these are all great things I think that are applicable to everybody. But what if any specific things have you kind of divine where you're like, I see people out in the world and if they only knew like, when I work with these athletes, what I learned is this and like, this could work for everybody if they just understood this thing. Everything in moderation, but nothing moderately. We're terrible at moderation though.

1:51:09We hear that and that's just a license to do whatever we want and then say it's moderate. Yes and no. So through the lens of is this improving my life or is this improving the life of those that I care about? So when it comes to the person I said before, Rowan Dennis, I work really closely with Rowan's wife and his children at one stage to help him deliver a world championship. When it comes to Mark Cavendish, I work with Peter Cavendish to be able to help him. So how your behaviours affect others and how other people's behaviours affect you and how you deliver who you are as a person, you need to be able to be content with that portion and if it's not something that you like in yourself, there is an ability to change and seek help.

1:52:07Yeah, that's something that in my 20s I didn't do and I struggled with for a long time post that as well. I sort of tried to sweep things under the carpet and it's not really helpful at all. We all have to, you know, do all of that stuff. before we're actually ready to look in the mirror. Yeah, I think so, yeah. But from that perspective, if you wake up in the morning with some purpose, understand or go to bed understanding that tomorrow there is some purpose, it doesn't have to be, you don't have to change the world every day. You don't have to, it's an accumulation of behaviors and actions that lead to an overall improvement in life.

1:52:55It's not sexy. It's not something that you can do an instantaneous thing like from an alcoholic perspective, you can take the alcohol out, but you actually haven't changed anything yet. Right. You know? Yeah, no, you're a mess. You're a disaster. Good news is you're not drinking anymore. Bad news, you got some work you gotta do. I used to think it was a competitive sport for a while there. And it's not, I found out. This has come up a lot on the podcast. In fact, I raised it with Gervais the other day, when you talk about purpose, like if you have something that gets you out of the bed and you feel like your life has purpose, I think that screws with people's minds a little bit because it's such a looming large word that's loaded and you're like, what is my purpose?

1:53:48And it ends up with a bunch of navel gazing and kind of paralysis around doing anything because I don't know what my, I think it just keeps people from the growth that is available. So how do you, like somebody's listening, I don't know what my purpose is. He's telling me, I get up in the bed. I really don't know. I go to my job. I'm kind of like, I'm not in a crisis, but I'm not really that fulfilled in what I'm doing, but it's fine. You know what I mean? Like, I think that's a lot of, there's a lot of people that are in that. Exactly. So from that perspective, chunk it down into smaller portions.

1:54:23There's a psychological construct called chunking. It's from an endurance perspective, if you just start out on a 190 mile ride, that's quite daunting. If you chunk it into 10 mile pieces, it's way less daunting. Exactly the same concept when it comes to overall purpose. So you don't have to have a life affirmation or a life goal. If the purpose for tomorrow is just, I want to be able to come back home after my work commitment and give my children a cuddle. Or if I, if, it can be the smallest thing. It actually doesn't matter. But ticking that box will create that reward pathway activation that we're looking for that creates change.

1:55:14and the accumulation of smaller things is far better than trying to say i'm going to start a world tour team or i'm going to create a fortune 500 company or whatever it is the purpose that that can't be what you're doing it you know it has to be smaller and chunk it into smaller portions and it's okay if you don't, what we're looking for is a trend upwards. It's okay if you take a couple of steps backwards every now and then. Like as long as that trend is - It's inevitable anyway. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Like it's nothing's linear when it comes to life and but we want that linear progression and we strive for that or we want an upward trend faster and exponentially faster over time.

1:56:11Or we wanna know where we're headed or what that destination is. But it's actually okay. It's okay to not know. Being in that uncertainty is fine. Yeah, it's fine. So when you were 20, if you said to your 20 year old self, when I'm however old you are now, that I'm gonna be doing a podcast and have a global empire. It's ridiculous. Yeah, like you go, one, what is a podcast? So what's the point and even, it's like, first of all, it didn't even exist, there was no internet. So it was like the world is, you can't imagine what the world is gonna be. So you have to be flexible in your life. It's okay to just go, okay, this is what I did till now.

1:56:53I'm gonna close that chapter, which is athletic performance say, and it's okay to start another chapter with the learnings of the previous ones. You know, like I wasn't always doing what I did, whatever my bio says on my LinkedIn. I wasn't always that. Of course not. Yeah, I was Golf Kelly before and I did some other things. But yeah, I worked for my dad. But yeah, it wasn't always that. And it's okay. Right. I was pretty messed up for a while there too, and I'm not now. So that's a good thing. Yeah. Yeah, you and me both, brother. You know, there's hope. Yeah, absolutely. Because you now. Yeah, well, you know.

1:57:35It's pretty good. Yeah, at the moment. It's pretty good. Life's good at the moment. Final thing before I let you go. You mentioned change. Obviously you're in the business of taking a person who's in a certain place and helping them get to another. What have you learned about people who are able to make a positive change and make it stick and people who struggle or who are unable to really capitalize on making a change in their life? Are there any kind of principles where the people that can do it exhibit these characteristics, like that kind of idea? The biggest one is self-awareness. You're a person's ability to have that inner reflection and how that projects across to others.

1:58:24that self-regulation portion, your ability to be able to regulate your emotions and understand what makes those motions regulate. And the ones that don't do it well don't do both of those really well. And the biggest driver here is the ability to be vulnerable. It's actually the biggest driver. Why is that the biggest driver? Because without that vulnerability, you actually can't elicit the change that you need. because you're more than likely lying to yourself and others. That's super interesting. Yeah. And what's also interesting is what you didn't say, which is the person with the most willpower or the most motivated person or the most, I don't know, intentional person.

1:59:17Like those things - That's a byproduct. Yeah, those things are exactly, exactly. But that's kind of where our brain goes. So that's what we think, that's what our instinct tells us is going to drive the change that we seek. Yeah, but it's actually not. It's your ability to ask for help. It's your ability to accept the fact that I'm in a spot where I need it. Interesting. Yeah. Well, it's good talking to you. Yeah, I had fun, thank you. Yeah, I appreciate it. We covered a lot. This is great. Will you come back and talk to me some more? If you let me. Yeah. I don't do these very often, so. You should do more of them, you're good at it.

1:59:55And I think you're providing an incredible public service. And I think the fact that you're in the arena that you're in working with these incredible athletes is a way for people to connect with the broader ideas around mental health, because we'd like to hear these stories about what high performance looks like. But I think the wisdom lies in the applicability of all of it to our everyday lives. and I appreciate you. And I think you are doing amazing work in the world and thank you for that. Thank you for taking the time to share with me. It struck my ego, so I appreciate that. Thank you. And I usually end with like, where do people go if they wanna learn more about you?

2:00:37But you know, your shit's kinda locked down. So LinkedIn, you know, right? But in your websites, just kind of like a landing page. Yeah. So when it comes to that portion, um it's i had a a friend of mine who's now in banking is really high up in australian banking now um that said literally have the worst website that you can ever have because it will weed out the people that actually don't want your services oh that's amazing advice yeah um so that's that's actually what it is um and so from so from that perspective that's the reason why now i've just I just told the world. That's like a Jedi mind trick.

2:01:16Yeah, yeah. But also it's also the reason why my wife owns half of our business. It's the same thing. Yeah, no, it's actually because there's, I'm away so much and it removes the resentment. She's also massive. She's 50 % of why I do what I do. It's my family. So she, yeah. Well, good man. Thank you again. And I wish you well. Thank you. I wish you well. I hope to be in Paris this summer too. I'd love to see you there if I find myself there. We'll definitely be there. Come to the Olympic mountain biking. I would love to do that. Yeah, we make that happen. Oh, cool. I've got an athlete named Samuel Gaze.

2:01:53Amazing. That is an absolute phenomenon. Cool. If he gets his things together, he's had a life as well. And ridiculous. Big summer I had for him. Oh, yeah. All right, good. You heard it here first. Samuel Gaze, Olympic gold medal. Thanks, David. I appreciate it. Cheers. Peace.

2:02:26That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change in the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube and leave a review and or comment.

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2:03:46Portraits by Davy Greenberg, graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Solis. And thank you, Georgia Whaley, for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants.

2:04:22guitar solo