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since starting the Diary of a CO one of the most popular questions I get asked is what are your favorite episodes and
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what are your favorite guests now I don't think about it in terms of that I think about moments and insights so in
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this episode we're going to do something a little bit different I'm going to show you four moments from the Diary of a CEO
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that genuinely changed my life and changed how I think about one of my core
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beliefs that I then actioned that made my life better
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[Music]
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in your book that little voice in your head is this concept of neuroplasticity oh it says it on the back of the book it
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says um retrain your brain for maximum happiness this concept that we can
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retrain our brain physiologically seems like nonsense and I can't change my arm
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so when someone you know asserts that you can actually change your brain you can change your arm I can change my arm
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of course what tattoo no you work out that's true when you work out you're
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building muscles in your arms and that same exact process is exactly what happens inside our brains and it's
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called neuroplasticity the only difference is that you don't see it you don't see it visibly you can see your
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muscles growing because that's the function that they need you know they need to grow to perform but in your
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brain what actually happens again like computers it's almost as if you loaded a new piece of software I need a new piece
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of operating system uh on on your brain literally for every one of us listening
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uh everyone listening to us to it right now at the end of this conversation their brain will be why are they
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differently than when it started every single instance of anything that you do
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literally rewires the hardware itself the neurons that fire together wire together okay so imagine the old days of
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the switchboard okay and um you know Steve wants to call his mom
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so you you know crank your phone and the operator says uh you know hi how can I
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help you and you say can you please connect me to that number and she would literally take a wire and Patch you and
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your mom's phones together okay after a while the operator constantly every time
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you call you want you ask for your mom so the operator goes like why am I even wasting my time on this let me just
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patch that wire to his mom all the time okay so that's exactly what happens in our brains if you if you perform a sin
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give a certain function your brain starts to build networks that make that function easier to perform in the future
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if you do it one time it becomes a little easier if you do it 20 times it becomes permanent okay and there are
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there are tons of studies that if you if you take a simple task like tapping your finger on the table okay and you're
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requested to do that say 20 times every hour after a few days you'll find that
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you're so much better at tapping your finger on the table and you can do it much faster you can do it consistently and you can do it in the background
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Gamers know that for certain okay the problem with neuroplasticity is if you
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tell your brain to wire for tapping your finger it will if you tell it to wire
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for solving complex mathematical equations it may take a little longer but it will if you tell it to wire for
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hating people it will become very good at hating if you tell it to wire for fearing the end of the world because of
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what the media is telling you it's going to become very good at feeding the world I know some of these people I have no
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absolutely and you don't want them in your life the challenge of our modern world is that we think that this brain
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is supposed to be there to make us successful yeah okay first of all it's not the
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primary function of the brain the primary function of the brain is to make you safe okay and then the secondary
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function that we push human as humans to that brain to do is to invent iPhones and create podcasts and have amazing
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things right that's a secondary function but believe it or not before that secondary function your your brain is
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supposed to make you happy because happy is the ultimate form for you to perform in life if you're not
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happy you're not as effective as you could be at achieving survival think about it huh if you're grumpy all
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the time at work people don't like you you're not focused uh no one wants to help you you're wasting most of your
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time your brain Cycles uh you know thinking about the negative and so you're not Innovative or creative and so
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on and so forth it degrades your performance happy is a better place for
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you to be at work because it will make your customers want to do business with you it will make your colleagues want to
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uh you know to help you out it will make your boss welcome you and their team and so on and so forth we are social Animals
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by definition and we want to have that in our life and the easiest way to connect and to open up and to is
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discover the world is to be in a happy place that's a primary function of your brain
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it's hard for some people you know because we can all think of someone in our Lives who has um certain
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wiring very stubborn wiring that almost seems impossible to unwire and the only
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thing we all have that ourselves as well the Saturn wiring in our brains where something happens and our reaction to
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that thing might be uh you know to catastrophize it's the end of the world that's like a it feels like it's a
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certain set of worrying where trigger and then the brain goes through the circuitry and it goes catastrophe Panic
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yeah and yeah and the answer to that I found was to actually guide that person
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or yourself if that's yourself to the opposite of your wiring so if my if my wiring is to look at everything and see
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what's wrong with it I should deliberately force my brain to look for what's right with it so uh you know I uh
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when I was when I was coming here it was very busy in the morning and so I came late if you remember and my brain's
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immediate reaction is oh what's gonna happen I'm gonna be late for Steve right
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that's the immediate reaction of the brain because something is wrong so it looks for what's wrong
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I could also say and what is good about that what is good about being a little
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late you know he's been recording for the last few days so it may give him a little bit of extra time do you want to
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know the truth I was so happy you were late because I was late right so I was doing upstairs reading that I was reading the book and I was thinking I
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just hope he's like 15 minutes late he's not coming here perfect so I
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carried on going and carrying on going and Karen I'm going and I just finished as you arrived yeah so it's perfect time you see that that is the truth huh
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that's the truth that your brain tries to deny you from seeing and interestingly you can train your brain
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so so basically what you can do is for every thought for every negative thought that your brain gives you task it with
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the task of giving you a positive one or two positive ones nine I say nine yeah
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because in reality if you look at life around you more than 90 of life is okay for the your brain to contribute more
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than that as negative is not fair right so if literally if your brain says hey by the way this studio is a little
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warm what else is about the studio my friend Steve is there the lighting is
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perfect the crew is amazing the you know the coffee is is not that bad you guys get got me honey I can go on for hours
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right and and the idea is by training your brain to look for that what are you
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actually doing you're firing the neurons together prostitute so and exactly your
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your your book basically says it is the answer the answer is when you find gratitude what what that gratitude
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Journal that you keep ever that you kept for years every day what was it telling you it was training your brain to look
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for what's right that your brain every night that you did it was like okay it seems he's gonna be
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asking to call his mom a lot more often it seems he's going to be asking for good things a lot more often I might as
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well observe them I might as well find them and so yes you said some people are impossible to
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rewire they're impossible to rewire if they've been practicing a certain wiring for 21 years it's not going to take 21
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seconds to rewire anyone including me and you it will take 21 days let's say
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for your brain to recognize I need different work and it will take maybe 21 months for your brain to say and I don't
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need the old wiring anymore okay and the game here is can you actually keep doing that can you keep tapping your finger in
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a way that trains your brain that this is the wiring that you need like can I keep going to the gym and
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working on my absolute guns yeah believe it or not the research will tell you that a big part of being athletic is
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wiring of your brain not your muscles for your brain to be able to say I will go even if I feel a little tired I will
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go even if I feel a little uh busy I will go and I will do the right exercises even if the last push is a
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little painful a lot of people will hear that and go what's the evidence for this what's the evidence for neuroplasticity
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is there science oh there is a ton of science behind neuroplasticity any anything from between neuroplasticity
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and neurogenesis is when you know neuroplasticity is to rewire
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um the connections between the neurons and neurogenesis is to actually create new or new neurons when if you're hit
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with a ball for example and part of your brain is damaged how we can recreate that right if you have a stroke and how
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you create recreate that and ample evidence one of the very famous stories is Matthew Ricardo when we spoke about
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him in the beginning Matthew's brain looks different than the average human brain his insula is much bigger in
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relative comparison his prefrontal cortexism is bigger and and it it fires
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more often it's simply because of the constant neuroplasticity of I need you
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to meditate I need you to stay quiet I need you I mean some of the of of of Matthew's Journeys would last four years
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in isolation I would meditate for four years maybe be in isolation in Hermitage
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for four years right and and so at that level your brain starts to do very different things and by the way that's
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not unusual now many farmers around the world live in isolation for a very long
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time believe it or not you and I when we when we spend a long time on airplanes I
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I chose a long time ago to not watch a lot of stuff on that on you know I maybe watch one movie but not the entire trip
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the other bits of Silence that's actually a form of of meditation I uh
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you know my my absolute wonderful friend Jamie Nelson the photographer if you
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know him he photographs indigenous tribes and the way he does it is he would go and
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and spend a few months outside their premises you know their Village if you
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want in silence you know camping out there he doesn't speak their language he's just sitting there waiting for them
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to accept him and then he would start to you know communicate to them in sign language because it doesn't speak their
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language and he's one of the wisest people I know and I and I said how did you become this wise I never studied any
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of those things and the reality is is because he's in constant reflection and meditation he's sitting out there and
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he's spending hours and days in reflection and meditation right because you're sitting alone all of those things
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are our habits and all of us have the chance to do it I mean so you you could be on the tube uh for a commute of 40
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minutes a day and you could be in that commute cursing life and that's a very
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good 40-minute exercise to work and another 40 minute going back or you could be spending the 40 minutes in
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gratitude you could be first for you know uh the 40 minutes listening to music could
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be doing whatever what you will do for 40 minutes a day will rewire your brain
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it really is like a paradigm shifting thought that our brains are in this constant growth and evolution but when
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we look at as you said my muscles are my muscles are changing State size growing more fibers to achieve their objective
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in a different way and of course my brain is as well and when you think about that it's really liberating
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because you realize that you're not stuck with who you are absolutely not so let's choose what which parts of it are
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we going to grow I think that's the whole point and we grow it with our actions and our thoughts repetitive actions thoughts and memories believe it
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or not one of the interesting things is if you take a memory in the past yeah and you think about it over and over and
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over it's as if you're hap it's happening over and over and you're growing the neurons that are needed or
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you're growing the connections between the neurons that are needed to trigger that memory think happy memories okay if
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you sit next to your partner and focus on one thing that they do and go like they say do this they do this they do
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this they do this and forget that they do a hundred other things that you you love and appreciate 8 your
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neuroplasticity is making you completely obsessed about that one thing and you can only see that one thing and
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eventually you know some of my friends after a breakup I go like so what happened then they'll say one thing it's
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like just you could they obsess about it over and over because your brain is growing to say he needs to think about
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this right I'm gonna make it easier to think about this I'm gonna make it faster
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more accessible one of the things I've heard you talk about a lot is your your journey and your
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evolving relationship with sex and sexuality and how that changed from when
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you were very young through the period when you were drinking a lot um till today can you talk to me about
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that Evolution and what you've learned about those topics that might benefit me yes absolutely
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so I'm going to
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sort of keep referring to my sobriety in that period of my life because it was so
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transformative and it revealed so much to me so much
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that I could have never imagined at the time so something that also happened when I got sober I think this was about
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a year into my sobriety I realized just how much sexual shame I
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was holding so much of it and I initially sort of wanted to fix it
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wanted to do something about it what are some surface level things that I can do what can I read what can I sort of dive
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into how can I deal with it from where I am now as a 25 year old but I quickly
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realized that I actually had to trace it back to see where it even comes from and I realized just like so many things it
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did come from my childhood being raised in a Christian home I learned again not directly more so
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indirectly that being a sexual being was not something that was off God it was
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not something that was supposed to be a part of who I am pleasure was never discussed sex was never discussed even
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Intimacy in general I never saw my parents hold hands I never saw my parents hold hands I never saw them kiss
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I never saw them hug I never saw any sort of affection but I knew that they
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loved each other I knew that they cared about each other but affection and intimacy I just never saw that not for a
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moment when I sort of wanted to really understand where a lot of the sexual shame was stemming from or just
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I'm also even outside of sex intimacy intimacy feeling very disconnected to
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other people when it came to intimacy but also from myself I realized that I could only be
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expressive as a sexual being if I was drunk or if I was high if I was in that
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place where of course my inhibitions are low but I had no insecurities I didn't
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have to feel like I'm doing something wrong I didn't have to feel like my pleasure was wrong but then when I got
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sober all of those things came to the surface and then I I had to look that in the eye so that also became something
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that I started sharing over time as well I was sort of sharing my journey with sobriety I then started sharing the
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things that were revealed as a byproduct of me getting sober and sexual shame was
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a huge one was a big part of that my relationship with sex has evolved a lot yeah over over time I think it was early
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in my early years influenced by porn yes for many people so me too that's the way I went into the game trying to be those
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those male porn stars right and I think over time and I think there's this wider issue in our society
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specifically I've got to be honest with men yes um what they think that what they think sex
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is in terms of this kind of very aggressive often dominating
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transactional um encounter yeah and then there's you
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know again I'm just I'm just talking freely I don't give a [ __ ] whatever please do please but I'm seeing a lot in
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my in my close friends they're all in relate they're often in relationships not all of them where they're having
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problems with their sexual relationship with their partner they're basically saying things
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to me and I'd say this is crazy I'd say 75 to 80 of my male friends are saying my partner doesn't want to have sex she
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doesn't like having sex yeah and I was there at one point too my partner said that to me at 1.2 yeah and I took it on
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face value I thought they don't like sex what I came to learn
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is that wasn't true but that what what I'd learned to be sex and what I was bringing as sex this kind of aggressive
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you know whatever was not yes the language that they spoke
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right and I feel like I'm surrounded by men that need to start seeing sex as a
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language because then you can ask yourself well actually she's speaking Spanish and I'm speaking English that's why it's not she doesn't like English
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she just doesn't she speaks a different language yeah I mean yes that's a lot I'm just dumping that on YouTube no that
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resonates so and I'm I'm really glad that you said this because I think you're speaking something that is on so
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many people's minds or something that they've just never really put language to and a big part of my
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Awakening if you will and really addressing that sexual shame is because I also learned sex from porn at 10 years
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old 10 years old so by the time that I had sex for the first time when I was 14 it was very much like a porn performance
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to put it very simply and I speak to so many people men and women about this very specific thing a lot of us learn
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that we should perform that sex should be driven by orgasm and ejaculation and
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this sort of production if you will which is not actually accurate for most
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people when it comes to what really actually feels pleasurable especially for women so I started to realize when I
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got sober that every time that I was having sex for example I faked every single orgasm it was all a perform I
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didn't know much about my body because I'd learned from porn and because the men that I was with had also learned
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from porn we were just in a performance and no one's actually talking about it right so in time times when I was in
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relationships and I made myself think I don't want to have sex I don't want to have sex anymore it actually was not
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that I didn't want to have this type of pornified sex that's what I actually
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meant so what you just said is really important and I realized that's when I found tantric sex actually yeah that's
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when I found tantric sex around 2018 because I realized that I had always
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felt like sex was being done to me yes that I was not a part of it and that is
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how most women feel I I felt like I needed to apologize yeah because that's what that's what I
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came to learn yeah was that the the reason why the person I was with had
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turned around to me and said I don't like having sex is and when we got talking about it after I acted like I
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mean let me be clear the first time she said that I did not understand my little Neanderthal monkey brain went uh like I
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was emasculated by it yeah it made me feel what is this something that I was I didn't know
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ended up breaking up but this person got back with this person a year later when I was maybe a bit more mature I
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apologized and I said I want to have a conversation and I also said to her that I'm going to be here regardless of whether we have sex or not yes and then
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she could she had a safe enough space to start talking to me about it and what I discovered is she'd been with
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should I had three previous boyfriends over the course of seven years her view of sex was this person comes
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and takes from you treats you like this object and he was with him for five years treats you like an object takes
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what they want from you and then he was actually going and cheating on her as well right so Not only was he taking he
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was then like hurting her and that cycle just repeated her relationship with what sex is was really really toxic she
00:21:02
didn't like that yes she didn't want that anymore yes and that's what she and me probably referred to as this word sex
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so it was kind of like learning a new language of sex and what it actually is that meant she went from the place of
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like I don't have sex anymore to absolutely loving to have sex yeah I didn't think it was possible I thought
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if they don't like sex dump them yes you know I'm gonna go find someone else right that will let me take yes and you
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know what you you've articulated that so beautifully in terms of sex being a language and it's going to
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look different for every single person because something that I realized is that I could tell when I was with a man
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sexually I could tell if they were sort of if it was like a script almost like a
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play-by-play like this is exactly the method we do this we do that switch into this switch into that it wasn't sort of
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flowing and very intuitive as to what's actually needed in that moment which reminded me of porn and I would also
00:22:02
realize actually and this is something that I've spoken about so much because I ended up um starting a sexual wellness
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company called Cherry Revolution over time and I realized that even some of the
00:22:13
positions I would get in were very much like porn because certain positions in porn are like that because
00:22:20
the camera is there not because it's comfortable because that's the shot for the viewer to be able to see it so when
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I started to see that I'm starting to replicate this in my most intimate private moments but we're both doing it
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I made myself believe that I didn't enjoy sex so then drinking and drugs and
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everything that came with it I felt like those were the moments that I could be
00:22:46
fully expressive without needing to perform which is very interesting because you would think it would be the opposite that I would then perform more
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but I felt as if I could actually speak my mind if I didn't enjoy something can
00:22:58
we try this can I do this instead or I just want to give or I just want to receive can we be slower and then when I
00:23:04
was sober I felt like I couldn't say those things because if I say to you as my partner I might be emasculating you I
00:23:11
might be embarrassing you you might think something is wrong so I would just perform and you're performing as well
00:23:17
and then it just causes a huge disconnect so tantric sex was the first
00:23:22
thing that I came across that made me realize and really articulated that sex is actually not a specific destination
00:23:29
did you know that you can actually enjoy sex without uh ejaculation that you can
00:23:34
have a full body orgasm that you can be very slow that foreplay can be the main
00:23:39
thing that you do that you can experience orgasm without penetration just so many different ways of
00:23:46
articulating that experience of sex and it's just that an experience and that changed so much for me it's
00:23:54
such a sort of a narrative violation for so many people who've spent their whole life watching porn and then yeah
00:24:00
recreating it this idea that you can have an orgasm from touch that you can use energy to to cause
00:24:06
someone yeah orgasmic pleasure and yeah um yeah I just that's it's a really
00:24:12
important topic that I think people need to talk about a lot more and I think just just saying to someone that's listening to this that might be in a
00:24:17
relationship where they're not they're in a sexless relationship yes just proposing the idea that what if you both
00:24:23
just speak there's just say there was ten languages what if you're just speaking the wrong language right you
00:24:29
know what I mean and what approach would you then take you're probably trying to learn the language yes yes and also
00:24:34
communicate to them what language you speak and see and see how you can be bilingual I guess yeah you know what it
00:24:41
it reminds me of um are you familiar with Love Languages and and that that whole thing yes I realized that a lot of
00:24:48
people expect someone to give in the way that
00:24:54
they like to receive you know so no one really says okay how do you like to
00:25:00
receive love how do you like to give love and the moment that I started asking those questions even though I
00:25:06
believe I [ __ ] cringed in the beginning I'm like really if I get it but you get used to it yeah and if they
00:25:13
run off good food yeah it's Stephen it's been a game changer to just ask the person that I'm dating or my current
00:25:20
partner to be like how do you like to be loved how do you like to receive love and how do you like to give it
00:25:25
um because just those simple questions can change so much and then you can use the same with sex what do you like and
00:25:32
what do you not like what have you changed your mind about what do you like to do now and again or maybe not so much
00:25:38
sometimes um how much time do you need how does your arousal actually work and I know
00:25:43
that some people might not know how to answer these questions for themselves so it's actually very good to start asking
00:25:49
yourself those questions before was speaking about it with someone else because I think we get into
00:25:54
relationships and make so many assumptions based on all individual experiences and our world view and we
00:26:01
expect the person we're with to reflect the exact same thing back to us but we
00:26:07
don't we don't ask questions I watched a lot of interviews of you before you you arrived here today and I
00:26:14
think in pretty much all of them you said I'm a normal guy I'm a regular guy and I get that I get that I understand
00:26:20
what you're saying however well it's not false modesty I don't want to I'm not going to let people build builds me into
00:26:29
something I'm not you know and I think as I get older I know the frailties more and more and I'm not ashamed of them you
00:26:35
know I mean it's it's okay many mistakes many many sort of it's okay otherwise Things become all too
00:26:42
you know that how it's it's hard to relate to you know but you you got
00:26:49
through SAS selection just I got through all this [ __ ] just you know and people
00:26:54
turned turned to you and said things and as they turn back and quit right that that for me is a filtering process of
00:27:01
something yeah whatever that something is resilient all it is is something we can control it's not a filtering of
00:27:07
talent it's not filtering if you're you're brilliant you're through you're not through you know it's a genius of
00:27:13
selection for the Special Forces it's all about heart and spirit and we can all have that that's not a god-given
00:27:19
talent that's a that's a muscle that builds with walking through the door of failure time and time again and keep
00:27:25
getting back up you know so I like that as why I say I'm an ordinary person as
00:27:31
well also say just to so many things because you know yes I passed oh yes you reached the top of this man or yes you
00:27:37
do but it's always just and that's okay you know and it's also Often by standing
00:27:43
on the shoulders of many Giants who've helped me you know many many times you know if I think of ss selection you know
00:27:50
that time there were so many times where somebody somebody just kind of believed me in a critical time you know it might
00:27:56
be something where the two corporals running something good we want that guy do on you know a bit of luck falls on
00:28:01
his side somebody backs you you know or you know you you I don't know just the
00:28:06
more I look back on so many so-called achievements the more I see
00:28:11
the hand of good people in critical moments but as you know you have to win the hearts of those people in the first
00:28:17
place but also the role of just that dogged determination to keep going and
00:28:23
that's not a thing of being brilliant it's just trying to keep going often sliding
00:28:28
another step back but keep moving forward and you say that to you know I've got three boys now three teenagers and I
00:28:34
think if you said to them what one thing does your dad say to you day off day before you go to school
00:28:41
it's always just you know don't give up don't never give up be kind you know be determined but
00:28:47
never give up and they roll their eyes but you know what one day they'll know that it's a key thing a key thing of
00:28:54
life you know you don't have to be the best to do your best did that resilience muscle as you call
00:29:01
it grow over time of course it's just like like everything it's like the little little Seas to the mighty Oaks
00:29:07
you know how do we build it just inch by inch and uh and that's a great thing
00:29:12
because it's not something only some people can have you know it's Universal for us all we can all become people
00:29:18
think it's a god-given gift to someone be resilient resilience is that muscle and you build it by failing and trying
00:29:26
to stay positive and and trying to get back your feet and going again you know I look back and I remember being uh
00:29:32
really excited about being picked for the fourth eleven football team as a linesman I wasn't even in the team you
00:29:39
know and it was like my job was to bring on the oranges at half time you know but it was that and I remember my dad was
00:29:46
the only dad on the side of the pitch cheering me on I thought it's so embarrassing he's not I'm not even in the team and dad said you know he's come
00:29:53
to kind of but actually those little steps of like I'm going to do this I'm going to bring
00:29:58
on those oranges and you know you're never gonna forget it's gonna be great and ink into tiny little things
00:30:05
but having to fight for things you know it's how often do we see at school though the the school hero
00:30:12
actually in life doesn't always do that brilliantly and why is that it's because they've got you
00:30:18
know schools rewarded that they've never tested this you know where little Johnny who doesn't
00:30:25
have that doesn't get the awards is the linesman brings on the oranges
00:30:31
yeah whatever it is drugs doesn't even get noticed and everyone's anything but never gives up and keeps doing his best
00:30:36
and still doesn't really get noticed but doesn't matter but when he leaves school this might not be the biggest thing but
00:30:42
this is like ninja-like you know that that resilience muscle inside is strong and as you know and as I know in life
00:30:50
that's the one that is gonna carry you further and and the Unseen people at
00:30:56
school often do better in life it's like don't peek too early don't peek at 14. I
00:31:02
certainly didn't I sat here with um Eubank I've been thinking about this idea of resilience and what it really means and as we sit here today my
00:31:09
current hypothesis is basically resilience is the story it's kind of this contract you have with yourself this self-story about who you are and in
00:31:16
those moments when no one is looking I I was talking to Eubank about me being on the running machine and knowing I've got
00:31:21
two minutes to go because I said before I started I'd run till 45 minutes but my
00:31:26
legs are hurting and they're cramping and I could give up and walk away and No One's Gonna know because no one's here but what I I alter my own self story in
00:31:33
a way and I send a message to myself that I am the type of person that gives up when it's tough so is it really do
00:31:40
you relate to that and is this kind of like you're crafting this story about who you are to yourself with every small
00:31:46
decision you make doing the linesman job you said I'm going to do it the best I possibly can and although it's not what
00:31:52
I wanted I'm gonna I'm gonna give it everything I can and not give up yeah yeah does that relate and also I think
00:31:58
the thing of giving up is that you know what is that thing a temporary pleasure
00:32:04
long term yeah that's not true you know and and for me I just I I developed a thing where [Music]
00:32:10
whenever people quitting or complaining I like those moments for me it was like
00:32:16
okay there's all the all the chat and the bravado is always there at the beginning I was full of that but bring it down put the squeeze on you know we
00:32:22
like grapes and squeeze us you see what's inside bring the squeeze bring the squeeze now we see characters see
00:32:28
what people are like and for me it just became whenever I saw people quitting or complaining especially complaining you
00:32:34
see it so much just in the military you see it on big Expeditions you see it even when we're filming TV shows for
00:32:40
people you know when it gets hard you know and you're hungry and you're scared and you're up against it and you're dehydrated you know those are the
00:32:46
moments and for me it just became a trigger when everyone's complaining and giving up it's a time to give more you
00:32:52
know just you don't have to give more in the early times just wait till this and that's how you separate yourselves in in
00:32:58
business and in life and in relationship you know in the big moments you know look at a relationship when it's when
00:33:04
you're under that wheel down everyone's throwing it you know are you gonna really throw that nasty comment or gonna hold it and just try and be gracious and
00:33:11
kind in those big moments you know and and I like that it wasn't you know it wasn't complicated to think
00:33:18
about Under Pressure it was just like when everything's going wrong that's that I'd give more rather than give up
00:33:23
and I held on to that in many difficult moments you know across many different Arenas and um
00:33:30
and has helped me you know I remember this guy said to me once said and you'd do anything for another 10 seconds I
00:33:37
like that you know when it's you're in that moment you keep going another 10 seconds that makes you different though
00:33:45
you've got to admit because most people don't want another 10 seconds yeah well it hurt it hurts I'm not saying it's not
00:33:51
going to hurt it's going to hurt but that fire inside it's in us all you know it's just you've got to dig sometimes
00:33:57
but it's it's a great truth to know that it's there when you dig you know it is
00:34:02
there and uh and I think as you say once you get used to this and you start to practice it the muscle gets stronger and
00:34:09
then you almost seek out tough types you know this is a chance to to shine you know and as you say that's how you
00:34:15
separate yourselves in life you know you're going to reach these points but but in those big are you going to go
00:34:21
this way how are you going to act in those big moments and it's always what separates you know reaching those
00:34:26
Summits for not reaching those Summits when you look back on the person you are now and the tremendous wisdom that
00:34:33
you've just demonstrated just speaking to me just then do you recognize the Mel that was couldn't get out of bed
00:34:41
was feeling depressed couldn't find you know described herself as you as you did
00:34:47
as being lazy do you recognize that person and what's at the very essence in the engine room that drove that change
00:34:53
was it passion was it finding your calling
00:35:02
um because I know you weren't this part you couldn't have been this person oh dude it's also been 31 years I mean come
00:35:07
on I've had I've like basically been changing for as long as you've been alive for crying out loud so true and
00:35:13
also human beings are designed to grow but not everybody seems to because you have they don't understand being stuck
00:35:20
yeah interesting see being stuck is one of the most universal
00:35:26
feelings of The Human Experience and nobody understands what it is what is it oh it's amazing when you hear
00:35:32
this it's like so remember how we've talked about how uh the human beings have this crazy
00:35:39
amount of natural intelligence wired into us and inside your body we've talked about one of the signals anxiety
00:35:45
anxiety is a signal that means pay attention that's why you go into fight or flight you're in an alert mode okay
00:35:51
that's all it is it's a signal an alarm system and your body has a sophisticated
00:35:57
system of signals and alarms and they're all tied to fundamental needs
00:36:02
anxiety is tied to your fundamental need for safety that's why it's a signal
00:36:09
let's talk about your most important fundamental needs let's go right back to psychology 101 Maslow's hierarchy of
00:36:16
needs uh you need food or else you die so when you need food what is the signal
00:36:22
that your body sends you when you need water what is the signal cost when you
00:36:27
need um a air yeah you're catching your breath when you need rest what do you feel
00:36:34
when you need connection what do you feel lonely human beings are designed to grow
00:36:40
when you stop growing what do you feel stuck yeah I was gonna say stagnant but
00:36:48
I guess stuck is yeah or stagnant we're still trapped I guess is yeah
00:36:54
feeling stuck is a signal that you've stopped growing that's it and when most people feel stuck since
00:37:03
they don't understand that it's tied to a fundamental need for growth we believe it's an existential crisis
00:37:10
and we blow up our lives for most human beings what actually will
00:37:15
get you feeling like you're not stuck is having something in the future that you're looking forward to
00:37:23
or taking a class where you're learning something or changing a routine so that
00:37:29
you try a new class at the gym learning anything gets you back in touch with a
00:37:35
fundamental need it makes you start to feel like things are moving and from that place of feeling a little bit more
00:37:42
empowered you'll be able to make better decisions about what big things need to change in
00:37:48
your life and is that you would also describe that as a moment where your life has like an
00:37:54
absence of purpose I think about I think about various examples Olympians that come
00:38:00
back from the Olympics and they they're like 80 chance of depression after they've you know and then I think about
00:38:06
people who have lost purpose in their lives for whatever reason been fired from their jobs or whatever all people
00:38:12
that are in jobs that are uh you know absent of purpose completely a feeling
00:38:17
of being stuck and and then you certainly talk to us about the importance of goals and Ambitions going forward when humans don't have that
00:38:23
forward ambition or that thing to look forward to in the future and their current situation lacks purpose
00:38:30
they become very um psychologically disorientated either way I'd describe it
00:38:37
um I act I have a different take on purpose um I think everybody's purpose is
00:38:43
exactly the same I think your purpose is to share your true self
00:38:51
to be fully seen and for the Olympian when you are
00:38:57
training and you're in that Arena that is an experience of being seen
00:39:07
and for most people that are lacking purpose they feel profoundly invisible
00:39:13
and being seen fundamentally comes back to whether or not you even see yourself
00:39:20
and when you start to feel empowered and you start to see yourself and meet you
00:39:25
where you are what happens is every day that you're
00:39:30
able to stand with yourself to accept where you are to give yourself the compassion to give yourself the support
00:39:38
and the love and the respect and the worthiness that you deserve you're going
00:39:43
to go out into the world and share more of yourself that Olympic Athlete is
00:39:48
sharing more of themselves and so I think our purpose in life is to
00:39:55
come back home to ourselves to reconnect with ourselves and to empower ourselves
00:40:02
to go back out into the world and share our stories and share our experiences
00:40:08
and share our full selves with the rest of the world and look if I can save
00:40:13
anybody the heartache and the headaches that cause myself that's a life well lived
00:40:20
you know if I can laugh at myself along the way if I can punch a wall and drink a gin martini and then share with you
00:40:25
like okay this and then get out because how I got out of that because I could have been in that cycle
00:40:32
The Old Mill would have been there for a month everybody's out to get me I never get
00:40:38
recognized why even bother it doesn't matter and
00:40:46
it allows me to share in real time that I feel all the [ __ ]
00:40:52
but I don't like to stay there and this is not toxic positivity it is important when you're disappointed
00:40:59
to allow yourself to feel disappointed it is important when you lose something
00:41:05
to give yourself the grace to grieve for as long as you need to it is important
00:41:11
to have a good cry to have a good scream to draw it's important to feel the highs
00:41:18
and the lows you're meant to feel it all but you can shorten
00:41:25
the length of time you stay down and what always helps me is I just kept
00:41:33
saying what I what I've said a couple times during this I I say to myself
00:41:39
I refuse to believe that if I'm a good person
00:41:44
and that if I'm working hard I refuse to believe that this doesn't work out
00:41:50
I refuse to believe that I'm not going to be okay like I know that This Moment's going to pass and I
00:41:57
know that I will look back on this moment five years from now and I'll see exactly what I was meant to learn and
00:42:05
redirecting your focus to what actually matters and the fact that you believe in your
00:42:11
heart that you got the mindset you got the work ethic you got the ability to figure this [ __ ] out and to keep going
00:42:16
and that eventually if you do what's meant for you is going to find you you
00:42:22
will be rewarded for all this in the way that you're meant to be rewarded
00:42:27
that's amazing it's an amazing feeling because you can pick yourself up no matter what happens I spent so long
00:42:38
being dysregulated having a nervous system that was
00:42:43
constantly on edge like what it felt like to be me
00:42:49
any moment in my life whether it was sitting in a classroom or I was sitting at that law firm bait stamping or I'm
00:42:55
sitting as a young mom with postpartum depression or I'm sitting in yet another job I don't like
00:43:02
is it felt like being in a car
00:43:07
at a stoplight that had a green signal and the emergency brake was on and the
00:43:13
gas was floored and I was going nowhere like just the engine revved and the sense that I needed to go but not being
00:43:20
able to go and when I finally started to get control of
00:43:27
my own thinking when I finally started to understand anxiety and how to quiet it in my mind
00:43:36
and then how to quiet at my body when I finally got serious about understanding
00:43:41
trauma and healing it in my nervous system
00:43:47
first through EMDR through therapy through guided MDMA sessions
00:43:55
I finally had the experience of being in my body
00:44:01
and being safe and being okay and I hadn't had that in a really long
00:44:07
time and um I'm so
00:44:14
aware of when I'm not in my body now I'm so aware of when my nervous system
00:44:20
starts to go on edge that my tolerance for staying there is
00:44:25
zero because I live for far too long feeling
00:44:31
on edge anxious dysregulated self-loathing that when I dip into that
00:44:38
space and everybody you dip into that space once a day if not like I used to
00:44:44
live there and so when I start to dip into that dysregulated anxious on edge
00:44:52
intense space it's like get this out of my body we got
00:44:58
to get back into my new default which is grounded centered in control of what I'm
00:45:07
thinking what I'm gonna do next and it's a fluid situation
00:45:12
but you just gave me the insight as to why it's so quick for me now
00:45:17
because I've made a commitment to myself that after spending 30 years that way
00:45:23
40 almost that I don't want to live another year that way another week that
00:45:29
way another full day that way now do I have things that happen in my life that
00:45:35
are tough that that put me into a mode where
00:45:41
I'm anxious and on edge and of course do I disassociate when I get really awful
00:45:46
of course but I now have the tools to bring myself back into my body
00:45:54
to give myself the encouragement the Assurance the support that I need
00:46:00
so that I can face whatever is happening and know that I'm not only going to be okay
00:46:06
I'm actually going to be awesome eventually quick one as you might know crafted are
00:46:14
one of the sponsors of this podcast and crafted are a jewelry brand and they make really meaningful pieces of jewelry
00:46:20
the really wonderful thing about crafted jewelry is it's super affordable it looks amazing the pieces hold tremendous
00:46:26
meaning and they are really well made I think I've worn this piece for almost a
00:46:31
year it hasn't broken hasn't changed color because it's really really good quality and it costs roughly 50 Quid
00:46:39
people will be surprised when they hear that they'll probably assume that all of my jewelry is like solid gold and cost thousands and thousands of pounds but
00:46:45
what's the point when you can achieve the exact same effect from a piece of jewelry that's high quality and costs 50
00:46:51
Quid that's why I buy crafted quick one for many years people have been asking
00:46:56
for a coffee flavored Hill and quite recently he'll release the iced coffee
00:47:01
caramel flavor of their um ready to drink heels and I've just become hooked on it over the last couple of weeks I've
00:47:08
been on a really interesting Journey with huel which I've described and talked about a little bit on this podcast I started with the berry ready
00:47:14
to drinks then I moved over to the protein salted caramel because it's 100 calories and it gives you all of your
00:47:19
essential vitamins and minerals but also gives you the 20 odd grams of protein you need and now I'm balanced between
00:47:24
them both I drink mostly the banana flavor ready to drink I've got really into the iced coffee caramel flavor of
00:47:31
fuels ready to drink and now I'm drinking that as well as the protein make sure you try the new ready to drink
00:47:37
flavors that the caramel flavor is amazing the new banana flavor as well is amazing and obviously as I said the iced
00:47:44
coffee caramel flavor has been a real Smash Hit so check it out let me know what you think on social media I see all
00:47:49
of your tags and Instagram posts and tweets about you [Music]
00:47:59
oh [Music] my God
00:48:06
[Music]
00:48:12
[Music]
