Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prw1xtkdfhs
and this is why tiger woods keeps working this is why warren buffett keeps working it's why richard branson keeps working the only way in which businesses or people will become successful and truly perform to their optimum this amazing question is probably the best question i've ever been asked [Music] camille thank you for joining me today it's a pleasure to have you here so early in the morning i i typically on this podcast will won't introduce people because um i i'll do a little bit of a pre-introduction but your your background and the work you've done specifically with high performance people and successful people is so compelling and fascinating that i feel like i want you to introduce yourself and i've read through your bio multiple times it was deeply inspiring and i think without an introduction everything we talk about from here without the perfect introduction which i feel like only you'll give everything we talk about from here on um might not have the the context it needs to have so who is jamil creation i'm a performance coach and psychologist so i've spent my time working with some very good sports teams some very good business teams some successful people and i guess what i do is i help people cultivate a mindset for success so i always say that for us to act differently we need to think differently i'm going to create different behaviors different actions this is about creating different thoughts first so i guess what i do more than anything else is help people change their mind so i said there's new new opportunities new possibilities that will come from new perspectives so a lot of my time is spent working with people not to give them new skills but more to allow them to understand the skills that they've already got and then create a perspective for them to use it differently
so um as a performance coach i think everyone can be better everyone can perform better at terms as a matter of i guess trying to create the mindset the attitude um i guess some of the precursors to those to the performance which are which are beneficiary which have benefit to them and so you said that everybody has the skills and i i you know i i see that in a lot of my friends i see that they have a lot more sort of um natural capabilities than they've managed to sort of give the world through their actions if someone has an ambition to be something if they have the ambition to be you know a sports uh star and you've worked with a lot of athletes and you've worked with business people or they want to start a business what you tend to see it and what i tend to see in my inbox is a lot of people with intention but there seems to be something preventing that intention from turning into action or like behavior into an achievement yeah yeah and i think you know turning ambition into achievement is the key because most people will have good intentions most people will be wishing and hoping to be better there's a big difference between wishing and hoping and believing and executing upon it so i think that the people who genuinely execute on it probably want it more for a start at a monastic key no one's ever wandered around the bottom of a mountain and then simply found themselves at the top and it does take that determination the resilience it does take the ability to execute upon ideas to drive success so i think the key is the desire which is fueled by having a purpose a mission a vision towards what that end goal should look like a lot of people um can't quite they say one thing they say that their their purpose is to go to the gym yeah for example we all say one thing and do the other yeah and why is that like because it's sometimes hard to distinguish with someone whether that's their real sort of desire
or whether they're kind of like virtue signaling to themselves if they want to be something or you know they want to start that business or become an entrepreneur be you know get a six-pack but then their actions show that quite a different story so i always wondered that with my some of my friends always think are they do they actually want that or they just it's very easy to say that this is what i'm after and much harder to do it and i think one of the reasons why is because um we have to invest we self-invest so we probably all know these um kids at school who are great footballers at 14 15. you think you know what they're gonna make it they're just brilliant they're gonna make it um or great track athletes at 12 and you know and you just think they're special but they don't make it and the reason why they don't make it is they don't self-invest so the people who make it are the ones who um will get up on a rainy friday morning and rainy saturday morning to go and practice whilst their mates are in bed the ones who will practice on a friday night when their mates are out drinking and so talent is not enough you need talent plus teachability so talent plus the ability to be open-minded agile in our thinking to commit to practice and turn that practice into something which develops our talent even further so there's lots of people with talent and business lots of people with talent and sport um but i guess that we need to be open-minded enough to invest in how we practice our talent to become successful so you know there's no there's no substitute for practice i get lots of golfers who say to me that yeah can you make me better yeah and yeah the number one golfer in the world will practice more than any any amateur you know and you know their lies the truth but you know we need to we need to apply ourselves in a particular manner and so we need to be practical about how we
exercise our talent you create good feedback loops to understand what we're doing gain better personal introspection and self-awareness to allow us to use our talents differently how do you give someone that purpose though like i'm trying to think like so we know we know practice is like so incredibly important to master something but my i guess my question is um how would you give someone that motivation because i i i guess you can't give someone purpose a lot of us spend so much of our lives trying to to motivate people right to motivate friends families you know siblings whatever it might be i'm wondering if there's a thing we can do as like loving friends or whatever to to give someone that kick yeah so i mean a couple of points i guess on that in regard to discovering purpose um it can't be done for someone so i always said purpose is never achieved it's attained on a daily basis so the mistake that people make with purpose is they confuse it with an end goal so here's my purpose and have this vision statement of what they're seeking to you know achieve or create whatever it might be and get practical and tangible about it but purpose isn't that purpose is achieved on a daily basis that um sorry purpose is never achieved it's attained on a daily basis and this is why tiger woods keeps working this is why warren buffett keeps working it's why richard branson keeps working it's because it's never achieved it's attained on a daily basis so i think that you know we need to find something which is purposeful to us um and then we need to lose ourselves to it on a regular basis so once we start to become more purpose driven and express ourselves in a particular way obviously being a good colleague being a good business leader been a good sports person is not seeking to impress it's about seeking to express and be ourselves in the context of our work
so once people can find that um within themselves um then i think they can direct their energy and their focus in a particular way and become much more purpose driven in how they go about their daily activities but you can't give someone that purpose it has to be theirs and i think life is about timing i think some people find that very late some people find that very early and um and it makes no difference we're all individuals in regard to helping other people make change we're almost too quick to go towards behaviors so we tell people to be different all the time tell our team members you should be more collaborative guys i don't guys need to be more innovative and tell our children to keep their rooms tidy so we're constantly talking to people about behaviors say to our friends that you should give up smoking or eat healthier whatever it might be the only way in which you change actions is by changing thoughts so we think and then we feel and then we act that's how we work so if you're constantly working on actions we're telling people to be different and this is why new year's resolutions fail from tomorrow i'll be different start doing this i'm going to stop doing that and we start talking about actions and behaviors um we need to go back to the um granted a precursor of all our actions which is our thoughts so the only way in which you genuinely drive commitment rather than compliance when it comes to change in your team in your friends you know and yourself is by changing the words and pictures in your head or their head to drive different feelings and then different actions there's um a little tip which i sometimes give leaders and so i said leaders never say to your team you're gonna make a change you say to your team you're gonna make a change they won't like it um say to your team i'd like to try and experiment they'll they'll be on board with it and um we'll give that a go that's okay so even just a difference in language to
allow someone to think differently or make them feel differently and hopefully therefore choose to act in a different manner and how how would i get someone to change their thoughts you know i think um i think the best way is gamification um what holds people in place is what they believe to be true and then so um so people will sit around a boardroom table and i'll discuss strategy and i'll say you know look you know we can do this but we can't do that and they'll have a viewpoint on budgets on consumer buying behaviors on on compliance and governance and that's what holds this in place so what we need to do is break free of some of the parameters that we think are in the way so if we got people around the boardroom table and said look guys let's just this strategy piece that we're going to talk about let's imagine we got an unlimited marketing budget for it if we had an unlimited marketing budget for it i know we haven't but if we had what would we be doing how would we be doing it um you know if we had no marketing budget what would we be doing now what we're doing here is that we are helping people to move outside of the mental tram lines that we all operate under and under habitual thinking so let's ask some what if questions can you imagine that you know a life if you weren't smoking i told what it looked like i don't know what you'd be doing today if you weren't smoking what'd you spend your money on that you saved on cigarettes just played the game of what if so let's break free of some of the things which are holding people in place by um not by conflict not by arguing and and debate in a confrontational manner but finding some common ground and working from there and the common ground is let's play a game and you you said that you know about people finding that purpose um in their lives you we hear this uh phrase um a lot which is find your passion yeah and i almost feel that it's it's
in many respects quite harmful because it that question is kind of loaded it it assumes a singular passion for a star it sounds that you can discover it like an easter egg and then and also um the the context in which that question usually sits in it implies that once you find it then it's you know then it's the the the it's a can of unlimited like happiness and orientation forever and then that's yours and it i just feel like sometimes language can be harmful because it it simplifies very complex things and sometimes multifaceted plural things you know so i wondered if that you know that phrase uh find your per find your passion was something you um you felt similar about or yeah i do i mean yeah it's true that passion can be a significant multiplier of human potential so you know if people are passionate and engaged in a business they can direct their energy in a in a worthwhile meaningful manner so so so it's it's worthwhile but you're right and um that you know there's a big difference between passion big difference between happiness and joy um some are in the moment at home i think joy is in the moment and i think happiness is something um that we continually continually adjust towards um your passion can be a significant multiplier of human potential particularly in the workplace so it does have a place it is something which is useful to understand and then ultimately it always comes down to personal introspection and self-awareness for me and i think that um we need to work harder at understanding ourselves and when we are constructing a mindset which is conducive to performance so we optimize our potential when we're in a particular state of mind and that state of mind might be passion it might be relaxation it might be enthusiasm might be enjoyment but we need to almost get to know ourselves
and know that um there are certain things which enable us to do others and once we work backwards and understand what that looks like maybe we can gain some more consistency i say to a lot of sports people and to a lot of business people that consistency of mind gives you consistency of play and i'm convinced of it and the more consistent we can be in our thinking we understand um the building blocks the component parts to success yeah the more success we can have and how does one establish consistency of thought because i completely agree with that i completely agree i've seen that in my own life when i've been consistent with my thinking i've managed to you know perform the same habits every day um but then sometimes i'll lose consistency in my thoughts because i lose um [Music] i lose i guess i lose attachment or sort of my anchor with my my why yeah and i talk a lot i've talked a lot in this podcast over the last couple of weeks about this realization i've had this year with the gym which was every year february march i was incredibly motivated to go fired up trying to look good for summer yeah and then obviously once you look good and summer has ended it's almost like you've lost your anchor right so you get into september and the why which made you go and to think consistently every day has been is evaporated and i'm tr i can't get myself to go to the gym in october right you look in great shape for it this was the other video i realized so this was the year i realized that this is the year i booked the trend for the first time in my life because i realized that i thought to myself every single year i i do it for this period and then i stop and they're two different people august steve and october steve don't know each other they're like you know what i mean they're like twins that were separated at birth and so this was the year where
i realized what i was doing and why i was losing my motivation so i thought [ __ ] it you know i'm gonna anchor my why to something a bit more uh long term and without a timeline so i said to myself listen i persuaded myself of all the reasons why i want to be healthy and view my life as one season and that's what's allowed me to persevere and also i got a bit pissed off with myself i thought you're really like that like like you're that vain and you're like you know but so yeah do you know i mean i always think that consistency of mind comes from understanding the intrinsic quality of our decision-making processes and i say that a lot to people in sport and in business so yeah you can make a good decision and have a really bad outcome you can make a bad decision have a good outcome and this is why i've worked with leadership teams who have confused luck for genius and really bad decisions with a great outcome you know markets have changed competition's done something something's just worked in their favor um so um so it's really important for us to not judge our decision making by our outcomes and we often do so we'll say this is a good decision because it resulted in this or this is a bad decision it resulted in that and we can only understand the outcome retrospectively so it's wrong to measure our decisions by the outcomes and we need to go back to how we made a decision in the first place and once we start to understand the intrinsic quality of our decision making process we can become more consistent in how we make decisions and therefore have more control over those outcomes so i think that you know two things i don't i think that and then we'll use you as the example here steve um that consistency of mind will come from knowing how we make decisions okay i understand that we put our weight into evidence how much we use prejudice and bias and opinion whatever it might be
but let's understand how we make decisions and in that way we can be consistent in um how we apply our logic and thinking and feeling try and determine some best outcomes and then the other thing and um as you've just positioned is reframing let's stand back and create some time and space to understand and um you know why we do things and why we don't do things now i always say that um the people are most successful and i've had a pleasure working with six sports people who got to number one in the world i can guarantee you one thing i had in common was that um um they um they never made big changes and um it was small changes so i'm a big big believer in the one degree of change if you take two parallel lines and you move one by one degree it may not seem much at first but it's a really big difference between where you start and where you end up so um everyone's trying to you know make a dramatic change and see change from tomorrow i'm going to be different i think it's about doing something a little bit more than what we've been doing it matan a bit more consistently and then the other thing with these people who obtained you know what i call um super achievements at home so they did really really well um is that they actually worked on their strengths they started to understand what was good about them and do that some more so we think to be better as human beings i'm gonna be better as a business or a team of people we need to fix our weaknesses um i'm not sure that's true i actually think it's more about understanding our strengths and playing to them so um i've actually worked with teams before in business and in sport who have actually weakened the strength by trying to strengthen a weakness if you think about it it's ridiculous and actually weaken the strength by trying to strengthen the weakness we need to be careful so i think understanding what's good about us understanding you know where our behaviors come from in regard to the thinking before it
and then reframing some of those words and pictures and i guess that's what you've done with your gym example because i guess change some of the words and pictures in your head to therefore feel differently which has resulted you and acting differently yeah and i really you know i was i was valuing intensity over consistency and intensity wasn't sustainable right so i was going through the summer like to the gym two times a day i was starving myself like eating things that i i didn't want to necessarily eat yeah and the the consistency came from being a bit more um realistic with myself being yeah you know if you missed the day of gym it doesn't matter you don't have to perspective yes perspective isn't it yeah and i think do you know it's funny because again something so many sports people have worked with and business people who will lose perspective they'll lose the tournament and it's dreadful you know win a tournament i've made it you know this is it this is turning point for me now they win a big contract you know in business and you know this is us now we're set up you know or they lose a contract and um and life has never been so dreadful um but i think that we need a better perspective on things so their ability to think more long term term to be more forgiving you know to understand with more um reality at uh what's good and what's not so good is probably the way forwards and in terms of responsibility it's a it's a topic that's fast consistency is a topic i've been so fascinated about over the last year as i've reflected and done has been sort of introspective about the things i've been able to achieve whether it's getting millions of followers on social media whether it's growing my business or going to the gym it seems that the the very ironically consistent theme across all of them was consistency it was being able to do perform x habit for a long period of time and then you have that
the eighth wonder of the world shows up and things start compounding in your favor very quickly usually um but the other term that i've been fascinated with is responsibility and as i've i started out as an 18 year old kid dropped out of university disowned by my parents no money at all and the one of the things that i noticed as i look back on 18 year old steve versus a lot of other people that i see that that are living in the same [ __ ] area i was living in and stealing pizzas like i was stealing them um was they don't take responsibility for their situation they kind of see themselves as a a victim of the situation they're in whereas when i was in that situation not only did i not view it as my destination i was literally taking photos of the the nothingness in my fridge and the how dire my life was because in my mind and i started keeping this diary on facebook which i really randomly wrote in my diary that a tv company had asked me to keep this because i didn't actually know how to tell my own diary right that i thought i was gonna show the world this someday um i i didn't see it as my destination and i took full responsibility of my circumstance it wasn't anyone's fault but my own and i was gonna change it but then one of the things that makes me concerned um about our generation and about certain political narratives and certain themes i see on the internet is like a an avoidance of responsibility for your life and the the default to blame someone else and i'll be honest it's something i see more in the western world than i do in the african village i was born in yeah you know so i wanted to know if really from you like what role responsibility plays in people's outcomes okay that's a big one yeah um you promised me some easy questions um no so um responsibility is huge it's just massive it's um it's it's one of the pre it's one of the predetermined
of successful outcomes is our ability to take ownership and accountability so circumstance and situation push and pull us in different directions on a daily basis the world is complex it's uncertain it's unpredictable all of those things the people who perform best have huge levels of responsibility and ability to respond to those circumstances and situation no matter what they are to drive the best outcomes or opportunities so i always said there's a circle of concern water cooler conversations the stuff that's going on you know around us circumstance situation incidents and accidents then there's a circle of influence and the circle of influence is where we make choice that's what it's about so responsibility is all about choice for me i absolutely guarantee you now that the circumstance the situation is not a predictor of success and um because we know of people who were born into privilege their great role models had good access to opportunity to wealth they had good guidance and good support and they ended up dying heroin addicts in prison we know some people born with a physical disadvantage now a lack of good role models now the lack of guidance lack of support lack of opportunity they grew up to be some of the most successful people who have ever walked this earth so it proves beyond doubt that attitude is more important than intelligence or facts and i genuinely believe that to be true in all areas of high performance that attitude is more important than intelligence or facts i always say give me i will over iq any one of my teams i'd rather if i will over iq because high technical expertise and talk about the western world at the moment high technical expertise is no longer as valuable as it used to be and the reason why high technical expertise is no longer as valuable as it used to be it's because we can google things that's why so knowing a lot isn't where your success is going to
come from yeah it's not what you know which is important it's how you think about what you know and how you bring it to life with your character and personality to determine the best outcomes or opportunities so you know i genuinely believe that the only way in which businesses or people will become successful and truly perform to their optimum is taking full accountability and ownership we need to almost move away from circumstance and situation which is a distraction so um the more that we realize that our success is dependent upon us and not on situation the better and because the world is so unpredictable i need to simply learn to dance on a shifting carpet not see the rug being pulled from under our feet you know life is a game of continual adjustment and it doesn't matter what happens it's how we react and respond to it to determine those best opportunities or outcomes and i think that you know it's funny because initially i'm working a lot of businesses and um on culture on team um people strategies and the focus on responsibility has never been higher mainly because we've been asked to stay apart people are having to determine their own work schedules people have to determine their own working week and um they're going to have to take responsibility for driving the best outcomes and whilst they're not surrounded by team or working with directly with a leader so it's been a greater call for responsibility i wonder whether in answer to your question i don't know the answer to this um i wonder whether we'll see a better shift or greater shift towards more responsibility in the western world because i agree with you i think that many of us will see ourselves as a victim of circumstance and situation and not necessarily see the beauty in the chaos because of it you talk there about the the internet as well in the power of the internet and how that's been a bit of a leveler which is yeah which is a really
wonderful thing i think um what how important is it do you do you think when you think about the successful people you've worked with to be a sort of self-driven learner beyond school um did you see in the specifically in the sort of upper echelons of like business the ones that are the people that are most successful are proactive sort of self-driven yeah i think i think it's true i think that um i've said that our only sustainable competitive advantage is to learn faster and better than your competitors so you know and you think about that for a business you think about that for a leader you know you think about as a sportsman it's probably true isn't it you know our only sort of sustainable competitive advantage is just learn faster and better than anyone else two powerline lines yeah yeah and i think that you know and i think that i think that how can we learn faster and better yeah if we're not proactive lifelong learners and so you know and i think that you know learning isn't necessarily about being taught um we don't necessarily need teachers um it's a strive for greater curiosity you know i think curiosity is worth more than creativity at the moment but it's a strive for greater curiosity it's a matter of being massive being open-minded it's a matter of being um agile in our thinking so we can deploy resourced of opportunity as it becomes visible um it's about um it's about self-discovery so it's about a variety of things which are based not necessarily upon traditional learning but more in a way in which we can open our mind up to experimentation and feedback you know and understanding ourselves differently and i think the best leaders um you know have this ability to you know reimagine repurpose reinvent i don't think they're beholden to a
particular or wedded to a particular mindset but that's for a lot of people that's terrifying the thought of experimentation and being agile and reinvention i've seen that in my own business i've seen over the years i was um i was known as being the guy that would walk in i think a lot of business leaders are walking in the morning and be like we're going in a different direction everyone come in this room we're going to launch this part of our business and we're going to take it we're going to experiment and i i would often say to our team that experimentation is like at the heart of all of our strategy it's like why especially as a social media company where our platforms social media changes every day there's new updates pushed by facebook and instagram every day um so our company slogan was keeping keeping brands at the forefront of what's possible which meant that we had to be agile but i'd often see people in my organization that were really against change fearful of it they would take you know they would resist it yeah you know uh and i i i am i wonder how you if it's i always wondered why it was i think some of them had levels of imposter syndrome so they were you know they were just uh just trying to get a hang of the role they were in and not do more that you know they were already you know but i wonder what your thoughts were on that i think i think people don't like change because they don't know what it results in and that's one of the things so let's take um let's take uh moving your desk yeah someone sat at our desk for ten years in a particular office he said you know what you need to you need to move down the corridor i'm going to make a move but uh people weren't like the slightest um if you said to them that you know you need to move down the corridor you know we really appreciate the move we're
going to give you a million pounds at the end of the year because of it they'll be trotting off with their potted plant in hand i guarantee it so i think that because people don't necessarily know what it results in why should we invest in doing something different which is uncomfortable because it goes against our mental tram lines our habitual thinking so now you're asking me to compromise my patterns and i don't know what for and i know what's going to result in um it could be good it could be bad so therefore i'm not sure i want to go to the trouble without investing in this change when i haven't determined you know the result of it as human beings we like patterns um that's good and it's bad and um it works in our favor sometimes sometimes it doesn't so we like patterns and so we like consistency and we compartmentalize and how am i getting a viewpoint on the world and in fact if you look at um the office is a good example the office is a great example of keeping people in patterns you've got your phone on your desk here your computer there come in at a certain time working a certain way take your lunch at a certain time so we're conditioned to work in a way which is reflective of the consistency which takes out variance in business so you think that management has been around for about 100 years and the reason why management's been around for about 100 years is to reduce variance at time because then you can guess then you can scale so businesses got bigger a lot bigger 100 years ago and um because of the ability to keep people habitual so um so because we've become conditioned to do this and everything around us keeps us in in in a pattern that we quite like being in as soon as we start to move outside of that there's a level of discomfort so i guess leaders can allow people to make change atta and embrace change um i guess there's a few points one it's always best if it's co-authored and
co-created right um so let's involve people in what that change looks like um it's always best if um we look at our organizations or teams as a community instead of as a team or an organization at the moment communities are outperforming bureaucracies and hierarchies when it comes to maximizing human talent so let's try and form a community and um let's co-author and co-create and and then um let's have a look at um peer recognition peer coaching peer challenge it doesn't need to be a top down thing done to people it can be something which can happen from the inside out you know it's meaningful when when something is endorsed by others that that you know you are that you feel an affinity with sure what when you read about the steve jobs of the world and the elon musk's of the world they seem to buck all of the a lot of the trends that you hear in like management coaching they seem to be very authoritarian you know i was reading about from i was reading steve elon musk's biography and there's stories of him just like calling someone into the office and saying how much does it cost to do this they'll say 10 million he'll say do it for 5 and do it within 30 days and they'll go away feeling puzzled but they'll get it done yeah he has this culture of like intensity and when you start he says to the teams that this will be the hardest you've ever worked in your life but it'll be the most worthwhile but it'd be the hardest you've ever worked and and i you know and then steve jobs as well i've heard the stories of how he was you know how he built the company at medlo park and um he seemed like the antithesis of what you would read about in a business book but obviously these are two of the most successful entrepreneurs the world has ever you know seen so i wondered if there's a i'm trying to appreciate the like
how they've achieved their success by being so different from what all the business books say from all accounts they're you know what i mean yeah i mean i think a couple of things i guess that you know you find what works for you um i think what they have on their side is they have a really big purpose statement it's a really big mission so there are lots of companies with mission statements but very few on a mission and i guess that when it comes back to um the point i made earlier that passion been a significant multiplier of human potential i guess that these people have the ability to engage people so to tell a story attempt to inspire and motivate so i guess that you know there is a there's no doubt lots of logic and time there is no doubt lots of rationality which is used in their management leadership style you know but what you're describing to me in the people that you're describing i think you can really get behind something that someone passionately believes in and is something which is worthwhile and purposeful yeah on such a grand scale so i think when they're talking about um and things which will change humanity um i think it's possible for you know us to be swept along at him on that particular vision and so maybe it does mobilize people in a different manner because of who they are what they believe in and what they're trying to achieve yeah no that's probably true i mean yeah you think about i mean the example i'll give you is jfk well yeah i mean i mean jfk do you think that jfk's speech about putting man on the moon you should read it actually rather than look at it um it's a rubbish speech when you read it the term and the reason and the reason why is that there's no logic to it until there's no rationality so he says we put a man on the moon and the reason why he gives that we should put a man on the moon is because it's it's hard and not easy
which is a rubbish reason to do anything it's hard that's why we're gonna do it yeah so um but not only did they end up doing this it mobilized the whole nation behind the space race and the whole nation behind science in fact um the reason why was that because logic was low inspiration was high it was such a um it was such a literally a moonshot it was literally such a big goal and so ambitious so expansive you know that people bought into the dream and i wonder whether and i don't know you know the examples you gave at steve jobs and elon musk whether whether people just buy into that dream and they buy into what they not necessarily what they're seeking to do but what they're seeking to create and maybe there's a lesson for all of us who manage and manage teams that maybe it's not about trying to you know get people to do stuff it's about people to you know to create stuff is that you know my time to be part of something which is worthwhile and meaningful and sell a big vision and tell the right story and you know engage people emotionally you know all of this stuff about psychology i know a lot of stuff i read a few books yeah you've read a few books about a few books a week last tuesday yeah you know don't tell my clients um you know when people come across people like you they think that you've got all the answers and because you've got all the answers or at least an answer to most things um they think that you must live a life of sort of perfect decision-making couples children have the worst worn shoes yeah exactly um so yeah what what do you like at living these things that you're aware of speaking of performance one of the things that's integral to performing at the highest level is nutrition it's something that i i guess i took a a long time to finally believe but that is why having hewlett's
response for this podcast is such a privilege because there was a time in my life especially when i was early in my business career where i wasn't getting the vitamins the minerals and i wasn't having a sort of nutritionally complete diet i was if you look at some of my old photos i was definitely lacking protein as well and a lot of that maybe it was an excuse was because i was um i was busy and when i discovered huel when a guy called mike walked past me in the office wearing a heel t-shirt and shaking a little bottle and you know upon my curiosity of asking what was in that and why he was drinking it it really really did change my life and so here's what i want to do you know this particular podcast today has been about high performance and mindset and how we how we become our best selves and how we teach our teams to become our best selves i'm going to give away this week five boxes of your big boxes right all you've got to do if you want one of those boxes is hit the subscribe button on this podcast wherever you're listening whether you're on youtube or whether you're on the the podcast or wherever you might be and leave a review if you leave a review on the podcast or just keep your instagram handle or your twitter handle in there so i can find you but if you're listening on youtube then please um just leave a comment down below and any comment you leave enters you into the competition and i want to know what you think of huel so um it's as i say i say it with full honesty it's changed my life and i really believe that those of you who aren't getting your sort of um all your minerals and proteins and all the good stuff i think it can change yours too what do you like at living these things that you're aware of yeah i'm rubbish next question and the reason why is that two things that one um we're all human because we're all human you know we're all prone to make mistakes in our doing and
our thinking um and i think that being you know better never stops so therefore we've got to continually adjust you know we don't find hints tips gimmicks that make us better and then we just apply them regularly and it works so i guess there's a level of inconsistency which is reflective of the fact that you know that i'm a human being who tries to do better you know give me an exam on a regular basis on an example well you're aware of the truth but you're just not oh you might you know on the amount of time so as you know i've been a guest speaker for 10 years now so when the world is normal and sane you know i would um go off four days a week anywhere in the world so twice a week i was abroad and i'd speak to a few hundred people i'd stand on stage i'd do an hour's talk about performance psychology and i'd come off um so i did that for ten years four times a week and um but um but i'd often come off and think cause any good i say to the stake at stake i would come up to me and say that you know that was really brilliant this is exactly what we're after it's perfect are you happy oh yeah it's exactly what we're after but you sort of covered the brief yeah yes yeah absolutely it's exactly what it was send me an email let me know the feedback and then you get you know maybe even get some feedback which is like you know you get sort of scored out of five it's almost like 97 percent five and um i'd be scouring for the threes and twos and think that you know there's like you know 500 people there's that sort of five people who put two and so it was all right i just think [ __ ] but um but uh but i'd be wondering why what did i do wrong what was real and it's unbelievable it's unbelievable the
amount of times i've sat in front of an audience and um and you know maybe 300 people there there's someone with their arms folded like that and they're just like i think he doesn't look engaged you know and so out of friend of people there's something there's most people writing down things or nodding or smiling or whatever it is it's amazing how many times i can pick out the one person who doesn't seem to be enjoying it so i think i think look i think it's a couple of things that i'm i'm always prone to you know we actually we wait quite highly stuff which we think we're not doing well you know we're trying to fix what's not right about us what's not good you know you know what we should have done and um what we could be doing um i think i'm still prone to that rather than sort of enjoying the you know the success that i've had really what about things in your personal life in terms of like like you know health and like being a parent and like yeah pursuing goals and ambitions you have in your personal life what about those things yeah i think that you know um health-wise i need to take some advice from you we should i'll lie down and tell you all about it i keep i keep meaning to i keep meaning to run more and get to the gym more there's always an excuse um so you know i'm the most demotivated motivational spooky life's pretty [ __ ] and um so um so yeah so i think i need to work out more um i'll tell you the one thing that gets me and um i've got three children i got sort of um four four-year-old twin girls and a nine-year-old boy um is that you know as a psychologist and um yeah i'm pretty good at i've sat in front of some sort of pretty difficult clients some really difficult clients you know some people at the absolute top of their profession and um and they're they're [ __ ] screwed in their thinking and um and you know and you know i've
dealt with it four-year-olds and nine-year-olds just do me i can't you know i just you try and apply psychology to it it doesn't work so the level of frustration that comes about in regard to being a parent again this is my point that you know all human beings and um so um so you know you try you try all the influence persuasion and negotiation and all the psychology and all the techniques that you know that um it doesn't work on four-year-olds it doesn't work it's so funny the guest that was here yesterday joe wicks are the exact same thing he said i'm like a you know calm guy but he just said you know when i my daughter i'll tell her that i want to just put her down so i can clean the counter and she just won't be the irrationality of it is what it does yeah and um so you know you know it's funny because um i've had some really good sports people sit in front of me and say you know give me you know you've got something that makes me better then and then you give them something and they go away they come back a week later and they say i tried that it doesn't work have you got anything else it's a bit like going to the gym working out for half an hour going home looking in the mirror and says yo let's crap that i don't like the gym film refrigerator um and so and this is my point that that you know it's not about tools gimmicks and hints it's about striving every day to be better than what you were yesterday um i worked with a golfer it was very very good really good um and you know literally top 10 in the world it's about a whole year and uh with just a piece of paper in his pocket and he used to play with his piece of paper in his pocket um and it used to just say um what did i enjoy today and what did i learn today 2 questions on it and then in the evening he just answered those questions so that whole year forget the numbers i'm not going to look at numbers i'm just going to answer this question so i've had a good day i've had a bad
day doesn't make any difference i'll just answer that question these questions what did i enjoy today and what did i learn today had the best year we ever had and i'm just answering those questions yeah and in a way there almost needs to be more simplicity to not using tools and techniques not to try and apply psychology to a four-year-old you know but to just try and consistently enjoy and learn on a daily basis so i guess in regard to like you know yeah i'm still prone to say god i need to get running okay i've been drinking all week i need to do some exercise at the weekend um and you know again it's falling into the trap of the i've been at the mercy of the shoulds and musks rather than thinking about at um you know what am i enjoying what am i learning what surprised me this week um you know where am i experimenting and what have i discovered you know this week about myself and then once we start to talk like that maybe we can so i guess apply more consistent thinking and therefore change our doing so you want to run let's use that as an example yeah i need to run more definitely i need to run more why do you need to run more and um do you know because i want to improve my heart and lung health i think i think i've got tonight it's all right for you because you're young and fit and um but um but i think i've got to an age now where i realized there's more of an importance on exercise so you know before i could just i'll just do it anyway you know pick up running every now and then i'll be able to run i go to the gym every now and then i'll have a great time at the gym for a couple of weeks and then i'll skip it um yeah but now you know but now it's it's different a term you know now i sort of feel at them as though you know i could be fitter it should be i think this year has also sort of illuminated that for everybody at the importance of health i think it's made us all well it has for me made me think about my health a lot more
no not for the vain reasons that you know young guy would think about their health because they're trying to trying to get laid or something but because you know i i want to live longer and i want to have more memories than those kind of things did you know near ielts he wrote a book called indistractible i know yeah i'm not familiar with i've read it you're probably familiar with the book yeah i know the name but i am yeah he said this quote to me which really changed my life and i think about it all the time okay when i find myself procrastinating from doing something or whatever he said that typically we think we're humans that are seeking pleasure but we're actually living in the avoidance of discomfort and when i think about the things that i procrastinate against or whether you know we're at six seven o'clock in the evening you think i can't be bothered to go whatever it does ring true to me that i'm actually avoiding some kind of psychological discomfort yes and so i now whenever i feel myself like this weekend i had had this big project to do i also had this talk that i had to do um for my manager dom and i found myself like and then i've got the book my book which i had to do go through the whole book from start to finish in a day and i'm like low-key finding myself oh just clean the countertop because that's important and i said i stopped myself i thought you're avoiding the discomfort associated with sitting down for nine hours until six am in the morning and doing the book and it wasn't until i realized why you know what i started that term has been like this flashlight that i shine in like the corner of the room we're after hiding the you know the thing that i don't want to do now so i wondered if it was you know for some in in regards to your running if it's in some respects similar like you're avoiding some kind of discomfort where you think i'd rather play i'm convinced of it because running such an unpleasant experience
for me it's a really good example i can't stand it so but you're absolutely right that uh that you know i totally agree with you that you know we we do sort of go about our lives trying to seek moving out of that space of you know of of being uncomfortable this is why we don't have conflict conversations in the workplace this is why we don't challenge our own thinking this is why we don't like change and uh you know we like we like to operate from a comfort zone that's what we do um so yeah no i agree with you i think i think because running is such an unpleasant experience for me that's absolutely awful um i'm probably avoiding it because i just don't want the experience whereas riding a bike isn't so bad for me um so so yeah so maybe therefore but um instead of sat there at four five o'clock thinking god i need to go running in an hour and i really don't want to i'll go tomorrow maybe maybe what i should be saying is i need to go running no you don't um why don't you ride the bike why didn't you yeah why don't you just have stairs um okay well i'll have a go on it after this but um we should have done a whole interview on that i'm gonna kill two birds with one stone i hate running as well it's like i hate the impact on my knees yeah just i don't want to be outside yeah that'll be swerving past people so i got the peloton um it's low resistance it's fun super engaging and gamified because you see the data you see everyone in the world and where they're placing you see jenny 55 in north carolina's beating you yeah make me feel bad i hate jenny forever that just makes me realize how unfit i am and how much i hate other people who are fitter than me but i mean interestingly it proves how fit you are because you said you don't like running because of your knees and swerving past people i don't like running because i can't breathe so you're already winning chicken egg that'll be cured if you
start running um but but on that point of um of psychological discomfort um how does somebody in your opinion face a challenge that they know is uncomfortable like you know to be honest i don't i don't want to go to the gym or do all these zoom calls all the time it's not like you know i'm not getting comfort or in pleasure out of doing two hours zoom calls at the moment about like you know biotech or whatever it is the thing that i'm involved in but i'm doing it and i wanted to know in your case what what does it take someone who like doesn't want to do something because they know it's uncomfortable to say do you know what [ __ ] it i'm gonna do it today yeah and is it does that go back to that point of of having that like long anchor purpose yeah i think it does i mean mohammed ali said i've i've hated every moment in the gym but i did it so i could live the rest of my life like a champion yeah and it's in in a way it's true isn't it that that you know there are there are component parts to success um and i think the two of the interesting one is and the one that most people probably relate to is failure so people don't like to experience failure but you know for example failure is part payment towards success so the price of success is always paid in full and in advance the price of success is always paid in full and in advance you can't be successful and you start making mistakes you can't be successful and start having your two hours zoom calls but uh you know in a way you need to fail we need to have these awful conversations we need to kiss lots of frogs we need to you know do deals which don't work but i mean you do all these things to enable you to be super successful so um there's lots of things that um again it comes back to reframing if we see it as part and parcel a stepping stone towards a greater advancement they're probably more likely to do it you know if you see failure as something which is we're trying to avoid and it's just
awful and you know and it screams to me that i'm useless um then we're probably going to stay within a comfort zone you know if we embrace failure then we see it as part payment towards success until we see it as something which is um an active contribution a stepping stone towards you know being better maybe we're more likely to indulge in it and not have the discomfort that we associate with it so now i feel that um it is always good to think about you know what you think about that end goal have that purpose that vision the mission you know what you're seeking to achieve and create um and then think about what those building blocks look like because you know all great achievements are the result of many small achievements um you know you had joe wicks here yesterday he wasn't super successful overnight and he probably kissed a lot of frogs i'm sure you talked about it you know um know his business and korean personal life went in all sorts of different directions like ours at um and you know it's not necessarily as we said earlier it's not necessarily what what happens it's it's our interpretation of what's happening which will then enable us to use that as feedback towards something better and do you find with a lot of the high performance people you've worked with that their childhood is a definitive reason as to why they are the way they are today i'm going to try and articulate this if i can but i've i from speaking to guests on this podcast and also from a bit of introspection to be honest i tend to think a lot of people that have extraordinary outcomes have often had some kind of extraordinary early experience and i'll give you a couple of examples the a lot of the billionaires that i know are really really successful people that i know um cite their father's disapproval as the reason why they've always had a chip on their shoulder and they've
always strived obsessively to be enough right because their father told them they weren't enough yeah um have you seen that in successful people that there's the the thing that makes them just a bit [ __ ] weird is often a you know i think one particular instance with a friend of mine a comment their mother made when they were four that they just can't shake yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean i i'm not a psychiatrist so i don't delve into backgrounds in the way that maybe someone involved in psychiatry would yes as a performance coach i tend to work with how people are now basically and um tell me about what you're thinking and doing what you're trying to achieve and more so than to try and deconstruct you know or analyze some of the you know the earlier experiences um so that's not my thing having said that though you're absolutely right there seems to be some sort of correlation between extreme experiences and then how people interpret or translate them and in fact you know as you're talking i was trying to think of the book i can't think of a book i wish i could now and they talk about in this book the fact that so many super successful people politicians actors um business people lost parents when they were young and there's a direct correlation believe it or not it's a direct correlation between people losing parents when they were young and then becoming super performers be incredibly successful um and the psychology behind it was that you learn independence and um it's almost easy if you've got these loving fabulous parents who you know hopefully you know many people have got um you're not as independent you know whereas you know if you lose a parent young you end up sort of doing things for yourself a little bit earlier and so maybe that going back to that responsibility the ownership piece and i'm having to sort yourself out and um you know means that people learn
some of the skills which enable their talent to then be used differently in the future but there is a direct correlation believe it or not i wish i could tell it's like the real psychology in the actual article in the actual piece in the book um but you just reminded me when you're talking about it so i do think that some people do have these extreme experiences and i think that um it's almost easier to get to know ourselves and get to think about life and contextualize things um you know if we're experiencing things which are outside of our i guess our normal field of vision i i resonate a lot with that i um you said you know lose a parent but the reason i resonated with that is because i've said multiple times on this podcast again um that when people have asked me why why i was successful i i cite that when i was younger my parents weren't ever in the house and that made meant that i had to find a way to make money to feed myself or you know my mum was never in the house when i went to bed and she was never there when i woke up because she was just she slept at her shop sometimes my dad worked in london for six days a week which was four hours away and i and it was only of the four of us in our my family the four siblings that wasn't the case for my older siblings when they were younger or when they were my age my mom and dad were in the house every day doing date nights together and then when i grew up by the age of 10 i could leave the house for three days or two days and they wouldn't actually know that i'd gone and so that meant that i became like this sort of self-autonomous kid at like 12 13 14 50. and then started businesses at 14 and then you know went off but you could have gone the other way as well couldn't you oh you know with 100 you know with that level of freedom and autonomy but not the maturity and you know to deal with that freedom
um my friend my best friend said to you and i'll never forget where i stood when he said it in this takeaway shop he said stephen you're either going to be a criminal or a millionaire and it was because i had that my independence created this connection where i knew that my outcomes were going to be a direct result of my behavior i always think of like school dinners as the perfect example for a lot of my childhood maybe up until the age of about nine my there was always like two quid on the counter which is like okay you take that to school and then by ten the two quid wasn't there anymore yeah so it was like waking up in the morning and being like how am i gonna eat today i'd have to find a way so i'd go and sell cigarettes or you know i'd like i knew that there were cigarettes in this this room upstairs which my mum had got from nigeria one one year so i just went to school and i was just shopping cigarettes or chewing gum and it was that that connection i made super early that my outcomes are a direct and only correlation of sort of connected to my behavior um so i resonate with that a lot and it kind of explains the difference between four kids that grew up in the same household and one the three of them went to university llc cambridge whatever and one of them dropped out of everything got kicked out of school and became an entrepreneur it's true isn't it so it's not necessarily the um yeah the experience is how we translate that experience and exactly how we channel our feeling into something which could be productive or destructive you could have become a criminal and a millionaire and got a job at this tory government you could be yeah but the last thing i really wanted to ask you about was um you know this idea of distractions social media is uh made it incredibly easy to distract ourselves and you see you know teams becoming
much more distracted at work because of all these screens and you know the digitalization of the world and individuals and what are what's your thoughts on on why we're so distracted and how to overcome it yeah um it's true that we are distracted i think focus and concentration have to be practiced so many things can be improved so um whether it's resilience whether it's concentration whether it's courage all these things can be practiced so many think courage for example i say courage is like a muscle the more you exercise it the stronger it gets so it's possible to exercise all these things and be better at them and i think that um it's fine to be distracted because it's actually quite nice to have different stimuli and different um provocation and so we just need to choose when it's good to have that provocation and change and when we need to concentrate we need to practice both now um uh here's the thing for you adam is that as human beings we don't multitask so multitasking is a lie so for all the um all the girls and all the women watching this and um oh listening to this um i'm sorry to tell you it's not true you don't multitask better than men it's true amen it doesn't happen we're both equally as bad now we're both useless at it so what we do is we do rapid switching so we don't multitask we just want to talk about exactly um this is why actually um i can't remember it was a couple of years ago that the um the blackberry network went down in abu dhabi for a weekend from friday to monday had a 48 decrease in car accidents that we get really because as human beings we don't multitask you don't like check your text and drive well it doesn't work so um so i think that we are living in an age where it's easy to be distracted and some of these distractions are incredibly useful um
we need to come back to greater responsibility and choice and um let's choose at home you know when it's fine to do that and it's fine not to be and um and practice you know these levels of concentration of focus that we may need for certain tasks but we may not for another so i quite like times when i can sit down and read a book or absorb something or think about something and narrow my focus sometimes i quite like sort of tv being on music being on at um phone next to me on the computer because actually um i'm sometimes picking up on certain things which um for a level of creativity can be quite useful and a bit of provocation a bit of a bit of changeability in my thinking because i get distracted by something and come back to it i find that as well i find them for some bizarre reason if i if i go for a walk or if i go to the gym uh inspiration floods into me but when i'm stood sat in my office trying to think of stuff it's yeah almost impossible the shower is another weird place where my ideas seem to show up all at once and it's like i'm not like this isn't hyperbole i'm not exaggerating at all like if i if i'm sat here and i'm trying to think of something to write or whatever yeah i go for a walk and sometimes i put my my music in it's like non-stop and i find that quite you know interesting yeah teams are often trying to think of ideas and creativity and if you say to people where do you have your best ideas and have asked people that question whatever your best ideas do you know what they'll say well i'm walking the dog and when i'm in the shower just about to fall off the sleep um on the commute over breakfast uh you know um they'll they'll they'll come up with all some recreational drugs they'll come up with all sorts of stuff but no one will ever say in a boardroom with some mints on the table and a jug of water no one will ever say that but but where
do we where do we um you know try and create ideas in the business at all we get them around this boardroom table no one ever said don't get me wrong you can't get your team in the shower with you maybe you've tried i don't know what it's like around here maybe you've tried i don't know yourself better but um but yeah maybe yeah maybe we can't do that but we've got to find a way of trying to you know uh create a more natural environment for people to flourish and i do say to you many organizations i say to them that you know you're too quick to train the people rather than fix the environment you know people say oh i need more innovative people they don't um you know we need to train them on innovation no you don't let's try and create a culture an environment where people are free to express themselves the problem we've got is that you know we're so we're so convergent in our thinking and uh you know we start off as divergent thinkers we start off making really weird connections um i had a six-year-old once um asked me what does the number nine smell like amazing question i think that's probably the best question i've ever been asked well do you respect the interviewer today i was going to say that but um but you know what's the number nine smell like it's a great question um yeah was the last time you heard a ceo ask that question they don't um you know children ask these divergent questions because they make the connection between two things usually unconnected um and then you go to school and the school says why are you asking that we're doing numbers today just concentrate on the numbers um and then we go from divergent thinkers to convergent thinkers and our careers get better because of it our businesses get better because of it and making simple connections you know margins down okay we need to do this you know revenue's down okay we need to do that um but what do we need in today's society in today's world
and um i think we need convergent thinking i think we need to move back and and get into that divergent space again and yeah who are the most successful people you know at the moment and people are making really weird connections people who this is where uber and airbnb and all these things come from it's from people who are making a connection between two things previously unconnected because they're still divergent so let's try and create some environments where people are free to explore experiment free to break some of the rules and to talk about things which are um which are not easily put together and i think that that's the best way in which we can see the opportunity and possibilities in in this changing world in which we live in how do people find you what's the best uh yeah i think i mean uh twitter or linkedin really i don't use anything i don't use facebook or anything like that so um for your website so you're on my website into me people contact me through my website but i used uh i started using twitter again and but linkedin is great for me i can imagine there are about 30 000 people on linkedin and that's really where where i sort of communicate have you um how do you find social media just out of interest in terms of life i'm a bit like an alcoholic who can't get the top of the bottle yeah i mean i mean i love the idea of it but um you know i am you know i i think oh god i should be doing more um but um but i but i just don't people say that you should if it's not you should you should do yeah well but you know what it's funny one of the advices that i give people at the moment if it ain't broke you should break it because um you know we almost need to give up what's allowing us to be successful to allow us to be successful and um you know i know it's a counterintuitive argument it makes perfect sense to be honest i mean that's the definition what innovation is right yeah
it's breaking the blueprint so so i think that you know and again look it's probably my running isn't it it's one of those things which are uncomfortable so i probably don't do it so um so what i should do is is try and find out more about you know social media and then i'll have a look at your social channels after and obviously we've got a lot of content from this so we can send it to you in a way that will do perform well if you post it so listen thank you for your time today thank you very very generous and it's a really inspiring conversation that's uh i actually want to read it's one of the few conversations where i'm like i really need to re-listen to this again and maybe with my notepad out and really take notes because there's so many ideas that are really really profound at times that i'm like i'm trying to hold on to and then because you're because you're full of them i'm i'm going back i'm thinking you know what i mean because there's so much intelligence condensed in such a short period of time very kind no i really mean that as well yeah sometimes i have experts on that have really well studied in their field and the things you say as someone who's ran a multinational business with 700 employees for the last 10 years of my life i'm like perfect sense and i i really want to i could unpack all of those individual topics more but yeah thank you such a pleasure to have you thank you thank you for inviting me [Music]