Forging Resilience
Join us as we explore experiences and stories to help gain fresh insights into the art of resilience and the true meaning of success.
Whether you're seeking to overcome personal challenges, enhance your leadership skills, or simply navigate life's twists and turns, "Forging Resilience" offers a unique and inspiring perspective for you to apply in your own life.
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Forging Resilience
38 Dr. Nick Wadsworth: “There’s a huge distinction between High Performance and sustainable High Performance.”
Join me in a captivating conversation with Dr. Nick Wadsworth, a distinguished sports performance psychologist and director of MAP Performance Limited, where we unpack the profound influence of early life events on careers.
Nick shares his inspiring evolution from a passionate young sports enthusiast to a leader in sports and corporate psychology, drawing from his transformative experiences at a Premiership Football Club and as a senior lecturer.
Our dialogue takes a personal turn as we explore the impact of childhood bullying, delving into defense mechanisms and the journey toward self-compassion and authenticity.
We unravel the importance of narrative analysis in high-pressure environments, highlighting the power of diverse stories and the significance of creating spaces for them to thrive.
We touch on the crucial role of self-compassion and intrinsic value in decision-making, offering insights into creating resilient and high-performing cultures.
Tune in for an episode brimming with wisdom on resilience, authenticity, and the transformative power of personal narratives.
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Hi guys and welcome to Forging Resilience, exploring for a different perspective on strength and leadership, join me as we discuss experiences and stories with guests to help gain fresh insights around challenge, success and leadership. So today, on Forging Resilience, I'm joined by Dr Nick Wadsworth, and he's a sports performance psychologist, director of MAP Performance Limited, which helps high performance people and cultures both in sport and in business. Nick, welcome to the show, mate, it's a real pleasure to have you here today.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me, mate. Mate, yeah, it's been a long time coming, hasn't it really? We've been trying to find a bit of space. We've had some really good conversations off camera and we've always ended those conversations going. I wish we'd have pressed record on that. That was quite interesting.
Speaker 1:A hundred percent, mate, yeah, and I think sometimes that's the way it happens, but also what I like about that, though, is there's a certain level of trust there, so we both know a bit about each other's stories.
Speaker 1:So the reason Nick is sat in front of me in my screen today and you're listening to him is, once again through LinkedIn, having to make certain connections and start certain conversations and take those I don't want to say offline, because it's not because I'm in spain and you're in the uk, but more more personalized and face to face, because of the, the power and the depth of the things that you talk about, um, and and that shines through your, through your work, nick, which I'm sure we'll get on to, so I feel really drawn to share those sorts of conversations with, with people, um, which is why it's really, like I said, a pleasure to have you here, that the strength of your story, the power of who you are being in this world, speaks to me, and I know will speaks to others. So thanks once again, but what I'll do, mate, is I'll ask this give us a little broad brush of you, your story and what leads you to be sat in your Airbnb today, mate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, broad, broad brush. Okay, Always interested in sport from a very, very young age, always playing sport, always had a fascination with wanting to help people. I remember from a really young age my mum made me really, really aware that she was like you always ask people how they're doing, you're always asking how other people are. So I was always really connected with with other people and I essentially just put those two things together love of sport with the want and need to help people. I was like, well, what is this thing called sports psychology, which which really wasn't that that much of a thing when I was growing up? It was a really new and emerging area. So played a little bit of football to a half decent level, had to stop playing football due to an injury, which is a really typical sports psych story. Most of us I always make this joke most of us are failed athletes in some way. So I stopped playing at a really young age, about 17, I had to stop playing due to a really severe ankle injury. Got into football coaching but knew that I wanted to kind of go a little bit deeper with it, always interested in psychology, so coupled those things together.
Speaker 2:Did my undergraduate at MMU, um, did my master's at John Moores and then got got a placement working at Everton Football Club and then for the last 10 years, I'd say, I've worked in and around Premier League professional football clubs.
Speaker 2:Set up my first consultancy about eight years ago which was to specialise with elite athletes and diversify it into other spaces, also do a little bit of stuff in academia.
Speaker 2:So I'm a senior senior lecturer at liverpool john moore's teaching sports psychology to the, to the future sports psychs of the world, and then set up, as you said in your introduction, set up map performance about 18 months ago with one of my very good friends who I met while studying at john moore's, who is also a performance psychologist and a Matt. Performance essentially is us taking our first step into the business world. Because what we started to recognize is we weren't studying sport psychology, we were studying psychology of sport. So the distinction there was we were studying people and it just so happened that the context that we were working in was sport. But we started to realize that what we knew and what we could apply actually could, could, could be applied across multiple contexts and so we thought let's go and let's go work with some people in in high performance spaces in the corporate world, and that's that's been the journey that's taking us to today, mate.
Speaker 1:Brilliant. Love that, mate. I'm curious to go to go back to the beginning there, where you said that your mum reminded you or recognised that in you. Do you think that that helped draw it out of you, the fact that she used to acknowledge that you were always asking that to people?
Speaker 2:influence on me. I had a really good, loving, supportive household when I was growing up and my mum was my, my biggest advocate as a as a child, and still is now. I speak to her every week and give her updates on what's going on in my life. And, yeah, a distinct moment I was about 12 years old and someone who we were in a restaurant and someone was coming over to ask us you know what, what do you want to drink? And they said how are, how are you guys? And I said I'm good, thanks, how are you. And my mum went that's a really unusual thing to have said Like you don't normally actually ask the other person how they're doing, and I just remember like that didn't feel unusual to me.
Speaker 2:I just really genuinely wanted to know how she was doing.
Speaker 1:And she yeah, she created a really loving environment for me, my mom, and I think that gave me the brilliant start in life and gave me the really good foundations to to build on. Yeah, definitely, I think what you're saying I can completely relate to and it's a really common thread, isn't it with, with us as we go through through our journeys and through our lives, that that foundation doesn't mean life's always going to be easy or things always going to go our way, but that that foundation, that that place of knowing to come back to, yeah, so so crucial, as I can relate to personally as well yeah, I don't know how much will you want to go into this, but I said I had a really good childhood because the my mum and dad were really supportive.
Speaker 2:But I also went through a lot of bullying when I was a child. So you're not going to show the video to your listeners, but I've got very bright ginger hair and I was also a very overweight child when I was younger. So there was a lot of bullying that went on at the same time. So if I was to look at the origins of why I'm doing what I'm doing today, it would probably be a combination of really caring about people but also having to navigate some really early challenges as a young person and wanting to try and help create environments where people didn't have to experience that.
Speaker 2:So I don't think it's it's not a coincidence that I talk a lot about authenticity. It's not a coincidence that I talk a lot about authenticity. It's not a coincidence that I talk a lot about creating psychologically safe spaces for people, because I had that from a family perspective but didn't have that in like the schooling systems and in the sporting systems that I grew up. So I've kind of just combined my my want to support people with this idea of how do we create the best environments for people to flourish and thrive yeah, I guess well that, yeah, no, you, you've brought it.
Speaker 1:I mean so I think that that lived experience and wanting to do better provide that those conditions for people where that doesn't happen to a really strong driver. So how long was that? How long were you bullied for nick then, or how long was that that go on for me me and my girlfriend have a joke about this, because I went to.
Speaker 2:I went to see my own therapist about four or five years ago when I was going through a difficult moment which we've spoken about offline and I'm more than happy to speak about on here, and one of the realizations I came to and it isn't funny, but it is funny in a way that we talk about was I've been bullied all my life.
Speaker 2:That was one of the revelations that I made in in this therapy session and the earliest I think I remember getting bullied was probably about six years old. Um, the people. We moved house to a new, to a new area and there was a knock at the door on the first day, as you did back in the day, when people played out and it was is that is the new boy playing out and there was a group full of like seven or eight kids and all of them are older than me, and there was a huge power dynamic that existed between me and my kind of friendship group in inverted commas and I didn't realize it at the time. There was a lot of manipulation going on, a lot of control going on.
Speaker 2:I didn't understand that it was bullying at that point, but it was probably all the way through and I think from a very young age I learned I needed to. I felt I needed to put on a persona, a defense mechanism, so that people stopped doing that. But all that did was attract more people. Because in the schooling system then I became I was fortunate that physically I'm you know, I'm quite big, I was quite strong, I was quite athletic, so I had a presence about me. But I also created a presence around me with like being quite arrogant, being quite cocky, getting in front of people, not giving the people the chance to get in on me initially, so that then gravitated the wrong people towards me and I probably came a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy then at that point. So I learned from a very young age that I needed to be really tough to make sure that I could kind of survive these environments that I was in.
Speaker 2:So it went on for a good while, I'd say, and I'd say it probably carried on as I stepped into my first role in professional football. I probably wouldn't have used the word bullying, but in reality it really was. So I was head of sports psychology at a Premier League football club at 22 years old and I was like I am deeply out my comfort zone and elite football is is hyper masculine, um, just yeah, some just horrendous kind of accepted cultural practices that go on in there, and I think I didn't make this connection at the time, but I was like I'm being bullied again and this is, this is a trigger for all those things that I experienced when, when I was younger and I was like my purpose in life is to try and help create environments where people feel safe. And I have this little saying past pain equals present purpose, and so connecting those dots for me is a real driver for me moving forward.
Speaker 1:Well, I love that mate past pain. Say that again mate pain past pain equals present purpose love it, love it. I'm jotting that down. There you go. So if, if this conversation gets cut off, mate, the fact that I've told you, I appreciate you, that I've got that past pain equals present purpose.
Speaker 2:Mate, we're done, thanks nick, thanks for coming on.
Speaker 1:That's brilliant, mate. That's really, really insightful. How did you begin to separate yourself from that bullying then, if it always went on? Because I guess that once you got to understand a bit about that, you probably, on making assumptions here, made it mean something about you.
Speaker 2:Yeah or not? You probably. Or making assumptions that made it mean something about you, yeah or not. I think it would have been a really difficult thing to go through if I didn't have the voice in my head that had been created from my mum and dad going you are loved, you are safe, you are accepted.
Speaker 2:So I had these two kind of inner, inner dialogues going on at the same time, one which was like you are worthy, you are accepted, you are loved, you are perfect, there's nothing needs to change. Versus this you are nothing, you are worth. And it was like that inner conflict and I think it's normal that those two dialogues, those two voices, can exist in the same space and sometimes one voice shows up and sometimes the other shows up. So I'm very fortunate that I think I had a real good strong buffer against some of that stuff. So whether we call that resilience or not, I'm not too sure, but I had a really nice alternative narrative. What I had to learn over the years was how to tune into the narrative that was going to serve me and support me and help me and how to to dial down the narrative.
Speaker 2:That wasn't going to serve me, but I think one of the scars it may have created, which I had to unearth in therapy, was kind of self-compassion sometimes is missing, like I'm really ambitious, really I don't want to use the word obsessed because it's got really negative connotations but I really want to grow, I really want to develop, I really want to be the best version of myself. I'm constantly learning, I'm constantly reading, but then you've got to be really careful with that that you balance it with. But you're okay right now and you're doing okay now Because if you don't replace it with self-compassion, you can quite quickly allow that other narrative to come in, which is you're not good enough, you're not good enough.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, again, this is something that we've talked about a lot, as well as very. There's lots of similarities in in the language we use, in our stories and, and, I guess, in our feelings and experiences, albeit in different environments. But what does self-compassion actually mean for you, nick? For maybe that somebody's not quite there on their journey, or don't understand that what that means, or or actually look like so at this moment in time, what does self-compassion mean to you?
Speaker 2:self-love, self-acceptance, self-worth. I think the easiest way of understanding self-compassion is to tune into the things that we say to ourself and ask ourself the question would we say that to someone that we loved? And if? And if we wouldn't, and if we would be appalled by the idea of saying those things to the people that we love, it's very likely that we're not demonstrating self-compassion. It's much easier to be harsh on ourselves and then to see the good in other people. Self-compassion is trying to flip that on its head and say you are worthwhile, you have got a lot of things going for you, you are doing a really good job, carry on. But that narrative isn't as common as the other one, which is you're not good enough, at least in me anyway no, I, I recognize that as well and something that the phrase.
Speaker 1:I've got quite a few from the summer, but the most recent one this last month is just catch the story. Just catch that story. You know, is it really easy to try and read into it or try and trace it back or understand what it means? But sometimes I can't on my own, so you just have to catch it. I just have to catch it. And yeah, because they're both voices are there.
Speaker 2:Like you said, we're human, they serve a purpose I love the idea of stories, so when I do manage to create space to do research in my academic role, everything I do is through collecting and analysing stories, which is a concept in the research called narrative analysis. One of the challenges of stories and storytelling is the stories we create are created in conjunction with the context that we exist in. So the context that we exist in will often have one dominant narrative, one dominant story, and if your story goes away from that dominant narrative, you're seen as an outsider to that space. So there's very little space. So again, the world I've existed in the last 10 years is professional football.
Speaker 2:The dominant narrative that exists in professional football and a league sport generally, is the performance narrative, is one of commitment, is one of sacrifice, is one of put 100% of your effort in in is one of neglect your friends neglect your education, neglect your family. You're not good enough until you make it to this level, and so it can be quite difficult to catch that story if you exist, if you're existing in a context where that story isn't appreciated or respected or understood. So I'm so I'm trying to get my head around now. How do we create spaces in both sport and business that allow for diversity of stories to exist. So we're not just marginalising those stories that don't fit into the common culture and conform to the common accepted norms. It's like well, that doesn't allow for collaboration and innovation and diversity of thought. It just creates fear and repression. So I'm obsessed with the ideas of story. So I love, I love that phrase how do we catch? How do we catch the story I really like?
Speaker 1:so what sort of things do you do then? Or ideas are you starting to throw around in terms of providing that space for those different stories to, to coexist?
Speaker 2:well, I mean, this is. This is a deep dive, so it depends on how deep you want to go with this, but for me it's about we work at an individual level, a team level and then a cultural, organizational level. And really, if we were to, if we were to gain entry into an organization, be that sport or business we want to work at our organizational, cultural level because we believe it can have the most meaningful long-term impact on on the organization and the people within it. Um, so first of all, we need to understand what are we talking about when we say culture, and I think that's a really it's a used phrase that's not often understood. Um, I've spent the last two or three years like doing a bit of a deep dive into to some of the literature on this and I've barely scratched the surface, but I think I've got a pretty good appreciation of of of what culture is.
Speaker 2:And many people think culture is like shared values. But when we talk about culture just being shared values or expectations or beliefs, that's what. That's the thing that doesn't allow for the alternative stories to exist, because if I don't share something with this organization, then all of a sudden I don't feel as though I belong in this space, so I do a lot of work around creating meaning, shared meaning and belonging. So, like cultures, should be understood on three levels. Where are we shared? What's our shared purpose? What's our shared goal? What's our shared values? Where are we differentiated? Where are we different? What? What conflict exists in in the organization or the, the business?
Speaker 2:Um, but how can we unearth that in a respected way? How can we allow those marginalized voices and those different opinions to come to the surface? And then, where are we fragmented? So where do we not know? Where do we not know the answers to the questions that we've not even asked yet, like what? What are we not even aware of? But most people stop at that shared level. If you don't, if you don't align to our values, you do not belong in this organization. But you want diversity, you want innovation, you want difference. So I'm a lot of the work I'm really passionate about is how do we create spaces for people who have typically not brought their story to the forefront and give them the space to actually share it, because that will just take these, these spaces, to the next level, in my opinion, through innovation and creativity and problems.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really interesting. It sounds really really. I guess you have read the book by Matthew Syed, the Rebel Ideas. It talks a lot about that. I found that an absolutely fascinating book. Going back to the premiership level, working with that first team and the cultures there. How did you find yourself then? Um, trying to fit into that culture or adapt yourself to that, that high pressure, having an understanding and knowing your loved but also feeling way out of your comfort zone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean without realising it. That was probably the catalyst for when MAP was born, because central to MAP is this concept of authenticity. And if I think back to the person I was when I stepped into that football club because on paper it was my dream job when I got the phone call I was like this is, I've made it, this is everything I've ever wanted in my life. Like six months later you wouldn't have recognized me. You would not have recognized the person I became, because I became so inauthentic and every day was a what mask do I need to put on in order to survive and navigate this space? And as a psychologist, that is not a position that you can take when you're trying to support other people. I just didn't have that deep level of understanding of myself and how to navigate that space. I conformed to a lot of things that made me deeply uncomfortable. I would engage in the banter or the bullying and the shit conversations, even though I was like this is just horrendous. I just wasn't self-aware enough to know why I was feeling this deep anxiety working in that space, because a lot of the commonly held values and beliefs in that world are just so contradictory to what I believe I just didn't understand that. So I just put a mask on really surface level. You would probably call it on the surface like very adaptable.
Speaker 2:Some people might use the phrase oh brilliant, you adapted really well to that space. But I mean me and you have spoken in the past, mate, and I always talk about optimal balance. So you've got to find the optimal balance between authentic and adaptable. You can't adapt so much that you come completely inauthentic and you also can't, you're not going to be successful in these worlds if you completely just say, well, this is what I believe and I'm not willing to flex on that. You've got to find the balance between the two. I'd completely gone off on the other direction. I was just completely like. I was like who the hell am I? Who am I anymore? I don't recognize myself anymore so I've got?
Speaker 1:I've got two questions, I think. So what? What is authenticity? Give us an example, then, of what authenticity, authenticity means to you and how you live into that now, or strive to yeah.
Speaker 2:So authenticity for me is about understanding who you are and what you stand for. So understanding the values that are important to you and living a value-based life. So making decisions based on those values, understanding your beliefs about the world and making sure that your behaviors are aligned to those belief systems. So for me, that's that's what authenticity is and it's about, and and the type of environments we want to create are spaces where people get the chance to reflect, because not everybody knows what they stand for and who they are. Not everybody knows what their values are. So creating those space of like what is really important to you and why are those things important? And also we really respect that. So please come, and please come and be your authentic self in in that space. That's really rare, by the way. That's really that's a really rare environment, that that I'm describing. But authenticity to me is like value-based decisions, behavior aligned to your belief systems yeah, it's.
Speaker 1:It's a journey I'm on which is fascinating at 45 years old. Once again, I'm asking who I am, what do I stand for as people help peel back the layers of the onion to, which is really quite uncomfortable at times, as we know again through our conversations and and and in our type of work to to find that and live it, um, which for me is another reason why these conversations are so important to to surround ourselves with people that are more aware of who they are, who they're being in this world, because not everyone does, and that's okay, there's no judgment there but it's really uncomfortable sometimes and it can feel really quite heavy and lonely.
Speaker 2:In my experience, yeah, there's a lot. I'm doing a again a deeper dive into this concept because it's it's something that I just I'm so passionate about, and one of the things that I've come across recently is the goal we, what we don't want to do is view authenticity as a destination that we reach. You've just alluded to it. At your ripe old age of 40, 45 years old, you're still on a journey about who you're finding. You're finding out who you are. So we should never view authenticity as a journey, a destination that we reach where we reach it, and then that's just some fixed state done. Yeah, authenticity is always a negotiation between who we are and then the context that that we're in.
Speaker 2:I fundamentally believe that you can't understand a person in isolation, so what, what is authentic is also context specific, so it's always a negotiation. What you don't want that negotiation to feel like is a battle and a fight where you're thinking, well, I don't fit into this space, so I'm gonna have to fit somewhere, I'm gonna have to force this. What you want a negotiation to feel like is gentle, so there's a little bit of flex going on, but there's enough space here for me to be free. Freedom, I think, is a really important concept. So, and it's really rare to find a space where you can be truly authentic.
Speaker 2:So, like one of my supervisor, who just keeps dropping wisdom bombs on me over the years, spoke to me about six months ago, he said, nick, sometimes the goal isn't about achieving authenticity, it's about just being less inauthentic. And I was like that's that that removes the pressure of just having it as a fixed state that we must achieve, because it can quite easily go well, I'm either authentic or I'm not, and therefore, if I'm not, I'm going to beat myself up about it, and that that doesn't help anyone. So it's like, well, okay, I probably could have made a better choice, but I was less inauthentic than I have been in the past and that that's a nice progression yeah, definitely, I love that, that, the ebb and flow of that journey.
Speaker 1:It's a great catch there, mate. So, thanks, thanks for that. And uh, there was something else I wanted to mention, but what the question I'll go back to then. What was the price that you started or that you paid for forcing yourself as the round peg into the square hole of that culture at the team there, mate?
Speaker 2:you. You would have seen on this on the outside. Looking in, you would have seen someone that was a ridiculously high achiever, high, ambitious head of sports psychology at premier league football club at 22 years old, straight out of my master's, married at 22. Um on the surface of it, everything that society tells us a good life looks like. I had all of those things by the time I was 22. By the time I was 24, I was resigning my post at the football club because I could no longer carry on doing what I was doing. Um deep levels of clinical depression, severe burnout, resentment for the, for the sport that I used to love. Um divorced. After 18 months I came home and and my wife at the time said listen, I haven't seen you for 18 months. Because I was.
Speaker 2:The football club I was working at was based in the Midlands and I lived in in the northwest of England, so I was on top of all of this. I was commuting 190 mile round trip every day, six days a week. I was sleeping on the sofa at 2am in the morning after we'd come away from a game in in London. So I was. I was just the most broken I think I'd ever felt in my entire life, um, just a complete loss of identity. Everything my identity that I'd ever felt in my entire life, just the complete loss of identity. My identity that I'd built up around the time was about outcome and achievement. So I said this in my therapy sessions I treated my life like a tick box Head of Premier League Football Club. Tick Married, tick, and it was like well, that's done, I don't have to give it any energy anymore, I'm just going to move on to the next thing.
Speaker 1:And it ended up two years later, you know, in a really bad place. Yeah, how did you manage to start to draw yourself away from that bad place? What was the catalyst for that change, nick?
Speaker 2:do you know what my? My memory of that time I think this is one of the symptoms of the experience of going through is is really hazy. There are big periods of that phase where I don't remember. So I don't know if there was a catalyst. I don't think there was a moment where it just clicked. I think it was probably more accurate to describe it as like a slow journey out of that of that space that had little peaks and troughs.
Speaker 2:Um, when I was speaking about this and I've wrote about this before I put I put down the phrase the gym saved my life. So, more accurately, I would say movement saved my life, it, it gave me meaning again that I had something to focus on. Um, so I would go to the. I would walk to work, which was in, which was then in academia, because that was a safe place where I could have a nine to five and have the weekends off, just to kind of rebuild my life. I would walk to work, which was about two miles. I'd go to the gym at seven o'clock every day and I would go for a routine where I would go. You deserve to be here, you deserve to work on yourself, you deserve to improve. Just move for an hour. I got really, really into weight training and strength training. So that was a really useful stepping stone in the right direction. And then I became a little bit more focused on eating the right food and sleeping. So, as basic as this sounds, I would go to bed at the same time every night and I would wake up at the same time every morning and all of a sudden, over a couple of weeks, I'm now sleeping really well, I'm now eating really good food and I'm now exercising and I'm moving. And the foundation of that body experience I believe that there's a connection between our body and mind. So all of a sudden now the mind started to follow with that, which was look at the progress you're making. So I could start to see physical changes in my body and how that started to, to reinforce that I was heading in the the right path. So I think that was a good catalyst.
Speaker 2:The challenge that then came because I have a real big need to control and that that still is something that I'm working on Is off the back of the focus on the gym and on the eating. I then developed an eating disorder off the back of coming out of the depression because I'd found a coping mechanism to help me navigate the clinical depression and the burnout. But that developed into another mental health challenge, which was symptoms of bulimia. So I didn't realize I was was symptoms of bulimia. Um, so I didn't realize I I was, I was demonstrating symptoms of bulimia, until I saw um freddie flintoff's documentary.
Speaker 2:Um, and those of you that are listening, the freddie flintoff's documentary was just a brilliant insight into how you can have bulimia without the need to vomit and purge. That the, the version of purging was, was exercise. So what turned out, what started out as being something that was caring and compassionate, turned into you must batter yourself in the gym. So that that ambitious person took over again, which was like you can't just go to the gym three times a week and enjoy it. It was like, well, now you need to be the strongest, best at weight training, and it was like a double down on that and that then became an issue. So that's when I ended up going to to therapy to try and unravel it.
Speaker 2:And I think you said the comment before sometimes we can't catch these things on our own. Sometimes we need that, that support. I'm a I'm a huge advocate that every psychologist should go to go to a therapist to understand themselves a little bit better every person should have a therapist, in my opinion, yeah, yeah, no, I, I completely agree and I'm so grateful to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, coaching, as you know better than I, is different from therapy, but I think it was very therapeutic for me to be able to have a look at myself and, like I say, peel back those layers to understand and begin to understand who I am and who I want to be, and how I was being, how my behaviors were being shaped by an old story.
Speaker 1:That sometimes wasn't even true. It's just my perception of something that had happened all that time ago again, which we've, which we've spoken about. Something that's quite relevant for me, nick, although again I can begin to catch it, but it still weighs heavy with me, is the fact that, because I am a coach, because I help people when I trip up or when I'm in a slump or when I am engulfed in my story, it weighs quite heavily on me that almost the guilt thing you should know better, you know that, can you relate to that thing? And you should know better, you know that, can you relate to that. Is that something that, with with all your knowledge, with all your experience, with all your compassion, when we, when you, go into those lows, all those moments which we all inevitably do that. Does that weigh on you?
Speaker 2:100. Yeah, you're describing exactly the period that I'm in at the moment. I'm going through quite a challenging period professionally. We're experiencing a lot of setbacks because we're moving into a new space and that's that's fine, but it's creating a lot of doubt, it's creating a lot of anxiety, it's creating a lot of fear, and there are days when I wake up and I wish that I didn't know all of the things that I could be doing to improve the situation, because sometimes the last thing you want to do is engage in those things.
Speaker 2:Ben, my friend and business partner, we've come up with this phrase, which is and we know what this means it has a meaning to us, and we just say do the work. And that, for us, means embody all of the messages that we would speak to others about. We have to live those things. One, because, on a surface level, we'd be really fraudulent and hypocritical if we weren't living those things. But two, we deserve to live a life like that as well, and we need to place ourself in the best position to be able to support others. And and that those were the words that I used when I handed my notice in at the premier league football club. I am no longer in a position to help myself and therefore I cannot help others, and so that was my start of the the self-care journey.
Speaker 2:But it weighs heavy because there are times recently when I've when I've not engaged in things that I should have engaged in the self-care practices. And the more you know, the more you realize that you need to keep living it, and sometimes it would just be nice to wake up and go. I'm ignorant to all of those things, so it takes the weight off. But I think you also have to find a joy in it as well, and I think you also have to find a joy in that. Don't use those practices as a means to an end, but that is life in itself. Just be present with them. Actually, some of those processes like walking your dogs in nature, sometimes you don't want to do that because you just want to. You need to jump on your emails and you need to get stuff done, but it's like well, this is life and and actually suffering and pain is a part of human existence, so we should just embrace it rather than trying to run away from it run away from it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I love that, and that is my conclusion of something that I went through really recently, just coming off the tail end of um, yeah, I was faced with a, a challenge, which I avoided and tried to talk my way out of and ended up telling small white lies that grew and tried to palm my way out because I didn't know the answer and I felt really trapped. I didn't recognize this at the time. I was just. I knew I was waffling. Um, luckily, this person is absolutely incredible. I'm not going to name them, but they helped draw this out of me and show this to me.
Speaker 1:But it weighed so heavily on me the fact that, as a coach, I teach people about these sorts of things, yet I couldn't in that moment, face my own fear and criticism. Um, and it really weighed heavily. It really weighed heavily and I think there's two things about that. First of all is just because we do this work doesn't mean it's not uncomfortable, and and secondly is that we're all human and we're all going through these experiences and my lesson from that was again. So once I caught, I caught the story, I just become present, because when I'm present, I'm connected to what's here now. So that is a feeling of something in my stomach, rather than assumptions, noises and memories of when I was in school getting called out for not knowing my three times table, which I still kind of struggle with, et cetera, et cetera, you know. So, yeah, I think that you have to find that brilliantly, mate in, in, in presence yeah, what you're talking about here again comes back to self-compassion.
Speaker 2:So I have a process at the end of each day now where I do a little bit of journaling. I find it really cathartic just to create that space to do a bit of journaling. I have a four-step process. At the end of my my days now, recall a moment where you were self-critical and just just write down that moment. What were the, what were the emotions associated with that critique? So that's the mindfulness element of it. What did you feel? What were you thinking in that moment?
Speaker 2:And then the third step, which is the bit we're talking about here, which is suffering is just a part of being a human being is is common humanity recognizing. Sometimes, when we're not being compassionate to ourselves, we believe that we're the only people that are making these mistakes. Why am I doing this when everyone else seems to be doing a really good job? But actually that that common humanity piece is really useful. This is a normal human experience. And then the last phase is self-kindness. Replace the self-judgment for self-kindness, and I've I've been doing that for about seven weeks now and I'm starting to notice, without needing the journal, the moments where I am being judgmental so that I can go through that process in the moment, which is a really useful thing to be able to do yeah, I bet it is, mate.
Speaker 1:When going back a bit again to your when you started to get out of depression and then you started to develop a, an eating disorder, mate, how do these days do you catch that need to constantly be the best, or to to strive to have the most successful business, or to be the best um lecturer that you can, or whatever it is the task that you've got in front of you.
Speaker 2:I think I still have that in a drive. I think that the clear distinction to me now versus how I would navigate that journey before was best meant in comparison to others. So I wanted to be the best sports psychologist or the best lecturer in comparison to how other people were doing it. I've just replaced that with I want to be the best version of me. Essentially. So this I never want to remove that ambition. Um, I never want to remove that ambition in the people that I'm working with, because if I, if I was to say to them well, don't, don't strive to be the best, and I'm working with elite athletes, they would go you're not the right sports psychologist for me because I want to be the best.
Speaker 2:But social comparison rarely, if ever, brings any good things into our life. So the best for me now is just being the best version of me. So we have this little phrase that we talk about quite a lot, which is create, an infinite purpose, something that can never actually be achieved, but it's something that you're always striving towards. So be the best version of yourself, constantly learn, constantly grow, constantly develop is an infinite purpose, because you'll never reach it. Similar to what we were talking about before, of like be the most authentic version of yourself, is an evolving thing that will never change. So you know, we speak a lot about purpose over performance, and I think that's probably the difference now is I'm purpose driven rather than performance driven, and obviously the irony of that is if you were to go back to performance, your performance is probably better because you're purposeful.
Speaker 1:So it has a really nice relationship between the two and, and how do you manage that so that you are able to step away from work and and and create that space for you to journal and reflect um, and to maintain those conversations with the people that are important to you, and to make space for your own self-care and self-compassion, whatever that looks like?
Speaker 2:yeah, again, I've been on a journey with this. If we're talking about trying to be the best and we're trying to trying to be aspirational and inspirational and reach a certain level in our career, then what we are talking about is being high performing that's. That's a phrase I think is really common now. But there's a huge distinction between high performance and sustainable high performance, and I was speaking about this to businesses and elite sporting organizations at the minute. Now, but there's a huge distinction between high performance and sustainable high performance, and I was speaking about this to businesses and elite sporting organizations at the minute.
Speaker 2:Your high performance environments are dominated by those short-term wins. So like again, without trying to draw too heavily on football, high performance is like did we win, did we get three points at the weekend? Yes or no? You very rarely actually sit in an elite sporting club that go what's our vision for 10 years from now? It's not. It's we want to win the league or we don't want to get relegated this season. So high performance can can allow us to become really short-term driven.
Speaker 2:Sustainable high performance is could you maintain this for the next six, seven, eight years? And that's the question I ask myself quite a lot after, after a really busy period, I'll go could you have done those three weeks for the next three months? And if you did, what will it look like at the end of it? And if you can't sustain that, you need to come off, you need to drop off it a little bit. So these two phrases I always remind myself excellence is just being good consistently.
Speaker 2:And people overestimate what they can achieve in a year and underestimate what they can achieve in a decade. So basically, the way I try and create space for myself is I'm viewing it as the long game. If this is an infinite purpose and my purpose is to be of service to people and help people, then I need to be the best version of myself to do that. So to engage in self-care is to do work. To go for a walk with Ben in the park is work. There's also this real deep conversation going on in the psychology literature at the minute about a job versus a career, versus a vocation. So if it's a vocation and what we do becomes who we are and therefore we are the tool in which delivers the support, so we need to make sure that we're in the best possible place to to do that, so self-care then doesn't become something that you need to fit into your day. It's something that you've just.
Speaker 1:It's just a thing that happens because it's meaningful to you and it's important to you and it helps serve the greater purpose that that you wake up every morning to to do and I guess the challenge is is being able to fit that into an environment or create better said, an environment that supports that, because, from in my experience, it's much better to be seen to send x amount of messages or x amount of emails or x amount of sales than it is to look after myself and do less of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, everyone in the world of business and sport is trying to justify their place in the world, and the easiest way to do that is through performance. So you get some short-term performance wins and all of a sudden you know you've just justified your position in the world. You've driven your ego, you've driven your status, your identity becomes reinforced. But the challenge becomes if, if and you'll have seen it in these worlds the, the high performers, get rewarded with more jobs, more work. So all of a sudden, you just created this scenario now, where you just demonstrated that you're a high performer, but now you're just getting bombarded with more things that you need to do. So actually, can we just create systems that allow for sustainable performance, and actually a big one that we're trying to work with teams on at the minute is like, what space do you create to allow for failure? Because I was so fixated on, everything just needs to be right straight away. It's like, well, no, because we have to accept that failure is going to be part of that process as well.
Speaker 1:I'm curious to hear a bit more about that made the systems that you create for in space for failure. Could you talk to us a bit about that?
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean, we have this, we have this model that we've developed recently, all of this stuff that we're talking about, this idea of being authentic, feeling safe, finding meaning, finding purpose. We were like, well, when, if that's the end goal, if that's what we're trying to help people create, when is that most under threat? And we came to the conclusion that it's when people go through change, so change that they either in, they either create themselves, create the change that's inflicted on them. Change that's big or small, and there's this concept in the literature called critical moments. So what are your critical moments in your life? And a critical moment is a moment when you have anxiety associated with a change in your identity. So your identity is either in threatened or you have a successful moment that reinforces who you are and it becomes who you are. So we've got this model that has two, four phases in it. But what we're talking about here and this creating space for failure is the first phase is expectation phase. So what expectations are you creating within your organization about what high performance looks like? If you get fixated on the short term and there's no space in that expectation phase for navigating failure, then your performance has to meet that expectation.
Speaker 2:It's very rare that our performance actually matches our expectation. It usually falls below it. And that's the moment where teams really struggle. It's like, well, now we're not meeting our targets. And the common, common thing that then people do is they double down. Because they go well? The answer is do more work, spend more time doing it, because that'll raise the, that'll raise the performance so that it's in line with with the expectation. But what? What they don't realize is they've not actually built in any any ways of navigating the moment when it doesn't go wrong, doesn't go right, because it's not always going to go right. So how do we navigate those moments where our execution of the performance doesn't meet our expectation?
Speaker 2:And again, I can do a little bit of a deep dive into the psychology of this. But when people fail or don't meet people's expectations, that's a threat. And when human beings feel threatened, they'll do what we were talking about before, which is put on a mask, and hide their true sense of self because they don't want to admit that they don't know what to do. They don't know what to do, they don't know what to admit that they need support. So actually, what you see is in these moments when people need to ask for help the most is the least time that they're likely to ask for help. So it creates isolation, it creates loneliness, it creates poor communication, it impacts on cohesion, all because we've not said well what happens if it doesn't go right. These are the systems that we're going to have in place to allow for failure to exist within, within the system. So that's some of the work that we're doing at the minute.
Speaker 1:It's really complex, it's really difficult yeah, yeah, no, I guess that because you it sounds like you're trying to push, push something upstream and obviously against the current and general flow, but I can see, I sense the benefit of that and again, it can relate to so many things that you're saying there. So, in terms of that system for failure, mate, you mentioned four things or four phases. You hit on one expectation. What are the other three, mate?
Speaker 2:briefly, Expectation, which is defining what high performance means to us. Execution, which is delivering against what we said we were going to do in the expectation phase. Evaluation, which is reviewing the extent to which we're hitting our targets. But the key there, everybody does that and everybody does those three phases. But the key to that evaluation phase is balanced feedback, balanced reflection. So what we see quite commonly in both sport and business is the only time feedback gets provided is when we're not meeting our expectations.
Speaker 2:So you set too high expectations and you don't have a contingency for failure. You inevitably don't execute against those too high expectations, which creates failure. And then you only evaluate the things that are going wrong. So that creates this doubt, that creates this fear, that creates this lack of confidence, demotivation, and you might show up, as my team, are not resilient enough. It's all. No, the environment isn't creating resilient people.
Speaker 2:And then the last phase is phase is evolution. So how and what? The easiest way of describing that phase is how have we changed? Through change, which is quite an abstract method thing, but it's like well, once we've gone through this change, we're probably not going to be the same people, we're probably not going to be the same team, we're probably not going to be the same organization coming out of the other side. So how do we need to recognize how we've changed in order to reevaluate our expectations at the start of the cycle? And then we go again. So it's a constant cycle and that cycle can happen in a day. So you can go through that cycle in a day and it can be a really micro cycle of it. That cycle can be a whole year, that cycle can be a five year strategy about setting expectations. Your strategy about setting expectations and that's kind of where we want to get to is going into the, to these organizations at that executive level and and supporting that, that process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, love that. Cheers, mate. Um you, you touched on it there, mate, but in terms of resilience, then I'm curious to know what resilience means to you yeah, um, I knew you're going to ask me this question and resilience?
Speaker 2:resilience to me brings up really negative connotations. The word resilience I was telling you before about stories are co-created between us and the environment in which we're situated. So that means that the language that we use is also co-created between the language we use and the language that's socially acceptable to use. That the language that we use is also co-created between the language we use and the language that's socially acceptable to use in the space that we exist. So the reason why I have really negative connotations associated with with the word resilience is I've learned that it's become a? Um, a critique of people.
Speaker 2:So it's never used in the positive sense in the worlds that I've existed in, particularly in the world of football. He's not resilient, he's not mentally strong, he's mentally weak, he's not courageous. He's often used as a, as an insult, rather than a as a positive thing. I also think the concept of resilience is completely contextually dependent, so people have lots of different definitions and I think he's become one of those things that he's essentially now an umbrella term for lots of things. So resilience is high self-belief, high self-efficacy, high self-confidence. Resilience is the ability to be able to navigate anxiety associated with failure. Resilience is the ability to persevere through challenge, and resilience is the ability to persevere through challenge. Resilience is the ability to adapt, the ability to maintain motivation for prolonged period of time. So for me resilience is kind of a an umbrella term, that that brings together lots of psych, social functions yeah, and I love it, mate.
Speaker 1:And and yeah, you've hit the nail on the head. And and in terms of yeah, I. I even sometimes get to the point because I'd realized when I started I wanted to be a coach. Um, I, I wanted to define that um. I'm justifying my case for using resilience here, but I have been genuinely questioning am I resilience coach? Do I teach people that I don't know? Um. I like the name for the for the podcast, but it you, you make some absolutely great points. It's a name that I've grabbed from the air because I recognize it's a character, a trait that lives within me. I thought I was something else, but actually I'm not. I'm this and I like that more. But yeah, I completely buy into the fact that it's a. It's a term that's thrown around far too easily, and I'm also do I even disassociate myself from it. It's not a decision I have to make now, but yeah, I completely. I completely hear what you're saying, though, right no, I think.
Speaker 2:I think it's also a term that I've heard in, particularly in sport, where people have got this belief system that you're either resilient or you're not, and it becomes a label. It becomes a really easy way out I've seen in elite sport for reinforcing your beliefs about a certain athlete or a certain player. So you label them not resilient and then you do everything you can to reinforce that narrative you've created for them and ultimately you're causing them to fail because we're using that label. Um, I find that. I find that so tough, so I spend a lot of my time going what do you actually mean when you say he's not resilient? And also it's something that can develop?
Speaker 2:so what are you doing to support that person? Um, resilience for me is about resilience, the ability to navigate, navigate challenges discovered through experience. So we have to try and cultivate experiences for people that allow for failure, that allow for challenge, but also a balance in that high challenge with that high support. So, giving people the skill set, giving people the space to reflect on navigating those difficult moments, giving people the space to reflect on navigating those those difficult moments, like I would probably, if we were using that language I would say, I would say I was very resilient because of the life experiences I've had and having to navigate those moments has led to that resilience yeah, I think for me at the moment, again, it means my ability to process and hold the whole range of emotions.
Speaker 1:If I go back to to my recent challenge in in, in being feeling cornered, to hold the weight of that and still be able to get back up and lean into it and continue with those conversations, because it would be so easy to try and continue playing big different people off each other so that I didn't have to face that or dismiss somebody from that conversation, so I didn't have to face it. Um, it's so, it's a reminder, yeah, for me that yeah, it can feel horrible but I can. I can I choose to get back up and and lean gently into that, knowing when, when not to, and when to ask which I did a couple of people for different bits of help, support, advice. Um, I still had to do the do the work myself, but it was. It was great to have those different perspectives or reinforcement or challenges or nudges as required.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean you've used two words that I love there. One is had to choose. I believe that we have. So there's a concept in again in psychology called situated freedom. We have free will within the constraints of the context that we exist in, so we always have choice. That's a really nice, liberating thing. So we have a sense of freedom because we get the the chance to choose.
Speaker 2:But it's a paradox because if we have the choice to choose, then we also have responsibility, and responsibility brings anxiety and doubt, and in those moments where we we have to choose to step in or we can choose to step into the discomfort, we now have a belief system. I have a belief system that actually short-term discomfort leads to long-term growth. So you're having to choose in this moment not to avoid and that's the other word, don't avoid that discomfort, because what you're then choosing is short-term comfort over long-term growth. So we talk about sustainable high performance is allowing people the freedom to choose, encouraging them, supporting them to choose short-term discomfort in the hope that that will lead to long-term growth, and ultimately, that that that I've just gone through is 90 95 of the one-to-one work I do with elite athletes is not teaching them skills like imagery and self-talk. They already know all that. They wouldn't. They wouldn't be where they are if they they didn't know that stuff.
Speaker 2:It's navigating those choices. Do I stay at the club and fight for my position, or do I transfer to another club and leave and then it's all? Who are you? Who do you want to be? How are your values going to help you make that decision? How are your beliefs going to help you make that decision? And it's all about navigating those moments of change and resilience and courage. Courage, I think, is a massive thing, stepping into that discomfort, because the other thing about choice is we can make a choice based on our values and beliefs, but we will never know the consequences of that decision until it unfolds and happens. So courage to me, is wrapped up in this idea of resilience, is wrapped up in this idea of choice. We have to have courage to step into the unknown, even if that's going to cause us a bit of pain in the short term and in the knowledge that we can never control the future. That's so fundamental to my belief about how I help people.
Speaker 1:What we've just talked about there is like 90 of the job, I think, love it, love it. And I guess that comes back to that foundation. Then, if, if, to read into that of yet, knowing that we're enough that that message has been that seed has been sowed long and long ago, enough to whatever the outcome, I'm enough, the love, the self-compassion, to be able to hold that for ourselves, regardless of the situation that we're going through.
Speaker 2:So it's making a choice and not needing the outcome to drive the decision that this was the right thing to do it's. I'm going to step into this discomfort knowing that, if it doesn't work out as I would hope it does, I still have a really nice, solid foundation to come back to, because, actually, who I am right now is enough.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think what's fascinating for me is that, again, there's all this story and I'll finish with this, but all this story and the guy still chose to speak to me about this, held that space for me and helped explain his position, what he saw in me, what he thought I was making the mistake, you know, um, which is just an incredible opportunity and one that I can see. Wow, what a gift somebody that I've almost basically tried to trip up is is helping me learn from this experience. It still felt horrific, by the way, um, but what an opportunity. What an opportunity, nick. To start to wrap up, mate, I'm just curious, if there's in terms of high performance. I know that you try and create those environments and cultures for people and businesses, but what's a couple of myths that you'd love to dispel if you had the opportunity around high performance, given your experience with high performance, mate?
Speaker 2:Some of the myths.
Speaker 1:Or stuff that just grips you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the stuff that grips me is that I have a lot of conversations about paradoxes or trade-offs. So I think one of the myths or one of the things that I find really interesting is that what we often see in these really high performance organizations is some people believe we need to be at the extreme ends of certain spectrums in order to be different, unique, pushing the boundaries, really about finding the optimal balance between Some of the things. On the surface of them look mutually exclusive, but the best organizations find the balance between the two. So I'll give you an example structure and freedom. So how do we find the optimal balance between allowing our people to have the freedom and autonomy and choice, but also giving them enough direction so that they know where we're heading? So we have that shared. Going back to that definition of culture, we've got a shared direction, that shared goal, that shared purpose, but within that we're not restraining and restricting and saying you must do it this way and controlling. We're then finding that balance between the structure and the freedom, very similar along those lines. Another trade-off or paradox, I think, in high performance environments is conformity versus creativity, and again, those things seem like completely opposite ends of the spectrum. But how are we finding the balance between being really clear with what we expect but also creating the space for people to put their own spin on it? So this is where we want to head, similar to the structure freedom kind of dynamic. This is where we want to go, but I want you to put your spin on it. I'm going to give you the space to do that. But we do have boundaries that are unacceptable, and these are made really clear. So we have a clear focus and a clear direction.
Speaker 2:The one that we've spoken about continuously, without actually naming it, is finding the balance between acceptance and ambition. So seems such a paradoxical thing that we should say there's a gap between who I am and who I want to be. Like most high performance people will say that that resonates with them. I'm not where I want to be yet. But the paradox becomes that actually to get where you want to be, you have to accept who you are right now, and if we go to the extreme end and we fill that space with I'm not good enough, I'm worthless, we're making it more difficult to get to where we want to go. So for me and this is a new thing that I'm trying to understand and articulate, and I don't know if I've done a good job of it there. That'll be a first time I've really articulated it in this kind of forum. But how do we find the optimal balance between those conditions to drive sustainable high performance?
Speaker 1:I love it, mate. I think that's a brilliant way to end on that question for people to ponder and, no doubt, to speak again about Nick. As I said, I will start to wrap it up. I'm just curious to know if there's anything else you'd like to talk about that we haven't that you feel compelled to, or if something you'd like to say to start to finish, mate.
Speaker 2:Nothing else shows up in terms of additional information, but I just think thank you for creating the space to have a really nice, organic, authentic conversation. Thank you for creating a trusting relationship as a foundation to this conversation and asking some brilliant, brilliant questions.
Speaker 1:It's been really enjoyable experience no worries, mate, my absolute pleasure. Where can people find you, mate? If they're interested in in reaching out to you, I'll put the stuff in the in the show notes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, afterwards as so I've made the tentative decision to go back into the world of linkedin. Um, my account got hacked about five years ago and it was probably the nicest thing that ever happened to me, because I couldn't get to linkedin. However, the caveat is we wouldn't be speaking if it wasn't for linkedin.
Speaker 1:So you can find me on linkedin, dr nick wadsworth, and our website for map performance is is mapperformancecouk, so you can find us on our website brilliant nick mate, um, yeah, thanks again for for being here, thanks for the, for the courage to step up and talk about your story, and thanks for being who you are in this world, mate. It means a lot that I can interview and learn from people like yourself, um, and also to know that we've got that relationship outside as well. It means a lot. So thank you for for being an awesome guest here, mate. I really appreciate your time and you thanks, mate, appreciate it.