S3 Ep101 Sam Smith: The Door Was Never Locked

You can spend years trying to fix a problem that was never locked in the first place. That’s the provocative premise behind our chat with Sam Smith, coach and author of The Door Is Never Locked, and it immediately changes how we think about resilience, mindset, and high performance under pressure. 

We talk about what it looks like when a single insight shifts your trajectory faster than another plan, another programme, or another round of self-improvement noise. Sam shares a turning point from a dark season in his life, why “deserving” can be the hidden barrier to getting support, and how the simplest prompts can help you trust what you already know. If you’re navigating a career transition, leadership stress, or that vague sense that something needs to change, you’ll hear practical ways to create space and move without forcing. 

We also dig into why language matters more than we realise, how reframing a story can open real options, and what flow and acceptance look like beyond the motivational posters. Sam introduces two sticky concepts for personal development and coaching: competing commitments that quietly override your goals, and the “kitchen sink test” that often hits right before a breakthrough. 

What’s one “door” you’re ready to stop treating as locked?

To get in touch with Sam, find him on LinkedIn and here you can find his book.

Transcript

Welcome And Sam Smith

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Forge in Resilience. Real conversations for high performers facing transition. I'm Erin Hill. And join me as I talk with people about challenge change and the adversity they faced in life, so we can learn from their experiences, insights, and stories. Today on Forging Resilience, I'm joined by Sam Smith. Sam's an author of the book The Door is Never Locked, Band of the Conscious Julio. Much of his writing pushes against the usual self-improvement noise. Instead he adds a more of a instead, pardon, sorry, of let me go back. Instead of adding more fixing and forcing, Sam's work points people back towards truth, clarity, and what he calls a return to signal. His book is a short reflective guide for anyone who senses something needs to shift and a reminder that the door they've been staring at may never have been locked in the first place. Sam, welcome back to the show, mate. It's good to be here, Ron. Cheers. No worries, buddy. I am I am curious, and I thought of this as I just lapped the house waiting for the time to start this podcast. I'm just I'm curious this morning, what what is on your heart?

SPEAKER_01 1:16

I've just had a really, really lovely catch-up with the guy that I used to play rugby with. Um we reconnected in the last six months, um, having not seen each other probably for like 15 years. And so that's really on my heart. Just what a joy it is to be able to connect with people who are similar-minded and into the same kind of things. And just particularly with men, I think it's really special to to be for me to be connecting with people who are willing to be open and vulnerable and talk about what's actually going on in their life. We went straight into it from the beginning. We didn't do any how's this, how's that? We just got straight into it, and that was really refreshing.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Yeah, I guess there's a lot of joy in that, isn't it? Is uh there is a time and a place for that, but and and I I reflect, especially coming from certain organizations or backgrounds where that might not have been the case once upon a time in in the locker room or or in a change room or on the rugby field.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

Yeah, I mean uh the whole my whole rugby career was it was all very surface level. Um I've shared this before, but I was living in a house with two other guys, all of us really struggling with our mental health, and none of us were talking about it. But we we spoke about it ten years afterwards and how useful it might have been to have had a chat rather than just sitting playing PlayStation pretending everything was okay.

The Door Was Never Locked

SPEAKER_00 2:41

Yeah. Yeah, I guess there's a time and a place though, isn't it? And that that that's that's the journey that it was that we that it took. Yeah. Um Sam, I one of the things that that brought me back to to ask you to come on, mate, was yeah, first of all, I loved our our first round of the conversation. It's very it was it was thought-provoking and challenging um in the same time for me, which is really interesting. Um but yeah, I'm I wanted to talk to you about your book and a bit about that journey. Um Yeah, so give us a give us a a rundown on on your on your book, mate. The door was never locked.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

So it's a it's a very short book, and the chapters are one to two pages each. And my belief is that that the door is never locked, that we create these problems in our mind that we face and we can spend years or weeks or months or hours, however long, trying to fix and solve. And actually, pretty much every single time in my experience, I've when I've stepped through the door, it's because I realized that it wasn't locked, and I could just open it and move through. And I wrote this in a way that each chapter is a way of seeing yourself or life or others in a completely different way, and in that you can gain insight, gain clarity, see life a slightly different way, and from that there's a different set of options or choices for you to make. So there's no frameworks, there's no um telling you how to do something. It really trusts the reader that they'll see what they're meant to see, and in that they'll have a different option available to them.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

When you talk about stepping through the door, what what what what did that look like for you? Can you give us an example of you stepping through the door?

SPEAKER_01 4:28

So I I mentioned it in the introduction that I met a man called Hugh uh when I was at working in my uh working in my coffee shop, and I was very depressed, very in a very dark place, using drugs and alcohol to kind of avoid my life. And he was a therapist and a coach, and he kind of put his arm around my shoulder and said, Sam, I think we need to go for a coffee. And I tried to resist because I knew what he was getting at, and I didn't believe I deserved to be helped, but he was quite persistent, thankfully. And we we worked together and my life literally transformed before my eyes in six weeks, and we ended up working together for a few years, but it was six weeks at the beginning where things just shifted so much that I I couldn't believe it. And I walked in to a session and said, I can't believe this is all happening, and I feel this, and and he just said something that really stuck with me, which is that just because we have complicated locks doesn't mean we need complicated keys, and it just really summarized my experience. And I and I see this in my work now. People come to me like, I've been like this for 45 years, and they're like, Well, we could undo it in one or two conversations, it's not going to take 45 years to undo what's been put in place, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:45

So I guess that what I'm hearing is there's a tendency to overcomplicate or as well as be stuck to our story around how complicated things are. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Yeah, I think we get wed to the idea that I'm gonna have to work really, really hard to undo this, and that's actually probably the delay tactic or a safety mechanism coming in to prevent us from changing.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

The the intention behind the book, mate, was that something that you were doing for others, or was that more something that was coming from within you, whatever that looked like?

A Book Built For Rereading

SPEAKER_01 6:24

So the the book itself, it felt like life downloaded a USB stick in my brain and downloaded the chapter list. And I I woke up on honeymoon and about six in the morning, it just felt like a whole book showed up. So I jumped out of bed and scribbled down the the chapters, and the writing process really was I got home and I just filled in the gaps, and it was very flowy and pretty easy. The editing bit was hard, but the the getting the first draft out of me was just it kind of just all happened spontaneously almost. But the I guess the intention behind it is I want to but I wanted to create something that could spread further than my one-to-one work. I only have capacity to speak to a certain number of people each week, and I really believe that one insight can totally shift the trajectory of someone's life, and that's what this book is. People have been saying to me that they read it cover to cover and it takes it takes probably like an hour, an hour and a half to do that, but it stays on their desk or their bedside table, and it's something that they return to and open at random and just pick a chapter and see what they see. Because I think as we shift and as we change, we can reread stuff and it can say something completely different because we interpret it differently. And so that that's what I want this to be. I want this to be a companion and a tool that people can return to, not something that's just a bunch of nice ideas and diagrams and kind of goes in one ear and goes out the other.

SPEAKER_00 7:56

Has that been your experience with this process as well, from that initial download to rereading it back or reading it on on LinkedIn or having feedback that that the ideas, the meaning, the impact shift for you personally in your world?

SPEAKER_01 8:11

Totally. Yes, totally. Um, Holly, it's really annoying, but it's quite good. Sometimes I'll be I'll be telling I'll be trying to enroll Holly, my wife, into a story about my life, and then she just goes, Well, I think you need to go and read the chapter on X. And it's really frustrating, but often she's right. Um, so it is it's something that I return to and I use, and I said I think I say it in the introduction, like I don't there are lots of the chapters where I don't fully understand what they mean, and I'm interested to see how those shift and transform for me over the rest of my life. I don't well, one of the last chapters I wrote is like I'm looking forward to being wrong about all of this, and I'm looking forward to writing another book which where all of this is wrong because I've changed and grown and see life differently. Like I'm very unattached to it being the truth, I just care about if it's useful for someone.

SPEAKER_00 9:06

What what do you think would be the main thing that you would want somebody to take away from from reading it? You've alluded to that, but I'm curious if there's yeah, one thing.

SPEAKER_01 9:20

Um, another way of saying that the door is never locked is that you are already whole and complete and you already have everything present for you to move through whatever it is that's in front of you. I think that um that could be quite hard for some people to hear sometimes when they feel like life's a mess and things aren't going the right way. What do you mean I have everything? It's like, well, you have everything for this moment. You might not have everything for what you want off in the future, but for this moment, and as things stand, you can move through it. And I think something I also really feel strongly about is that I've I really believe that everyone does know the answer to the questions that they're asking. Like when I sit with someone in a conversation and I help them see what they already know, I'm not adding any ideas or thoughts or perspectives, I'm helping them slow down enough to take a look inside and see what's already present. And I think that once you really get and understand and embody the fact that you do know the answer, you can trust yourself. Life takes a very different form because you're no longer coming from a place of lack or fear or needing to ask someone else for help to get the answer because you start to trust that you already have it, you just maybe are hiding yourself from it or haven't let it in yet.

SPEAKER_00 10:45

Yeah. I I I love these concepts, I'm also challenged by them. And sometimes I I can hold them, I get them. Sometimes I have to choose to. And and I'm also curious for for people that I work with or that I speak to um that would argue against that, and and I'm curious on on their behalf, what what might they play with if they can't hold that they are whole and complete or everything is perfect in this moment? Yeah, how how can we support that or help them draw that out of themselves?

SPEAKER_01 11:22

I think a really good thing to do is to is to ask a friend or probably not a partner, a friend to just sit with you and ask questions. And but ask you ask that person to assume that you know the answer. And for them to ask questions and then stay silent until you finish speaking and just see what happens, see what comes out. Another thing to do is if I I know we've spoken a lot about this in in the OP, um I love I love borrowing from our higher self or from our future self. So asking if you're very if if you're certain about the fact that you don't know, just the asking yourself the opposite. If I was certain that I knew the answer, what would I see? Or if you're feeling really unconfident about how to respond to someone, asking yourself, if I was really confident, how would I respond? And in my experience, you always get an answer. You always get something that you don't get when you're looking at it through the lens of I don't know, or I'm uncertain, or I'm unconfident. So just literally flipping to the opposite and asking yourself the question from the other perspective, and then just slowing down trusting what comes.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

Yeah. There needs to be a desire to want the answer that not everybody is ready to walk through the door.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

Yes. Yeah. There's safety in staying in the room that you understand and know, even if it's painful, even if you say you don't like it, there is safety because at least you know what you're getting. On the other side of that door is is totally unknown. So it does take courage to step through and it and it does take a desire. Our mind, our ego wants to stay safe. That's its number one priority. So it will prioritize safety over discomfort.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

You you talked about something near the beginning there, Sam, about deserving. You know, you felt you didn't you feel that you deserved that that that help that is it Hugh offered to you right at the beginning. I I'm curious what what changed for you to believe that you did deserve it to start that that that process. Just just because I've got that word deserve written on my piece of paper here and it's jumping out at me.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

I think in in my case it was the fact that you just stood with like he stood by me and he waited. He didn't leave me, didn't didn't sort of step away. And I think eventually I realized that well he means he means it, he wants the help, he didn't just say it. He wasn't trying to be nice, he wasn't trying to look good, he was it was real. And then I think I allowed it in. I I find it with clients a lot that we often talk a lot before we work together about the the I the con the I literally the concept of investing in themselves in coaching is very hard for a lot of people because they'd be very happy to pay for a family holiday or send their kids to private school or buy a bigger house because it's for others, and even if they've got the money, sometimes it's really really hard for them to justify investing in themselves, and it comes with all these doubts of well, will I make it work? Is it like am I too broken? All of that stuff, all of those stories get in the way, and it's really interesting to pick through those with people.

Words Create Worlds

SPEAKER_00 15:16

I I I guess just gently challenge them from a place of compassion, right? Rather than judgment, yeah. Yeah. Um I'm you've alluded to it earlier, mate, but language in in in how we how we word, how we speak our world. Does that is that something that comes up in the book as well? Is there any chapters that talk about the importance of language?

SPEAKER_01 15:41

Yeah, there's a chapter, I think it's called this, if it's not, forgive me. But um words words create worlds. And the premise is that we don't we don't describe what we see, we create what we experience. I think a lot of people think that language is is a descriptor of what is already happening in front of us, and I believe that actually it's our language that comes or our thinking or our speaking, writing that comes first, and we interpret what we see through the language that we use to create it.

SPEAKER_00 16:16

Can you give us an example of your from your own life, Sam, or or or or from somebody that you're working with, how they've changed their language and how they've changed their world with these these subtle shifts and insights?

SPEAKER_01 16:29

So I've beginning of this year, I felt really lonely in my business, just being a coach. There was it's just me doing this, and I really noticed that I was missing being part of a team. Like it's been 10 years since I finished rugby, and three years since I stopped my business, which had a team of 60. So I've my whole life I've been surrounded by a lot of people, and um I spent probably six weeks in like poor me, this is really hard, I'm lonely, and it just created this experience of all of that being true. And then it was a in a conversation with Holly, she was like, What would be an how could what be a different way of describing this? And I started to go, well, how exciting that I'm feeling ready to be part of a team again. Like, who would I want to go and play in business with? Who who would it be exciting to have conversations with? And then I just started booking calls with friends of mine that I would love to work with, not knowing where any of them were gonna lead. And one of them has led to me partnering with an old client who's now a friend, and we're doing something together. So just that one shift from like, poor me, this is hard, to how exciting I'm ready to be part of a team again. It gave me a whole different set of options, and it sh totally shifted my inner world from one of like frustration and a bit of anger and a bit of sadness to one of possibility and excitement and curiosity again.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

Yeah, I d it's interesting you say it like that because it reminds me of a reflection that I had this morning, and and again in another group that that came up a while ago. It sounds to me, this is my interpretation of the story I told myself that I'm stood at a crossroads. The situation is I am working on my own, to the left is I am lonely, poor me. And to the right is yeah, how uh it brilliant. I'm ready to join a team. What what might I create? Um, yeah, totally. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

And and and notice in that, like you haven't moved, or I haven't, I hadn't, I didn't move in that's in that example you've given. The world outside me hasn't changed, the situation hasn't changed, but which direction I'm looking in, that's that's the internal shift.

SPEAKER_00 18:48

Is is is there any other words that you love to use, then Samuel, that that are powerful and and resonate for you when you do catch yourself um yeah, coming from a place of f fear or for or anger.

SPEAKER_01 19:05

A question I really like is just to ask myself, is it true? Is the story that I'm just told myself, is it true? And then that just is almost like a little fire break of slowing down and detaching from it being an absolute truth to all of a sudden there's a bit of doubt around whether it's true or not.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

So there's a possibility that it might be something else. Yes. Yeah. If I if language is so both so powerful and and limited, how did you justify the words that you used in the writing of your book?

SPEAKER_02 19:53

I think I just used the words that felt right.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Yeah, I I for me it my life tends to work when I do stuff that feels aligned and feels right, and it feels true to me. I think something I speak a lot about is that there aren't really that many absolute truths in the world. Truth is a very subjective thing, and what's true for me is not necessarily true for you. But it doesn't if if we were to both be looking at the same situation and I say this and you say that, it's not that one of us is right or wrong, it's just we're both seeing a different truth. So yeah, with with the book, I I guess I just wrote what felt true, and I'm also not attached to whether someone else agrees with it or not. Some people will read my book and say, What a load of rubbish, and that's okay too.

Effortless Performance And Acceptance

SPEAKER_00 20:48

Yeah, and I guess you're excited for that day when it is wrong, because then you get to write another one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um you're talking about the the the paradoxes as well of of of effort versus effort effortlessness and seeking and and finding. And I wonder if you could speak to us a little bit about that as well, Sam. I find that fascinating. And some days, again, I can hold it, some days I have to choose to hold that.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

For me, I always think about sport with sort of blown-up force. And I you never ever hear, and I and I talk about my own experience as well. Like, I never played a good game of rugby when I was forcing it. When I needed it to be a good game of rugby, I could guarantee that it wouldn't be. And you never hear that in a any top, any interview with any high performer about an amazing game that they played, or um yeah, an amazing match. They're never saying, Well, I was really thinking about my performance, and I made sure I did a really good job. It's like People talk about not even being present, and that to me is flow, it's it's effortlessness. It's I was there, my body did it, but my brain wasn't really that involved, and I think we can live a life where that is much more present than it usually is for most people. I I don't I can't live a life fully there because I have lots of human moments where I doubt myself and I feel all of the emotions, but even with that, it's like flowing with that when that's present rather than trying to force myself out of feeling bad. I used to really beat myself up for having down days or not feeling motivated, and now it's it's like how can I flow with this? And it doesn't mean that it doesn't it goes away, but it its grip on me loosens and I can move through that stuff a lot quicker. Um so yeah, I think well for me, my I I coach the best, I parent the best, I'm a better husband when I'm not trying to force anything when I'm not gripping on tightly.

SPEAKER_00 23:09

Yeah. So how w what what place is it that you're coming from to start to create that and that we can offer the listeners as well the th those places where we are not forcing it and starting to let it flow.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

He speaks about a monk was asked about how he was so happy when he said, I just say yes to everything. And I thought that was such a lovely way of framing acceptance. I think we talk about acceptance, but how do you accept? It's like, well, I just say yes to whatever is here, I say yes to losing the rugby match, and I I use it for something. When I want to reject losing the rugby match, I'm I'm gonna be in a bad place for three or four days if I can say yes to it. But I also think it means we learning how to say yes to ourselves, so yes to what feels intuitively right, rather than saying yes to what we think we should be doing or must be doing or have to. So I think for me, a w a really nice way into flow is is that is to say yes, but I has never heard it articulated like that before, but I really like it.

SPEAKER_00 24:33

Yeah, what's really coming to me, Sam, as I as I listen to you speak is that for myself is that the the gift that it is that we get to create space so that these things can bubble up rather than forcing and and and and smashing from one thing to the next to the next to the next. Um yeah, I just think that's interesting to to voice as well because it's not the norm. And yeah, when when we do certain things, when we go for a walk and consider that work, when we invest in ourselves, when we believe we deserve something, and yeah, that's not always even sometimes by the by our nearest and dearest and those that love us and support us, but in a different way, it's not it's not the norm. Um that's a generalization, I know.

SPEAKER_01 25:25

What and what what's your experience of of that when you uh allow space between things and rather than like you said, going force, force, force, like back to back?

SPEAKER_00 25:35

Yeah, I I feel more uh lighter. With what I have next, I show up um more present with that rather than carrying the the school run into a coaching session, into a training session, into uh house chores, into a discussion with my wife, into outreach, whatever it might be. So, yeah, there's more I can get more done because I'm present with what's in front of me rather than carrying the load of the last block, as as for want of a better expression.

unknown 26:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:09

Yeah. Like this morning, for example, went for a walk, just 15 minutes on the school run, an extra loop around the block, and I I can do what I need to do a lot quicker, which is interesting, because I wouldn't have believed that as true. Have you got any favourite paradoxes that sound from the book or from your life or any that that stick out to you or any at this moment in time?

The Competing Commitments You Miss

SPEAKER_01 26:35

Um it's not a paradox, but this is what's come. It's something I learned with my I I did some work with Townsend Wardlaw last year, and one of the most powerful things he taught me or showed me was this idea of competing commitments, and that we are we are always committed to something whether we realise it or not. And if you're ever in a position where you're looking at I want X, but I don't have it, it's probably because you're committed, you're more committed to Y, but you just haven't seen that yet. There is always a competing commitment that's taking you away from the thing you say you want. So I think in the book I talk about you say you want to look after your body and feel better, but you're more committed to the feeling of comfort of not training, for example, or you say that you want to have a partner, but you're more committed to the safety of not asking anyone out on a date. They can be really, really simple, but once you see them, it's like, oh, okay, maybe I actually want to choose to be more committed to the thing that I actually want.

SPEAKER_00 27:50

And I guess it's just put pulling that into the consciousness as well a lot of times, making it visible for ourselves to see. Yes. Remembering versus fixing, what what was it you remembered about yourself, Sam, in this process of putting the book out in the world?

The Kitchen Sink Before Growth

SPEAKER_01 28:13

Um rem It was interesting. The two weeks before I put it out, I had a total mind meltdown around I'm not good enough to put this out. This isn't this book isn't good enough. Who am I? What are people gonna say? Is it gonna sell? Like I had two weeks of it felt like total chaos. And um in the book, I wrote a chapter about the kit the kitchen sink test and the idea that every time we're on a threshold of stepping into a an expanded way of being in the world, life will or our mind will throw the kitchen sink at us to try and scare us into staying put. And I totally experienced that just before I put the book out, and it was horrible. And it you asked me about r things that like reminding and or remembering, and it was remembering that I will experience the kitchen sink test until I die because I will continuously be expanding, and every time I'm at my edge, I'm gonna feel like I want to quit and throw in the towel and go backwards, and that's part of the joy of of testing who we are and seeing what's possible is you get to move through that and experience that, and that's the kind of moment you know you're on the edge of something really cool. And I used to hide from that and run from it, and this time I was really wished it hadn't been there, but I just like I'm committed to putting this book out, so I'm just gonna keep taking the steps. Like, I'm gonna get the proofs sorted, and then I'm gonna upload it to Amazon and blah, all that kind of stuff. It's like I can I can move through the steps of doing that need to be done, regardless of how I feel, and that's something that's really it was a good reminder of that, and it was a good reminder to know that that's not going anywhere because I'm gonna be human until the moment I die. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:08

Love it. Um I'm curious if you are just sat in this space of being able to get the book out, or or is there something else that that pops up into your mind now as the the next thing, the next thing. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:28

Yeah, it feels I I touched on the the wanting to be in a team again and build something. So what I'm working on now is um created conscious soup studio with uh my friend Garth, and he's got a video production company, and so we're gonna bring our companies in under this one container, and yeah, we're still in the process of branding and and and setting it all out. But it feels like what the stage I'm in now is I really want to create a container that holds everything that I do. Because up until now, there's been the one-on-one conversations, the leadership work I do in teams, there's been the book. There's lots of like it's all kind of there but disconnected. I want to create this studio that holds it all, which is a place to then a foundation to continue to build off. And that that feels really exciting to be pulling it pulling that all together, but also doing it with Garth, but we're very aligned in how we see the world, and really excited to see what we create by combining both of our gifts, and that that feels really exciting and feels really alive at the moment.

Closing Thanks

SPEAKER_00 31:41

Love it, mate. Love it. Sam, I I think we're there for today, but I'm curious if there's anything that we've not talked about that you'd like to mention.

SPEAKER_01 31:51

I don't think so. I think it's like you asked what was on my heart at the beginning, and I talk spoke about connection, and this has felt like a really beautiful conversation. And um just want to thank you for hosting it and creating a space where these kinds of conversations can go out into the world.

unknown 32:08

So thank you.

SPEAKER_00 32:09

No worries, mate. My pleasure. Um, yeah, I've I've really enjoyed this, mate. I'm gonna go back and listen to it. There's a lot of lit meaning snippets in there for me to go and uh think about as well. So yeah, thanks for the work that you do, mate. Thanks for your support. Thanks for putting this out in the world. And uh yeah, I look forward to reading the book very shortly. Thank you so much. Legend. Cheers, Ryan. Lots of love, mate.