Bringing movement into our daily routines is beneficial not only for our physical health, but our mental and emotional wellbeing too. Consciously integrating activity into our lifestyles helps us counteract the sedentary nature of modern life, especially for leaders and entrepreneurs sat in front of a laptop all day.

Sal Jefferies is an embodiment specialist, focusing on movement and the interconnectedness of physical, mental, and emotional health. He’s deeply interested in how humans function, drawing from fields like psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, cognitive science, and embodied cognition. He discusses the importance of incorporating movement into daily life along with the negative impacts of a sedentary lifestyle. Sal also coaches entrepreneurs and business owners, applying his knowledge of movement and health to improve their performance and wellbeing.

If you like this episode, don't forget you can find all our conversations at www.peripheral-thinking.com or sign up here!

Links

• Connect with Sal via LinkedIn
• Mindset, Mood & Movement – Sal’s podcast
• TED talks by Sir Ken Robinson

Welcome to Peripheral Thinking.

The series of conversations with academics advisors, entrepreneurs and activists, people all championing those ideas on the margins, the periphery.

Why is this important?

Well, as the systems on which we've depended for the last 50, 60 stroke thousand years, crumble and creek people increasingly looking for new stories, new ideas, new myths, if you like, that might guide and inform how they live and work.

So in these conversations, we take time to speak to those people who are championing the ideas on the margins, championing the ideas on the periphery, those ideas which are gonna shape the mainstream tomorrow.

Uh, and our hope is that you are a little bit inspired, a little bit curious enough to take some of these ideas and bring them back to the day-to-day of your work and your life.

Sal, thanks for joining me on Peripheral Thinking.

Thank you, Ben.

That's really nice to be here.

like as, as all good, uh, journeys start.

Maybe, maybe just start kind of where are you kind of made reference, eh, we, we, we are nearby.

Whereabouts are you?

Yeah, so I'm in Brighton, UK for our UK listeners.

I'm in the South coast, uh, sunny south coast, although not today, Brighton, uh, which is a great little city.

Uh, Ben, of course, you are not far up the road for me.

Uh, and, and similar areas.

So yeah, I've been here for a while now.

Good.

Uh, six years I think it's been here, but it's my second time here.

I was here back in the early two thousands.

It's changed quite a bit.

It's definitely, um, the, some of the architecture's the same, but I think a lot of the culture feels like it's changed a lot in my experience.

That's curious.

So why, why leave and why come back?

Good questions.

Uh, while leave, it was a life choice at the time I was looking for somewhere to live, uh, that really suited me.

Uh, and I found somewhere just a little outside of Brighton that was more country and it just suited me at the time for that chapter of my life.

It was really special.

Um, my, my life changed about six years ago.

I was in a long-term relationship.

We, we, uh, we ended and then there was changes with that.

And I was looking to relocate and, and I, and I met someone in Brighton.

And so of course there was a lot of good connections in Brighton, so I was like, right, let's, let's go back to Brighton.

So, but I was in Hove previously, which is of course, I think your area and Brighton's, it's not that different, but to, to Hove and Brighton people of course there is a nuance different and, uh, yeah, it's good.

I mean, I love, I can walk, I can run, I can cycle almost everywhere.

And so that's, that's a great thing to do, whereas suburbia or the country, you've gotta jump in a car, which, you know it is what it is, but if you can negate the car, you can keep active a lot more.

Yeah, that's it.

I think, you know, getting out the habit of those sort of short journeys, um, is a really good way of kind of moving around and, like you say, kind of being in a place like this, it's kind of, you know, it's, it's easier to not be in the car.

So if anyone needed an invitation to not be in a car, it's live in a place like this where everything's kind of accessible.

Then you have the ongoing invitation to, to walk and move.

And so walking and moving is a, is a kind of nice, nice segue.

I guess the, a, a general, general question, how, trying to avoid the question of what do you do, uh, it being an awful question, um, but is also a useful kind of context revealer.

So how do you spend your time might be a broader way of kind of opening up that,

Yeah, absolutely.

What you do is, uh, we're so caught up in labels, aren't we, particularly in the business field, we, you know, there's, there's a name and there's an identity and there's a whole kind of semantics connect to that.

What do I do?

Um, I spend my time being curious, learning, moving, and helping as a, that's the flavors of what I do.

So, uh, I'm north of 50 now and I got really interested in movement back in my early forties, that's when I sort of really started to get connected to movement in the body in a, in a big way.

And I'm happy to unpack that too, as much as you'd like.

But now I move a lot.

So it's a non-negotiable staple.

You know, like you might have certain things in your day.

I have movement wired into my day as a way of being, rather than I'll do it if I've got time.

I do it with what everything else I do.

So I curate it into my day.

And, and there's a lot of connections to that too, between health.

Both physical and psychological health and emotional.

'cause they're all woven together in my experience.

And, and yeah.

And I had this curiosity.

I'm, I'm lucky to be in the field of, uh, entrepreneurship or business ownership, whatever you wanna describe that.

And I get to, I get to play with things.

I get to play with psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, uh, cognitive science, embodied cognition, all these different things, how humans function.

Uh, and I'm generally fascinated in the field.

So I learn about something and I'll apply it in my work that I do.

So I'm, I'm very fortunate to have a more of a vocation than a job, which, um, which is a choice of course, and it has its downsides, but that's how I spend most of my time.

So what does movement look like for you in, in an in over the course of the day?

Yeah, you are absolutely right.

And the reason I say movement, 'cause we start to say about exercise and, and you know, labels, uh, and words really pigeonhole us and sometimes pigeonhole someone we're talking to, like, oh yeah, whatever, I'm, I'm too busy for extra.

But movement is, is everything from subtle.

And that could be the way you sit, the way you stand.

How long do you sit at a desk if you're a knowledge worker, do you get up, do you use the stairs versus the lift?

Um.

Do you walk over, take the bus, all these choices, you know, where can you put movement in your day, you know, th throughout the day.

And then if you were to take a movement and make it more ex, uh, more explicit so they could be, you know, dedicated exercise.

And for me, that looks like strength training, uh, dynamic training, plyometrics, running, swimming.

So they, they vary.

You, swimming for me is more sort of, uh, visceral, kind of nice.

It's in the pool, it's gentle, whereas running is a very different type of feeling outdoors compared to weight training.

So I'll do the different types of exercise throughout my week, but I'm always looking, how can I not be sedentary?

It's perhaps the overarching philosophy because it's way too easy to be sedentary.

And as a little tell, I, um, last year I clocked up about five and a quarter million steps, which can sound like a big number and it is a relatively big number, but it's not, not much more of 14,000 a day, which isn't that high in my experience.

Now, I'm lucky I have dogs, so I walk the dogs a lot.

Plus I live in a city so I can drop the car and you know, take a walk somewhere.

But what I've noticed, if I had to go, uh, meetings, back to back coaching sessions, which are all online, had to drive somewhere for the day.

I'm look at my step count, they'd like 4,000 or 5,000.

I'm horrified.

Like how little movement there can be woven into one's day if you don't consciously put it in.

Because we don't live in a society which has got movement woven into the day we, we have the desk.

The computer, the car, the transport system.

And normally downregulation for most of us is the chill out on the sofa.

So there's a lot of sedentary, and from some of the research I've looked at over the years and more recent sedentary lifestyles, equal problems, health, physical, mental, uh, and performance.

So how can we negate that is what I'm interested in for my own personal reasons and also what I'm interested in when I'm working with someone who, who wants to share that, that same thought.

So it kind of, so the, the importance clearly of moving around.

Clearly we are, we are animals, we are beings that spent a lot more time moving around than we did sitting around.

Albeit sitting around is the kind of dominant, you know, sort of mode of operation for, for many these days.

Um, I'm just curious that, that point around 4,000 steps, because I don't have a step counter thingy, how, how far is 4,000 steps?

What would I, what walking would I be doing if I only got to 4,000 steps roughly?

Hmm, good question.

Uh, so when I walk the dogs in the morning, we walk for roughly about just under an hour, approximately, and that's roughly about 5,000 steps.

So I'm guessing it's around about 50 minutes of walking approximation.

So it might look like at a reasonably good pace.

10 minutes might look like about a thousand steps of continuous walking.

Now of course we, if we're in an office or working from home or something like that, we might be, you know, I'm lucky I've got three floors, so I purposely leave stuff on the bottom floor, so I have to keep coming up and down and there's, there's two flights of stairs every time I go up and down.

And what I know is our beautiful, elegant human brain is hardwired to take the easy room.

You know, we are hardwired to find simple, quick solutions.

It's, it's, um, an evolutionary strategy.

The problem being in, in an over, mm, comfortable world, let's say that might look like, well, let's grab an Uber or jump in the car, 'cause it's, you know, it's, it's easier than walking for 20 minutes and I'll take the elevator rather than the stairs.

And all these pieces, and it's no fault of anyone's particularly, it's the way the system's designed, the system's designed to make us comfortable.

But comfortable in the modern world is probably unhelpful at best and unhealthy at worst.

Yeah.

'cause I guess there would be nobody listening who.

We would need to persuade that moving was better for your health.

Uh, or the flip, I guess, that, uh, a lack of movement might be compromising your wellbeing in terms of how you feel or how you are kind of performing.

But then I'm, I'm kind of curious, and you touched on it a little bit there, given that, that most people would kind of understand or knowledge, yeah, okay, clearly movement is important.

What's happening?

Why is it we then find it so difficult?

Um, to, to not move, you know, or to, to move.

Not enough.

Okay, yeah, good question.

So I think we need to look at life design or environment design is the first thing.

If we were to pause for a second and you were to take a moment and think, what's the shape of my, my day, my week, my month?

What do I do now for if someone's listening, they think, well, okay, that looks like I drive to work or take the train to work, well, there's a lot of sitting.

And if you to add up all these hours, and you might work in an office block, so you might take the elevator up to number eight or whatever.

If you look at the amount of sitting plus your desk time and added up and aggregate it, that will probably be quite horrifying.

Because we, we, we are movement creatures are, um, there's a lot of suggestion that the way our brain is designed, uh, in terms of neurogenesis, the way new brain cells grow and learning is that we grow through movement.

Humans look back in the day, were savanna trackers, you know, we're out, we're moving.

And this ability of moving, which is, uh, the motor cortex of the brain moves the body, so your arms and legs.

So all of that is getting fine tuned.

The muscles are, are, you know, operating with the nervous system.

But what's happening is all that feedback's coming to the brain, such as, you know, look where you're going, observing your terrain, what do you need to plan for?

And you know, it's very strategic planning.

If you take that away from our hardwired biology and you put us in a chair, you know, 10 hours a day, seven days a week, repeat five years, at end of that five years, we're gonna feel and look very different.

And, you know, most, most people will probably agree that there's a, as an onslaught of, you know, health challenges in the world, particularly in our country right now, I think I saw two stats earlier around four fifths of business owners are gonna have a mental health issue in the next year is the statistic.

I think it's Mental Health UK, Um, about 70% of business owners are gonna have a mental health, emotional health issue.

And what I find really curious, Ben, is that we, we, and this is one of my issues, is that we separate and segment, we've got the mental health conversation, emotional health.

People don't even, don't even know what that, what that means.

You've got your physical health, you've got your fitness, and they're all kind of as if they're different fields of specialism, but no one lives in a body.

We live through a body, and if that body is optimized.

So your cardiovascular system works well, your muscular system works well, your brain works well, you are all gonna feed into things like you're gonna have good sleep.

And then that's gonna feed into how well your cognition functions, how resilient you are to stress.

So all of these things affect each other.

And I, and I've heard it from many, a founder who I coach, and people are like, oh, you know, I'm super, super busy.

Which is the kind of classic, and, and I get it 'cause I'm doing, I've been working for myself for 20 years, so I understand that you've gotta put the, put the hours in sometimes.

But if you, if you sacrifice your health, your physical health, assuming that you've gotta get more done, it's gonna be a better, uh, outcome, you're really missing the point because when you get to 40 plus, everything goes south, unfortunately.

Yeah.

Like the muscle, you, uh, sarcopenia at worse.

But you get muscle loss around three to 5% a year.

You lose your strength.

Uh, we lose bone density.

Uh, women have a whole host of issues around perimenopause and menopause.

So fundamentally we are never gonna be as fit or healthy as un as we are right now today.

And if you're not in the best shape, you're only gonna get worse, which is not a nice thought, but it's the truth that's really worth looking at.

And I find it curious because of course I think you can get away with it when you are younger.

You know, you can put long hours in, you can miss your sleep, you can, you know, do those allnighters.

I think 40 plus for me, that was like never no chance.

And definitely 50 plus that is not gonna happen.

if we were to live for another 50 years, like if you are around my age 50 and you've got another 50 to go, what does that look like?

And it's all about long game from here.

So I know people who plan their pensions and they're really good.

I know people who scale businesses and they're really good.

What about your health pension?

What does that look like as you, as you think about today and go forward and, and I think there's a whole misunderstanding around, it's something we should do as a nice thing rather than as a fundamental or essential quality, uh, for me around performance, you know, physical performance, psychological performance, business performance,

And why?

Why do we have that misunderstanding?

Where, what, what is that?

Where, what's the root of that misunderstanding?

It seems to be culture in particular.

So if we dial back to maybe, uh, three generations, four generations, so great, great parents, great grandparents, or something like that.

Most even motor cars weren't really around until the early of 20th century.

So dialing back 100 years, having a car would be quite a prestigious thing, not that many people did.

There weren't computers, there were less desks, there was much more manual work going on.

And, and this nature of physically moving, even small amounts like gardening would be a big difference to the sedentary nature of a knowledge worker.

So culturally, we've shifted, we've become very analytic creatures, and very disembodied to a large extent.

Whereas, you know, great grandparents say, I'd have to walk up the blooming hill to get their loaf of bread, you know, up and down the hill.

Whereas now we're like, well, I'll get an Uber, or I'll have it delivered by Deliveroo.

And we are having more and more of the movement pieces taken out of life, it seems, by culture.

And it seems then we need to consciously put it back in, because it's not gonna happen by default.

You have to consciously choose to, to, uh, augment this into your life, into your day.

And it's not easy if you haven't thought about it, if you don't value it, and if you haven't seen it, its impact.

But, uh, I live with an autoimmune condition, so I know what it's like to be unwell and to, to have health taken away from you and there's nothing more, well, this is a great saying, isn't it?

There's a person who's in good health has a thousand wishes.

A person in bad health has only one.

You know, you just want to be well.

And I think that for me, reminds me, doesn't take anything for granted that I'm, you know, put the work in,

interestingly though, I think there's another caveat around staying active and well as if it's hard work.

and I dunno, many people who run their businesses or founders who don't work hard, so it's not a viable excuse, it's just a misunderstanding.

So when you're able to wire, uh, dial into your day exercise, and that might look like walking to begin with, but if you are more active, the payoff aren't just physical.

So I'm very interested in the weave of the mind and the body.

I, I look at it, I work with it.

I've been doing it for more than a decade, at least in professional terms.

And what I see when we got mental health issues, and I've had it when I was psychotherapy only now I've blended into coaching, talking through a problem, feeding through a problem, it is embodied.

So a physiological response such as a stress experience or emotional experience is mediated through your body.

If you are able to handle stress and you have price to process stress, such as the gym, a boxing place, running, whatever those outcomes are, you are able to process that experience, as opposed to being in the world of abstraction and thought alone.

You know, and we are a very think, thought led culture.

We're very analytical.

We prize IQ over EQ, uh, and EQ is only one of them, eight intelligence, eight intelligences according to Howard Gardner.

So what I see, it feels like we disconnect.

When I've got someone in front of me who's got problems, you know, normally they're trying to resolve something psychoemotional around themselves and their business, and I'll ask them, well, how well is you, how well do you sleep?

And they're kind of looking at me curious.

I'm like, what's that gotta do with this, you know, mindset shift?

I'm like, well, I.

If you don't sleep, you don't have refresh of your brain cells.

If your brain cells do not work well, you can't access your prefrontal cortex for executive function and you'll be in a threat state.

And to cite people who know sports psychology or even like sport, it's a little like, are you playing to win or playing not to lose?

And if under a stressful situation, let's say post covid, uh, I don't know, culture change, AI is coming into, uh, disrupt your business, you are likely to be threatened.

So we are likely to play not to lose as opposed to playing to win.

And that is built on how you navigate your stress response, which is mediated through your body

Amazing.

That's really beautiful.

Thank you for sharing.

It's very interesting insight too, actually.

The realization that, um, these kind of sort of cultural sort of habit patterns, uh, of kind of the, are pushing us increasingly up into our heads and out of our body are actually very recent.

As you point out, you know, that very recently obviously kind of much more work would've involved something manual or like you say, just the act of walking around, collecting food, whatever it might have been, you know, actually increasingly century.

And also the weird thing that's happened certainly in some places in the world over the last 20, 30, 40 years were much more wealth, uh, and then people using more wealth, uh, you know, which becomes the kind of work hamster wheel to pay for support services, to pay for people to deliver my food, to pay for whatever it might be.

So, but actually these are very kind of recent, recent changes really.

Um, and I gonna come back to that.

I'm also really interested in this, uh, playing not to lose and plane to win, but before I come back to that, so, and I know that kind of movement, we sort of started off on a, on a movement, uh, movement angle.

Uh, we started walking in a direction we might say.

Uh, but of course that's just kinda one part of what you're doing.

But I'm kind of curious, has this work always been your work?

Good question.

No, so I, um, without giving you a boring biography, uh, I've done many things over my, my sort of journey out of early childhood.

I've worked in advertising, uh, I've been a dancer at one point.

I think a p decorated for a year.

I've done many things.

Um, advertising was my, predominantly my twenties in the, in the other agency world.

In my thirties, I went into self-employment, became a photographer, and pretty much photography took up the bulk of my thirties.

And that was one of those classic, let's be successful under the traditional, uh, as in super, uh, respected, lots of income, lots of work.

And, and that was really great right up to the point I was empty.

And it's such an interesting one.

'Cause I retired from that business.

When I, I could have carried on, I could have grown, it could have taken more money.

But it's so curious when you feel a lack of, um, purpose, um, or lack of fulfillment.

It's something, the money won't cut it.

And it wasn't easy 'cause then I actually was like, I was gonna retire for a bit and take some time out.

And I was doing yoga at the time.

And I'd already been, I was doing philosophy for years.

I've always been studying for years in the background, like learning about eastern arts.

And I got involved with a yoga and I enjoyed it so much.

I thought I might as well try to be a yoga teacher.

Someone I know was doing it, let's do it together.

It's kind of fun.

And what I found fascinating, uh, I was around just under 40, I think I was about 39.

I did this training and I loved it.

Now, I hadn't been in training for a long time, like really, you know, learning something new.

And I absolutely cherish that.

Also, the thing of yoga is, it's an entire science of the self, but we're talking about the physical aspect, it helped me become embodied.

It helped me get connected to my body.

I spent a lot of time in the cerebral space of photography, which is, you know, image, image creation, both creative and analytic.

But it was, I, it was a lot of time at the desk.

You know, there's a lot of light room time editing the images over those years.

So that became a really beautiful thing and feeling connected to my body, getting the gift of learning how breathing changes how you feel, which no one told me at school, and I mean, there's a, there's an onslaught of breath work understanding now, but most people don't breathe that well or, and could breathe better.

So learning these things over some time, and then it was just this, ah, the, the door's open.

Now I'm, I'm evolving.

Uh, I think in my early forties, uh, I then took a, uh, went into psychotherapy.

I did a post-grad in contemporary psychotherapy.

Brilliant course.

You know, it goes deep, that stuff.

It's really deep.

Um, but the bedrock for everything I do now was sort of built on that.

But what I saw, Ben was particularly in the therapy space, which then sort of blended in to become more of a coaching approach, that we talk a lot and we talk about the psychology and the mindset and the beliefs and the behaviors, and it's so important.

'Cause mind is, you know, everything we experience, but it never comes without the body, and it never comes without a form or a shape or a sensation.

We can't negate it.

So even feeling confident, I mean, if you imagine feeling confident now, most people will sit up in their chair and the chest will expand slightly.

If you feel scared, you'll probably diminish.

Your spine will flex slightly.

It cannot not, because these systems are integrated.

So I got super interested in the somatic work, like as in what's the body telling us around a person?

What can we work with 'em?

And then the more obvious stuff, like if you are physically strong, what does that do for you?

And.

It got my attention, particularly when I was about 45 and I was scratching head thinking, oh, that's a big age.

I'm gonna be 50 soon.

I don't like the sound of this.

And of course, this sort of dawning reality, existential crisis, uh, I had a few of those by the way.

Um, came about, okay, what are you gonna do?

So I got in interested in proper fitness.

Now, yoga's great discipline, but it is not a fitness discipline.

It's good, it's good for many, many things, but it won't be enough.

You know, it's not enough cardiovascular, there's, there's missing pieces in it.

So, uh, and, but I love yoga.

So I'd always say it's a great discipline, but it's not the only discipline we should do for, for a body and a mind that works well.

I went to CrossFit.

Now if anyone knows what CrossFit is, it's probably the worst place you can go if you haven't been to the gym for years, 'cause it's really, really hard.

One day is like really, really strong.

And I was absolutely humiliated, literally humiliated.

I'd become this, you know, this great yoga teacher who was really skillful in the yoga arts and all that, and could I, you know, do a, a kipping pull up or a ma muscle up or, you know, carry a sled down the road, all of these sorts of things like this is really difficult.

But I stuck with him and I stuck with it.

And I was really, thankfully, this is the psychotherapy model.

I was able to observe my own discomfort.

I watched my own ego hate it.

'Cause when you're good at one thing in one field, we do not like being poor or new in another field.

It's very common with successful people.

So we, we gravitate back to that success space.

We don't wanna be uncomfortable.

But I stayed with them 'cause I knew there would be something in it.

I just stayed with it.

Five months in.

I managed to go from twice a week and then I was like, okay, I'm ready now.

I think I can do this four times a week.

It was like a commitment.

And the strength gains, the fitness gains really came.

But what I thought was different was instead of like most people thinking, oh, three months to fitness or, you know, beach body or those silly notions, I was like, what do my favorite people do?

And they're Olympians.

I love Olympians, they're fascinating psychologically, but I, I love Olympians.

I thought, well, they train you four year cycles.

So I've got four years to go to 50.

I wanna be an athlete at 50.

It's just a four year window.

That's a four year training cycle.

That's a lot more manageable and workable.

'cause when I had a year out, because I had a, a horrendous flare up for my colitis condition, I could come back to him.

Had I given myself a one year timeline, I would've been a failure and it would've proved that I shouldn't do it.

So the long term thinking from that mid forties onward, stepping into the physical domain.

But then feeling, so I said this to so many people, exercise isn't about what you look like.

It's kind of nice, you've got a few muscles or whatever, but it's about what you feel like.

It is undeniable.

And for example, if anyone's been in love, you've been in love.

It's, it's lovely, isn't it?

It's really lovely being in love.

So let's try and explain that.

What's it like where you smile a bit, you feel a bit warm and gooey, and if you've never experienced love, that would sound ridiculous, like, what a stupid idea.

But if you're in love, you know, whether it's your partner, your children, your dog, whatever it is, you know what love is, is experiential.

And I would say my experience of when you really connect with your body in a healthy way, the feeling supersedes everything.

And it's all these millions of payoffs.

But that feeling, you literally can't buy it.

It's unavailable anywhere else.

Feeling strong, feeling dynamic, feeling youthful.

Certainly if you're overthought it, it's a, it's a lovely feeling.

And that transcends the mind because that's a psychological, emotional experience.

So we are now feeding into our mind like a, an infusion, like a beautiful, uh, experience infusion into your mind about how you can operate, which then steps into our realm of mindset, because if you wanna work on mindset and you not involving in your body, you are missing a fundamental piece.

mm So where these things all start to stitch together.

Something you just said in, in passing, which I'm just kind of curious on.

Uh, I don't, I'm probably not gonna use the words that you used exactly, but it was, the, the sentiment was most people don't dunno how to breathe properly.

Uh, and I dunno if you actually put it like that, but we, I, I'm just kind of curious what, what, what's in there?

Absolutely.

Yeah, such a good point.

Okay, so in yoga, they, they, they've been banging about the breath for like thousands and thousands of years that you do breath work in yoga, in this particular breathing practice.

But what they got was really spot on if we were gonna put a scientific lens over him.

The breath is under autonomic control, which means part of your brain will run your breathing whether you are asleep or unconscious or awake, you don't have to think about it.

And yet we can also choose a part of our brain to consciously breathe, whether that's fast or slow, you know, nose or mouth.

So it, it's the, it's the in, in the nervous system.

What we know from more modern science, things like polyvagal theory studies on the body, how we breathe directly affects the neural response.

So there's a major nerve in the body called the vagus nerve, which runs through most organs.

It is, uh, it has pretty much 80% of its fibers going up to the brain.

So it is feeding the brain with what is happening in the inner environment.

So if you are breathing in a particular way, which is normally chest breathing and mouth breathing, that feeds up signals to your brain that you're not that safe right now.

You need to prepared for danger or stress.

If you are breathing, probably through your nose, but particularly in your diaphragm, your lower belly region, that tells the vagus nerve, a bunch of signals that feed up to the brain, yeah, you're safe, you're good, you've got this, you're okay.

You're in control.

Now, what I love about breathwork, it's entirely scientific and secular.

You can do it.

Anyone can do it.

We don't have to any, there's no bars to this, there's no religion, there's nothing to it.

It's just functional.

You can do it anywhere, anyone, and no bo, everybody can do it.

Literally, everybody can do it.

And yet we take 20,000 breaths a day.

Repeat that.

You know, think about compound interest.

So if you breathe through the mouth all day, if you breathe high stresses and size all day, what is your inner environment?

What is that telling your brain?

So if we are not conscious of these breathing patterns, we're not conscious of our mind, our brain or brain, mind, you know, expression.

So stress, performance, wellbeing, peace of mind will always be disrupted if your breathing is disrupted.

It is a sort of hardwired, biological and neurological fact.

So this is one of the pieces that I, I, I trained in breathwork as well, both in the yoga arts and also with a guy called Patrick McKeen, who's quite famous breathwork trainer.

It's really interesting.

Using the breath alone can be one great tool to change our state from normally from stress to calm, but also even in the gym.

Like how do you breathe in the gym?

You can use breathing patterns to, uh, Brian McKenzie, the specialist America, talk about going through the gears.

So, gear one might be nasal breathing, in nasal breathing out, you're walking.

Uh, gear two might be nasal breathing in mouth out.

If you're running.

If you're sprinting, it might be mouth in, mouth out.

If you're sprinting with a, with a sandbag in your hand, it might be full maximum breath in mouth, full maximum breath out.

If you don't understand how you can shift your breathing patterns, whether it's in movement or in stress, then there's great scope, you know, go learn it.

There's lots of breath work around, there's lots of videos around.

Uh, I teach it, I add it into my coaching, but it's really, really fundamental.

And just as you were sort of talking there, the kind of reminder, the invitation Oh, to kind of, oh, right.

I'm actually, I can feel the, the kind of breathing is.

Coming from my chest or I can feel the breathing is coming from my belly.

If there was, if there was sort of a, kind of a sort of simple point, 'cause in a, in a sense kinda like the, the kind of our conversation started somewhere on movement and the kind of invitation just to walk, you know, and, you know, to kind of take stock of where you are as a

reminder or a prompt or an invitation to, to get up to, to find ways of weaving, walking to weave movement back into your, your day to day.

I'm kind of curious, are there sort of simple, you know, if I am, you know, like we sort of spoke, spoken about somebody kind of immersed in my work, you know, overwhelmed potentially, or, you know at sort of best immersed in my work at worst, really feeling kind of teetering on the edge of a real overwhelm, but it kind of felt in, in the kind of moment.

What's the sort of invitation or instruction if there is one, uh, that around breathing that might help me, that might help me in that, in

Yeah, absolutely.

So, um, we can get as technical and nuanced or simple as you like.

I, I prefer the simple because simple just transcends lots of things.

So here's a couple of facts which we can know.

Switch from nose, from mouth to nose Breathing is rule number one.

So in our, I mean, some people have a deviated s acceptance, so they can't nose breathe that easily, but you probably still can.

If that is a medical case then you might be, you might not happen.

But for most of us, we can breathe through our nose.

What happens is to several things.

Firstly, there's more control.

So a nasal breath in now versus a mouth breath, yeah?

There's alert, there's a different pace to it.

Neurologically, there's connections between the nose and the diaphragm.

So we're starting to get that conversation.

Thirdly, around the nasal breath there we have these little areas in our sinus, uh, area, which, um, deploy nitric oxide.

So not the laughing gas, but it's a different one.

This molecule gets, um, secreted as we breathe in through the nose.

It opens up the veins, it opens up the, uh, vascular system.

It's been cited, uh, it's only finite, 91.

It's one of the latest found chemicals in the body.

It's quite a fascinating one, but you get, I think around 10 to 12% better oxygen absorption.

So we're talking a whole load of biological factors, which affect brain health.

Brain takes up 20 to 25% of the oxygen any one time.

So the brain is a very fuel hungry thing.

So oxygen and glucose.

So these, these, again, this is why I find these systems, like if you want to be better in your mind and you're not looking at your body, you're missing everything, 'cause your mind is expressed through your brain.

So brain health is fundamental, which is built on body health.

So coming back to, so yes, rule number one, nasal breathe.

Rule number two, belly breathe.

I.

So if you're breathing through your nose to your belly, and if you're not sure, just rest your hands in your belly, you can try it now and take a slow breath of your nose in and a slow breath out.

There's a quality to it.

It's a slower quality, it's a deeper quality.

It's a fuller quality.

And what's happening here is that diaphragms going up and down.

It's literally stroking the vagus nerve.

So you can imagine, I think of broadband and we, we were speaking about broadband before our call, when you've got a lot of good fiber optics going the right way, you've got great download speeds or upload speeds, right?

So we can think of these as great fiber optics uploading into the brain like I am safe, which is code one for the nervous system.

The brain is designed to look for threats at all times and all places.

If you feel safe, your quality of thinking will go too creative rather than, you know, you try not to lose.

So this is where it weaves in.

If I can be neurologically safe.

I can think differently.

If I can think differently, I can solve problems in a different way.

I can attend to the challenges in my business, in my finances in a different way.

If I am unconsciously mouth breathing, chest breathing.

So chest breathing, we take a mouth breath in the chest, which is a lot of people breathe, we fire the stress response.

And you've got two places to go in a stress response.

You either fight or fly.

Neurologically, you've got two spots.

You are either gonna go towards the problem or you're gonna get away from it.

So anxiety is getting away from it.

Uh, overly aggressive would be going too much towards it, but if you could go towards the problem, but with a, your nasal breathing, diaphragm breathing thing, that puts us more towards a flow state, yeah?

Lots of things come online in the brain.

Lots of all the centers come online to be creative, to weave that brain magic to solve problems.

We don't solve problems under stress.

We find solutions to escape.

So when someone tells me, I'm really stressed, I'm really stressed, so yes, let's figure out what the rest are.

Let's understand it.

Let's understand the mind part.

What's the emotional part?

What do you feel like, how are you breathing right now?

And if we can weave these steps in, and particularly the breath.

'cause you can do it anywhere.

Chair, plane, car, gym, it doesn't matter.

You get control of that breath and use these techniques, nasal breath, diaphragm breath.

And if you're stressed, slow the out breath.

That's, that's the easiest thing I can teach.

Quiet breathing.

Not loud, quiet, but you breathe out slowly and calmly, you literally are changing your neurology and which will change your biochemistry, which will change what's happening in your brain, which invariably means everything you experience in your life will be seen through a different perception.

Wow.

So is it, uh, is it sort of overly simplistic or a statement of some truth that actually if we are, catch ourselves in a moment where we are feeling like we are really stressed, the chances are we are breathing through our mouths in the chest?

Yeah.

Or even through the nose in the chest.

But generally it's a chest breath and it'll often be quite short breaths.

I, I use a coworking space or coworking spaces and I'll be quite curious.

I've heard it from, sometimes people are like, ah, real big size.

Now I know that's a nervous system kind of giving these little resets, but I'm always curious though, it's not unless someone asks me to, but if I said to 'em, let me just give you a quick breathing pattern you could play with, let's just see how you work through your problem, if you do this for 10 minutes, you know, breathe this way and try and solve your problem.

I wonder what might happen.

And, and I know, 'cause I'm a human, I have stresses.

You know, life doesn't, life isn't always kind to me either.

Stress is not a problem, it's an experience.

And what I think we want to be able to understand is how do I manage that experience?

Because a true stressor, you wanna be ramped up.

You know, if a, if, if a lunatic that's running towards you in the street, you don't wanna be all zen, that's not going to work too well for you.

You wanna go and fight state, you probably wanna be pumped and either we're ready to, to defend yourself or to run out of there, because that's smart, right?

That's self protection at what's meant to do.

Stress is not a bad thing.

You know, I'm a big fan of this.

I call this neural, um, map this response.

So you have fight or flight in the, what we call the sympathetic nervous system, and we have flow or freeze in the parasympathetic.

The sympathetic is the, on the doing.

The parasympathetic is the more relaxed or the off.

We want to be able to go flexibly through flow state, ideally it's a great state to be in most of the time if we can.

Fight state with awareness, which will be going towards the problem solving my problems, now I've got confidence.

So it's a challenge, but I've got for this.

Flight state, which is anxiety, is always moving away from the problem.

There's a space for that.

Maybe you need to move away from it for now, but if you're always running away, the problem doesn't go.

And then the free state is, uh, either shut down, like, leave me alone, you know, close the doors, do not disturb someone.

Or at worst it's trauma.

It's complete shut down.

So neurologically, if we spend a lot of our time in one or the other and not, not being able to flexibly move through them, it's, it's like you're unbalanced.

And the nervous system will often find balance and, and that's, and it'll find balance, whether it's healthy or unhealthy.

So it's better to understand how you can regulate your system.

Uh, so I'm a big fan of people who are used to, so I used to do a lot of yoga, so that's a flow state.

It's beautiful.

And I used to be quite anxious.

So that's the sort of opposite states.

So I now do things like boxing and weight training because that's a fight state.

Now it's a controlled stressor.

But then when I came home, I did a strong session at the weekend.

When I came home, I crashed.

I was on the sofa, I was like, I was in shutdown.

My body's like, you're gonna rest for half an hour.

And I literally was, you know, everything off.

Shut my eyes for half an hour.

That's healthy.

That's like flexing through the system.

But how we breathe can help you move out of these stuck states that can be happening in the normal run of the mill, like in the office, in your working day stresses at home.

Because maybe you can't run away from it, but you might need to be able to steady yourself.

And I think that's where we can come in and do these most fundamental breathing practices to help take control.

You made reference there, something to, um, your nervous system will find balance, whether it's healthy or unhealthy.

What would be, what would be some examples then of unhealthy balance that people might find themselves in?

Yeah, so if we take the anxiety flow state, so if we are on, if I drew a big circle in the air, uh, flow might be up on my top right, flight top left, uh, flight bottom left and freeze bottom right?

You sort of go opposite way.

So if you are zenning out, you're happy and by people drink, right?

You know, ah, lovely, there's going to the flow state, then anxiety may be the opposite balance.

So if you're quite anxious, it's tempting to get away from it, whether you smoke, drink, do yoga, watch movies, but there there's an escapism factor and it can be quite flowing.

I was speaking to my boxing coach only the other day, we're talking about perhaps guys who can be maybe a bit too aggressive, 'cause they're their upbringing, it's good for them to box and, but it's not uncommon in the boxing field that people get depression.

You know, that's sort of the opposite.

There's a lot of output and then it's a lot of shutdown.

So in the real world, we want to be able to skillfully go through when do I need to retreat?

Like, when am I close to burnout?

I need, I need to retreat, I need to take a week off and regenerate as opposed to keep fighting.

There's a reason why people burn out is 'cause they keep fighting, they keep pushing, you know, you, and then what will happen is they'll get pulled into burnout or shut down.

So being able to understand when do I need to pull back?

When do I need to move away from things?

When do I need to move towards things and when can I be in flow state?

Becomes a conscious way of moving through these normal states.

Every human has them.

Everyone.

We have access to one, but we often spend a lot of time stuck in one state.

Depression will be the free state, anxiety will be the flight state, aggression will be the fight state.

And when anything's too much, it's of course outta balance.

So what we're aiming to do is be, as the Buddhists say, more centered, you know, find that center.

When do I need to take care of things and when do I let it go?

When do I pull back?

And when do I come back?

When do I move away from something and when do I move towards it?

So there's a real skillfulness in.

I guess the eastern arts, which look at how does one become more conscious?

And for me, the first step is if you dunno what's happening in your body, it's really difficult to be more conscious, like at a basic biological level.

And by that you just mean awareness of where I might feel tense or where I'm feeling discomfort.

It's sort of that, that's kind of what you mean in terms of awareness of the body, I guess.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

What are the sensations?

What do I physically feel?

So would there be emotional feelings such as I'm scared, I'm anxious, I'm annoyed, you know, the name of it.

But then they'll be like, well, my shoulders are coming up, my, my tummy's really grinding, uh, my, my jaw's tight.

Start to notice the body, 'cause the body is expressing what you're thinking and feeling.

And of course you can change your body quite quickly and that can help change the thinking and feeling.

And, and then of course you change your thinking and feeling.

You can change your body.

So it's, you can't separate these things out, but you can focus on one area.

So if you are struggling with stress, first question.

How am I breathing?

It's the first question to ask yourself.

And the very fact you ask yourself, you, you'll become conscious.

And I almost guarantee the minute I've asked anyone, how are you breathing?

Most people breathe better.

It's generally how it goes.

People go, oh, you know, I feel okay now.

So the question, how am I breathing and what do I physically feel can be such a win If you are in a pickle, in a stressor, really banging your head against the wall over a problem, because within the field of embodied cognition, there is no cognition without embodiment.

Some of it's a very cutting edge piece of science, but it takes away the away from the abstraction of thinking as if thinking some phenomena, which is different from the body.

It's like, no, there's, there's, there's a physiology to all thinking

Right, okay.

And so, by which we mean, um, there is no thinking without your body.

Have you met anyone who doesn't have a body that can think?

No, but I guess that's what I was just trying to, 'cause in a way it's like, it's like the, you know, it's of course I just, I just, you know, try to kind of place it for people who, 'cause I, one of the things I was thinking about as you were talking earlier, uh, which you'll be, you know, the,

the brilliant, um, Ken Robinson, the kind of amazing kind of, uh, uh, teacher talker, gave that hugely popular YouTube, uh, no TED Talk, I think it was.

Uh, and he was sort of talking about how for most academics, you know, people you're speaking to kind of in academics or the kind of of our wider culture, this kind of idea that you asked most people, they would think that the role of the body was simply just to carry their heads around.

Uh, and I kind of had that in mind a little bit as you were talking there.

'Cause obviously it sounds really stupid to say, uh, that you know, this the kind of relationship between a body and thinking.

But in a sense that's sort of what we're revealing a little bit, isn't it?

It's pointing people back to the importance of body.

There's a lot of clever people than me who've been revealing this for a long time.

So I would, uh, obviously as a, a playful joke I might say to such, uh, said, academic loan.

Well, okay, so if I just cut your arms off, you think you'll be okay with that?

Or just chop your head, chop you off at the neck and you'll still be able to operate quite well.

Of course you won't.

Don't be so silly.

So, and this is one of the problems about the disconnection I see with human performance is that our thinking and our feeling can be disconnected or our mind and our body gets disconnected, or worse ourself, and our social environment gets disconnected.

Then they're getting away from it.

You can't work in isolation, doesn't work in cellular biology doesn't work in human biology, doesn't work in ecosystems.

There is no separate.

Everything affects each other.

And if you think you're separate, then you don't need any customers, right?

It's as simple as that.

In business, you think you're running a great business, then you don't need customers.

Well, of course you need customers, right?

You need revenue, you need business.

So we know about these ecosystems there.

Same in our body.

Unfortunately, the prevailing, let's say dominant wisdom has been biased that man is a thinking creature, which we are.

and and thinking's an elegant, beautiful thing.

I, I think a lot, but it doesn't come without an embodied experience ever.

And the most richest of experience are embodied, whether it's being in love, winning your first contract, um, setting up your own business, you know, hitting a milestone, there's a physiology to it, it's a shape to it.

And the minute we understand that, the minute we start to bring that whole aspect of self in.

And this is one of my big rights with the human performance and coaching field, is that it's, it's, it's, it's fragmented.

And we we are not having that conversation about how do we perform best in all the levels, without having this understanding of the interaction between all our aspects of self.

And, and there's loads and loads of clever people, the semitics do this, which is, uh, looking at how feelings and meaning and signals, uh, um, science come together.

We've gotton, DiMaggio, the neuroscientists prominent guide, loads of work on somatic markers.

So things happen in our body when we have a thought or a feeling, and there's just tons and tons of people doing great work on this stuff now.

But you're right, Ben, it's still thought that, you know, thinking's thinking and maybe kicking football around is something different, but you can't do one without the other.

Now what I see, it's a bit more like, where's your lens of attention?

A bit like a spotlight.

If you've ever been on stage, uh, or seen a concert and they, they put the light on either an actor or you know, performer, and then they shine it somewhere else, it's a bit like, where do we put our light of awareness?

Do we need to do a bit more mind work?

Do we need to regulate our nervous system a bit?

Do we need to do a bit more physical?

So we do shine the light on certain areas for balance and for, for optimizing our performance, but one doesn't work in isolation.

God, it's, I mean, it makes, it makes so much sense.

And I just sort of thinking then about the kind of reality of somebody running a big organization, which is many people, whatever, it doesn't in a way manage matter what they're sort of spending their time doing.

But it just kind of how separate these things are.

And I guess in a way that's also a symptom of, you know, hundred hundreds of years of kind of material rational rationalist thought, which has separated things out, which are like a lot of the wonders of modern science, um, are based on the fact that everything has been separated out and things are seen in isolation.

But of course the huge cost of that is we sort of, we, we, we come further away from understanding that actually it's in connection, it's in relation that all of these things ultimately exist.

And so while separating things out has allowed for huge kind of leaps in understanding and kind of treatments and medicines and all of these types of things, we basically kind of, we are sort of husking out the reality, which is the fact that actually we are a kind of complex web of sort of connections going backwards and forwards all of the time.

And actually helping people back to that in the kind of smallest of ways feels like such an important thing to do.

Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

And, and that's the sort of premise of my, my work and my philosophy.

And I talk about this a lot now.

Because even if it starts like the simple awareness, like, oh, okay, I could learn a simple bit of breath work and I could put some more movement in my day, and I know that that's gonna have an output in my, my feeling in my, my business, you've got buy-in..

As we all need buy-in 'cause we're busy.

So you've gotta catch someone's attention and say, this is worthwhile doing.

But if you wanna perform better, do this.

If you wanna feel better.

Do this.

If you want make more money, probably do this as well.

Because if you are only thinking your way through the problem, you are missing a huge piece of your system which can come online.

And, and I think that's, that's something I would love to impart, you know, people listening might think, yeah, okay, go explore those three spaces.

Do the mind work with a coach, therapist, whatever, who, whatever it is that's mentally a growth space, the emotional staff sort of tips into being partly mind staff but also breathing, 'cause how you're breathing is a physical and a mental experience, uh, and then the physiology of it.

How do you move, what's your body doing?

'cause it's nothing better than feeling strong and dynamic and there's nothing worse than feeling outta shape and awkward and, and achy.

And our bodies are, well, I'm gonna say this is a, perhaps a, a really salient point.

It seems to me that we are an adaptive system and that's our mind, as in we are learning, cap learning capabilities are phenomenal.

Our brain with neurogenesis and what to brand new brain cells and this neuroplasticity we talk about that brains can actually change in its dynamic shape and its activations, we see this in our neural responses, we see this in our behaviors, we see it in the body.

Everything is an adaptive system.

What we give the conditions of that adaption are up to us.

So if you give it the conditions of you move quite a lot more in your day and you get a PT and you work out for the next seven years, your future is gonna look very different to the one if you don't.

And if you do some breath control and you learn about that and you do that for the next 10 years, again, your stress responses are gonna be very different.

And if you work on your mind and you work on unpacking the story that's holding you back or keeping you stuck, again, present and future is gonna be a very different trajectory.

We are adaptive.

And the same goes the other way.

If we give ourselves poor mental, dire.

We read a lot of rubbish and we believe a lot of rubbish, and we are unwell emotionally.

We're just not dealing with our stuff.

It's a very male trait, right?

You know, just not dealing with it.

And physically we're not well, well we'll adapt to that.

The adaption will happen, whether it's maladaptive or positive adaptive.

So I think as conscious people, we want to be like a little bit savvy here and go, okay, what conditions do I need to create to change, to know these adaptions are gonna happen?

And, uh, a for those who like science, there's a principle called epigenetics.

It's epigenetics is the study of how genes express based on the environment.

Uh, Dr.

Bruce Lipton, uh, I got to spend a day with him some years back in London, a fantastic guy, he's prominent in the field.

And so genes are what code and shape our, you know, body and our eye color and all these sorts of things.

What we know now, pretty categorically is that genes express depending on the environment.

So the internal environment of the body, which could be what you eat and how you physically are, your surroundings, are you safe, unsafe, you know, are you in a good community or are you in a, you know, in a a, a difficult situation, the genes will express based on the environment.

Now, this is, so those are like the science, it's epigenetics, so it's adaption.

So what are you gonna adapt to?

That's the question.

What are you gonna choose to create the adaptations you want?

And those, you like the gym, it's really simple.

If you lift weights, you stress the muscles, they, they get bigger.

You go, oh, my muscles got bigger.

It's a very clear sign.

Same with psychological adaptations.

If you challenge your story, you're telling yourself, oh, all the time with founders challenge their story, you're like, oh, oh, now I can do this, because the story was a limitation in their mind.

But unless you do something about the adaptation, then yeah, you're at the whim of whatever's gonna happen.

And so challenging the story and things like that is you, you, is, is challenging the adaptation.

So in a, in a way, is a way of thinking about the adaptation, the ingredients that I'm weaving into the soup, essentially?

Yeah, absolutely.

And, and that's a huge part because if we think, I mean, I spent, we spent so much time in our mind, our, in a narrative, our inexperience.

In many ways, most of the current thinkers I would work with are, would say the, the body is the mind.

It's the physical expression of the mind.

And the old oakies used to talk about this, um, in, uh, certain psychotherapeutic fields we talk about the mind is the subconscious.

We know that trauma's held in the body, yeah?

Some people think it's in the fascia.

Some think think it's in the cellular matrix, but we know there's fascia, something in the body holds trauma.

So we know that the mind, mind is all, whether we call it body or thinking, but mind is all.

But what I think really interesting about our mind is that it gets, it gets curated and formed at a young age.

And unless we really do the work, it gets sticky.

You know, we get really pen in on our beliefs and, and I see this.

So I meet other people roughly my age, and I hear them talk in a way, I think, wow, you really are stuck in the two thousands, right?

You, you're just stuck, dude.

Like you need to get up to date just 'cause you're 50, that's no excuse.

They think, and you hear this from all sorts of problems, some, some really poor problems like biases and um, yeah, really ill behavior.

The brain mind needs to adapt.

You know, we live in a different world now.

And if you don't change the world, then you're gonna become a fossil.

And we are outdated.

And as, as a business owner, if you're not adapting, you are dying.

It's, you know, it's really fundamental.

It's a little like, I often use the analogy.

You remember the keyboard, which was the typewriter.

I just about remember them, my mum used to type.

And you'd hit the old keyboard and you'd type away.

It's a little like saying, okay, well I'll just keep this typewriter 'cause it's kind of, I know it works.

And someone offers you an uh, a PC from the eighties, like, no, I don't wanna use that.

And then it comes up to do thousands for a, you know, a Mac Air.

And then you get a MacBook Pro.

And then you look and like, why is that guy using the typewriter?

We just voice note everything now.

We don't update the internal software of the mind as a, as a crude analogy, it gets stuck like, I believe this, this is how the world is.

This is who I am.

And I would then lean a little bit into arts, which I think you are into as well, but look at the eastern arts, uh, your Buddhism, Zen yoga, uh, I've looked at.

Those Eastern arts, they're like, Hmm, yeah, you need to look at your mind, humans, because it's, it's a really, it's a big field to look into.

But if we're not adapting at its simple root, we are stagnating.

And stagnation is never a good thing.

But it's interesting, isn't it?

Because stagnating is, whilst it's not a good thing, I think we could totally agree on that, equally, it is inadvertently the choice that most people are making in a sense, because in a way, the, or not all people, but it's like, actually, 'cause the, the cost of change is also great, isn't it?

Sort of from a system point of view.

And so we kind of organ our systems sort of sustain themselves.

You know, we've spoken before about homeostasis.

In a way our systems are also organized to sustain themselves.

Uh, and so actually the cost to change is, is also quite great, isn't it?

It is, yeah, absolutely.

If we think about the sort of, uh, the easy path principle of, uh, how our brain bodies wide, it takes the easy path, it works on habit formation.

The why would I try and do something new, which takes some effort?

You know, the brain's eating up 20, 25% of all energy at any one time.

It's, and it's, it's, it's something we don't do unless we're really pushed into it.

But it doesn't mean we shouldn't.

And that's, I think, the distinction.

Are you conscious or unconscious?

Because if you know how these things work, then you can't unknow it.

And if you know that, that the brain is always gonna take the easy option and go with what you know, then you have to be in the stretch zone rather than the comfort zone and say, okay, we're gonna do a bit of personal development or gonna learn something.

I'm gonna do a , experience, because that's what keeps you fresh.

And I think what I've seen as well, certainly with some older people, that what I worry about is that our comfort zone, we think it's, it remains, but actually it doesn't, it shrinks.

So there's a certain, I dunno what there, there may be an age in life, but it feels like there's a point, I think it's about midlife, it feels like about that, but once comfort zone, like what I know, what I believe, what I do starts to become quite crystallized and a bit hardened, but then it starts to shrink on itself.

Then everything's scary or a problem.

And then what do we do?

We play not to lose, so we go safe and we avoid all conflict and all problems.

So on some level, pushing oneself, adapting is a gift, but you have to choose it.

And it is not about comfort.

I think Brenny Brown spoke about this, didn't she?

She said, you can choose comfort or courage, but you can't choose both.

Yeah.

That's beautiful.

Uh, there's one thing I was just gonna come back to, um, which you kind of made reference to there.

Um, the, this thing around, I was kind of interested in that idea, the, uh, the playing not to lose versus playing, playing to win thing.

Can you just sort of just explain that a little bit more?

Because I think it's something which I think would resonate with lots of people, lots of, lots of the, the listeners, I think.

Yeah.

So we can think of it like this.

Uh, I mean, a lot of people like sport.

I know football's very popular.

Um, but if you take, imagine a, a sports team, pick, pick your favorite sport, football, rugby, formula One, doesn't matter.

But what often happens in teams that are starting to go somewhere is they, they start, um, getting better.

You can even hear 'em single sport as well, like tennis players and boxes and that.

But they, they, they're kind of coming up, then, they're the underdog, you know, and they're pushing their edges.

They're trying their luck a little bit, 'cause hey, what the hell?

You know?

So there's, there's a risk taking quality to it.

And in that risk taking quality, there's an unpredictability.

Uh, it's a very entrepreneurial mind to it.

There's like, let's try this, let's go here.

And, and there's a, there's an willingness that there's risk inherent in this.

The minute we think something's at stake.

We've hooked a very strong meaning on it, that this means something important.

And the problem that we have as humans, we have, uh, cognitive biases, thinking biases.

And one of the biggest is loss aversion.

We don't wanna lose, we'd rather not lose the win.

So we're already on the back foot, 'cause our brain is hardwired for loss aversion.

So that means, let's say you're running a business and it's not going so well, you, your profits are down or your, the market shares change and you are starting to worry.

So what often happens is that we'll play not to lose.

So we'll try not to lose customers or try not to, uh, lose market share or whatever that, that, that potential area of loss is.

When actually the right thing to do at that time is to play, to win.

It's like, yeah, we've gotta take some risks here.

And we've gotta be quite comfortable with this risk.

And we have to build in that some of this stuff's not gonna work because otherwise we are constantly shrinking.

So if you keep shrinking, you are only gonna get smaller.

So playing not to lose ends up becoming an unhealthy, unhealthy strategy in business, particularly because you end up avoiding, uh, opportunities and you're always looking for threats.

So in your perception, in your activities, your marketing, comms, everything's about let's you know, let's not lose, let's not lose.

And the word lose is in your mind, it's in your staff, it's in your messaging, it's in your energy field.

Whereas playing to win, it's like, okay, and maybe we need to play a different game to win, that's okay as well.

But you know, I talk about pressure often is in directional, you're either applying pressure or getting pressure.

So pressure's either pushing you forward so it goes somewhere to do something, or it's pushing you back and stopping you.

It's understanding these forces are there.

You, you've gotta choose a direction.

And there needs to be a willingness to be uncomfortable.

And I think this is when, if we cycle back to some of the things where I'm interested in me, like why do I do heavy strength training?

It's 'cause it's uncomfortable.

It's horrible, right?

You're trying to pick up your dead, your body weight and drag it across the floor.

It's really hard.

But being okay with that discomfort gives me a template to understand how to be uncomfortable in my business?

And that, I think, becomes a very strong metaphor that you can overlay certainly as a, as a leader or founders of a company.

Like I know how to handle physical discomfort, so can I handle psychological discomfort?

Of course I can.

But again, it comes just calling oneself out and saying, and I would say, if you listen, now ask.

It's not an easy question.

And it, there needs no judgment.

Am I playing to win or am I playing not to lose?

'Cause if you're in a sticky spot and you find you on, you're playing not to lose, then your best opportunities to find, how can I turn the pressure around?

So play to win.

Yeah, it's a really, really brilliant invitation.

And, and also, I guess I'm thinking about a conversation I had with somebody a couple of days ago, you know, he runs, you know, quite a bit of business.

It's like I, something like.

25 million euros worth of sales.

But he is had a real struggle to get where, where he is.

And, uh, he's also a professional sportsman, but was a professional sportsman, that was where it it came from.

So he has a huge will to win, right?

Uh, but it was interesting when he was sort of talking about some win, some of his sort of struggling states earlier where he was having to do things which made him really uncomfortable.

And, um, there was a lot of fear around those things.

And he was talking about, you know, like being in the car every morning and having to give himself a kind of pep talk.

And, but now things are kind of on a, like, he, you know, eludes to the kind of metaphor, like he's on a rocket.

So when things are going well, it's easy to think I'm playing to win, right?

But I think the kind of interesting thing is actually how to be in that mindset.

How to, how to create the creative confidence, essentially, to be able to play with that mindset when it's not like that, when the, when the momentum isn't behind me, when the flow isn't behind me, when people are not buying my shit, when people are not taking my calls, how I kind of turn up and play with that creative capability, that creative confidence in those states, essentially.

'cause that's where it's won or lost isn't it?

Yeah, absolutely.

'cause we can all, it's, we can all go fast downhill, right?

Can always go fast, downhill.

Ah, this is easy.

I love this.

I say, well, this, it's when you hit the uphill and potholes, like, oh, this is hard.

That's when you need strength.

If you're on a bike, you need physical.

If you're running, you need physical.

If you're in business, you need psychological, emotional, and physical strength to manage that, that hill, because it's coming.

I think one thing that leads me into the Eastern thinking is don't get caught up in either side.

That's another thing as well.

That's another sort of slightly more deeper level of thinking.

But don't get caught up in winning.

Don't overly identify it and don't overly identify with losing.

Be with the process.

'cause this being with, I learned this from the yoga arts, uh, I've learned it with weight training.

Like if you're being with something, there's no resistance.

And that, so if you're like, oh, I'm, I'm doing so well, I'm great, or Oh my God, I'm doing so badly, this is disaster, you, you're really with that, you know, highs and lows.

Whereas if you can almost smile at it, you're like, oh, this is kind of fun, we're going really well right now.

You know, if you've been around the block, you know, a challenging point's probably gonna come anyway, but being overly attached to it.

So, um, I think Jon Kabat-Zinn, the Buddhist teacher says, uh, a great saying, which is, it's far better to build your parachute before you jump out the plane.

So be ready, yeah?

Be psychologically ready for this.

Just 'cause you're on an up curve right now, you might be scaling like crazy.

What if it all goes to hell?

How are you gonna deal with it?

So the smart leader will be building a parachute, you know?

And I would say it's a psychological parachute, an emotional parachute, and a physical one too, to deal with what's coming and to be, in some ways playful with it.

Like, ah, this is a nice challenge.

I'm up for the scrap.

And that'll take a lot of stress away.

So bringing that all the way back then to kind of me sitting here today.

So the invitation, I guess, so your invitation of it is choose to walk, choose to move, choose to kind of reflect on the story.

What would be some of just those other kind of, sort of small little, if I was weaving new ingredients into the soup, like we, we, we kind of made reference to, or I was making reference to drifting off onto another metaphor.

What, what, what would be the kind of invitation to weave into my soup today?

The invitation is that you are the core of everything you do and everything you are.

Everything.

And if you, particularly if you're a leader of a business, then what's happening in you is happening in your business.

If you are healthy, you have energy.

If you have energy, so do you and your team and your thinking.

So you get, you're like a resonant harmony.

So whatever frequency you are sending out, that's the frequency people dial into.

Are you Classic FM or Rock FM, you know?

What frequency are you sending out?

Um, am I Scared FM, Stress FM?

Or am I um, Courageous FM, Curious FM, Entrepreneur FM?

You need to choose what you're sending out.

It starts in your body.

It starts with knowing yourself at a physical, emotional, psychological level, because that's the work.

And you do that, then you can use all that beautiful and mental architecture.

You've got all you experience and you can align it well.

If you are, as we've said, playing not to lose that life's got you.

So we get to choose.

I think that's one of the things I learned from the yoga arts is the consciousness is an ability to choose.

So my invitation to summarize is, what are you gonna choose?

it's, it's so important, isn't it?

It's, it's set up your mind, have a moment in the morning.

What am I gonna choose?

And it might look like, what, how am I gonna choose my actions today?

How am I gonna choose my, um, or activity, physical activity?

How am I gonna show up?

You know, the choice is ours.

Now of course it is as affected by many things, but conscious choice, we often just negate it.

We don't pay any attention.

It, and we're, you know, we're swept along by life.

And the consciousness is, I think, the start point.

It's like the center of everything.

Start there.

What will you choose?

Sal, thank you so much.

Where will people find you and your work?

You can find me on the magic of, uh, the classics, LinkedIn, Instagram, uh, obviously your website.

I'm on my own.

I run a podcast as well.

And I'm always interested in having a conversation with people like we speaking today, because the right person gets this and I'm not right for everyone.

Why would I be?

That's the silly notion.

But I'm right for some people and, and, and I know what I wanted when I was 40.

I needed what I have now.

So there's a lot of people who say, oh, I just need that kind of weave of stuff to help me both with my own experience of life, but also with my business.

Uh, and that's where I, I work, I work with founders and the human element of it and how that expresses in the business.

So it's a particular style of coaching and personal development work, um, which doesn't look at your, your spreadsheets.

But I do look at how your mind works, your emotional body and your physical, and I help you become very good in those spaces.

So that's what I do.

But thank you, uh, thank you everyone for listening.

I trust you gained some knowledge, uh, some gems.

And Ben, thank you so much for having me today.

Oh, so pleasure.

Thank you so much.

Thank you again for listening.

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