June 8, 2025 • 26 mins
In this episode, Carly chats with Paul about his mindset in the lead up to open heart surgery. Paul talks about the difference between a challenge or a threat orientation when it comes to life's challenges and dives into how you can train the challenge muscle to develop your mental fitness.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hi everyone, Kelly Taylor here for this week's Mojo Monday.
So last week was part two of the Becoming Mentally
Fit series and we talked about mindset through the lens
of psychological flexibility, and this week is actually part two
A because I thought that mindset being such a huge
(00:30):
topic and having so many different theories and approaches out there,
I thought it was worth doing another mindset episode. So
if you have been listening to Mojo Monday right from
the start, you will know that Paul and I used
to do these together, so I thought it would be
great to get him back on as my guest on
(00:51):
Mojo Monday on the Paul Taylor Podcast to talk about mindset.
So welcome Paul Taylor.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
It's nice to be here.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Thank you for inviting me on after all this time.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
It has been a while, I know. And the reason
you stopped going It was supposed to be a temporary
thing is because you and knee deep in your PhD,
weren't you and writing a book, and so that's why
I kind of took over. And then yeah, you've just never.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Come back, that's right, other than a live back of
the truth been all listeners.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
But anyway, I am here for a guest appearance.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Yes, yeah, banjir PhD is submitted and the book is
nearly done, so yes, and that's really funny.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
The book is done.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
I am just doing the edits on it now, so
it's gone finished.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
The manuscript that went to the editor.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
They have done the lit lelots and I'm just approving
the last of the edits.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
So it's yeah, yeah, it's good.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Good get that ticked off.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
It is. Yeah, second book, that's that's an amazing achievement.
So let's talk about mindset. And I thought it would
be good to talk to you in the looking at
mindset when we have big challenges, and you went through
a challenge recently, well we all did, given i'm your wife.
It was a challenge for me as well that you
(02:10):
had open heart surgery, which is huge thing to go
through and a lot of uncertainty in the lead up
to it. So I thought maybe we could talk about
how you managed your mindset in the lead up to
that operation.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
Yeah, so it was really quite interesting when my cardiologist
told me that we'd done an assessment actually for maybe
just to take a step back for the people.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Who don't know. Most listeners would be familiar with it.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
But I played soccer with a cardiologist, and because I
was in the fifties, I said to him, he amio it.
I want to get a full check to see how
my heart's going. So he did all sorts of difference.
He did a stress test, he did a cardiac MRI,
he did a number of different things, but anyway, and
he talked about the rooms, the plumbing, and the electrics,
(03:01):
the rooms being the different chambers, the plumbing being your valves,
and the electrics being all your electrical activity and contractions
and all that sort of stuff. And it turns out
that he found out that I was born with a
dodgy valve, a die customd a ortic valve rather than
try cuspid.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
So he told me, as you know.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
That I needed to have open heart surgery or eventually
it would.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
I would get heart failure or it would kill me.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
And so but said that there was no rush.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
And I remember him saying and said, you know, go
and chat to your family, take your time, and I said, look,
I want to get it done soon because my view
on these things, probably with my ex military bent, is
that when you're going in for a contest or you're
going to war, you do it on your terms and
(03:55):
when you're strong and your opponent's weaker. And I knew
if I weighed, I was going to be older, and
my heart was going to be weaker, you know. And
some people were like, why are you doing it now
if you don't absolutely have to, But that's really why
I did it.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
But I remember walking out.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
Of the surgery and the words of Seneca just rang
in my head. The stoic philosopher I pitied the man
who has not faced adversity because he has not faced
an opponent, and nobody, not even him, knows what he
is capable of. And I actually thought that this is
(04:34):
my worthy opponent. And I went straight in to a
challenge orientation. And probably just because I've read so much stoicism.
I'm writing a book on hardiness. One of it is
around challenge orientation, and I've read a lot about this
whole idea of challenge and threat. So maybe i'll explain
(04:55):
that a little bit and explain my kind of mindset
because the research, and I was very familiar with this
is that if you view adversity as a threat, it
has a very different impact on your physiology and how
(05:16):
you deal with that. Then if you view it as
a challenge. So when you view something as a threat,
it basically eroade your motivation. And I think to take
a step back here, this has to be something that
you care about and that you're interested in, right, And
then we tend to quickly evaluate stuff when it comes
(05:39):
up and we decide in our brain subconsciously or consciously
whether that's a challenge or a threat. And if you
decide that it is a threat and start focusing on
the bad stuff that could happen, it actually activates cortisol,
the major stress hormone. If you view it as a challenge,
it activates the or flight nervous system fight flight freeze.
(06:02):
They're called the SAM axis. But the fight part the
engage part. Now that's important for two reasons. Number One,
when you view it as a challenge, then you have
motivation to actually lean into that challenge.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
It affects your.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
Motivation to do stuff. It affects your engagement level. But
it also affects your hormones, so it activates adrenaline and
nora adrenaline. Whereas when you view it as a threat,
you tend to have avoidance behaviors, right, So you either
procrastinate or you try and hide from that thing. You
try to avoid it, so it affects your motivation, it
(06:44):
affects whether or not you engage with this particular piece
of adversity, and then it drives cortisol. Now this is
important for people to understand because the challenge response adrenaline
and nora adrenaline, and the half life of those chemicals
is around one to two minutes, so that means one
(07:06):
or two minutes after that event, those chemicals have dropped
in half in your body. So after four or five
six minutes, your body is back to what we call homeostasis,
whereas if you're in a threat response, cortisol is released
and the half life of cortisol is an r to
two hours, so that means that ours later, there's still
(07:29):
significant amount of stress hormones running through your body, even
if you're not thinking about it right, which then has
knock on effects because it can then affect your sleep
that night, particularly if this is something that you've been
thinking about later in the evening, it's going to affect
your sleep, and then your sleep then effects your physiology
(07:51):
the next day and all sorts of knock on effects. Right,
So that's one thing, the physiology, but then it's about
your level of motivation, and you're in gagement with this thing,
and with that challenge orientation, that's when you get on
the front foot and you lean in and you're highly
motivated to deal with it, whereas with the threat, you're
not motivated at all. You tend to procrastit it, you
(08:13):
tend to avoid, you tend to height And.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
I know, I walked into the bathroom and you'd written
up on the bathroom mirror are worthy opponents. And this
is before you'd even had a conversation with me about
that Seneca saying, and so I was like, what the
hell is this? And then you explained it to me.
And then even in the process of leading up to
(08:37):
the operation, you were trying to get as fit as possible,
as strong as possible. You were meditating every night. And
so I guess that's where that challenge orientation comes in,
where you're motivated to you were motivated to be in
(08:58):
the best shape that you would be for the operation
and for the recovery afterwards.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
Absolutely, and that's why I wrote worthy opponent on my
bathroom Mrror.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
I'd actually remembered a conversation.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
That I'd had with the made of mine, reg who
was an ex Lieutenant colonel Special Forces to the Australian
military and he led the special forces into Iraq said
it was Kuwait in the first in the first golf War.
And I'd asked him one day we were having coffee
(09:32):
and I said, you know, how did you feel when you.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Were going to war?
Speaker 4 (09:37):
Because I was in the military but I never went
to war. And he said to me, he said it
was it was interesting. He said I obviously had a
bit of nerves going in, but he said the overwhelming
feeling was a perverse sense of excitement because this is
what we had trained for. And I actually thought, when
I was driving home, I'm going to borrow that attitude
(09:58):
because we get to choose how we respond. I mean,
you talk about this a lot. We do get to
choose our attitude. And I actually, as I was driving home, went,
this is what it's all been for all.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Of my training.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
I remember at university playing soccer, doing pre season training,
running up hill, doing hill sprints and running till I
threw up, and then getting up and running again.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
And I used to pride myself on that.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
And you know, my military training when me and a
bunch of unhinged meates who you know, quite a few
of them, used to get up in the morning and
do voluntary log runs up and down the hills, you know,
my combat survival training. I started to think, the everything
here has been to train me for my worthy opponent,
all my ice baths, the CrossFit stuff, and so I
(10:45):
decided I was going to embrace my open heart surgery
as a worthy opponent. And I actually got to choose
the arena and got to choose when it was going
to happen, and critically had some time to prepare myself
to be the best that I could possibly be. So
I actually viewed this as an opportunity to bring out the.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Best in myself.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
And actually I actually hit the fifty to fifty to
fifty challenge, which I'd been flirting around a little bit,
but because I really dug into my training, really cut
back on my alcohol, I hit that fifty to fifty
to fifty. I don't know if you have even told
you about this. So that's in your fifties to have
a VEO two max over fifty, to have your heart
rate variability over fifty, and to have your resting heart
(11:32):
rate below fifty and if you do that, you're in
pretty exceptional shape. And that actually got me over the line.
And as you know, on my bathroom murror, I wrote
my training program so that every morning I actually saw
this and Epictetus, you know, his words in my mind,
even though when I first knew it was it was
(11:54):
going to be probably six or eight months before it
was going to have the operation. Epicititus is the Olympi
Games are upon us. We do not have a day
to waste. So for me, it was like every day
is training day.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
And I just I love that and this is just
this is so, this is what mental fitness is about.
It's like we are training when the big challenges hit.
And even before you knew about your heart surgery, I mean,
this is laying those foundations of exercise, mindset, nutrition, slight connection,
(12:31):
all that stuff is laying that foundation so when life
does throw us those curve balls, we are better prepared
for them.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
Look, one of my favorite quotes, as you well know,
is from Apictitis, historic philosopher who said, we must all
undergo a hard winter training and not enter into lately
that for which we have not prepared and he was
talking about life.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
So you know, the storics knew that life.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
Is whole, so you need to train for it. Now,
this brings us back to the challenge orientation. So what's
critical in challenge orientation is that you can.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Only really, you know, fully be.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
In that challenge orientation if you believe that you have
the resources to deal with the threat.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Right. So this is really critical.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
And how do you know that you have the resources
because you've done stuff before that's hard, right. And this
is I think hugely important for parents to understand. I
think we're coddling our kids far too much. You know,
as you will know, my biggest issue whenever we had
(13:45):
kids was, you know, being brought up in Belfast in
the nineteen seventies in a mixed marriage, as a Catholic
living in a Protestant neighborhood was really reasonably resilience building.
And we're bringing our kids in a bubble within a
bubble within a bubble.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
All right, And I was like, how do you bring
up resilient kids? And that's where.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
I think we both agree.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
I think you've told my first suggestion, which was to
take them through a kiddie version of combat survival it
was just interrogation training.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
I think there are a few things I said no
to with our kids that are from a very young age.
I think he had them in stress positions at one point.
It was a very It was all supervising.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
It's okay, that was Oscar.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
He wanted to know what it was like when I
went through interrogation training, so I put him through a
little bit of it.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
It's just quite funny. Anyway. We probably shouldn't talk about it.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
No, we shouldn't.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
But but this, this is the thing, is to understand,
whether you're a leader, or you're a parent, or you're
a coach of of of kids doing sport or whatever,
is to give them challenge. Is that just stretched them
right that are within their capabilities or just outside of
(15:07):
their capabilities. They are a push they could then achieve
it because this is the stuff that builds what I
call the challenge muscle. Right, we have to deliberately work
on our challenge muscle so that we build our faith
in ourselves that we can actually confront or deal with stuff.
(15:27):
Whenever the big shit sandwich comes in and it's linked
to the stocktaal paradox, which you know, I'm a massive
fan of and when Oscar went through his Cushing's disease,
he had it on his bathroom mirror. You know, the
stocktail paradox is from Jim Stocktaal who spent seven and
a half years in the Hanoi hilt in prison camp.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Was brutally tortured I think.
Speaker 4 (15:49):
Eighteen times, spent four years in solitary confinement because they
were trying to break him. But he used actually Epictetus's
teachings to get him through. But the Stocktail paradox is
that you need to that you need to hold two
seemingly opposable things in your mind at the same time. Firstly,
you need to retain the faith that you will prevail
in the end, regardless of your circumstances. And at the
(16:12):
same time, you have to confront the most brutal aspects
of your reality, whatever.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
They might be.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
So as you know, I didn't bury my head in
the sand.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
You know, the second thing that I did after I
wrote my training program on my bathroom mirror is that
I went and researched the heart surgery because we talked
about the different options for me. So I researched the
options and then you know, we decided on something called
the Ross procedure where they take your pulmonary valve out
(16:42):
and they use it as the donor valve, and then
they get a separate donor and put that in your
palmary valve. And it's a bit more complicated, but a
lot better outcomes. So I wanted to know all the outcomes.
I wanted to know the death rates on the table
so that I was fully prepared, but not to dwell
on it. Just saw that I could then go into
(17:05):
action to mitigate that. Yeah, and that's part of the
stock deal paraduct. You can't just bury your hand in
the sound and go She'll be right. You've got to
actually look at what are all the risks here, what's
the chances of it happening, and how do I mitigate
for those risks.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Yeah, you also had momento Mauri in mind as well,
which is remember you can you will die, or remember
you can die because you you actually went over to
the UK to go and see your family and your friends,
And that would have been a hard decision to make
because it was based on that, well, if this happens,
(17:41):
then I want to go and see all my mates.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Yeah. Well I called it mate, just in Case visit.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
That's I'm sure I love that.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
Oh my minutes thought it was hilarious, but it was
it was a you know what, I actually thought about it,
and I thought, I knew the chances were pretty slimy, right,
yeah it's less.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Than one percent, but it was just in case.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
Yeah it's less than one percent, And I thought, well,
I actually back myself because it's one percent.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
Of all people going through that surgery.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
I mean, they're so freaking good at it now.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
And I thought, well, look, I'm pretty fit, I'm pretty
healthy compared to the average person with open heart surgery,
just because I was born with it. And then I thought,
well I can. I can improve my odds by getting
myself in.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
The best shit possible.
Speaker 4 (18:30):
But there's still a slight chance. And so what would
I regret if just In kis right? And so that's
why I went and had my just In Kis visit
in the UK.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
So what would you say to those people who they
might look at you and kind of go, well, yeah,
you've got this history of being in the military, You've
gone through some pretty challenging comeback survival, you know, living
in Belfast, and you know you've had a few hardships
there what about a people who may not necessarily have
(19:07):
a challenge orientation now it's more around threat, but they
want to change, It's like how would they go about that?
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (19:16):
Well, look, look, I think the first thing is to
create your best self or you know the concept of
the seeds that we talk about, so actually to write
down the character traits that you know that you have
when you're at your down best. And the best way
to do that is think about your biggest achievements in
your life, write them down, and then write down what
(19:38):
character traits did you have to exhibit to get through
that stuff. So the more you reflect on having gone
through difficulties and then and then you create this best
version of you. So my best version is called JEV.
As you know, J for Jim Stock, deal E for Epictetus,
(19:58):
V for Victor Frankel. And often I asked myself, and
that was actually the first question I asked myself on
the way home, was what would JEV do? You know
he would he would see this as a worthy opponent.
He would lean into it, right, And then it's it's
about building your capability to deal with stress. So you know,
(20:19):
this is things like doing exercise that makes you uncomfortable
because you're actually going I'm actually doing this to build
my challenge muscle, to build my capability to deal with
the inevitable shit sandwich that's.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
That's around the corner.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
You know, three three things you can guarantee death taxes
and shit sandwiches from the universe. So it's about building
that through hard exercise, coal shars, ice baths, psychologically doing
stuff that makes you uncomfortable. I think you know one
of your clients you talked about that she went into
public speaking because she was shit scared of public speaking,
(20:57):
so she went and actually joined groups and and did that,
which I thought was just absolutely brilliant. You know, you've
got to do stuff that gets you out of your
comfort zone.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
That's key.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
And I think the words of Stan Beacham, who's been
on my podcast a couple of times, and I love this.
He says, every nine and men, So this isn't a daily,
weekly thing, but every nine and Anne, you need to
walk right to the edge of yourself and you need
to stir into the abyss and work out what the
(21:32):
abyss tells you, and then you walk back and you
take it on board. And every nine and then you
learn the lessons in every nine and then you walk
back to the edge and you find that over time
you have to walk further to get to the edge.
I think everybody understands what that means, but it is
it's this hard winter training.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
That the Stoic's talked about.
Speaker 4 (21:54):
So if you're somebody who is easily stressed, you know,
it's a combination of in in the moment when you're stressed,
doing your breathing, you know, getting control of your physiology,
and then shifting it into a challenge orientation like what
would your best self do or what would somebody who
you admire do, Because we can choose how we respond,
(22:17):
we can choose how we react to our circumstances. But
I think it's that combination of the thinking about it,
the visualization, the reframing stuff as challenges, but also then
training yourself so you get that heartiness edge over time
that you're doing hard stuff that's physically and psychologically hard,
(22:38):
so you build that challenge muscle, so you then eat
it's easier for you to slip into the challenge orientation.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Yeah. Yeah, And I think that's great, and I think
that's that's something that I have done personally, because as
you know, like you know, public speaking is when I
first started doing talks, I was a wreck, a wreck,
but I was Yeah, you probably could describe it as that.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
I mean it.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
Certainly having that feeling made me. It motivated me to
work harder and be prepared. Sometimes that can be a
bit of a perfectionist tendency is to over prepare. But
it certainly motivated me. But I know the more that
I do talks now and go through that, the easier
it has become. And that's not to say that I
(23:29):
don't still get nervous, but I approach the nerves as
a positive thing because I need them to prepare, I
need them to motivate me, So they're not something that
I shy away from now. So I think that acceptance
as well. It is like this is my body preparing me. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:46):
Absolutely, And you've built your challenge mussel all the time,
Like you could have from that first talk when it
was highly stressed. You could have just gone, I'm not
going to do it, and you could have walked away.
And how different would it be if you had have
done that? Right, And there's a lot of people who
do do that. But if they can just find that
(24:07):
ten seconds of courage to actually lean in and go right,
I'm doing it, and then they get that little bit
of fierce as long as they don't completely and utterly
fuck it up and make it an abomination, because that
will then weaken your challenge muscle.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
And this is the point that if.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
You're a teacher a culture parent, is not to throw
people in the deep end too much, to do something
that completely overwhelms them, because that can then send them
into that threat response.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yeah, well that then goes into a skill, doesn't it.
So you have to be realistic about what you are
about to do and do you have the resources and
the skill. Have you done the work to actually do it?
Speaker 3 (24:52):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
And that's the other thing that plays into challenge orientation is.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Knowing that you've done the work.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
You know, most athletes, and I work with quite a
lot of karate athletes, a lead athletes, the biggest.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
Thing that athletes want is confidence.
Speaker 4 (25:10):
And any sports or any sports psych worth their salt
will tell you the best way to build confidence is competence,
is to do the work, to know that you've done
the work, and to actually have that progressive overload where
you stretch yourself, right, So if you've never lifted weeds before,
you don't go in and try and do two hundred
(25:31):
kilo deadlift. You start little, and then you progressively overload
the system as you go.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Yeah. I love that competence, and you also need courage.
I think it's like I'm looking at that equation courage
plus competence equals confidence.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Yeah, yes, yes, yes, yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
All right, well, I think that's been really useful. Thank
you for coming on right Jo on Monday for this week.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Absolute pleasure.
Speaker 4 (25:59):
Hopefully I get back on at some stage within the
next couple of years.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
We'll say all right, well, thanks everyone for listening. I
hope you've got value out of that, and I'll catch
you next week.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
So yeah bye,
Hi everyone, Kelly Taylor here for this week's Mojo Monday.
So last week was part two of the Becoming Mentally
Fit series and we talked about mindset through the lens
of psychological flexibility, and this week is actually part two
A because I thought that mindset being such a huge
(00:30):
topic and having so many different theories and approaches out there,
I thought it was worth doing another mindset episode. So
if you have been listening to Mojo Monday right from
the start, you will know that Paul and I used
to do these together, so I thought it would be
great to get him back on as my guest on
(00:51):
Mojo Monday on the Paul Taylor Podcast to talk about mindset.
So welcome Paul Taylor.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
It's nice to be here.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Thank you for inviting me on after all this time.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
It has been a while, I know. And the reason
you stopped going It was supposed to be a temporary
thing is because you and knee deep in your PhD,
weren't you and writing a book, and so that's why
I kind of took over. And then yeah, you've just never.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Come back, that's right, other than a live back of
the truth been all listeners.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
But anyway, I am here for a guest appearance.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Yes, yeah, banjir PhD is submitted and the book is
nearly done, so yes, and that's really funny.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
The book is done.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
I am just doing the edits on it now, so
it's gone finished.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
The manuscript that went to the editor.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
They have done the lit lelots and I'm just approving
the last of the edits.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
So it's yeah, yeah, it's good.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
Good get that ticked off.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
It is. Yeah, second book, that's that's an amazing achievement.
So let's talk about mindset. And I thought it would
be good to talk to you in the looking at
mindset when we have big challenges, and you went through
a challenge recently, well we all did, given i'm your wife.
It was a challenge for me as well that you
(02:10):
had open heart surgery, which is huge thing to go
through and a lot of uncertainty in the lead up
to it. So I thought maybe we could talk about
how you managed your mindset in the lead up to
that operation.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
Yeah, so it was really quite interesting when my cardiologist
told me that we'd done an assessment actually for maybe
just to take a step back for the people.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Who don't know. Most listeners would be familiar with it.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
But I played soccer with a cardiologist, and because I
was in the fifties, I said to him, he amio it.
I want to get a full check to see how
my heart's going. So he did all sorts of difference.
He did a stress test, he did a cardiac MRI,
he did a number of different things, but anyway, and
he talked about the rooms, the plumbing, and the electrics,
(03:01):
the rooms being the different chambers, the plumbing being your valves,
and the electrics being all your electrical activity and contractions
and all that sort of stuff. And it turns out
that he found out that I was born with a
dodgy valve, a die customd a ortic valve rather than
try cuspid.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
So he told me, as you know.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
That I needed to have open heart surgery or eventually
it would.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
I would get heart failure or it would kill me.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
And so but said that there was no rush.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
And I remember him saying and said, you know, go
and chat to your family, take your time, and I said, look,
I want to get it done soon because my view
on these things, probably with my ex military bent, is
that when you're going in for a contest or you're
going to war, you do it on your terms and
(03:55):
when you're strong and your opponent's weaker. And I knew
if I weighed, I was going to be older, and
my heart was going to be weaker, you know. And
some people were like, why are you doing it now
if you don't absolutely have to, But that's really why
I did it.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
But I remember walking out.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
Of the surgery and the words of Seneca just rang
in my head. The stoic philosopher I pitied the man
who has not faced adversity because he has not faced
an opponent, and nobody, not even him, knows what he
is capable of. And I actually thought that this is
(04:34):
my worthy opponent. And I went straight in to a
challenge orientation. And probably just because I've read so much stoicism.
I'm writing a book on hardiness. One of it is
around challenge orientation, and I've read a lot about this
whole idea of challenge and threat. So maybe i'll explain
(04:55):
that a little bit and explain my kind of mindset
because the research, and I was very familiar with this
is that if you view adversity as a threat, it
has a very different impact on your physiology and how
(05:16):
you deal with that. Then if you view it as
a challenge. So when you view something as a threat,
it basically eroade your motivation. And I think to take
a step back here, this has to be something that
you care about and that you're interested in, right, And
then we tend to quickly evaluate stuff when it comes
(05:39):
up and we decide in our brain subconsciously or consciously
whether that's a challenge or a threat. And if you
decide that it is a threat and start focusing on
the bad stuff that could happen, it actually activates cortisol,
the major stress hormone. If you view it as a challenge,
it activates the or flight nervous system fight flight freeze.
(06:02):
They're called the SAM axis. But the fight part the
engage part. Now that's important for two reasons. Number One,
when you view it as a challenge, then you have
motivation to actually lean into that challenge.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
It affects your.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
Motivation to do stuff. It affects your engagement level. But
it also affects your hormones, so it activates adrenaline and
nora adrenaline. Whereas when you view it as a threat,
you tend to have avoidance behaviors, right, So you either
procrastinate or you try and hide from that thing. You
try to avoid it, so it affects your motivation, it
(06:44):
affects whether or not you engage with this particular piece
of adversity, and then it drives cortisol. Now this is
important for people to understand because the challenge response adrenaline
and nora adrenaline, and the half life of those chemicals
is around one to two minutes, so that means one
(07:06):
or two minutes after that event, those chemicals have dropped
in half in your body. So after four or five
six minutes, your body is back to what we call homeostasis,
whereas if you're in a threat response, cortisol is released
and the half life of cortisol is an r to
two hours, so that means that ours later, there's still
(07:29):
significant amount of stress hormones running through your body, even
if you're not thinking about it right, which then has
knock on effects because it can then affect your sleep
that night, particularly if this is something that you've been
thinking about later in the evening, it's going to affect
your sleep, and then your sleep then effects your physiology
(07:51):
the next day and all sorts of knock on effects. Right,
So that's one thing, the physiology, but then it's about
your level of motivation, and you're in gagement with this thing,
and with that challenge orientation, that's when you get on
the front foot and you lean in and you're highly
motivated to deal with it, whereas with the threat, you're
not motivated at all. You tend to procrastit it, you
(08:13):
tend to avoid, you tend to height And.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
I know, I walked into the bathroom and you'd written
up on the bathroom mirror are worthy opponents. And this
is before you'd even had a conversation with me about
that Seneca saying, and so I was like, what the
hell is this? And then you explained it to me.
And then even in the process of leading up to
(08:37):
the operation, you were trying to get as fit as possible,
as strong as possible. You were meditating every night. And
so I guess that's where that challenge orientation comes in,
where you're motivated to you were motivated to be in
(08:58):
the best shape that you would be for the operation
and for the recovery afterwards.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
Absolutely, and that's why I wrote worthy opponent on my
bathroom Mrror.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
I'd actually remembered a conversation.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
That I'd had with the made of mine, reg who
was an ex Lieutenant colonel Special Forces to the Australian
military and he led the special forces into Iraq said
it was Kuwait in the first in the first golf War.
And I'd asked him one day we were having coffee
(09:32):
and I said, you know, how did you feel when you.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
Were going to war?
Speaker 4 (09:37):
Because I was in the military but I never went
to war. And he said to me, he said it
was it was interesting. He said I obviously had a
bit of nerves going in, but he said the overwhelming
feeling was a perverse sense of excitement because this is
what we had trained for. And I actually thought, when
I was driving home, I'm going to borrow that attitude
(09:58):
because we get to choose how we respond. I mean,
you talk about this a lot. We do get to
choose our attitude. And I actually, as I was driving home, went,
this is what it's all been for all.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Of my training.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
I remember at university playing soccer, doing pre season training,
running up hill, doing hill sprints and running till I
threw up, and then getting up and running again.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
And I used to pride myself on that.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
And you know, my military training when me and a
bunch of unhinged meates who you know, quite a few
of them, used to get up in the morning and
do voluntary log runs up and down the hills, you know,
my combat survival training. I started to think, the everything
here has been to train me for my worthy opponent,
all my ice baths, the CrossFit stuff, and so I
(10:45):
decided I was going to embrace my open heart surgery
as a worthy opponent. And I actually got to choose
the arena and got to choose when it was going
to happen, and critically had some time to prepare myself
to be the best that I could possibly be. So
I actually viewed this as an opportunity to bring out the.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Best in myself.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
And actually I actually hit the fifty to fifty to
fifty challenge, which I'd been flirting around a little bit,
but because I really dug into my training, really cut
back on my alcohol, I hit that fifty to fifty
to fifty. I don't know if you have even told
you about this. So that's in your fifties to have
a VEO two max over fifty, to have your heart
rate variability over fifty, and to have your resting heart
(11:32):
rate below fifty and if you do that, you're in
pretty exceptional shape. And that actually got me over the line.
And as you know, on my bathroom murror, I wrote
my training program so that every morning I actually saw
this and Epictetus, you know, his words in my mind,
even though when I first knew it was it was
(11:54):
going to be probably six or eight months before it
was going to have the operation. Epicititus is the Olympi
Games are upon us. We do not have a day
to waste. So for me, it was like every day
is training day.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
And I just I love that and this is just
this is so, this is what mental fitness is about.
It's like we are training when the big challenges hit.
And even before you knew about your heart surgery, I mean,
this is laying those foundations of exercise, mindset, nutrition, slight connection,
(12:31):
all that stuff is laying that foundation so when life
does throw us those curve balls, we are better prepared
for them.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
Look, one of my favorite quotes, as you well know,
is from Apictitis, historic philosopher who said, we must all
undergo a hard winter training and not enter into lately
that for which we have not prepared and he was
talking about life.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
So you know, the storics knew that life.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
Is whole, so you need to train for it. Now,
this brings us back to the challenge orientation. So what's
critical in challenge orientation is that you can.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Only really, you know, fully be.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
In that challenge orientation if you believe that you have
the resources to deal with the threat.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Right. So this is really critical.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
And how do you know that you have the resources
because you've done stuff before that's hard, right. And this
is I think hugely important for parents to understand. I
think we're coddling our kids far too much. You know,
as you will know, my biggest issue whenever we had
(13:45):
kids was, you know, being brought up in Belfast in
the nineteen seventies in a mixed marriage, as a Catholic
living in a Protestant neighborhood was really reasonably resilience building.
And we're bringing our kids in a bubble within a
bubble within a bubble.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
All right, And I was like, how do you bring
up resilient kids? And that's where.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
I think we both agree.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
I think you've told my first suggestion, which was to
take them through a kiddie version of combat survival it
was just interrogation training.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
I think there are a few things I said no
to with our kids that are from a very young age.
I think he had them in stress positions at one point.
It was a very It was all supervising.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
It's okay, that was Oscar.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
He wanted to know what it was like when I
went through interrogation training, so I put him through a
little bit of it.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
It's just quite funny. Anyway. We probably shouldn't talk about it.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
No, we shouldn't.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
But but this, this is the thing, is to understand,
whether you're a leader, or you're a parent, or you're
a coach of of of kids doing sport or whatever,
is to give them challenge. Is that just stretched them
right that are within their capabilities or just outside of
(15:07):
their capabilities. They are a push they could then achieve
it because this is the stuff that builds what I
call the challenge muscle. Right, we have to deliberately work
on our challenge muscle so that we build our faith
in ourselves that we can actually confront or deal with stuff.
(15:27):
Whenever the big shit sandwich comes in and it's linked
to the stocktaal paradox, which you know, I'm a massive
fan of and when Oscar went through his Cushing's disease,
he had it on his bathroom mirror. You know, the
stocktail paradox is from Jim Stocktaal who spent seven and
a half years in the Hanoi hilt in prison camp.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Was brutally tortured I think.
Speaker 4 (15:49):
Eighteen times, spent four years in solitary confinement because they
were trying to break him. But he used actually Epictetus's
teachings to get him through. But the Stocktail paradox is
that you need to that you need to hold two
seemingly opposable things in your mind at the same time. Firstly,
you need to retain the faith that you will prevail
in the end, regardless of your circumstances. And at the
(16:12):
same time, you have to confront the most brutal aspects
of your reality, whatever.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
They might be.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
So as you know, I didn't bury my head in
the sand.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
You know, the second thing that I did after I
wrote my training program on my bathroom mirror is that
I went and researched the heart surgery because we talked
about the different options for me. So I researched the
options and then you know, we decided on something called
the Ross procedure where they take your pulmonary valve out
(16:42):
and they use it as the donor valve, and then
they get a separate donor and put that in your
palmary valve. And it's a bit more complicated, but a
lot better outcomes. So I wanted to know all the outcomes.
I wanted to know the death rates on the table
so that I was fully prepared, but not to dwell
on it. Just saw that I could then go into
(17:05):
action to mitigate that. Yeah, and that's part of the
stock deal paraduct. You can't just bury your hand in
the sound and go She'll be right. You've got to
actually look at what are all the risks here, what's
the chances of it happening, and how do I mitigate
for those risks.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Yeah, you also had momento Mauri in mind as well,
which is remember you can you will die, or remember
you can die because you you actually went over to
the UK to go and see your family and your friends,
And that would have been a hard decision to make
because it was based on that, well, if this happens,
(17:41):
then I want to go and see all my mates.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Yeah. Well I called it mate, just in Case visit.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
That's I'm sure I love that.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
Oh my minutes thought it was hilarious, but it was
it was a you know what, I actually thought about it,
and I thought, I knew the chances were pretty slimy, right,
yeah it's less.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Than one percent, but it was just in case.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
Yeah it's less than one percent, And I thought, well,
I actually back myself because it's one percent.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
Of all people going through that surgery.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
I mean, they're so freaking good at it now.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
And I thought, well, look, I'm pretty fit, I'm pretty
healthy compared to the average person with open heart surgery,
just because I was born with it. And then I thought,
well I can. I can improve my odds by getting
myself in.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
The best shit possible.
Speaker 4 (18:30):
But there's still a slight chance. And so what would
I regret if just In kis right? And so that's
why I went and had my just In Kis visit
in the UK.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
So what would you say to those people who they
might look at you and kind of go, well, yeah,
you've got this history of being in the military, You've
gone through some pretty challenging comeback survival, you know, living
in Belfast, and you know you've had a few hardships
there what about a people who may not necessarily have
(19:07):
a challenge orientation now it's more around threat, but they
want to change, It's like how would they go about that?
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (19:16):
Well, look, look, I think the first thing is to
create your best self or you know the concept of
the seeds that we talk about, so actually to write
down the character traits that you know that you have
when you're at your down best. And the best way
to do that is think about your biggest achievements in
your life, write them down, and then write down what
(19:38):
character traits did you have to exhibit to get through
that stuff. So the more you reflect on having gone
through difficulties and then and then you create this best
version of you. So my best version is called JEV.
As you know, J for Jim Stock, deal E for Epictetus,
(19:58):
V for Victor Frankel. And often I asked myself, and
that was actually the first question I asked myself on
the way home, was what would JEV do? You know
he would he would see this as a worthy opponent.
He would lean into it, right, And then it's it's
about building your capability to deal with stress. So you know,
(20:19):
this is things like doing exercise that makes you uncomfortable
because you're actually going I'm actually doing this to build
my challenge muscle, to build my capability to deal with
the inevitable shit sandwich that's.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
That's around the corner.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
You know, three three things you can guarantee death taxes
and shit sandwiches from the universe. So it's about building
that through hard exercise, coal shars, ice baths, psychologically doing
stuff that makes you uncomfortable. I think you know one
of your clients you talked about that she went into
public speaking because she was shit scared of public speaking,
(20:57):
so she went and actually joined groups and and did that,
which I thought was just absolutely brilliant. You know, you've
got to do stuff that gets you out of your
comfort zone.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
That's key.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
And I think the words of Stan Beacham, who's been
on my podcast a couple of times, and I love this.
He says, every nine and men, So this isn't a daily,
weekly thing, but every nine and Anne, you need to
walk right to the edge of yourself and you need
to stir into the abyss and work out what the
(21:32):
abyss tells you, and then you walk back and you
take it on board. And every nine and then you
learn the lessons in every nine and then you walk
back to the edge and you find that over time
you have to walk further to get to the edge.
I think everybody understands what that means, but it is
it's this hard winter training.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
That the Stoic's talked about.
Speaker 4 (21:54):
So if you're somebody who is easily stressed, you know,
it's a combination of in in the moment when you're stressed,
doing your breathing, you know, getting control of your physiology,
and then shifting it into a challenge orientation like what
would your best self do or what would somebody who
you admire do, Because we can choose how we respond,
(22:17):
we can choose how we react to our circumstances. But
I think it's that combination of the thinking about it,
the visualization, the reframing stuff as challenges, but also then
training yourself so you get that heartiness edge over time
that you're doing hard stuff that's physically and psychologically hard,
(22:38):
so you build that challenge muscle, so you then eat
it's easier for you to slip into the challenge orientation.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Yeah. Yeah, And I think that's great, and I think
that's that's something that I have done personally, because as
you know, like you know, public speaking is when I
first started doing talks, I was a wreck, a wreck,
but I was Yeah, you probably could describe it as that.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
I mean it.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
Certainly having that feeling made me. It motivated me to
work harder and be prepared. Sometimes that can be a
bit of a perfectionist tendency is to over prepare. But
it certainly motivated me. But I know the more that
I do talks now and go through that, the easier
it has become. And that's not to say that I
(23:29):
don't still get nervous, but I approach the nerves as
a positive thing because I need them to prepare, I
need them to motivate me, So they're not something that
I shy away from now. So I think that acceptance
as well. It is like this is my body preparing me. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:46):
Absolutely, And you've built your challenge mussel all the time,
Like you could have from that first talk when it
was highly stressed. You could have just gone, I'm not
going to do it, and you could have walked away.
And how different would it be if you had have
done that? Right, And there's a lot of people who
do do that. But if they can just find that
(24:07):
ten seconds of courage to actually lean in and go right,
I'm doing it, and then they get that little bit
of fierce as long as they don't completely and utterly
fuck it up and make it an abomination, because that
will then weaken your challenge muscle.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
And this is the point that if.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
You're a teacher a culture parent, is not to throw
people in the deep end too much, to do something
that completely overwhelms them, because that can then send them
into that threat response.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yeah, well that then goes into a skill, doesn't it.
So you have to be realistic about what you are
about to do and do you have the resources and
the skill. Have you done the work to actually do it?
Speaker 3 (24:52):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
And that's the other thing that plays into challenge orientation is.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Knowing that you've done the work.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
You know, most athletes, and I work with quite a
lot of karate athletes, a lead athletes, the biggest.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
Thing that athletes want is confidence.
Speaker 4 (25:10):
And any sports or any sports psych worth their salt
will tell you the best way to build confidence is competence,
is to do the work, to know that you've done
the work, and to actually have that progressive overload where
you stretch yourself, right, So if you've never lifted weeds before,
you don't go in and try and do two hundred
(25:31):
kilo deadlift. You start little, and then you progressively overload
the system as you go.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Yeah. I love that competence, and you also need courage.
I think it's like I'm looking at that equation courage
plus competence equals confidence.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Yeah, yes, yes, yes, yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
All right, well, I think that's been really useful. Thank
you for coming on right Jo on Monday for this week.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Absolute pleasure.
Speaker 4 (25:59):
Hopefully I get back on at some stage within the
next couple of years.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
We'll say all right, well, thanks everyone for listening. I
hope you've got value out of that, and I'll catch
you next week.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
So yeah bye,
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