Redefining failure and men's mental health with Angus Collins

Welcome to episode 227 with Angus Collins, an endurance athlete and adventurer who has rowed across the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic Oceans, setting multiple records in the process.

He is the youngest man to row three oceans and is thought of as one of the world’s most successful rowers and he achieved all of this while battling his own mental health, taking on these incredible challenges to avoid facing up to himself.

His struggles with depression would eventually lead to a suicide attempt on his 30th birthday.

We talk about all of that in this episode, how we started rowing and how these incredible challenges became a way of avoiding his mental health, how he came to the edge of taking his own life, how he got help and what came next.

This year he set out on A Great British Odyssey, an attempt to become the first person to row solo and unsupported around mainland Great Britain.

A run of bad luck, unexpected challenges and equipment failure left Angus stranded and with Storm Floris brewing, and both the physical and mental weight of the challenge building up, he made the incomprehensible decision to call it off.

A journey that originally appeared to be one of physical endurance and mental toughness became an inspirational display of vulnerability and of asking for help when life just gets too much.

In this episode I chat to Angus about his passion for adventure and endurance and how rowing across oceans helped him to avoid getting help with his mental health.

And Angus takes me through his Great British Odyssey, everything that led to him calling it off and how that affected him mentally, both at the time and since getting back on dry land.

And we chat about men’s mental health in general, reframing failure, masculinity, real vulnerability and the true meaning of resilience.

I followed Angus’ journey around the British coastline on social media and I was absolutely blown away by the physical aspect but it was the way that he faced the end of the challenge that really moved me. 

There’s a lot of talk around men’s mental health but not much action and a lot of the words used, particularly around vulnerability, and asking for help, are thrown around as if this stuff is easy.

To see Angus completely going through it, and making the hardest but bravest of decisions, was nothing short of inspirational and it was wonderful to get the opportunity to chat about all of that with him.

Follow Angus @anguscollinsbe and learn more at www.beyondendurance.co.uk

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Thanks for listening!