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#88: Kyran O’Neill: Understanding mental performance: resilience, pushing limits, and overcoming obstacles
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In this episode, I sit down with Kyran O’Neill, founder of Total Mental Performance, to discuss the world of mental performance coaching and overcoming life’s toughest challenges.
Kyran shares his journey through boxing, sales, and coaching, offering insights into the power of resilience, managing emotions, and overcoming feelings of inadequacy and stress.
We also tackle the societal pressures many of us face, the impact of alcohol on potential, and why health is more than just physical - it’s about personal fulfillment and giving back.
Key questions discussed in this episode:
- How does Kyran’s background in boxing, sales, and coaching shape his approach to mental performance?
- What is the "Psychological Ferrari," and how can we harness it for mental clarity?
- Why is resilience more important than fearlessness when overcoming adversity?
- How do you manage stress and find balance amidst life’s pressures?
- What are the hidden challenges of balancing career and parenthood, especially for mothers?
- How can journaling and self-coaching tools accelerate personal growth and success?
- What role does alcohol play in limiting human potential, and how can we break free?
- How does Kyran define true health and mental performance in today’s world?
Links & Resources:
- Connect with Kyran O’Neill at his website
- Connect with Kyran O'Neill at Total Mental Performance
- Journaling for High Performers ebook - coming soon!
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with friends who might benefit. For more health tips and updates, follow me on Instagram and TikTok @katehamiltonhealth.
Music by LiQWYD Free download: hypeddit.com/link/xxtopb [http://hypeddit.com/link/xxtopb] Promoted by FreeMusicPromo [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbycji-eySnM3WD8mbxPUSQ] / @freemusicpromo
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Kate Hamilton health podcast. So you guys are in for such a treat today. Today's guest is kian o'neill Kieran'Neill. Kieran O'Neill is the most fascinating human being that I have come across in a long time. His outlook on life is absolutely fantastic. His experience and how he's overcome his different obstacles to better himself and not only better himself, but help others become the best versions of themselves. He is an absolute.
00:00:46
Speaker
inspiration and you are going to love this conversation.
Kieran's Personal Journey
00:00:49
Speaker
Kieran is an NLP practitioner, performance coach and cognitive hypnotherapist. He is the founder of Total Mental Performance or TMP, which is a mindset management service focused on helping fitness entrepreneurs, coaches and high achievers optimize their mental performance. But don't worry, you don't need to be quote unquote, a fitness entrepreneur, a coach or a high achiever to listen and and get value from this conversation. There is absolutely so much value for absolutely every human being listening to this conversation. He tells his story from his experience of being a boxer, working in corporate sales in a highly and competitive environment to the buildup of a lot of different situations and events which led him to developing an eating disorder, ending up in such a bad situation where he had suicide ideation and really picking himself up from rock bottom
00:01:44
Speaker
and rebuilding himself and his story is absolutely inspiring.
Themes: Fear, Stress, and Alcohol
00:01:50
Speaker
We also talk about fear. We talk about pushing past emotions like fear and other emotions and doing things anyway and how we can get to that. We talk about stress, good stress, bad stress and we talk about stepping out of our comfort zones and how that's needed for change. We talk a lot about alcohol as well and how that might be the one thing holding you back from becoming your best self. I really hope Sorry, I really know that you will enjoy this conversation as much, if not more than I have. And I really hope you get so much value from it. Enjoy the episode.
00:02:27
Speaker
Here and welcome to the podcast. Hey, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited just to share your amazing perspective on things with my listeners. Do you want to just share a little bit about who you are and what it is that you do?
00:02:39
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm Kieran, I'm a mental performance consultant, so I wear many hats. So I have a company called Total Mental Performance, and that works with coaches and business owners to minimize overwhelm, master their emotions, and ultimately become more productive and get more work done. I lead that, we have a team of coaches in there. We've worked with over 300 clients in the last four years.
00:02:59
Speaker
Outside of that, I coach high net worths, business owners, entrepreneurs, investors in this space as well. that And I'm a public speaker, so I speak around the world on topics of performance, mental performance and productivity. And outside of that, I'm an ADHD. I'm a huge Arsenal fan and a huge boxing fan. Yeah, I'd say that's me.
00:03:19
Speaker
you in a nutshell, but I suppose what exactly then is the practices that you do with, even if we say like the TMP clients, what is the psychology practice that you're using with your clients?
00:03:30
Speaker
Yeah, so it's my fundamental belief that every ambitious mind is a little bit like a Ferrari. And Ferraris are amazing. When they're managed properly, they're one of the fastest cars on the road. But when they're not managed properly, they spin out, they break down, they're really expensive to repair. And it's always like this balancing act of how you maintain a car like that. And essentially what I do is I help our clients learn how to drive the psychological Ferrari.
00:03:58
Speaker
So spinning out might be overwhelmed. It might be fear, doubt, anxiousness, stress, overworking, burning out. And it's simply you just don't know how to drive your own psychological Ferrari. So with that, we use a number of different tools and techniques across many different disciplines. So My background, I spent eight years as an international boxer, training full-time, had a team of sponsors. And that's where I first started working with Hazel Gale, former kickboxing world champion, British boxing champion, and a world-class therapist and mentor performance coach. She really opened my mind to what's possible with working on the mind. I spent six years in software sales, so selling software across Europe and into the States. And software sales is highly competitive, and it's all a psychology game. It's an understanding game.
00:04:43
Speaker
so There came a point where I realized I wasn't enjoying closing deals anymore, but I was really enjoying helping the juniors and coaching and leading them. So I took a year off. I had enough money to not have to work. I restudied as a therapist, a cognitive therapist, and NLP practitioner. And I took everything I learned from corporate sales and highly competitive environments there, everything I learned as a fighter. And then along with all of my training in therapy and hypotherapy,
00:05:08
Speaker
And that's really kind of what I built. So traditional therapy focuses mainly on the past. Life coaching mainly focuses on the future. Performance coaching mainly focuses on the present. But I believe that you can't improve the present without working on, I don't know, the ghosts of the past that are holding you back. um But at the same time, you also can't just focus on the past and the present, but you've got to have a future that's worth working towards. So really using all of my disciplines across those areas, that's how I've found what I call mental performance coaching and mental performance consulting. And it's so unique to have experience from a sporting background, a sales background, and then into the psychology side of things. And merging them is absolutely like magic. Well, they're all the same thing, Kate. Fighting is just psychology.
00:05:55
Speaker
How do you deal with your own emotions? How do you understand your opponent? How do you navigate and adapt to adversity? How do you get into flow state and how do you concentrate? Sales is just coaching. It's just asking lots of questions to understand whether you can help someone or not. And if you can, offering them a solution. And then if you can't, then moving on. So often they sound so different. but Both of those disciplines are exactly the same. If you think about the coaching questions you ask your clients, often it's the same that you'd ask a new client. It's just understanding their psychology. Can you help? Can you not help? And if you can't help, what insights can you help the client get to to help them get there? So whilst they sound all very different, they're actually all the same. And all I was doing was an each iteration was just building on what I'd already built. So the transition into coaching consultant was actually
00:06:49
Speaker
really easy because I'd already built the fundamental skills required in the previous two iterations of, of Karen, so to speak.
Childhood Struggles and Mentorship
00:06:57
Speaker
And you had lived it as well, hadn't you? I suppose to kind of dive a little bit into your story, you have quite an interesting story that's led you to here as well, haven't you?
00:07:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's not been an easy story. Where do I start? So as a kid, I always felt trapped. I've been really loving parents. My mum and my dad were really caring, but I had undiagnosed ADHD. So as a result, I used to get told off a lot. And I never used to understand why. And I had a lot of pressure in my body. I always felt trapped. And I always felt like I couldn't be me or do the things that I wanted to do.
00:07:26
Speaker
So that led to my highest value, which is freedom. If I hadn't have felt so trapped as a kid, I wouldn't have valued freedom so much. So not feeling good enough as a kid, various different childhood experience that led to that. I think kids make a decision. They say, yeah, you're right. And they don't try. Or they go, actually, I'm going to prove you wrong. And that's what I did. So the boxing was me trying to make myself feel enough and show everyone I was enough through fighting. And you think about boys and men.
00:07:52
Speaker
right? What's the societal expectations of boys and men? They can fight, they can make money, and they have a six pack. So if you look at boxing and and sales, I took that really literally, to be honest. And then through the boxing, you know, I ended up with an eating disorder, I ended up anxiety, I had suicidal ideation and was thinking about taking my own life and one night I was ah i was really close to that and and a business at the time failed as well so I'd lost my place on the England boxing program, I'd lost my place in the business I was building, I was £15,000 in debt and I had to start from scratch.
00:08:24
Speaker
So that certainly wasn't easy. And then in software sales, again, that that wasn't easy either. It's highly competitive, you know not only just in the market with all the different solutions, but it's competitive with everyone in your own company. That's particularly difficult too. So in there, I always felt like I was competing internally and externally and was trying to validate myself through my achievements and through what I could sell.
00:08:47
Speaker
And then I landed at a data analytics platform company. And for the first time ever, sales was always the thing I was always successful at. Even when I was 17, I had a sales job and managed to sell, you know, over half a million dollars of software in my first year. But it was the first time I went, Oh my God, like this isn't working. And.
00:09:06
Speaker
I started to realize maybe, maybe it's me, maybe it's the market, maybe it's the management of the company. And actually it was all three. The chief revenue officer had hired too many salespeople, like far too many. Nobody was hitting their targets. The market was really crowded. But then also my heart wasn't in it. And I was really enjoying just coaching the juniors. So yeah, I kind of lost that meaning and purpose in there. And that's when I went, you know what? I don't have to work. I've got enough money. I'm just going to restudy and spend a year just resting and kind of do what I want and I started coaching people for free and then they started paying me and then I started getting speaking invites and then next thing you know I was overwhelmed with inquiries so then I hired a coach and then a second coach and the third coach and it kind of grew from that the whistle-stop tour there's loads of detail in in all of those but that's kind of how I got here I guess
00:09:57
Speaker
That's a really good recap, but yeah, I'm a firm believer that living through something is going to make you the best teacher of guiding someone else through it. And I think that everything that you managed to overcome is makes you such an amazing and inspiring leader, I suppose, and, you know, guide for, and a coach for others to to do the same. So I know you alluded to it a bit there to that negative emotional state where you were getting to the stage of, you know, like suicidal ideation. Was it like a buildup of pressure?
00:10:26
Speaker
of pushing yourself too hard, was it burnout? What did you identify was the main common theme, I suppose? mean Well, I was pushing so hard and in boxing for so long. That was part of it. Part of it was the childhood feelings of not feeling good enough. And that was part of why I pushed myself so hard. Being underweight didn't help. So I'm 5'8", but I was 56 kilos. And that was the weight I walked around at and was fighting at.
00:10:55
Speaker
and that just isn't like sustainable at all. All of my opponents were like massively shorter than me and and I built this identity around being this weight and boxing is a very weight driven category and um but a weight driven sport. So there's a lot of eating disorders that happen in that sport that just aren't spoken about. So I think all of it. And then when you have the the business failure and everything all come crumbling down, it was just too much. And if did Jim Carrey has a great thing about depressed, he says depressed is actually just a word for deep rest.
00:11:28
Speaker
you're tired of playing the character that you are showing up in the world and it's your body's way of saying like that I'm taking you out of the game you're having a time out and there are days where I'd struggle to get out of bed I didn't leave my parents house for two weeks brushing my teeth was an achievement it was really really difficult so I think it was a build-up of all like years of starving myself to make the weight, all the pressure. I had a boxing coach who was like my hero, Martin Calvert, and he passed away when I was 16. And on his deathbed, I promised I'd win him a national title. I never did.
00:12:01
Speaker
and that emotional pressure and that emotional load on top of being massively underway and training two, three times a day, eating maybe 1600 calories. It was all just too much. Then I started getting injured. Of course, you can get injured. I'm not eating enough. I'm trying to stay at a weight that I can't maintain. and And it all built up to that moment where I was like binge eating.
00:12:23
Speaker
on these sweets. And I just kept eating and eating and eating and eating until I threw up. And I was just like, I just got to end this all now. It was really bad. But, you know, what I did learn was, like, if you can come back from that, bearing in mind, I kind of skint after that in a load of debt and my identity as a fighter and as an entrepreneur, both those things kind of crumbled
Fear, Resilience, and Comparison
00:12:45
Speaker
at once. And the relationship I had at the time didn't work out either. I don't blame her.
00:12:49
Speaker
I was very unattractive at the time. It just fell apart. But everything I learned in the way out of that and everything I learned after that, I think it underpins a lot of my success because my my perspective on life is.
00:13:03
Speaker
yeah but this isn't gonna kill me or I'm not being punched in the face publicly like this isn't as bad as what this used to be and don't get me wrong I get moments where I have to kind of check in myself and go come on mate like this is amazing what you're living is incredible but if it hadn't have been for those dark difficult moments and You know a lot of failure as well on route to where I am now. I just think they were the foundational blocks of Kieran and how I show up in the world today what I'm able to build the insight and the knowledge and the wisdom that I can share with others was built off of that and Having incredible mentors and incredible coaches like I'm really still on the shoulder of Giants if it wasn't for
00:13:46
Speaker
Everyone that been in my corner, whether that's my boxing coaches, my men's performance coaches, just my, just like life mentors, you know, all of them provided such support and love and wisdom that it just sort of all accumulated into where I am today. It's quite surreal to speak about it sometimes because I i forget because often we forget this stuff we've had to overcome. Often I forget that.
00:14:10
Speaker
And sometimes sometimes I'm like, Hey, you know what, that's, you're about to fight for that. No one gave that to you. So, yeah. Does it make you a little bit more fearless? Like, do you feel a little bit fearless in a way that you're like, I've overcome all of this, you know, throw it at me. I'm able for anything.
00:14:26
Speaker
No, and I don't believe in fearless. And the reason I don't believe in fearless is that all great things happen on the other side of fear. So if you're not a little afraid or a little uncertain, you might not be pushing yourself enough. Now there's too much uncertainty where you crumble and that's where you find your limit.
00:14:42
Speaker
I wouldn't say I'm fearless, I think I'm resilient and I think there's a difference because I can feel fear or I can feel uncertainty and I can still take bold aligned action regardless of how I feel and I think that's more important than fearlessness. I think it was Seneca that said, he who is brave is free.
00:15:02
Speaker
And bravery and courage are the values that I think underpin everything out of that. So I wouldn't say I'm fearless, but I would say I'm resilient. My base level of perspective and the ability to deal with fear and handle fear is definitely aided by everything I experienced for sure. Yeah, because I think ah like I struggle with my confidence around my resilience from lack of serious hardships. Now, don't get me wrong. I've had my own mental health struggles and, you know, serious issues around anxiety and panic attacks, you know, that I did work through. But in general, I still struggle with the confidence of how resilient I'd be in the face of serious struggle because I don't know, because I haven't experienced it. And, you know, as you build evidence for something, it becomes easier to be like, I've done this. I can do what comes my way. Can I ask a question? Yeah.
00:15:59
Speaker
Is there an element of comparison going on that might be driving that? Because sometimes when you hear people and you hear their story of, yeah, but, you know, I have one of my friends, right? He used to live on a rubbish dump in Somalia and his parents were shot in front of him when he was six and he worked his way across Africa. And then my auntie and uncle adopted him in the UK, right? Now I look at that and I'm like,
00:16:21
Speaker
Oh my God, I've had it so but it's so good. So sometimes, I've never had it tough, air quotes can come from peering over the urinal of perceived toughness, when actually, it doesn't really matter because your struggle and your suffering is relative. So perhaps you haven't experienced extreme things to extremes that when you're looking at others, you go Oh my oh my God, but there's still an element of you you still have to overcome and your perceived suffering and and what you've experienced shouldn't take away from that of others. So I just wanted to check in and hold up that mirror there and see what comes up.
00:17:00
Speaker
I don't know that it's a comparison. I worked through a lot. I would have been a very anxious child, anxious young adult as well. Did a lot of therapy, a lot of work through this. But as I'm discovering, as I'm working with Charlotte in TMP and you know, our group sessions that I do with you as well, that my default is still very much fear. And I thought I had moved past a lot of my fear, but I haven't. It's still ingrained in me. It's still my initial reaction.
00:17:27
Speaker
Stay safe, keep safe, Kate. Don't push too far. You're going to get hurt. The world is not safe. There is this kind of sense that I have around safety. So I have a default to catastrophize a little bit. Now I can identify it. So when I'm like, oh, what if, you know, they go out in the car and they don't come back and there's a terrible accident or this, this, that, you know, or whatever, I do this. And then I have to be like, Kate, you're doing it again. Stop. So I recognize it, but I still do it. Well, what if I told you fears then I'm going to go away, Kate? And what if you just accept that?
00:17:55
Speaker
I'm learning and that's what I'm doing. I'm doing things with light of fear now. I'm not letting it control me anymore. It's uncomfortable though. Of course, we're going to experience the same emotions to different experiences again and again and again, right? So yeah you're working with decades of a fear program, right? So you're not going to be able to pull that off in a few months. It's going to take time to keep chipping away, just like when you're working with, say, a fitness client that you know has had decades of eating habits and you're unpicking those one by one to help them change. It's the same thing. It doesn't happen overnight.
00:18:31
Speaker
But fear doesn't have to be a bad thing. i Fear gets a bit of a bad rap. People think fear is like the end of the world and it's crippling and it's the worst thing ever. And it can be. And anxiety can really warp your reality. But customato, the trainer of Mike Tyson said, fear is like fire.
00:18:52
Speaker
When it's managed properly, it can put man on the moon. It can keep your house warm and it can cook your chops. But when it's not managed properly, it can destroy everything. Now that's not word for word. That's essentially taking away what what he said about fear. And it's just never going to go away unless you want to go for a really stable, stable life.
00:19:12
Speaker
But you're an entrepreneur, so you're going to take risks. You're going to make decisions that are scary. You're going to have hiring and staff and employees. So fear is going to go away. You've got to learn A, how do I handle fear better? And B, as you're doing, becoming more brave, more courageous. I think that the notion of fearlessness, it just doesn't exist unless you're a psychopath, but even psychopaths get scared.
00:19:36
Speaker
You reckon? Yeah, I do. They're the reason that the things that they get scared for are more around insecurities and perception versus anything else. I agree with everything you said there. And it's what we do in our coaching program as well. And I talk to clients about a lot, you know, nothing changes if nothing changes. So.
00:19:53
Speaker
We're going to have to step out of our comfort zones to make change in our lifestyles and our bodies and, you know, our mindsets. And with with my coaching program, we try and find that sweet spot where we step out of our comfort zone, but we don't like leap out of our comfort zone to the point of overwhelm. And and that's when everything falls apart, which I think happens for my experience. I only work with women and a lot of my clients are, you know, over the age of 30, we have been subject to a lot of diculture over the years.
00:20:16
Speaker
So but we tend to jump like when when we start a diet, we jump, we throw out all the food. We're going to train every day and we're, you know, we go all or nothing. So we spend a lot of time working through that all or nothing mindset. I just think everything you said there is is really true that sometimes we destroy our self belief by how many diets we've tried and failed because we've jumped out into the point of overwhelm. and Whereas when I get some clients that are really just don't know if they can actually change. I'm like, right, it's it's baby steps. Yes, you're going to be afraid, but that daily walk.
00:20:46
Speaker
is enough for now or whatever it is that we're implementing one bit at a time. Yeah, and something I'd add to that if any of your clients or anyone from my world that's listening on this one, if you're afraid that you can't change or you can't do something, find somebody that has the belief for you. So there's been many times where I didn't believe I could do something, whereas one of my mentors, and this is why I always have a mentor in my corner. I've always got two or three in a number of different areas.
00:21:10
Speaker
and And I'm like, I don't know if I can pull this off. And the mentor goes, I don't care whether you can pull this off or not. I've had my mentor, Ron, my mentor, Steve, Russell, Hugh, all of these guys, Hazel, all of them. And I've had moments where I don't think I can do this. And some of them are more loving than others. Ron's very direct. And he's like, well, it doesn't matter whether you believe in it or not. You can still do it, because I know you can do it. Sometimes we need somebody else to believe in us before we believe in ourselves.
00:21:34
Speaker
and that is where you have to trust in the process. And if you're still operating for a really low place of low self confidence, and we have finding somebody that has been there has done it can see what you can't see in you. That's where transformational coaching happens. So yeah, I think that's what I see. And I hear that.
00:21:56
Speaker
That's so empowering and it's so true. I think a lot of people listening will actually have a real sense of relief. We always talk about you need to believe in yourself, but like if you don't believe in yourself, you can't just tell yourself to believe in yourself. That's going to take time and it's going to take evidence. And it's true. Having someone to believe in yourself for you is is going to be the first step.
00:22:16
Speaker
Absolutely. And if you can find that person that you trust and you resonate with, then just do the thing as if you believed in it anyway. Right? Here's the case in point. I'm currently training. I've been training in a different way this year. And I hate deadlifts. I've injured my back on deadlifts four times before. And I hate them. I really hate them. And my coach isn't letting me not do them. ah He's next to me in the gym.
00:22:39
Speaker
watching me do the deadlift, watching my brain start looking for reasons to put the bar down, watching my feet doing this random shuffle because I don't feel comfortable or safe on the bar. And let let me be really clear,
Stress Management and Gender Roles
00:22:51
Speaker
right? Okay, I don't believe that I can do deadlifts without hurting my back. I just don't believe it. But I believe my coach Mike.
00:22:58
Speaker
and I believe in him and he believes I can deadlift without breaking my back so as I'm doing the lifts in those moments it doesn't matter whether I believe I can do it or not I've got Mike believing in me and he's also going to see right you need to drop that now so that's just a very trivial example of discomfort and I could just say Mike I'm not doing deadlifts I'll do Romanian deadlifts I prefer those but reality is I know deep down on a mental resilience and spiritual level, I've got to conquer the deadlift. I can't let the deadlift beat me. And it doesn't matter if I start on really low weight and I work my way up and I overcome that. Whereas if you see me when I do my squats, or if I hit pads, completely different animal, I'm on the front foot. He has to pull me back because I've built confidence in those areas. So that's an example in the fitness world. But I've got numerous examples in coaching and business and life and entrepreneurships where somebody just whisters it in my ear. What are you worried about?
00:23:54
Speaker
You got this. Trust me. The deadlift example, is that difficult for you to let go of that belief and trust someone else? Yeah, I mean, it ah doesn't feel comfortable.
00:24:06
Speaker
But I've got enough experience to know on the other side is where confidence really comes from. I've got enough experience to know, ah, okay. Right. I've done this before. I've done this dance before, so I'm going to give it a go. And if you've never done that dance before, we'll just try. What do you got to lose? Even to this day, I know I'm doing deadlifts on Monday. I'm not looking forward to them, but I know I've got an old man myself out of it and go, oh, grow up, get over it.
00:24:33
Speaker
Let's talk a little bit about challenges and stress. As we know, chronic stress, prolonged stress is really bad for us. It's going to make us sick. It's going to lead us to be burnt out. But we need acute levels of stress to make ourselves better, to push ourselves forward. What are your thoughts on, you know, stress and where to push ourselves and when to pull back?
00:24:54
Speaker
So as you mentioned, I think stress gets a bad rap. ah Like if you don't have enough stress and bored, you kind of flaccid too much stress and you're going to get hurt, injured, sick or whatever. I mean, signs that you're overly stressed is you start snapping at people.
00:25:10
Speaker
You're really short with people, little things like when you explode, you're tired, you don't do anything, you're constantly fatigued, you're struggling to perform, you're all over the place. That's just not optimal. I mean, it depends on the pursuit, right? So if it's your calories and your training, as an example, it's always good to have an extra pair of ears to listen and go maybe youre pushing yourself too much. In boxing, the job of the coach is to protect the fire from himself.
00:25:36
Speaker
because the fight will just fight to the oblivion. And that's certainly what happened to me. In your business and in your own personal performance, mental performance, I believe you should always have some form of corner man or corner woman to help you see what you can't see and and spot that. And when it comes to stress,
00:25:55
Speaker
you know it's often perception stress is experienced in the body in relation to a situation or a stimulus or a context and then your brain chooses your mind chooses to be stressed or not stressed and it might not feel like a choice but especially when there's so much that's happening in the fight or flight response but eventually with time as you become more aware of your patterns just like you're becoming more aware of your fear Oh, the fears back. Okay. Whereas before it was just default fear. Now like, Oh, that's creeping back in. Okay. I can catch that. I can observe that. Do I need to act on that? If I was going to act for courage instead of fear, how would I know? So I don't know if that really answers the question, but that's kind of my perception of stress. I guess one final thing is particularly with ambitious people.
00:26:37
Speaker
I didn't realize I was so stressed until I got sick and injured six times last year, whilst I was trying to scale TMP. I cracked my ribs twice, boxing sparring, my back went twice, and I got really sick, like taking days off work sick twice, and there was a load of little sniffles in between.
00:26:53
Speaker
And it was only when I brought Mike into my corner, Mike Kanyas, shout out to him for my health and fitness in January. Did he say you're more stressed than you realized? And we were looking at my ordering data and I was more stressed than I realized. And what had happened is I was comparing my current levels of stress to my previous levels of stress back when I was a fighter or back when I was in software sales.
00:27:15
Speaker
I was, like, imagined very, very, very, very, very stressed to now, where I'm just very, very stressed. So that, to me, felt like, that's easy. This is easy. Like, this isn't anywhere near as bad as what that used to be. But that's still not optimal. So for me, we had to pull me right back to bring my stress levels down. And as we brought my stress levels down, and we brought my training load down, because I was training too high, and my workload was too high, and I wasn't eating enough. Of course, I was going to get injured and sick. It was only when we started to pull my training right back We started to eat more. We started to leap in a different way and manage my workload differently. Like touch wood, I've not been sick or injured once. We're now in October this year. It's really, really amazing. I guess that's my final piece of stress is that you might be more stressed than you realize.
00:27:59
Speaker
And this happens a lot with entrepreneurs, business owners, high performing coaches, lawyers, bankers, they're so stressed, but that becomes a norm. So as a result, they don't know what what really good feels like, or they've forgotten what really good feels like. And then you have to to work on that and manage those stress loads.
00:28:16
Speaker
I can relate to this so much. I like to think of myself as quite a self-aware person, but I find it really difficult to register when I'm stressed. Now, I'm getting better at it. TMP is really helping. I noticed, for example, up until quite recently, I'm starting to feel much better now. i was tired, we kind of even toyed around with the word burnt out. But what I noticed in the body is I will get like a little heart palpitations, which would have been a real sign of back in my early 20s when I'd be having panic attacks, my breathing could be a little bit tight. If I was sitting in traffic, I would feel this need to like, I need to be moving like I can't sit here, you know, this kind of pent up energy. And I noticed these things, I noticed it in my body rather than in my circumstances. And one thing that I've learned
00:29:02
Speaker
really, really helps for me is to actually physically slow down. So like I will literally start talking slower, like I'm doing right now, moving slower. around You know, way if I'm always rushing, like I have three kids, you know, a business, everything's always busy and I'm always rushing around and I'm like, you know what? I'm not fucking rushing anywhere. I don't want to. I'm sick of rushing. I'm like, what gets done in a day gets done in a day. And I don't care anymore. I don't care. No, but I don't care. I'm like, it will get done. I care about the things that need to get done, but the timeframe,
00:29:31
Speaker
I have to stop squishing and rushing everything into strict time boxes. Well, think about it. Strong emotions make you stupid and they cut down our timeframes. They cut down our options. And we perceive that this is the only thing I can possibly do. I can only do this one thing. What do I do? Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Panic, panic, panic, panic, panic. But by regulating your breath and regulating your body, slowing down your speech.
00:29:56
Speaker
All you're doing is you're just creating the space and the abundance required for you to get back in control. Whereas before you probably just actually sped up because your perception was I need to speed up. I'm not going fast enough. I need to go and go and go and go. So now it sounds like you're starting to control the pace of life. Not the external world, but the internal world and how you respond to a chaotic external world, which is great. Yeah. And I think a lot of the listeners will relate to this. A lot of my listeners and followers will be busy moms.
00:30:25
Speaker
who are also trying to navigate a career. So, you know, it's a really busy time in life and a lot of clients that come to me really struggle with finding time for themselves. And sometimes, you know, they come and like the idea of adding in, tracking their food, getting some walks in, getting a few workouts in, you know, making these healthy changes.
00:30:44
Speaker
can feel like another chore. And quite often I think we actually just need to take things away. And I think people get surprised when it becomes this whole, let's look at your whole life. We're not just looking at your food and your exercise, because quite often it's actually taking things away rather than adding more things in.
00:31:01
Speaker
Absolutely. And if you look at career women, I worked with some really ambitious women, right? Career women with kids. So unconsciously, women pick up more of the housework than men do. Unconsciously, right? For whatever reason, we can argue about society, we can argue about like gender roles. It's what happens.
00:31:20
Speaker
not only generally, and I'm saying generally, not every woman, right? But generally, women are doing unconsciously more work at home. On top of that, they are working 40 to 60 hours a week. And often unconsciously, they do more of the caregiving than men do. So when you have all of this going on, no wonder they're so tired, so stressed, because unconsciously, they're picking up more around the house and what they're doing for the children. I have another emotion in here that I think ties in with this as well is guilt. And this is something that I experience a lot less now that my business has grown. And maybe my kids are a bit older, but I find that not being present with them because I'm busy working. And I know a lot of women will relate to that. I think we experience guilt.
00:32:06
Speaker
in a way and that most men don't. Again, we could argue why, but I do think that women do struggle with that, you know, we're expected to have careers, like we don't have children, we're expected to look after our children, like we don't have careers, expected to be healthy, fit, happy, positive, there for our men. It's endless. And I know we could go down the route of all that the pressures and struggles that men experience as well. But I do think that that guilt, I think I'm releasing it, but it was extremely powerful for a long time.
00:32:35
Speaker
and guilt and shame is for the heaviest emotions out of all the emotions, right? Like it's the lowest vibrational frequency. So if we just look at men and women in general, there's always outliers. It's not men are only this and women are only this, right? But generally, if you look at kids, I mean, you were a teacher, right? Yeah. Which ages did you teach with?
00:32:54
Speaker
I taught primary school, so anything from age four up to 12, 13. So you've got loads of data, right? So you've seen kids across the board, right? If you're going to look at the the boys, what kind of toys or what sort of things did they gravitate towards? What do you say? Oh yeah, things like, yeah, footballs and cars and construction and Lego and things like that. What about the girls? What would it if what did they gravitate once towards?
00:33:20
Speaker
the dolls and like the toy kitchen and but see I don't like that I'm like is that just because that's what we offer them those things well have you have you ever given a kid a toy and then they've just gone I don't like this and they start playing in the mud Yeah. Right. Like you buy them a big shiny toy and they're like, I throw the mud, right? Generally, boys and men are more interested in things. Women are more interested in people. If you look at therapists, the majority of therapists, specifically when I was studying, it's changing a hell of a lot now, but I couldn't find a male therapist that could help me.
00:33:52
Speaker
that I wanted to speak to, I couldn't find any. It was all women. If you look at the roles, generally, traditionally, that women have gone into, that men have gone into, men have been in roles more that focus on things. Whereas whereas women have been more gone into roles focused on people, right? And men will feel less guilt because they value people less. You know, I say, God, I just can't say that. But generally, right, men prefer building things or or they prefer working on specific problems. And that's higher up in their value chain. Whereas with women, it's more around caring and nurturing and loving and they're more interested in people. So the reason that you'll feel more guilty than perhaps your partner will be, well, that's because that's how you've been hardwired. So it's learning that, okay, well, if you are going to go and build a business, you're going to have to have moments where, you know, you put your business out on like, right, business mode. And there's going to be moments to take the business out off.
00:34:47
Speaker
and be there with the kids and allow that loving, feminine, caregiving part to come out. Because otherwise, if you're at work thinking about the kids and with the kids thinking about work, you're going to be a perpetual state of guilt, where I should be at work, I should be my kids, and it's never going to win a shift.
00:35:03
Speaker
Yeah, and I'm learning that quality of time rather than quantity of time is much more valuable. And it's funny how we look at things with rose-tinted glasses. I look back and I'm like, you know, when I was a teacher, I had so much time, I was home i was collecting them from school. They went to the school I was teaching in. I was always there. They came home with me. We did homework. And I look back on it and I'm like, oh, God, I had so much more time with them and I feel good. And then I'm like,
00:35:27
Speaker
What am I talking about? I was miserable. I used to like but i remember like be shouting at them in sheer frustration. I'm not like that anymore. Like obviously don't get me wrong. We all have our moments, but I'm much happier and the time that I do spend with them is of much better quality than trying to cook dinner and screaming at them to do their homework and stop fighting. And because I'm not spending as much time with them.
00:35:48
Speaker
I actually appreciate the time with them more, which was a good realization. Quality time is where you create more memories and moments of connection and just sort of fill a time where you're overly stressed. It's like child birth syndrome. You remember the bit with a baby and how cute the baby is and how cuddly the baby is. And you forget that you were lugging this thing around for eight, nine months.
00:36:10
Speaker
in your belly and you're tired and you're bloated and you're like, oh, you like, you kind of forget about that. Child birth syndrome happens in business all the time where, you know, you remember the fun, successful part of the business and you forget how scary and lonely and difficult and complex and overwhelming it was. And you only remember the good times and the kind of wired like that. And it's catching yourself and going, oh, hang on a minute. What was I really experiencing at the time? That's why I keep really detailed journals.
00:36:36
Speaker
So I can now catch that. I've got it all in a spreadsheet and in my physical journals. If I catch myself going into that state, I then look through my journals and go, oh my God, I was just as insecure and afraid. Just, I forgot about that. Oh, I forgot about that person that was upsetting me. Oh, I forgot I was experiencing doubt. I only remembered smashing it out of the park, right? So. That's why journaling is so good at keeping past data for where you are and what you're working on. ah And I've written a book called journaling for high performance. I'll send you a link. Maybe you can drop it in the description prompts for you to journal on, whether that's emotion management, whether that's focus, productivity, decision-making. When you've got that, that data, you can just look back, cut out the noise and maybe it wasn't so rosy as I thought. Yeah. And I think I'm guilty of this. I know other people will relate as well of.
00:37:21
Speaker
striving for a perfect situation. And I think you forget there is no such thing as perfect. And even when you look back at, you know, maybe a holiday you were on where everything was amazing and some experience or occasion, you forget the little things that were going on in the background that are always there.
Enjoying the Journey vs. End Goals
00:37:37
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, always like often I'll be happy when is the biggest fallacy in the world. Honestly, I'll be happy when is the biggest fallacy in the entire world, because you're basing on your happiness on like the perfect set of circumstances. I always say that Steve jobs at the end of his life said to his HR manager when she asked him what was the best bit Was it the iPhone, the iPad, the Mac? And he said, no, the journey itself was the reward. So I try and look at my journey and I work with my clients. Once we put the emotional and psychological foundations in, which is how much fun can we have on this journey? How amazing could this be? This is what we do as well. Literally, you know, enjoy the journey, build a lifestyle that you enjoy. It doesn't matter if you've got 10 stone to lose. Who cares? Let's enjoy the journey. You don't have to wait till you've lost all the weight to feel good. You can feel good a day or two into this.
00:38:27
Speaker
You absolutely can. And when you start to learn to enjoy the journey and enjoy the process, all the results will start to take care of themselves.
Total Mental Performance and Self-Coaching
00:38:35
Speaker
Magic. Absolute magic. I want to actually ask you a question that I know on your podcast you always ask people. um What does total mental performance mean to you?
00:38:46
Speaker
Ah, thanks for flipping back my own question at me. Total mental performance to me is the ability to experience any feeling and perform anyway and maximizing your human potential. So once you've got the emotional bit down and the foundation's down and you know how to manage your emotions and how to catch thoughts, feelings and beliefs that might trip you up before,
00:39:07
Speaker
Then it comes down to how good can life be? If I'm gonna be my personal life, how can I be the best partner? How can I be the best athlete in the gym? And that's in relation for me, not in relation to anyone else. How can I be the best consultant, the best coach, the best entrepreneur, the best leader? And then and it's about stretching abundance. How much fun.
00:39:27
Speaker
how much enjoyment and fulfillment. Yeah, when the tough times come, not clinging to the tough times and using them as evidence to beat yourself up with that you're not enough, on the flip side, it's not them having a tough time. Cool, I can handle it. And I'll always handle it. And having that inner strength, wisdom to feel any feeling and still do what needs to be done in order to go after the life of your dreams and keep enjoying the journey. That's what Total Mental Performance means to me, as you asked me today. That's so good. And I think so many of us are controlled by our emotions.
00:39:56
Speaker
And to really start challenging that and maybe not everyone listening is in the position to have a mentor or a coach, but a journal, a good place to start, isn't it? To start noticing your feelings and reflecting a bit on them and like, can I just try and do this anyway and work and push through this emotion, like fear for me, for example.
00:40:14
Speaker
Here is one tool that will completely change your life and that tool is self coaching. Self coaching is that thing where you give everybody else really good advice yet for some reason can never take it for yourself. Well, self coaching is your ability to give your friend advice that you need and then go and do the thing anyway. It's really simple. You get your journal out, you imagine one of your best friends,
00:40:37
Speaker
or one of your clients or someone that you mentee or mentor or look after, and you imagine that they've got exactly the same problem that you have. They've lived exactly the same life. They've got exactly the same house, exactly the same family, business, whatever. And they come to you with this problem and then you give them advice and you write that advice down. And what I do is I email that advice back to myself and then I just follow the instruction. So here's a really trivial example. Let's say I look at, should I just go out on on Saturday afternoon and just smash like an 1800 calorie cheesecake?
00:41:10
Speaker
And I go, well, imagine one of my mentees asked me that. Well, what is my mentee experiencing? Well, at the minute, they're actually on a cut, actually trying to hold back on on their calories. They might be overeating on a couple of days and probably need to cut cut back a little bit more. So whilst it might be nice, maybe this Saturday is not the weekend to do it. Oh, cool. So it's is really simple, really easy. And I can just email myself that as a trivial example. What about a bigger example?
00:41:36
Speaker
I have a client that I'm really unhappy with and I'm getting really stressed and I'm really not enjoying coaching this client. And for whatever reason, like I feel like I still need to be in this coaching relationship, but I know it's not right for for me or for them. I don't know what to do. And you imagine when your mentees comes to you with that same scenario and you give them the advice and chances are you'd probably say, maybe for both of you, you just need to bring this up, understand where they're coming from and what they're struggling with.
Alcohol's Impact on Performance
00:42:05
Speaker
and you need to understand where you're coming from, maybe the best thing is to let the client go. And then you write that down and you send it to yourself. And you just go and take action because nobody knows your world better than you. But it's taking you out of the situation and imagining it's somebody else that you're advising and then taking action on that.
00:42:24
Speaker
I love this. This is so, so valuable. So everyone listening, try this. And it's funny cause I have a few different email addresses. You know, I have my business one, my personal one, so I can email myself from myself and it's like two separate things. It's funny. I do this for like top thoughts and ideas. Like I have a little WhatsApp group with myself and I'll just send myself voice notes of ideas. But yeah, taking that next step. I love it. Beautiful. Can I ask you about alcohol in relation to, I know everyone's relationship with alcohol will be different, but do you believe that you can reach your full human potential?
00:42:53
Speaker
And drink alcohol. Like everything, it depends. So for some people, alcohol is no bueno. For me, so I have ADHD. And if I have alcohol, that'll impact me for five to six days later. um I have spreadsheets every day where I'm tracking my energy, my mood, my focus, my productivity. And as only when I started that exercise did I realize that anything more than two drinks would seriously impact my performance for six to seven days. So then you got to think, wow, six to seven days. Well, if you're doing that like 10 times a year, that's like 60 days a year. That's like 600 days over a decade. Hang on a minute. That's two years.
00:43:31
Speaker
nearly of not performing how I could so if you're somebody that's very sensitive to alcohol and it really affects you then absolutely it's not good my drink of choice back in the day with gin I love gin I really really do but I don't drink but if you really love it maybe the occasional glass because you love the taste you love the experience or whatever like It's not the end of the world. But in my opinion, as a mental performance coach, I don't think alcohol is the best substance to help you go off your dreams and become more calm and clear. Some people can drink and doesn't seem to affect them as much. But even having coached those individuals, even with their own scores, we can still see a dip.
00:44:14
Speaker
I would imagine the people who say, or who, who it doesn't seem to affect as much, I'd be like, you know, it would affect me for the guts of a week. Do you not think that if they didn't drink at all, can you imagine how great they could be more than they are, they're already performing?
00:44:28
Speaker
we got to remember, right? And particularly if we look at Ireland and the UK, alcohol is weaved into society, right? So you go to a celebration, oh, we'll have a few drinks, you finish the end of the day of work, I'm stressed, let's go to the pub, or let me have a glass of wine at home. Or ah it's like this family celebration, or we're going to the football, or oh all my friends are going. So there's a social component that often creates a lot of societal pressure and fear of judgment from that.
00:44:54
Speaker
Now, I live in the UAE, so it's really normal here to go to a beach club or to go to a traditional environment where there's lots of alcohol and not drink. And I love that. And I really, really love that. Some people will be drinking, some people won't be, and there's no big deal made about it. It's just cool. What I've also found is with clients that have drunk a lot for a long time, let's say 20 years they've been drinking on and off, but they've never gone cold turkey.
00:45:19
Speaker
They actually don't know how good they could potentially feel. So for them, they can't see the payoff. Why would I not drink alcohol if you can't see that payoff? So with that, it's, well, why don't you just run it for three months? My dad had a ah challenge of his liver recently. So he could not drink alcohol for three months. It's the only time I've seen him not drink for three months.
00:45:40
Speaker
Two months in, I called him and said, how are you feeling? He goes, I've got to be honest, Karen, I feel amazing. I've never felt like this in my life. I said, yeah, it's pretty cool. Not drinking, isn't it? And he goes, yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong. I still think about going down the shops and having a beer, but overall, I've got more energy. You know, I feel like I can concentrate more. I feel better. So he's now seen the payoff. I think that's one of the things So if you're listening to this and you're triggered and you're like, yeah, alcohol is good, or oh, it's easy for you, or all all of that, ah all I'd say is just run an experiment. Just run an experiment, just do three months, two months, whatever it is without it, and just notice how life changes. And if you're a hell of a lot worse, right, and chill, then go and drink again if you want, there might be an emotional component that you might need to go and explore with a therapist or or a mental performance coach or someone like that.
00:46:28
Speaker
But I just don't think it's optimal. No, I agree. So you don't drink at all. No, I mean, if I look at the last three years, I had me and Dan because Dan doesn't drink either in TMP and one of my best friends. We had a beer and a gin and tonic when we were in Albania together. And it was like really interesting because we're kind of tipsy quite quickly. And for two days after, we both felt like something was off and we couldn't put our finger on it. And it's like, maybe those two drinks, maybe that's what it was, right? So that that was one time, I mean, I'm the sort of person where I can go to a concert and dance sober.
00:47:03
Speaker
I don't care and and I have just as much fun. Whereas before I'd have to do something like that and drink to feel like I could let go and have a laugh and have a joke and and whatever. The only other time I had a drink was so that would have been three months ago with Dan, maybe like... A year ago. And then that's, that's probably it. I'll probably say maybe I've drunk would be three times the last two or three years. I've had a blast happier, more stable, more consistent, much less anxious, much, much less distracted. For me, it was like one of the best things I ever did. Yeah.
00:47:37
Speaker
That's so interesting to hear because the reason why I ask you that question is because I did that. I took a break from alcohol. I've talked about it on the podcast a lot of the whole episode on this, but I stopped drinking for almost two years completely. Now it wasn't because I, you know, had an issue with alcohol, although it was more that, like that alcohol would affect me terribly. Now it's saying that my twenties, it would have been very much, you know, drinking every weekend, living for the weekend, you know, that kind of normal English and Irish lifestyle.
00:48:06
Speaker
I think a lot of that did contribute to my mental health issues back in the day. So I did a few years ago. I, not that long ago, a couple of years ago, gave up alcohol to stop drinking and kind of said, I don't know whether i'll I'll ever drink again. Maybe I will. Maybe I won't. I don't know. But for me, it was very much to change my relationship with alcohol. And what you're saying there, that spark that you experienced that it's not even a joy. It's just like a connection with yourself. And that's what I experienced.
00:48:32
Speaker
And this is when I started changing my career, building this idea of what I wanted for my life to be my business. And we we were only talking about this on the group call the other day, how I said that I felt like I'd lost that spark recently. And I wasn't quite sure maybe it was just, you know, the busyness of everything. And I haven't actually spoken about this in the podcast, but over the past year, literally, I think it was like September of last year. So about a year ago, I was at a wedding. I had like two glasses of wine.
00:48:59
Speaker
And I hadn't drank and I just made the decision. I was like, no, I want to have a glass of wine. So I had one and I had another and that was fine. And then there's been a few occasions over the past year where I have had a few drinks. Now I'm not going like mental on the session or anything, but it's funny. I wonder with those dotted throughout the year, has it interrupted my connection with myself? And I'm pondering the idea. I'm like.
00:49:22
Speaker
I don't know, I think I'm ready to say goodbye for good because I do think, like you said, something was just off and I think that might have been it. You've got to look at what alcohol does to the brain. It's not great. It's a toxin, right? So like when I was in software sales, I used to drink a lot. Now, albeit, I was in my early 20s, so I could get away with it. As I look back, I realized I was always in a stupor. I was always in recovery mode. I was always trying to kind of get back and I'll go like maybe seven to ten days without it and then I'll drink again and it was always like this this loop and I think if we look at mental performance focus stability and consistency it's just like adding an extra two or three kilos just like the left side of your shoulder and it's just kind of like why am I like just slightly off like why what's going on and I just think it plunged your blade
00:50:10
Speaker
now again it comes down to the life that you you want to live so some people might really value having a few drinks and that that's more important and and that's where they have the happiest moments but if you're somebody that really is at deeply ambitious and wants to build something really special and wants to push the boundaries as to how good life can really be. And performance is one of your highest values, then I don't think alcohol is necessary. And I actually and probably slow you down in that area. And experience and connection as well. Like if I've been to concerts, I've been on holidays,
00:50:45
Speaker
with absolutely no alcohol and have felt absolutely amazing and had the best time. And it's interesting, I need to do some reflection on this myself. And I hadn't been ready to speak about this publicly yet, but like, I don't know why it slipped back in. And it's probably our social conditioning a little bit, where it's like, oh, you know, having a glass of Prosecco to celebrate someone or a glass of wine, cause I'm in France and the wine is really nice in France. And I'm like, is it really? Like, do do I really? Cause I'd be someone who won glass and it dulls me.
00:51:15
Speaker
It does me the next day. Like it does, it affects me. So I'm not talking about, you know, going drinking a bottle and a half or anything. I'm talking about a glass of wine and I'm feeling dull the following day. So what's interesting. I mean, would you gamble your life savings in Vegas and would you snort a line of Coke in Columbia?
00:51:31
Speaker
No. but Right. So just cause you're there doesn't mean you have to partake in these things, right? So yeah you can still enjoy life and and go out and do that. I guess my question for you and you might not have the answer and it might be something worth journaling on is what's that little umbilical cord towards alcohol? So unconsciously stopping you from just going, snip, I just don't do that anymore.
00:51:51
Speaker
And that is something I need to reflect on. And I think that's a really interesting one for other people to reflect on too, because it is something that people will approach me about and ask about, especially when they've what they've listened to my alcohol episode, and a lot of clients looking to take a break from alcohol. And there is that pull. And I think we do need to reflect on that. And it's different for everyone. Yeah, absolutely is like a lot of it social. So if you look at things like so smoking, right? If you look at smoking, smoking,
00:52:20
Speaker
was done in groups as a kid. So people that smoke often, the unconscious attachment to smoking isn't necessarily the nicotine of the cigarette, it's being accepted as part of a group. So you know when somebody takes a lot of cigarette breaks? Well, number one, they're probably stressed, but number two, they're trying to look for comfort. If you look at alcohol,
00:52:35
Speaker
like particularly in in Ireland and the UK, so it's like societies that are built. Having beer, getting drunk, going out and and doing that, right? It's kind of wrapped into the fabric of your cultural identity in society and and breaking free of that isn't
Concluding Thoughts on Health and Contact Information
00:52:50
Speaker
good. On an unconscious level, it's trying to have you fit in and keep you alive.
00:52:53
Speaker
But on a conscious level, well, actually, is it going to add to your life as much as not having it? Maybe yes, maybe no. Then you've got the the societal and the social pressure. Oh, don't be boring. Oh, come on. Oh, all of that often. And this is my view when people project.
00:53:10
Speaker
don't be boring or, ah, like, why are you not drinking? What's wrong with you? Like, are you, but like, what? They're often projecting their need for you to accept and join them in what they're doing versus actually going, you know what? Fair play. Like, if that's your thing, I support you and come along. And when it gets to 11 o'clock and everybody's loud and ruckus, like probably slip out because I'll probably stop making sense. But yeah, let's do that. It's usually that. If we look at pubs,
00:53:40
Speaker
ah nightclubs. I don't know about you, but when I first started going to pubs and nightclubs, I felt really anxious and on edge. I felt quite insecure. All of the people in the room, you know, everyone's all dressed up. And, oh, god, like, ah for for me, it's like, God, can I gotta go speak to that girl? Can I do this? Can I not? Oh, my God, I'm so nervous. And, you know, some of the the dodgy and nightclubs when I was in London, it's like, Oh, my God, I'm gonna get my head kicked in, like, is this gonna be safe in here? Oh, my God. So you're all anxious and afraid. And what does alcohol do? It just relax.
00:54:08
Speaker
It just helps you let go of all of that. So that then becomes a crutch and a coping mechanism that keeps you feeling safe and calm and relaxed. So then, if you take alcohol away, sometimes you can start to get a little bit anxious. Oh, I just took a drink. Just take the edge off. What edge? Just work on the edge itself. Just move that edge. You'll be a lot more calm. You'll enjoy more of what you do.
00:54:30
Speaker
ah Thank you so much for your reflections on that. Now I'm conscious of time. So just one last question that I want to ask you before we finish up, that I ask everyone on the podcast, what does the word health mean to you? What does health mean to me? Health for me is having a level of connection, fulfillment and nourishment where you can not only look after yourself, but you have enough to give to others. I think that's what health is to me, because particularly in the fitness industry, lots of people have six packs big muscles. But that's not necessarily healthy, because they've lost connection, fulfillment and nourishment for others. If you look at the corporate world, you know, yeah, achievement is great, and business is great. And but
00:55:14
Speaker
you're losing connection and nourishment and you can't give back to your family because you're giving everything to your work and you've got nothing left, that isn't health. So in essence, no cliche, cliche is a cliche to a region. Health is wealth, health is abundance. Health is having enough vitality and nourishment and connection that you can give to others that either don't have it or they have enough and then you all just fill each other's cup. That's what health is to me.
00:55:42
Speaker
Thank you so much. If anybody wants to find you, reach out to you as interested in TMP and what you do there, where is the best place for people to find you? Yeah. So if you're if you're a corporate leader, a business owner, I do workshops. I do public speaking. I do work with corporate businesses around mental performance. So how can we make the team more productive and more stable? You can head to www.kieranoneil.com. If you're a business owner, maybe you're a coach.
00:56:12
Speaker
Maybe you're just highly ambitious and you're like, yeah, I really want to take my mentor performance in the way in which I do things upper a level. Head to www.totalmentalperformance.com or on Instagram at Total Mental Performance. and Drop me a message either through any of those websites on there. It might be a question. It might be an insight. It might be actually I want to explore doing some coaching with you, a member of your team, or bringing you into my business to to help the team.
00:56:39
Speaker
then I'm here. What do I really want to bring to the world? I want everyone to become more calm, have more clarity, get more shit done and enjoy the process while they're doing it. That for me is psychological freedom and that's why I bring the world.
00:56:52
Speaker
Amazing. And I will share all that information in the show notes as well. So anyone can just go and click the links below when they are listening to this. Kieran, thank you so much, not just for this, but for everything that you're doing for myself and others. It is life changing. And I think this conversation as well will be life changing for some people listening too. Cool. Thank you. Okay.
00:57:17
Speaker
I just want to say thank you so much for listening to the podcast. It really means so much to me that there are people out there actually listening to what I have to say and to the conversations that I'm having with others. So thank you so much. If you are enjoying the podcast, could you please make sure that you are subscribed? And if not, if you could hit that subscribe button, it really does make that much of a difference. Also, if you would like to leave a review on any of the episodes that you listen to that you particularly enjoy. I would love to hear what you have to say. And also, if there's an episode that you've enjoyed, please do share it on your social media, in your WhatsApp groups, with your friends. If you're sharing it on your stories, please tag myself in it and whoever I'm interviewing. And this it would be greatly appreciated. Also, if you're interested in working with me and my wonderful team, please do contact me about applying for coaching. So you can contact me at Kate Hamilton Health
00:58:08
Speaker
at gmail dot.com or on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, all Kate Hamilton Health. And you will be able to apply for coaching. We can organize to have a chat and see if it's a good fit for you and get you moving towards your goals.