161. Performance & Vulnerability With Toby Jenkins

Welcome to another episode of Professional Builders Secrets. In this episode I interview Toby Jenkins. Toby is a high performance leadership coach and former Olympian. He's dedicated his career to transforming the mindset of leaders across various industries, helping them unlock their potential through psychological flexibility and self awareness. Keep listening to discover how Toby's insights can help you elevate your leadership and increase the performance of your team in your building company. This episode of Professional Builder Secrets is brought to you by Apparatus Contractor Services. Apparatus provides full scope, end to end QuickBooks, Precision Construction accounting and CFO services for residential builders. If you feel like you can't completely trust your weekly and monthly financial reports or you feel like you're flying blind and Apparatus Root will rebuild and operate your QuickBooks accounting system and give you precision construction accounting capability you can trust. Learn more@apparatus team.com or on the APB Rewards Partner Directory.

It's more about opening up to the lived experience of discomfort and stress and pressure and knowing in fact that it is a part of the journey. How can we reflect for ourselves on that and then open up to that experience and know that that is a part of what we're going to be going through? The point here is not necessarily to feel better. The point here is to come back to the present, to recognize that I have it, regardless of what is going on around me and inside me as well. I have a choice of response here, so where do I need to focus?

Welcome to Professional Builder Secrets, the podcast for building company owners wanting to grow safely and securely. I'm your host, Will Blunt and today I'm joined by Toby Jenkins. Toby, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me, Will. It's great to be here, mate. I'm really looking forward to this conversation.

Oh, mate, I'm so excited. I got up like a. Like it was Christmas morning this morning, excited. But then the closer it got to the interview, I got a little bit nervous as well.

Natural part of the process, isn't it, when you care about something. And obviously you and I have known each other for a long time now. What's it been, 10 years?

Yeah, well, I was trying to dig that up. I joined your mailing list back in 2014, I think, trying to dig up that old email, but couldn't go that far back in my inbox. Honestly, Toby, the reason I'm so excited about having you on today is that you were a really strong mentor to me early in my career when I was starting my own business, you know, 10 years ago now, and had such a huge influence over that. So I'm really excited to share a lot of the things that I learned from you today. Hopefully it'll come out in the conversation. And you've got such an amazing story to tell. So really excited.

Oh, thanks, mate. Yeah, I am, too. Ripping in. Yeah.

Why don't we dive into it then? Seeing all the listeners out there that haven't known you for over a decade. Do you want to just give them a bit of a background about who you are and what you do?

Even answering the question, who am I? That has changed and probably more recently. And so the way I describe who I am is three. Three things. So I tend to talk about my infinite game when I'm describing who I am. So that means my purpose is to change the world's relationship to suffering. My values, love, gratitude, humility, exploration and contribution. And my suffering, which is the third part in my mind of an infinite game, is I call Mara. And we can dig into that in a little more detail. But the reason why I talk about who I am like that versus what I do is that to me, those three things, purpose, values, and suffering, are a definition of who I am, or at least a part of a definition of who I am versus what I do being an expression of who I am. So I'm a husband, I'm a father of three daughters. You know, I'm an executive or performance coach. I'm a speaker, I write books. I am a friend, a colleague. You know, there are so many hats that we all wear, in fact, that, yeah, I try to. It's a core part of my work. And the way I sort of see the world is that how can we decouple who we are from what we do and then see what we do as an expression of who we are rather than the definition of who we are? And I think the beauty of that, in my mind is that it means that we get to practice who we are in all moments, of all days. You know, I guess we'll explore that as we go through this conversation. No doubt. But that's my response to who am I and what do I do?

I really like that reframing of that question because it's something, to be honest, whenever I've been asked throughout my whole life, you know, what do you do? It's like an immediate anxiety of like, oh, am I proving myself to this person or something?

You know what I mean?

There's a famous quote from Heath Ledger. I think he said something along the lines of, everyone always, always asks what you do for a living. They never ask if you're happy. And I think it's kind of in the same ballpark as that.

Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? I mean, it does seem to be the default question. Actually, a friend of mine gave me alternative to that question that I love, which is just tell me a bit more about you, tell me a bit about yourself. And that kind of opens up as opposed to going straight to the professional roles that we play or the hats that we wear, which so often seems to be the response to that question. It just opens it up for someone to explore other areas of who they are and what they do. I think as well, in the same.

Respect, when someone asks you what you do, what they're really asking is, I'm trying to find one thing I can talk to you about. Right?

Yeah, probably, yeah. Do we have any common ground here? Yeah, yeah. Or is this going to be a conversation I need to leave pretty quickly?

Yeah. Anyway, that's probably a bit of a distraction, but I think you're also, in terms of that background, you know, honorable to talk about who you are from that respect, Toby, but you've been an Olympian, written, you know, a best selling book as well, and you've been a business owner for over a decade. So, you know, huge background in understanding how leadership and psychology work within a business ecosystem.

Yeah, definitely. I think, you know, if I think of my life and professionally anyway, in terms of chapters, it probably started with water polo back in the day. You know, I was fascinated by it, loved it. Started playing at age 13 and very much even though it was a team sport all the way through to going to the Australian Institute of Sport straight out of high school on scholarship there with the Australian men's team, missed out on Sydney Olympics. I then made the 2001 World Championships, the 2003 World Championships, and was selected for Athens for the 2004 Olympics. You know, very much that that whole chapter of water polo was. And I played professionally in Spain as well, which was an amazing experience and you know, the inevitable highs and lows of any, any, any journey really and pursuit, but very much the idea that that was all about how good could I be. And I was fascinated to find that out and of course, how good could I be? And then, you know, even in a team sport, how, how would that contribute to the team, of course, and the team outcomes. But it's a funny thing in sport actually Will reflecting on it is that even though it is a team sport, I would say 90% of the time was about developing the individual and My own personal capacity, whether that was fitness. Yes, we trained together and we developed that together in the varying teams and squads that I played in. But it was very much about developing the individual. And then, you know, that 10% sort of layer of the team layer over the top of it. It's staggering in hindsight just how much time was spent developing the individual within those team contexts. And I think that's something that does generally get overlooked because if you have, even though there's team and team dynamics is critical, of course, I'm not understating that, but the ability for each individual contributor, you know, you could put the All Blacks up against, you know, the local Brisbane A Grade competition. And regardless of their team dynamics and metrics on team dynamics, you know, the Brisbane A Grade team will never beat the All Blacks on pure individual capacity. And so I find that, I find, you know, sport is a limiting, a limited analogy for business in lots of ways. It's a zero sum game. It's, you know, there are lots of. It's a very defined set of rules and circumstances. But it was a fascinating pursuit, I think, in terms of the question of how good could I be? I think part of what I really enjoyed when I moved into business and where you and I first met through the first company that I started, a digital marketing company called Blue Wire Media with my business partner, Adam Franklin. The question that fascinated me in that was really, how good could this team be? How do we develop the individuals, how do we develop the team? How do we develop the organization? There's systems and structures that support all of that. Well, 13 years into that journey, I hit what I've come to call my crucible period, which was I had my second daughter, she had silent reflux, so it was up every 45 minutes or 90 minutes. And I know that you're beginning your journey on the parenting front.

Very pressing issue at the moment.

Yeah, and this is 2016 for me. You know, she was up all the time, so sleep was hard to come by. I'd had a shoulder operation from throwing a ball as hard as I could for 20 years. And so I'd actually spent the six weeks prior to her arrival upright on the couch, trying to get sleep. Way more painful than I expected. My father in law was in hospital with leukemia at the time and my own father had died from a brain tumor. A big part of what happened there was just the real, you know, the reflection. My dad had been 66 when he died. His folks had been 98 and 93 respectively. And I think you know, it was that question of what am I doing and why am I doing it? I might be 2/3 of the way there. You know, I fully expected a dad. Dad was a fit, healthy guy, didn't drink much, never smoked, every expectation that he still had a third of his life to go. And I thought, well, what am I doing and what am I, you know, why am I doing it if this is. What if I'm two thirds of the way there? So that real recognition and the contemplation of death that I talk a lot about in, in the work that I do now in order to, you know, it's a stoic philosophy, really contemplate death to appreciate life. For me, that was a real wakeup call and led me away to resign from the company I'd started from Blue Wire Media and hand. Hand the reins over Adam, my business partner, after 13 years and step out. And, and it was around that time that I was introduced now to what I speak and coach to, which is the science and evidence of psychological flexibility and how that can be applied. You know, I'm not a clinical psychologist, but this is World Health Organization validated science that has worked in clinical settings from anxiety, depression, substance use, all sorts of different settings. I'm not a clinical psych, but I'm fascinated by how it applies in, you know, the well being, resilience and performance end of the spectrum.

And how do you, how do you lean into the concept of mortality and death? To be honest, it's, it's frightening for most people, including myself, and avoided most of the time. How did, how did you lean into that to learn from it?

Did I lean into it or was I shoved into it? Probably shoved is the truth of it. I mean, through Dad's, you know, dad had six months from his diagnosis to death. It was just a brutal period, to be honest. Like a brain tumor is not a. He lost his cognition, he lost a lot of function. He, you know, declined. You know, in that six months, we probably had three months of lucid conversations. And even then they were getting shorter and shorter over time. The gift of it was that given time meant that dad and I had conversations that perhaps we would never have had, talking about forgiveness and love and all sorts of stuff and on a bunch of different fronts. But it was so in, in, in fact, in part the, the diagnosis and the six months to death was a, was a privilege in, in reflection and a gift that. Yeah. Was it comfortable? Absolutely not. It was a pretty awful period. And in fact it got to that point where I thought, wow, there's. There's really no humanity in dad continuing like this. That, you know, death seemed like the gentler option than continuing on with the quality of life that he had. That was a really unusual point to get to. I think, Will as well. I don't know that I'd ever, ever truly contemplated what that might mean for someone to see death as the kinder situation. But it was absolutely the truth of my experience with Dad's death anyway. And so that really forced it home for me. Now, I think basically every. I've been fascinated with philosophy, religion, all these varying traditions for a long time, really, since as long as I can remember, in terms of not so much from a particular faith, but from a. From the standpoint of these are systems that people have developed over a long period of time to work with the human condition that we all face every day. And part of that is death. And nearly all of them recommend and prescribe to contemplate death in order to appreciate life in some form or another. And so, yeah, I mean, for me, what I tend to do now with people is just have people calculate their days left to live. It can be a bit confronting. I do it in workshops all the time. I get people to open up your calculator, put in 80 minus your age equals what? Multiply that by 365. And statistically speaking, in Australia at least, and certainly for people like me, which is an enormously privileged group, that's the number of days we were expected to live. And so for me, I check that stuff regularly. I'm at 12,300 and something left to live. And I use that as to drive urgency for myself and also reflection on this idea that kind of, what am I doing? Why am I doing it? Is it important? Am I making a contribution here? What kind of contribution am I trying to make? What really matters? And am I living? And it's less about the actual number, right? Like, the 12,000 is neither here nor there. I might get more, I might get less. And in fact, you know, none of us have much control over that necessarily. There's something about that number, if you do sit down and do the calculation that makes it concrete. And you see this in lots of different spheres, people calculate weeks left to live. You know, you can buy posters that have, you know, the weeks remaining and you cross them off each week. But anything that you can do that helps reflect on the fact that time is finite, I have found, really dials up commitment to doing what truly matters for yourself, for the people you love. For the organizations or the businesses that you run and the people that you serve through those businesses. Your audience here, what am I doing? Why am I doing it? And to reflect on that kind of stuff each day, I think is really useful. I have gotten into this idea of whenever I get on a plane, I. I just ask myself, you know, how am I going? Do the people I love know I love them? Yes or no? And am I happy with where I'm at at the moment? If I look back, if this plan goes down and I look back, would I be willing, you know, am I comfortable with what I've been doing and the kind of contribution I've tried to make, even if I'm not where, you know, truth is, the work is never done. But am I there? And if I can look in the mirror on those moments and. And just those reminders to keep checking in on that stuff, that, to me, is another little regular hook for me to re. Engage in the contemplation of that in order to continue to stay on what truly matters to me.

Yeah, it's really powerful. It's like a calibration in a way to keep you on track or at least aware of what you're doing day to day.

Again, we'll probably talk about this a bit over the course of this conversation, but I'm big on practices. I guess my definition for success has changed over time, too, Will. I mean, once upon a time. It's interesting, even reflecting on the Olympics. I would have said that if I could be an Olympian, I'd be happy, right? I got two weeks. What's next? I got two weeks of contentment. The truth is, it was two weeks of contentment. And then I was wondering what was next. And I really dismissed that experience for 18 years. I really didn't talk about it much, only started to write about it a couple of years ago. And I actually had a chat with another Olympian the other day, and he'd come back from Paris deeply, deeply disappointed by his experience there. And, you know, I was reflecting with him, you know. You know, there would have been a time where you would have chopped off your right leg to call yourself an Olympian. And now you come back and what is the truth of it? The truth is that it's the full yin yang of experience. You care so much that, you know, for me, anyway, there was a near out of body high in the opening ceremony. And yet, on the other hand, you know, the day I arrived in the Olympic village, I thought I had a stomach infection. The day I left, it stopped this was a physiological response to the stress and the pressure based on the fact that I had built this thing up to be so important to me. There's lots of lessons. It's the full yin yang of experience is how I tend to describe it these days.

So how do you think? And I think bringing it back to the topic at hand, which we'll eventually get to if people are sticking around this long, which I think they will be, because it's been a phenomenally interesting conversation. All those experiences you've had from training ridiculously hard to get to become an Olympian, running your own business for 13 years and going through the challenges you've been through. From a personal perspective, how has that shaped the way you understand how leaders can lead business teams and how it plays into the mindset of those individuals?

I might address the mindset thing because I think that's been a bigger shift and then how that plays out then for leaders in terms of the day to day decision making and leading. The thing for me is the big shift for me. If I think about my time as an Olympian, I really thought that mindset was all about being harder and tougher and stronger. I used to think it was eliminating stress and pressure that that shouldn't be there. And I also used to think that it was about setting goals and chasing them, chase, chase, chase. And I think I became very, very good at that and certainly cared a lot about it. The shift has been that, you know, as I've learned more about how people can actually operate and what actually works to serve people in these situations of stress and pressure and whether that's a leader making difficult decisions, whether it's them sitting down and having the awkward or challenging conversations, accountability conversations, or the difficult ones that we all inevitably face. It might be even just the simplicity of how do I transition from work to be present at home when there's so much going on, particularly for business owners, having been one, I understand how and still am. You know, I understand how all consuming that can be. The truth is that what the science says is that at best, you know, an approach like I had as an Olympian is one third of what you need to really operate in situations of stress and pressure and really build resilience and truly be able to perform and deliver when it matters. And what the science of psychological flexibility says, which is 40 years of, you know, over a thousand clinical trials, it's World Health Organization validated science in all sorts of clinical settings is we need to develop three things. And those three things are we need to learn to open up, we need to learn to be present and we need to learn to do what matters. So that's open up, be present and do what matters. And open up is not necessarily about opening up to others, even though that is perhaps something that we would do and a choice that we can make. It's more about opening up to the lived experience of discomfort and stress and pressure and knowing in fact that it is a part of the journey. How can we reflect for ourselves on that and then open up to that experience and know that that is a part of what we're going to be going through, Certainly as we, as we chase anything that we care about, in fact. And then being present again, you know, often comes know that's very focused on mindfulness. And mindfulness often comes with this baggage of, you know, sitting in the corner with a cushion and a candle saying on to the universe. Where the kind of mindfulness that I, I really like to talk about with my groups is the sort of mindfulness that, you know, you see athletes using in all games now at, at the beginning of games when they're in huddles at the end of tries that, you know, it might be race car driver, you know, there's a lemon's world championship driver who at 340ks an hour down the back straight at Le Mons, practices mindfulness for 1.2 seconds by mindfully taking a sip from his water bottle and tracking that down his throat. The point here is not necessarily to feel better. The point here is to come back to the present, to recognize that I have it regardless of what is going on around me and inside me as well. I have a choice of response here. So where do I need to focus? So what do I need to focus on right now? What is the next best step and what is the next best decision? Because ultimately then the third part of that triangle is if we've gone open up, be present and then do what matters. That third part, the do what matters, is recognizing that. Well, a recognizing the context and what matters in this context. And that's where things like purpose and values, who's important, what's important, goals all play out. So it's not at the absence of a lot of those concepts that I spoke about, as you know, that I learned and knew about as an Olympian. But it's very much about how can we connect to that, understand the broader context and then come back and do what matters. Because it's in our actions that we make progress and doing in. It's our actions that we will be judged by too ultimately. So what do we do and how do we do that? How do we do that in a values based way, in a purposeful way, in a way that moves us towards the things that we truly care about? If you think about this as the triangle will open up, be present and do what matters. Really what we're trying to do here is rather than turn people into brick walls of harder, tougher, stronger, because if you hit a brick wall with a sledgehammer, it cracks. What we're trying to do here is help people become trampolines. And I think that's one of the things that I've really enjoyed about working with this evidence base. And I guess science is simply, it's repeatable. The fascinating thing for me is that it's worked for SAS soldiers, it's worked for Olympic gold medalists, it's worked for doctors, executives, business owners, founders, it's worked for 14 year olds, worked all the way through to 64 year olds, parents. And the interesting part for me is that this is a fundamental set of practices that we can apply as leaders to both lead ourselves and also to lead others. And I think leading self is a very important piece of this puzzle, particularly for business owners. Because often, often I find with business owners that decoupling of identity that we spoke about at the very beginning, who I am versus what I do is a really important piece. The business. The pattern that I've recognized is that part of it in building a business is that you commit, right? You've done this too well with yours. You want it, you go all in. But often we lose our identity into these organizations that we create. And so how can we create the separation so then we can understand that this business in fact is an expression of who we are. It is not the definition of who I am, it is an expression of who I am. Then how can we harness that organization in service of the things that truly matter to us? What kind of environments do we want to create? Who do we want to work with? What impact do we want to have? That is where I think there's a huge advantage from a business owner standpoint in this respect is that you have the opportunity to shape the organization to become an expression of who you are in a truly meaningful and aligned sense. That means that the organization can also serve the owner rather than the owner or often feeling a slave to their own organization, which I have absolutely felt at times as well.

Yeah, that was extremely challenging for me. And I'm sure there's other people out there that have A similar feeling when I was transitioning away from my business. It was almost like a severe breakup because every conversation I'd had with anyone for the 10 years prior to that, I'd attached my identity to the fact that I was a business owner and an entrepreneur. And breaking away from that and to your point, trying to position that experience as a part of my, the parts of it that were part of my personality and identity rather than the actual business itself was really challenging.

I mean it is. And I think, you know, this is an area that I fascinated by. And I guess in part I've done it a few times. Like I did it as an athlete. I was a water polo player. I mean that's, that's what I was, that's what I lived and breathed and everything else came second. Then I started the company, the digital marketing company and that's what I was. I was the founder and CEO of that and chasing after whatever we were chasing after. And then when I left that on the back of dad's death, I actually, I got. That was when around the time of dad's death or shortly after, I was introduced to psychological flexibility because I was really struggling, to be honest with you, really frustrated, didn't know what I wanted to do, couldn't set a goal that I wanted to keep, and just had this enormous generalized sense of frustration of like what is going on and why is this happening? You know, using a very simple tool called the Value Living Questionnaire. What I realized, which is share a link with that for people who access that. But what I realized in that tool is it asks you to give a score of importance and a score of satisfaction. And the score of importance for me for work, which obviously was the business at the time, was a 9 of 10. 9 out of 10 was of importance and yet my satisfaction was a 2 out of 10. And even with all the other stuff going on, all the other stuff made sense, but that was like an incredible insight that I just hadn't been able to get to on my own. And this tool just held up the mirror to say, well where, where are you at across these things? You know, it made sense that I was sad that dad had died. It made sense that I was worried that, that my father in law was sick, that I was tired physically because of my daughter and the shoulder operation. All that other stuff made sense. But that was the insight that fell out of that very quick exercise. I mean it takes like sub 5 minutes to do that, just to do a quick audit of where things are at and then I realized, wow, something's really got to change here. And that was. That began. And I became so fascinated by this evidence base because again, as I said, it's Western science validating these millennial traditions of mindfulness and acceptance practices and contemplation of death and all that kind of stuff, to understand what really matters and then keep moving in that direction. But I became so fascinated with it that I tried to start a tech company. And I did the same thing. I went all in on the tech company, who I was, it was what I did. And three years later, we hadn't got where we needed to get to. We were trying to raise money, didn't work out. The conversations with investors were happening. We didn't have conviction over the product that we were really going to bring to market. And at that point, I resigned again. Both of those resignations ended in tears. Both of them came with physiological, like resigning from the company that I'd started and handing the reins back to business partners. Deeply challenging experiences. And I found it to be. Yeah, I don't know, I guess that's perhaps part of my personality to go all in on things too. But this time around, I'm really trying to decouple who I am from what I do. That in itself is an ongoing practice, I think. But, yeah, it's exciting too. But it's certainly. Yeah, to your point, it is not an easy process and having done it a couple of times, yeah, it's something that I really enjoy helping people with. Actually, that particular.

It does, it does certainly build resilience. And I think having those experiences makes you stronger for the next time around. I'm interested to dive a bit more into vulnerability. And I think this ties into the first part of that triangle which is opening up. You've expressed a lot of vulnerability on this interview already. And I know through a lot of your writing and everything that you publish on your website, it's, you know, you express a lot of vulnerability and really put yourself on the line. How do you think that has played into your journey? And also how do you think it plays into individuals improving their self awareness and understanding of this topic?

I think so. Even to wind it back to the Olympics, right. I got home from Athens and I. I assumed that what everyone wanted to hear was the highlight reel. How was the opening ceremony? How'd you go? What was the dining hall like? You know, all this stuff, right. And I shared that. I steered clear of the discomfort of it. You know, the fact that there are boring times sitting in the village where you're waiting for the next training session and it's bloody hot and there's not much to it. Genuinely disappointed in the result from a performance. Yeah, we ended up ninth from a personal performance standpoint as well as a team performance. Go there to win, right? That's what you're there for, that's what you want. It's what you think is critically important. And so I didn't share any of that. And then in hindsight, I think that's. That's the missed piece. You know, that it was a big experience, definitely, but I kind of then dismissed it for really 18 years before I started writing about it more recently. Will, to be honest. I mean, because the truth is, I think, Will, that I can have my aspirations for, whether it's water poly, my business, my coaching, whatever. My book you can have, you have yours, right? You have the things that matter to you. And we all have these different ideas of our preferences, what we're great at, what we'd like to accomplish, all that sort of stuff. But the thing that I've come to realize is if you think of that Yin Yang symbol, which is the, you know, the teardrop, the white teardrop with the black dot and the black teardrop with the white dot, is that it's only when we actually show both sides of that that we can truly connect. It's the suffering that we actually all share. So if I was to say who experiences anxiety, frustration, resentment, anger, fear of failure, imposter syndrome, whatever it might be, there might be the top 10. Right. You'd net 100% of people are so close, perhaps with the exception of a couple of enlightened beings or psychopaths, maybe it's the suffering that we actually share. And so what I've realized, what I've been, you know, I wasn't a fan of, you know, blowing my own trumpet or talking about the Olympics all the time, but what I realized is that the Olympics is a ticket to talk about the things that really matter and the lessons learned from that. And so the thing is that the discomfort is something that we all share, so we can all relate to that, even if the aspiration is different. You know, I don't know what it's like to build a. A building company. I have no idea. Right. I have an idea about building companies. I have a dear idea. But there is a whole suite of contexts that I. I don't understand. But the thing that I can. That I can definitely connect to is the frustrations that come with that, the challenges of trying to Scale of hiring people, of understanding the key decisions, of holding people to account of, you know, the setbacks that inevitably happen, the challenges with cash flow, and the internal experience of that. Back to your question, which is the open up. The more I'm willing to own my own tough internal experiences, then the more likely I am to be able to see and recognize that in other people. And that is the truth, is that we all have them. I'm yet to meet anyone who doesn't. I've seen behind something absolutely mind blowing, trophy cabinets. And everyone experiences suffering in sort of this setting. Tough internal thoughts, feelings, sensations. And to me the fascination is how do we work with it rather than fight it? Because I also see the cost of people fighting it. Spending time, effort, money, focus, attention, you know, trying to distract themselves from it, trying to get rid of it, trying to avoid it. Yet the invitation and the reason why, I guess my purpose now, or at least this version of it, is to change the world's relationship to suffering, is that if we can, might be better. As an example, if I was to smash glass on the floor and say, hey, Will, shoes off, do you want to do some motivational walking here? You'd laugh at me, right? But then if I say, okay, we'll bring to mind the personal people most important to you in the world. They're on the other side of the glass, they're in distress and they need your help, would you be willing to do it? And you start to nod and in that second, right, it's the fraction of a second you go from absolutely no thanks to abt, yes, I'm now willing, at least willing to do that. And what's fascinating is a. It shows me that we're terrible at pointless pain. Humans are, you know, we don't need it, we shouldn't do it. But if we can truly connect and clarify what is on the other side of the glass, what we truly, deeply care about, if we can connect and clarify that, then humans are not just. We don't just endure this stuff, we will genuinely embrace it. We are extraordinary and embracing suffering and discomfort in service of the things that truly matter to us. And also in that moment there is, what's interesting to reflect on, is that there is no change to the glass. There's no change to the implication, there is no for your life. There's no change to bare feet. You know, none of that changes. The only thing that changes there is the relationship to it. And so how can we, it seems to me to be a, a tiny but powerful fulcrum that we can pull and to help people to change their relationship to these experiences in a way that means, you know, perhaps we can do more of what matters, that we can connect, we can empathize with ourselves, a bit of self love as well, compassion to open up to these experiences, to share the experiences, if you're willing, and then to continue to do what matters. Because even you and I was speaking just before we started, but like that experience of imposter syndrome on any of these podcasts, speaking that I do, you know, I've done, I've spoken to so many people now on so many stages, I still feel like an imposter before I get up, the chat starts, you know, what do these people want to hear? Will they be interested? Is this going to be useful or relevant to them? What, what will they think? All that shows up and. But it's been a story with me my whole life. I used to think I was the last one selected in any team I ever made. And now I think, well, yeah, if we can open up to these experiences for ourselves, and rather than trying to fight them or overcome them or break through them, what we're actually trying to do is bring them into the room with us. Use the energy source. Now is how I think about it, is, okay, well, if I'm sweaty palms, all those thoughts are going just before I get on stage or before we sit down to record a podcast. You know, there's this sort of energetic experience for me, and this is what I call my Mara, you know, this energetic experience for me of, you know, energy flowing in and out of my body sort of thing. And it's like, well, it's all sort of intensifies, but it's a reflection of the fact that I care. You know, these things don't show up when I'm washing the dishes at home at night.

Get sweaty palms before you wash the dishes. Yeah, I could understand it, though.

Yeah. Thankfully it doesn't though, Right. And it's. And it's also interesting because this is. The things that we care most about are the best predictors of discomfort. So the Olympics is one example. Parenting. I haven't experienced anger in my life like parenting, other than when I was punched in the head in a water polo game. And yet the challenge of that is that I need to try to operate not from that place. Right. I want to operate from a place of values. But it doesn't stop that experience showing up. So if we can let go of the fact that we need to get rid of these experiences or that that means that, you know, we're weak or broken or inadequate or something is missing. You know, the fear of cash flow or whatever, it's because you care. And the more you care, the more likely it is to show up. So how do we. That's what that open up is about. And I think the other interesting part for me around the purpose statement is if I want to change the world's relationship to suffering, then that means I need to. That applies first and foremost to the person in the mirror. I need to. And this to me speaks to Garni's idea of, like, be the change that you want to see in the world. If I want to help the world change the relationship to suffering, then I need to be willing to completely own my own. I need to be willing to share it. And it's taken practice doesn't mean it's still not that comfortable, but it invites people into a conversation that otherwise, if I just talk about the shots I score in Olympic Games or, you know, the business wins or the accolades or what have you. I mean, the world doesn't need more highlight reels, Will. We do not need more highlight reels. We need both sides of and equally. Nor do we need suffering for suffering's sake. We need to open up, expand our perspective, recognize that in any of these moments, we have the full spectrum of experience. The more we care, the more likely that full spectrum of experience is going to show up, whether it's the joy of parenting, the challenge of it, or the freedom of running your own business and the responsibility of it. The challenge of sitting down with the person that you know best to give them some tough feedback, or a friend that you've employed in your business. You know, they are the toughest, most difficult conversations that we have. And it's. It's not the content that's the problem. It's because we care. So how do we open up and experience that? So I guess to boil it down, mate, it would be the reason I speak about vulnerability is because I feel an urgent need to walk my talk. And also it is. It's an ongoing practice for me to continue to share this stuff and. And get better at it for myself as well, because I think it's. It's. This is those three pillars. The open up, be present, do what matters. None of those things are complete. You'll never be done with any of them. It's an ongoing practice.

Just on the broken glass. I'd probably still do it if I was egged on by a bunch of people. But That's a different conversation. You bring up the highlight reels because I feel like there's almost a vicious cycle and it's played out significantly in the last 20 years with social media. The highlight reels makes the individual feel better for a moment in time, but it makes everyone else feel worse. And then they internalize that so they don't share that feeling and then that bubbles away and then creates further issues and things like that.

Right.

And what you're talking about from your purpose in terms of changing our relationship with suffering, how do you break down that barrier of centuries of internalization?

The only way I can think to is to walk my talk mate, is to speak about it, to talk about it, but also to recognize that there is a toolkit, a very specific toolkit that can help people use it. And I think that's a part of it too. It's not an, you know, you don't want to talk about, as I say, suffering for suffering's sake. The reason for touching on the suffering is to recognize that there is a toolkit that can help us work with this condition that we call the human condition. You know, it takes mindfulness, as I said, you know, it doesn't take much. We could do a four, seven, eight breath, you know, breathe in for four, hold that breath for seven, breathe out for eight. And if we did that, I think that, I think there was a study that said, you know, six minutes a day for six weeks of mindfulness literally changes the physical structures in your brain, in your prefrontal cortex for emotional regulation, decision making, focus, attention, memory, all this great stuff that we would say we want to, we want as business owners certainly, let alone in the broader population. And so how do we develop the practices and recognize that it is an ongoing process because, yeah, can you break down like the human condition isn't going to change, in my opinion. But this is a toolkit. The psychological flexibility toolkit is one extremely powerful way and repeatable way of helping people work with it. So how can we do that? And I think, yeah, that to me is walking my talk for myself. It's sharing the tools, it's enabling access, it's working one on one or with groups, with people or however that plays out. But conversations like this one, right. Hopefully this means that some of these tools get to a new or access or awareness to this stuff, gets to a new set of that. Otherwise I would not have access to.

Yeah, I mean, even the micro convert, I'm talking marketing speak conversions, but the micro interactions that you have with people for example, we have a conversation and I have a conversation with someone else. They talk about how great life is, and I walk away from that feeling insuperior or, you know, questioning the things I'm doing. Have a conversation with you and you're vulnerable and you share your challenges and things like that. And immediately it's like, oh, someone else is feeling some of the same things I feel. And it makes the other person you're talking to feel better and feel more confident in moving forward as well.

Yeah, I think a big part of it is just not to feel alone.

Which is a part of the human condition. Like, that's one of the biggest fears, right?

Yeah, yeah, it is. One of the biggest fears is to be ostracized or left outside the cave, isn't it? Because once upon a time, it was existential threat. So how do we feel less alone? How do we connect? And I think in a world of digital, the human connection becomes exponentially more important. That's all we can do, is connect as humans. And what do we share? And I think because we share it, it becomes easier to have a, you're okay, I'm okay, as opposed to, I'm great, and you need to pick up your socks or pick up your act, lift your game. Or the flip side of that is, oh, you're doing so well, Will. I mean, that's the other side of the side, the coin, oh, well, you're doing so well. That is also misrepresentation. Right. Because if. And I. And this was something I really had to come to terms with, I think particularly when I resigned from this. From the tech company, couple of years. It's been two and a half years now. Was that. I think a pattern that played out over my life was putting people on pedestals and putting someone up on a pedestal to say, oh, what you've accomplished or what you've done is so amazing, is as much of a disservice as telling someone they're ordinary because it distorts the relationship. It sort of creates this subservience or what have you. And, yeah, I'd rather get to that conversation where, you're okay, I'm okay, really wish you well and hope, you know, I'd love to learn something about what you're doing in that space or, boy, there's lots for me to learn over here. How could we work together? There's no point. That imbalance serves no one on either side of the ledger, ultimately.

Yeah, that's a great point, too. Talk to me about a few More practical examples. You gave example of the breathing exercise. We spoken about being more vulnerable in general in terms of opening up. But when you're looking at that triangle, the, the psychological flexibility triangle, what are some other practical things that people can do to progress in this space?

It's probably a set of questions will that I might leave you with. And people can perhaps hit pause or as they go through them. My suggestion would be to write your answers down to these questions, pull out your phone, open up a note in your phone and actually again, I'll give you access to these questions, well through the link if you like. So in the open up section, I would say think of a challenging situation, choose a challenge that you have on. Write that down in three or four words and then ask yourself these questions and write them down into your phone. So what tough or unhelpful thoughts are showing up? What tough or unhelpful feelings are showing up? What tough or unhelpful sensations are showing up? So that's physiological sensations. You know, sweaty palms, elevated heart rate, tightness of chest, all that kind of stuff. Then ask yourself, where do you feel that in or around your body? Write that down. Does it have a size or size and shape? For some people that's like a ball in their stomach or a rock on their chest or a hoodie that they're wearing. Does it have a size and shape? Does it have a color? Does it have a texture? Does it have a weight? Does it have a temperature? And at the end of that, can you give that experience a name? If you've just done those questions, say, then what you've just done is two evidence based techniques. One is by writing down your thoughts, your feelings, your sensations, what you're doing, it's called diffusion. So you're creating space between you and your thoughts, your feelings and sensations and that experience. And in doing so you allow yourself the ability to look around, to see the options around you. And you know, if you're on the video then you know you've either got your hands held up to your eyes and. But if you can create some space between you and your hands, then you know, you're far more likely to see the broader context. The second technique there is labeling. So if we label that experience and give it a name, then that is also helpful. And I've given mine a name. Mara. It's very much the imposter syndrome. There's a story in Buddhism that where Buddha and Mara have this cosmic battle, Mara walks away unscathed, Buddha walks away unscathed. As well. A little while later, Buddha's at home, There's a knock at the door. The Buddha goes to the door, opens the door and Mara, this demon of everything awful is standing there. And Buddha invites Mara in and treats Mara as a revered house guest and says, mara, welcome back, come in. Pause Mara, tea first. And eventually Mara walks away. And this doesn't happen just once. But you know, Mara keeps on knocking and Buddha keeps opening the door. And this is acceptance with a capital A. Acceptance. Practice by labeling it, you can learn to open up to that experience and bring it with you, bring it with you onto the stage, into the conversation, whatever the situation looks like. And then if you being present a very, you know that 4, 7, 8 breath is a really simple one. The other one that's often useful in a business setting and particularly in the interpersonal setting is to take a glass of water and just have a mindful sip. If a conversation is getting heated or if you know this is going to be a conflict situation, take a mindful sip so you can choose your next words in a conversation. My favorite is probably the question, my favorite question, which is, what if this is the last time? So what if this is the last time? Who do you want to be? How do you want to act here? What choice will you make here? What will you say? What will you do? How do you want it? Whether that's giving your kids a kiss goodnight or saying goodbye to a friend, having a coffee, it can apply to nearly anything. What if this was the last coffee you ever drank? You'd approach it very differently, right? Yeah.

No, I think that is power. And that ties back to your comment about the plane earlier. It's that moment of reflection around if this is the last thing I do, is it? Am I about to do it in the way I want to do it?

Yes, exactly. I try to ask myself that as many times as I can and it's useful every single time. The final one then is that do what matters section. And again, some questions for people to uncover themes more than necessarily get to write answers, but what are my values? Who is important to me? And making sure that your own name is on that list, because I think it's about 1 in 20 people put their own name on that list. But if you think about resilience and wellbeing and performance, if your own name is not on that list, you're in trouble. What is important to me? So goals, aspirations, dreams, all that kind of stuff, what energizes me? What would I willingly do for free? What is my purpose. I mean, if you answer those questions, what you'll end up with, even if you just give yourself 30 seconds, you'll end up with a set of ideas or themes that truly matter to you, typically, is what I say. And so how do you then guide decision making along those lines? How do you guide behavior and action, those paths? Because that's what values are. They're a pathway for action. They're not an intention. They're not a mantra. They're what does love look like here? What does gratitude look like here? What does exploration look like here as a toolkit? That's the core of wrapping around that core triangle.

Yeah, that's awesome. There's tons of value there. So talk to me, Toby, about the Monday 3 so this is your newsletter that goes out every Monday, I'm assuming?

Spot on.

And people can get it from tobyagenkins.com Newsletter I highly recommend subscribing to Toby's newsletter if they want to get, you know, actionable advice like he's given today on the podcast. But can you just give a bit of a summary about what people can expect if they join your newsletter?

If you join the newsletter, yes, there's the this is the weekly Monday three, and the three things are a quote that I'm pondering, an insight that I've had or sharing from a conversation I've had or something I've learned, and an action that I'm taking each week. And as much as anything will, it's a way for me to reflect on what I've learned in the last week. And so I found it really, I love writing it, I really enjoy it. And so it's been fun to sort of collect and use that as an ongoing diary that I share with people. And the other part of signing up for Monday 3 and even if you don't want the newsletter, please sign up anyway. And down you know, you'll get a whole host of the tools that I just described. So you get all of those questions. I've called it the Reinvention Activity because it's about reinventing mindset. So you get all those questions. You get the Valued Living questionnaire that I mentioned earlier that really helped me in my crucible period, and a whole host of other things that can help with using psychological flexibility and applying that into decision making, reflection, all that sort of stuff too. So whole host of things that you can get access to immediately. And I'd love people to download that even if you they're not as interested in the newsletter that's fine on a bit of a mission, as you can tell, to sort of share this as a way of working with the human condition. So that'd be great.

Yeah. And personally, I remember like there's just the. Whenever I get the newsletter come through, obviously you do it on LinkedIn as well as through the newsletter. Not every time there's going to be something that resonates with me, but there's been number of occasions where I'll read through and there'll just be something like what we're talking about here. It's like having a conversation with you where it just allows me to drop my guard and feel okay about some things because you're sharing your experience and the challenges you face. So that's the experience I had with it, at least. Well, Toby, I guess we're almost out of time, but is there any final advice you want to give to the builders and business leaders that are listening today?

My one word summary of psychological flexibility would be choice. And so if there was one thing that I could leave people with is that idea. And that is because given that we have such little control of the world around us and given what I've come to learn, which is we have such little control over the world inside of us as well, the thoughts, the feelings, the sensations, then really what we need to remember is that we still have a choice. That is to me what that whole framework is about, is to remind us that we have a choice and then make that choice that moves us towards the things that really matter. So yeah, to me it's the choice to, you know, to open up. It's the choice to be present as best we can, knowing that we will inevitably fail and the choice to do what matters and knowing as well that we will inevitably, like, it's not about perfection, but it's about defining something that matters to you so much that you're willing to get back up and keep going when we do inevitably fail or fall. And so that would be. That would be my one word, probably will is like choice because we still, you know, regardless of what is going on, we still have a choice.

That's really powerful. Toby, you've. I mean, you've given me a lot to think about from today's conversation. I think the biggest takeaway for me, apart from the triangle, the psychological flexibility triangle, which I think there's a ton of interesting tactics and stuff and a way of thinking in there that one question around is if this is the last time I think you framed it. That's really powerful and I think I'm going to integrate that into my life immediately, so.

Well, I certainly hope this is not the last time, Will. Yes.

Yeah, so do I.

Thank you, man.

Yeah. Cracking conversation. Thanks so much for coming on, Toby. I really appreciate you provided a ton of value.

Pleasure, Will. Thanks for having me.

No worries. Also, a big thank you to our listeners wherever you are in the world. If you like the show today, please subscribe to Professional Builder Secrets on your platform of choice. And if you're feeling generous, leave us a review. But until next time, have a great day.