#1 way to deal with pressure with Performance Psychologist Jonah Oliver

Jonah, a huge welcome to the Lead on Purpose podcast.

Thanks for having me, mate.

Mate, it was such an honor to stand alongside you and connect with you at a conference in Brisbane last year. And when I heard you speak, I really resonated with not only what you spoke about, but how you actually packaged it. It was so palatable, so straightforward. You distilled all of these complex ideas around pressure, around performing with pressure, and you distilled it in a way that I think that we can all really get. So thanks for taking the time to go a bit deeper with us today.

Yeah, looking forward to the conversation, mate.

That's going to be fun. Well, let's start with this. What is pressure?

It's a big question to start with, right?

Well, I always think about it. There's some degree of.

Truth of the context, right? If, if you're standing inside a stadium with a hundred thousand people playing the super bowl this morning, you know, that's, that's a reality. And that, that involves some degree of extrinsic pressure, social evaluation, judgment, an outcome people are chasing, etc, and then of course you've got the intrinsic component of that, which is why, you know, of the. What is that? 80 odd people playing something huge teams in NFL, for example, you know, each individual will have their own story around pressure based upon, you know, all those human things like dreams, hopes, aspirations, past experiences, personality values, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So it's a, it's a, it's the, it's the, it's the collision between an extrinsic, environmentally imposed constraint and then the interpretation of that from a whole myriad of intrinsic drivers. Hope that's not too much of a mouthful.

No, that's great. And so the thing is, and what I'm hearing, and I'm sure the listener gets it as well, is we all experience pressure, yet some people seem to embrace it, other people seem to maybe wrestle with it, others try to diminish it or just totally make it go away. So in your experience, what is the best thing to do with pressure? When you're a performer, whether you're performing on stage, you're public speaking, you're taking that final shot on the 18th green. What should we be doing with pressure?

Yeah, sure. Well, firstly, let's just take a step back and realize that every single person will interpret the same situation differently. And I sort of touched upon it based upon past experience, perceptions of competence, what's at stake for them or what have you. So that, that means that, you know, our relationship to that very Moment can be really shaped by a lot of factors when, you know, the question being, well, what's the overlapping solution there, Jonah? What do the people who seem to, you know, navigate pressure. Well, you know, what they have in common. And.

You'Ve probably heard the cliche, pressure is a privilege. But it's pretty useful to sort of stop and remind ourselves of that, like in the sporting context, right? Like, if you're in. If you're. I don't know, if you're in a war zone and pressure goes up, it probably means something bad's going on, right? So I'm very careful in using that cliche haphazardly. But in the world that I mainly work, the more pressure that comes with normally means you've done something right. Generally. I mean, okay, you know, we're. We're. We're losing my contracts on the line. Like, I get there's other scenarios where pressure can come, but by and large, you play. You know, you're playing the season. You make the preliminary finals. Oh, a bit more pressure. Oh, we've made the grand final. Oh, more pressure. You know, my clients make the Olympics. Oh, more pressure. It's like you've got to remind themselves that often it's. It's the byproduct of doing something really well. And, you know, I use a lot of playful analogy, as, you know, and, you know, if I'm climbing Mount Everest and all of a sudden I'm getting to that really top section of the. They call it the death zone, where the air gets thin. If I turn to a colleague and went, oh, straight. The air's getting thin. Like, I imagine I'd get looked at with a bit of an incredulous look, like, are you kidding me, mate? Like, you know, no shit, right? Like, that's the price of entry for getting to the death zone. Like, this is. What's. This is what comes with getting to the very top of the mountain. Well, I like to relate to pressure a bit the same. Like, you want to go to the NFL Grant, you know, the Super Bowl. You want to, you know, race in Formula one. You want to go to the gold medal sort of match at the Olympics. Well, you know, pressure might be, you know, a familiar friend that may show up. Which then brings me to what do we do? And it's really about not engaging in control strategies to attempt to suppress, distract, run away from, replace, avoid the very.

I call it a bit of the story or the noise that shows up in our brain, right? Like, our brains have evolved to respond to anxiety you know, we see a snake, we want to move away from it. We've got deep neural architecture that says, when you think and feel this way, listen to me and do something to avoid. Yet here I am choicefully running onto the. Onto the football field. Here I am running, you know, entering the octagon or the UFC match. So, you know, we're often asking ourselves to do things that naturally are somewhat intention with some of our neural sort of substrates in the brain. So that's why we have to be a bit intentional with it. And, you know, what's the best way I can sort of summarize it? It's the more we can learn to accept pressure and anxiety is merely the price of entry to normalize it. And if I can be okay at just sitting with it and letting it be there, it frees me up to focus on the task at hand.

The number one reason athletes and coaches, you know, or surgeons or CEOs or actors or it doesn't matter who I'm working with. The number one reason they underperform when pressure's around isn't because of the pressure. It's because they're trying to control their interpretation of it. They're trying. They're trying to minimize that experience. They're trying to get rid of the butterflies. They're trying to get rid of some of the worrisome thoughts or the muscle tension or whatever's showing up for them. They see it as a bad thing, and they're making a correlational error that when I feel this way or think this way, I'm going to perform poorly. Whereas the truth is, when I try to wrestle with my pressure and anxiety, it hijacks me. It sucks me in. It then takes my focus away from what I'm trying to do. And therefore my breakdown in performance is a breakdown in focus. It's not because of my heart rate, it's not because of my butterflies. It's not because of some thoughts in my brain. It's because I'm focusing typically on those things and trying to do something with them rather than going, yep, okay, I'm nervous. Something of importance is at play here, and that's okay. Now what am I here to do? I'm here to behave. You know, the ball doesn't give a what I'm thinking, so what do I need to do here right now? And bring yourself back to those behavioral anchors 100%.

And that's really, really powerful. I mean, it takes me back, Jonah, probably 13 years of age, and I was preparing for the world Solo drumming championship, similar to maybe figure skating, where you're out there by yourself and there's a panel of adjudicators. And it's very subjective. And leading up to that, I was in my head thinking, what do they want to hear? How do they want it to be delivered? Then on the day as I get to go on, I'm actually, I'm not in control of any of those things. That's scary. I can't control what they want to hear. Don't know what it is they're looking for. The butterflies came on, the hands started sweating. And it was interesting at 13, trying to figure out what to do. Do I try and diminish? Do I try and engage? Do I try and just play through? And that set me in motion after that from a pretty young age of going, how does this brain of ours work? What impact do my thoughts have? What, what's going to serve me? And I was reading some of the older literature back then, like the inner game of golf, inner game of music. But I know things have changed and evolved so much. There's still a lot of relevant stuff in there, but things have changed a lot. So for you, you know, going back to those old. The old literature and old way of psychology and dealing with pressure, what do you think has changed? What, what's the narrative change that we need to be embracing?

Yeah, sure. Well, I say it's not about reducing stress and pressure. It's about building capacity to embrace more. That's the biggest pivot. Even when I went through university, I was trained explicitly in techniques of how to help clients reduce their anxious experience. Thought stopping, deep breathing, cue words, positive self talk, relaxation. You know, all these techniques that were basically saying anxiety is bad. You, you as a psychologist need to help your clients be less anxious and therefore that will lead to them performing well. Absolute lie, absolutely scientifically incorrect. And if you know anything about brain function, it's an impossibility. We worry about things we care about. You know, it'd be like me having a gun at somebody's head and saying, control your heart rate or I'm going to shoot you.

Good luck.

Good luck.

Right.

So, yeah, step one, it's not reducing stress and pressure. It's buildings people's capacity for embracing even more. You know, and, you know, strength and conditioning, physiotherapy, you know, medicine get this, and they've got that a lot longer than maybe psychology has taken a while to catch up. You know, you get a muscle tear. Now, maybe back in this 1970s, they put an ice pack on it and say, you know, rest for a week and get back out there. But now if you get a muscle tear in your calf or something, you know, once it's actually, you know, initially healed, you're doing a whole bunch of strength training because the physios and docs said you got a muscle tear because you weren't strong enough in that muscle. For the load of what your sport demands. You need to pack into a scrum, you need to jump high, run fast, whatever it is, your muscles need to be able to tolerate the load of what your sport demands. So we're going to make you stronger so you don't get another muscle hit. Well, psychology's got to be the same. What's the demand that your sport or your career is placing upon you? Oh, well, I need to perform in front of, you know, a hypercritical environment with, with, you know, contracts on the line and lots of money at stake or, you know, whatever it is. And therefore there's going to be a fair bit of pressure showing up both internally and externally. Oh, okay. Therefore psychologically we need to actually strengthen you and build your capacity. So that's the biggest pivot is that the psychological science has now caught up to that. And you know, I spend my life, you know, helping clients. Exactly. Build capacity for whatever their life is throwing at them. Probably the second one is it's not about positive thinking, it's about taking positive action no matter what you feel. And somewhere along the line I think that got a bit mixed up like the, the power of positive thinking. Look at all these amazing high performing people. They have nothing but unwavering self belief.

An abject lie. You know, like you, I work with those people. They're human. They, they have fears, doubts, worries, they feel fraudulent, they feel all those normal things, but they're very good at behaving consistently in the right way in the presence of whatever shows up. So, you know, we don't need to always wake up and have positivity for breakfast. Matter of fact, some of the most high achieving people in the world are just as fearful, worried and doubtful as anybody else. They just seem a bit better at not letting that dictate the actions they take. So really understanding what's the behavioral requirement of your job. And probably the third one would be it's not about motivating people, it's about connecting people to what matters. You know, there's, there's a whole bunch of work around human motivation and it's quite interesting in terms of lasting behavior change. You Know, if you can get somebody to connect to something far deeper than just maybe some, you know, surface level motivation or even intrinsic motivation, it's actually, where does that intrinsic motivation come from? And you connect to that deeper driver of that internal intrinsic motivation, you get lasting change. Right. You know, I might lose weight because I've got an upcoming wedding. I want to look good in my suit, but as soon as I'm married, you know, six months later, I'm back to the weight I was, you know, and you see that all the time. If I want to nurture my health and fitness so I can be a healthy dad and stay alive and role model to my kids, that being healthy is a really important thing to value in your life.

That's probably going to keep me a bit more on the road of health and fitness far beyond I looked good in my suit on my wedding day. So, you know, it's really important if you want to look at lasting behavior change, to connect to not just simple motivational levers, but. But connecting to things that deeply matter to people.

And that's really interesting. You know, when you look at sport, it's like helping the athlete, the individual, to really go deep with what it means to be the best in field at that sport. And I want to just unpack a few things. That was just incredible. So building capacity, I think that's just a big mindset shift for a lot of people because I know for decades people have been told, you know, you've got to just learn how to diminish, to breathe through it, to reduce, you know, all these feelings that you're getting physiologically. So where, where do we build capacity? So if I was an individual, there's a lot of pressure being put on me by myself and maybe external forces. Where, where do I start building capacity so I can start to really embrace that and operate well with it.

Yeah, great question.

I'm a bit playful.

I've never seen an athlete grow muscles sitting in a room talking to their strength and conditioning coach.

You want to get strong, you've got to throw some tin around in the gym, right? Yeah. Well, if you want to build your psychological capacity, you've got to go expose yourself to some things that stretch you, not just sit in a room with a psychologist talking about it. You know, people often ask, why do I travel the world so much with my clients? It's because I'm there to do exposure work. You know, if somebody had a fear of heights and I'm a psychologist, part of my behavioral exposure is taking them on A on a, you know, a trip to something of heights and setting up some, you know, systematic desensitization to that, you know, noxious stimuli. Well, it's no different in the performance space, right? You need to seek out things that generate discomfort and it's only through that exposure that you update the mental model of your capacity to function in that space and get better at sitting with the inherent discomfort that will show up. So I mean, you know, stoicism certainly knew that 3,000 years ago. Right. For those who are listening, you know, you can go down a deep rabbit hole of reading up about, you know, the, the stoics and all that stuff. But, you know, anti fragility, you know, that showed up and all really good things because it says that the only way to strengthen is through exposure. Again, how do you build muscles? You lift some weights that are heavy enough to actually introduce some muscle tear. You know, everyone listening here would have the basic understanding of physiology of getting stronger. In the gym. You actually have to cause trauma damage. You tear those muscle fibers and then the, you know, the tears fill in and you get muscle growth. So you go with light lightweights. You won't get, you know, stronger. You've got to expose you to a sufficient stimuli that actually causes a bit of almost damage. Right. Well, I'm not promoting seeking psychological damage per se, but bloody hell, go out and push yourself. Oh, I don't like eating tomatoes. I'll push them off the side of my plate. I don't like speaking in public. I don't like doing an ice bath. I don't like talking up in a team meeting or I don't like passing the ball, you know, to a, to a teammate when we've broken the line and whatever. Like, you'll see that experiential avoidance is the term. You'll see that showing up everywhere. Right? You know, how do you go telling someone when there's spinach in their teeth? Oh, my eyes dance around and I look for the stage exit. Left, right. We got to get better when some discomfort shows up to just learn to sit with that. That's a moment of growth. That's an opportunity of growth right there. And that's how we build capacity. So exposure to the environments that probably make you feel some discomfort, but with a mindset of curiosity and willingness to, you know, play in that space in the pursuit of something.

Bigger. Like, I want to excel in my career. I want to have greater mental health. I want to be a better leader. I want to, whatever that is. It's you've got to connect to your why, Otherwise you won't do it, right? You'll just interpret as pain and avoid it. Because humans are crap at pointless pain. Yeah, yeah, but 100%, if we connect to something of value, we'll endure great hardship.

And this whole idea of. You've mentioned it a couple of times, discomfort. At no point did you say pain. So how do we keep pushing ourselves into that discomfort zone without it going to pain and us just quitting is. A lot of people when they experience pain are like, screw that, that was awful. I, I vomited. Never again. But how can we dance in that area of discomfort?

Awesome question.

The very interpretation of pain, right.

Is completely contextually bound. So let's talk about physical pain, not just psychological pain.

How many of your listeners have played a game of footy, you know, rugby or something, and at the end of it, when they've gone into the sheds, they've looked down and noticed, oh, they're bleeding from the knee or shin or somewhere. And I didn't even know, right?

They didn't actually even register feeling that yet later that night, when they get up for a piss and they stub their toe, they normally call for emergency services. Man down.

Right?

So our brain actually filters and changes the very interpretation of pain based upon whether it's important right now or not. Like, we know this literally from a physiological standpoint. It wasn't that you were just distracted because you're playing a game of rugby and the crowd was noisy. Your brain literally said, right now it's not that useful to feel that slight cut on your shin. So I won't even send really a pain signal to your brain. But middle of the night, in the dark, I want you to be hypersensitive to any pain because I don't want you to fall over and kill yourself or something. So your brain is always changing your relationship to pain. It is no different psychologically.

No different.

Me having to.

Stand up in front of a meeting and give a colleague some feedback on something. You know, I might find that really hard if I haven't connected to something more important. Like, we've got to achieve something in this company and it's too important for us to get our own fears, doubts, worries in the way of just speaking the truth and in the pursuit of what we're trying to, you know, develop or build or. I want to be the best version of myself as a leader and I really want to come to work and feel like I can be that. Therefore, right now, my short term discomfort is Less important than me providing that feedback. You know.

I think I used this, maybe this metaphor in that talk you and I did together where, you know, if a ball rolls on the road and I'm playing basketball with my kids, you know, and a car's coming along, I let the car hit the ball. But if my daughter runs out onto the road to grab that ball, you know, I'm out there. I actually don't care how painful the car is.

I don't care how much pain it's going to bring me. I'm just focusing on how important my daughter is. And therefore I'm willing to experience death. You know, so what does that show? It's not how painful something is, it's how important something is.

Okay, I'm getting fired up. I'm getting excited right now with what you just said. So whatever field I'm in. So for the listener that's listening right now, they're all in specific fields. Some of them are on field, off field, they're in corporate, they're in sport.

Yeah.

If I want to be bif. So best infield, world class, world's best ever. How do I turn up the importance meter to the point where almost I would go as far to the point where I'd be willing to die for this. To push myself physically, mentally, to put the time in. How can we dial up the importance meter and really make that our central focus to achieve at world class?

Yeah, cool. It's about realizing that whatever we do in life is merely a vehicle for the expression of our values. And so I'll have to get a bit Dr. Phil here for a moment. Right.

Love it.

It's, it's. People will think they. I don't know, I just love rugby or I love Formula one or I love being a CEO or I love being a surgeon. It's like, yeah, but if you actually weren't physically built as you are, you wouldn't be a professional athlete. You would have had to find a different profession. But you've got the same brain, you've got the same personality, you've got the same values deep within your heart, but you just don't have the same body that would allow you to be a professional athlete. So what the heck are you going to do? And what you'd find is these people would seek out some other form of interesting high performance pursuits. It might be a coffee shop, it's just a bloody good one. Or it could be an origami shop. Don't care what it is. People get so caught up in what we do, it's actually realizing that what we pursue in life might be because we have some, you know, physical talents or intellect for, or we've inherited the family business or whatever, right? But it's got nothing to do with the person who's actually in that career. And why do you love playing rugby? Being a surgeon, being a CEO, being an engineer of a racing car team, what have you, is it. It's that allows you to bring your values to life.

And when you can understand your values, everyone has values. A lot of people just haven't stopped to find out and discover. When you do, it's life changing, right? And the science, the psychological science supports that.

Then you realize that at any moment, on any given day, it's merely an opportunity for me to dial up the expression of those. And when that becomes literally your only purpose in life is just to pursue life in a values congruent way, that important factor is normally dialed right up. Does that make sense? Or that too?

No, that makes absolute sense. And to me, once we get connected with those values, it gives us a certain perspective or a filter of, of the world around us. So we can obviously do lots of values based tests and assessments. But if someone was sitting there right now and they've pulled the car over or they've stopped running, whatever they're doing as they listen right now, and they've got a pen and paper and they want to just go a little bit deeper and go, what are some of my values? How would you say, you know, what's a good way to go about discovering your inner values?

Yeah, sure. The first thing I always ask all my clients is tell me what your values are.

Because it's amazing how, honestly, if you're forced sometimes you might not be completely right with the language of the words, but instantly some themes just jump out, like, oh, I don't know, people would probably say that I'm, you know, or these are things. So that's the start point. The second one is I play around with things like.

What do you want people to say at your funeral?

Not, oh, she founded a company that was worth this much. And the share price went to here. And.

He scored this many points in the letters low and like, come on, right? The people that love you, your kids, your family, your best mate, you know, I always think, what do I want them to say? Because I'm not going to be there, what are they going to say about me if I've lived this life in the right way? You know, so that's a really Powerful. Interesting question to think about, you know, or at your 65th birthday or some milestone or, you know, or if you were eavesdropping at a cocktail party and, you know, your best friend or your wife or your husband was talking about you to somebody and saying, you know, what is it about, you know, he or her and the relationship you've got? What is it about you that fell in love with him or her? And you get to hear that, you know, voyeuristic conversation. What do you actually want them to say? You know.

Those types of things. And then there's also just reverse engineering.

What are the things you spend your time pursuing or doing? And what does a holiday look like? Oh, well, you know, I normally like to go parasailing through the Andes with my mates once we've skydived off the. Okay, right, interesting. That's telling me something about, I don't know, adventure and curiosity and, you know, versus. I like to go to the state library and catalog all the books and read and. Okay, interesting. Maybe there's something around, you know, pursuit of learning, knowledge and so, you know, everyone will have a. Yeah. Our life often tells us a bit about the things we value, but also the values, expression. And that's a really important distinction is people get a bit mixed up when they do values questionnaires and reflections. Is they. They actually end up answering the things they value versus values. You know, I value being a dad. I value my mates. I value learning and growth. You know, they're things that are important to me. But when I'm being the best dad or the best psychologist or the best, you know, mate, I'm really connected to mastery. So the pursuit of mastery. I've always said, why do I. Why did I learn a lot? Why did I do a lot of degrees? Why do I still read? It's. I don't want an endpoint. I just want a lifelong pursuit of just learning. Yeah. So I use a word, mastery. It's just immaterial. The actual word you put around, it's the meaning behind it. Curiosity. I'm a much better dad when I'm curious. Otherwise, I'm judgmental as to why my son just put black texture all through my nice couch or something. It's like, hey, bud, what's happening here?

Playfulness, one of my core values, which is why I try to sort of do all my work in a slightly, you know, playful way. I enjoy that. I think I'm a better version of myself, and I think my clients learn better when I'm in that space. And value, doing things of value and bringing value. So, you know, my core values, I make sure I can dial them up and explicitly define them as behaviors. They're not words, they're not intentions, they're not lovely decals on footy club walls. They're behaviors. What does curiosity look like for me in this area or domain? And then it's just a decision making tool for me. It's just, okay, is that a towards or an away move from me being true to that.

I'll give a buyer, be warned here.

If people listening go down that rabbit hole of really discovering their values, life becomes a lot harder. A lot harder, but so much more rich and rewarding.

And that, that hard that you're talking about is I'm, I'm imagining it's because you're going to have to grow and you're going to be challenged and you're going to push through things that are very uncomfortable.

Exactly. Being the best version of ourselves is hard. We want to be emotionally governed. We want to kick the dog, we want to criticize the staff member. We want to, you know, eat those simple carbohydrates on the couch and not go for that run. Right. Like it's hard. You know, it's, it's. If I say I want to pursue, to pursue a life of mastery and I think about my profession and all I want to do is sleep on that airplane ride because I can justify that I've been busy working long hours versus actually read a couple more journal articles and maybe that book or what have you. You know, one feels harder than the other. But how do I feel when I get off that flight? So much more rich and rewarded that I'm glad I just, you know, did a little bit to nurture my, my learning, growth and my career and those values congruent so I'm less critical of myself. Just like when you get out of bed and go for that run, when your brain wants to say, hit the snooze button. We always feel so much better when we come back from it. So, yeah, doing values work is amazing, but you've got to know what you're signing up for. It not only means you've got that a bit of accountability to doing things that you might have historically avoid it. Yeah.

And that to me, that's where the true growth is. And you talked about it being hard, but I guess both options are hard. To stick to these unhealthy, toxic, disempowering things, that's hard. And it ends up pretty ugly at the End. But then also the growth stuff, that's hard. So I guess choose your hard.

Yeah, love that. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. It's often short term, hard versus long term benefit, you know, so the short term pain, the short term, you know, relationship to that chatter in the brain versus, you know, I say to all my professional athletes a lot, you know, do you want to feel good at the start of the game or at the end of the game? Because, oh, no, got to get myself really positive and pump up and calm down. Hang on, I only gave you an option. You can't be both. Do you want to feel good now or at the end of this game? And thankfully, most of them actually get it. They're like, well, good at the end. Okay, cool. So how about we stop worrying about how you're thinking and feeling right now and focus on your role and your job and your tactics and your competence and let's get after that, hey, meet at the end of the match and see how we're feeling. You know, that's brilliant.

Yeah. I was chatting recently with a professional athlete just around setting goals and first place. First place, first place. You know, at worst, top three, like, this is what they were focused on. And I said, well, that's interesting. And I get that, like, you're there to win, but would not, you know, just, why would we focus maybe more so on habits, on rituals, on routines and becoming masterful and world class at those. And therefore, the outcome will probably be a reflection of how well you've done on those things. Because the outcome, focusing on first place, to me, that's just so wide. Like, what does that even mean? But when you're focused on certain drills, mindset, routine, then you can impact it. So for the athlete that's sitting now going, okay, do I just meditate, visualize on first place, first place, gold medal, or do I park that and go, yeah, that's where I'd love to end up. That's cool. And then reverse engineer all the things I can control. What's your, what's your advice for that athlete?

Yeah, well, you've pretty well answered it in the question, right? It's, I use outcome performance process.

Okay.

You know, you definitely set an outcome, right? It's, it's, it's. You're allowed to say, I want to climb Mount Everest.

Then it's like, okay, well, what are the performance sort of behaviors that are going to allow me or put me in the best position to achieve that outcome? Okay. I need to, you know, make sure I'm spreading in defense Communicating in offense, make sure that I'm, you know, blah, blah, blah, whatever the environment is. Everyone, everyone generally knows what they need to do. I've never met an athlete who doesn't. And then I say, okay, now you've got your key strengths, behaviors that really are you being the best version of yourself that would lead to the best performance, which would then put you in the best position to get that outcome. Cool. What's maybe one or one to three process anchors or cues that might just bring you back to that when the inevitability comes of pressure, fatigue, pain, context of the scoreboard, whatever's showing up. And that's why we go from, yep, I want to win this match. Right. I want to really work on my A, B and C in terms of how I attack the match and play to my strengths. Cool. Therefore, my cues are going to be A, B and C. And that's just going to be my little slightly, almost like a little, you know, behavioral anchor that just, I come back to and then I, you know, that's that ascending chain now. So yes, we reverse engineer. Cool. What are we going to anchor to that then allows you to, to display that. Yeah.

And for someone that's listening right now going, what, what might that be? What might that process anchor be? What are some examples do you think that somebody could really, really get?

Yeah. Okay. It would have to be super specific and super nuanced to their environment.

So if I'm a midfielder in Australian football and that stoppages, I get a little flat footed and reactive because we know the anxious brain gets, you know, hypervigilant and scans and therefore we get reactive, not proactive. So the coach and I have been working on. Come on, Jonah, you gotta be more proactive. You gotta be more proactive. You gotta. It's like I've heard that a thousand times. Okay, well what's a cue that might make you more proactive?

It's when I'm actually just moving my feet. I'm not flat footed. It's as simple as that. I know how to play the game, I know how to tackle, I know how to, you know, all that stuff's actually pretty second nature. I literally just get flat footed at that moment in the game. So my cues is going to be fast feet or on my toes. Something so simple like that then brings out the rest of the behavior.

Brilliant.

So don't complicate it. It's just what's the superordinate cue? So this is a very important one. I always look for what's the super ordinary. What do I mean by that? What's the highest cue that leads to the descending behavior?

Like if that footballer had to now, you know.

Balance my weight, communicate, use my hips to create weight distribution, make sure that I'm also like, you know, there'll be a hundred things and there's no way their brain and their working memory is going to remember any of that with fatigue and pressure. So. All right, well, what's the simplest cue that if we connect to it, everything else flows from it.

And that's what I look for is, is if that makes sense. The highest, simplest cue that then just lets everything come from there. And then you normally end up with that descending chain of motor, you know, motor patterns that come out.

I love that, Jonah. That's just so simple. And that the person listening, if they're thinking about those anchors. It's not a complex set of rituals that take 10 minutes. It's one simple motion, one simple thing that they can relate to that sets off this trigger, that triggers off this thought pattern, this motion action taking pattern.

Yeah, totally. And if there's some historical technique breakdown in a fine motor control, like a tennis player seems to always fault on second serve when it's, you know, a spicy point, you know, a break point and what have you. And okay, how does the second serve break down? Their ball toss always just goes that little bit too low, so they end up hitting it into the net typically. Okay, great. So what's our cue going to be? You know, up to the right or up or just something that says if I get my ball toss in the right position, I know how to hit a bloody second serve. Even if I am scared and caught up in that story a little bit. It's the behavioral breakdown of this, of the serve that's actually leading to the error, not the presence of the anxiety. So all I need to do is make room for the inherent nerves of, ah, shit, it's second serve break point. Okay, feeling a bit uncomfortable. What's my solution? Not get rid of my nerves or thoughts about don't double fault, because you're going to have those for the rest of your life. It's and up to the right. And there's your superordinate cue that then leads to the correct service action.

That's brilliant. And yet to me, again, that's very simple. It's a command. So it's a, hey, this is what we're going to do. It's a direction for our focus to be placed. I really enjoy that. Now, what about individual versus Group. So let's say we've got golfer versus a foodie team. When we're working with an individual versus working with a team, what are the differences in terms of the conversation you're having? Can you work with a whole team and add tremendous value in terms of them embracing pressure and the whole idea of performance psychology and what's it like with an individual?

Yeah, great question. The work that I do in the science that I bring is trans diagnostic. So that just means it literally transcends.

Psychopathologies like depression and anxiety all the way through to leadership and decision making all the way from individual to family systems to group dynamics. It doesn't matter. It's trans diagnostic and it applies. You just need to see the client as the team.

So it's okay. What does this team do when it's being the best version of ourselves? Oh, Jonah, we, we move the ball through the midfield, we attack the line, we communicate well, we, you know, we value defense through these behaviors, blah, blah. It's always pretty obvious. They know how to play well and they're easy and they're quite quick to define that. And then it's simply, now let's look at that, where we go when pressure inevitably comes. And you know, if you know enough about human function, that one of the vulnerabilities of group dynamics is that when pressure comes, we get quite individualistic, right? It's like we're all good, we're a happy community. And then a lion got loose from the zoo. Everyone run. You know, we, we, you know, whereas it'd be much better if we actually bandied together and came up with a plan how to, you know, kill the lion, right? But we don't. So, you know, we know that about human brains. So with that knowledge in hand, we then need some robust systems and structures that say, when my brain gets a bit noisy and spicy and I want to just go back to preservation and just look after myself, how can I orientate to the team? How can I orientate to our tactics and what we need to do? So I say that the key to high performing teams is how much they don't change.

And I'll say that again, it's actually individuals as well. But even more so, I think groups are more vulnerable to change because of all of the human synergistics and that individualism. So we know how to play, we know our tactics, we know what works for us. It might have actually got us all the way through the season to a certain point. Now some pressure comes or some, you know, talented Opposition, whatever.

And then we change.

We deviate from our game plan, we deviate from our leadership structures. We do, you know, whatever happens. And that's always the review. You know what happened? Oh, we. We abandoned what we said we were going to do. Right. So I'm really big on saying, let's not lift. If you want to perform well with pressure, don't be Superman or Superwoman. You don't need to lift, you need to replicate. Be boring, be normal, be predictable. Just do the same bracket. Don't bloody change. Like, how good you are at not changing. Oh, it's a grand final. We've got to dig deep and find something special. That's the worst coaching advice on planet history, like, in the history of the planet. Like, what we've done all season to get us to the grand final has worked. And now on the day that it matters, I'm going to tell us to go out there and do something different. Like, it's just so illogical when you think about it. Yet I see that every day in the locker room. Right. Searching for something special versus okay, guys, let's look each other in the eye and make a commitment that whenever adversity comes, which it will.

We can lose today. But let's not lose through having changed.

We'll be disappointed if the other team are simply better than us. We will absolutely be disappointed.

But the worst thing in life is regret.

The drive home from the stadium where you've just lost in the grand final and you're all feeling that sense of regret because we know we deviated from what we said we're going to do.

It must take so much courage as well, under pressure. In a team environment, when you're out there and you actually feel like an individual on the field who could make all the difference and have the superheroic try across the line. Must take so much courage to go, no, we've got the plan. Let's work the plan.

Literally. Yeah. Yeah. It takes. It takes commitment to truly buying into what you say you're going to stand for as a team. That's why culture matters. You know, values, work matters. Not just words on a wall that I see in a lot of footy clubs that don't really glue people together. You've got to do it to a point where when you talked earlier about, you know, what really drives people, it's got to be so important that that's more important than my own stuff that's going on for me right now, my own impression management, how I'm going, how I'm looking my own individual statistics, my own, you know, whatever that is. And it's like you need to create a culture where the individual is secondary to that of the, of the group.

Yeah, a hundred percent. And you know, when we think about all these different tactics, tools, so you know, mental imagery, breath work, where does that stuff come in helpful for someone might have listened today and be like, oh, positive psychology and all that stuff. Okay, we'll throw it out the window. But I know that you don't mean that I at all. Where is the right place for those tools and strategies?

Yeah, it's about the function of them. It's as simple as that. What is the function? If I'm doing imagery because I'm trying to connect myself to a fine motor pattern of a particular skill that really helps my motor memory consolidation and therefore it's building my competence of that skill. Fantastic. And it's good neuroscience to show that if you do imagery around skill development and consolidation, it's actually very useful. If I'm doing what I'd call old school imagery of lie back and picture yourself in front of the crowd, you're filled with confidence, there's not a worry in the world, it's actually going to set you on fire because not only does it not work, but when you then walk out there and it's different than what you've imagined because all of a sudden you are a bit nervous, you are a bit worried, you are a bit, you know, you didn't sleep well the night before, whatever's going on for you, the normal trimmings of, you know, pressure. We have what's called metacognitive judgment. We, we start talking in our head about what it's not. Oh, this isn't what I thought. This isn't how I thought I'd feel.

Oh no.

And you start predicting that because it's different, you're not going to then perform well. And then all of a sudden we're tangled in our brain and you're somebody who's normally pretty competent and you're just completely distracted by your own internal state. So yeah, imagery. I tell all my colleagues in the, in the industry, if you want to roll out any form of intervention, you better understand the neuroscience and psychology behind it because a lot of people do well intentioned interventions that actually do harm.

And that's the last thing any great supporter, mental skills coach, psychologist wants to do. They all want to help, but actually they could be doing harm without doing the right research.

Yeah. And it's, you know, it's it's, it's because it's intuitively logical. I can lie here in my room and go through it in my mind and, oh, that's nice and feels good. And you feel like you're getting a bit of training done, even though you're not running around the field and it's like, I'm not saying no to imagery, I'm saying make sure it's about skill development and you're not trying to recreate that emotional state. It's like when people do pressure training drills. Well, we're going to recreate the pressure of Grand Final. It's just not going to happen.

Like, it's like dancing with your cousin at the wedding. It's different than dancing with a cute bridesmaid. Right. I love it. You still want to do the right steps though. So training matters and, you know, do the right steps, but don't expect it to feel the same as Grand Final Day. It never will. It doesn't have to.

Yeah, that's such a great way to put it. It's funny when I think back again, that 13 to kind of 17 year old stage where I was doing a lot of mental imagery and you know, there's maybe seven and a half thousand strokes, you know, like in drumming. So seven and a half thousand different tempos, different heights, dynamics. I found it really useful to go through mental imagery with that. I could spend two hours in my mind going through maybe a three minute performance and I'd keep getting distracted and come back and distract to come back and working on these tiny nuances and what my hand be doing, how will it feel on the, you know, the micro feel of the thumb, what will the thumb be doing? How will it be placed? That was powerful. As opposed to what you mentioned a minute ago saying just how will it feel with the crowd there and how, how great will it be?

Absolutely, yeah.

Yeah, I love it. Now, you spent a little bit of time on the golf circuit and I see that it says on your site you've done a bit of caddying as well. So when you're in the role of caddy, you know, for the caddies that are listening right now and the support people, what does that involve? What are you focused on? What are you looking out for? What are you not saying? Or what are you asking?

That's a cool question. I haven't been asked that before. I like it. Yeah. Well, firstly, I'm not talking heavily about club selection and wind direction and yardages because I'm a psychologist, not a caddy and I admire the skill that caddies, you know, have out there. And I normally only caddy when it's a requisite intervention. Like, my preference is they always have a really skilled caddy on their bag. Now, some don't have caddies, so you've been flown to the other side of the world. You might as well carry the bag because you're there and what have you. But typically, it's like this person just can't quite seem to do what we need them to in that moment. In psychology, the terms are transition object. So, you know, for the parents listening, you know what, the first day you send your kid to school, one of the best things you can do is give them mum's hairband or brooch or something that they can carry with them to keep a connection to mom or dad. And it's, you know, it's a transition object. Right. And there's plenty of psychological science to show the benefit of us having those gestures and what have you. Well, psychologists can play that role, right? So you're talking to an athlete about what they need to do and how they, you know, are willing to stick to the, the right shot at the right time and not deviate, not decel the club head or steer the shot or club down or all those classic avoidant things we see on the golf course. Me just being there carrying the set of bags, you know, set of sticks is just, you know, a bit of accountability, right? It's, you know. Okay, what's the shot here? Well, the shots are three, three wood, you know, to carry the, the trap and blah, blah, blah. Cool. And what's your brain telling you? It's saying three iron layout. I'll say, right, thanks, brain. Interesting. Now, what did we say we're going to do here today? Right, you said you want to be top 10 in the world. We know we've got the competence to hit that shot, so we're not, you know, overstretching. It's just fear telling you to, to go to a safer option. So what do you want to lean into right now? Do you want to, you know, buy in and give that fear power or do you want to make it towards. Move to being the, you know, a move that's moving towards being that top 10 golfer. So a willingness to commit to the shot effectively. So that's a lot of my role out there is letting them do the, the reverse engineering of what the golf course is telling them they need to do, but then just helping them in that moment be better at staying with a bit of Perspective and just noticing the thoughts and what's showing up for them around, you know, sort of emotion governed golf versus really pragmatic golf of what is the shot. And, well, the shots that my brain's trying to tell me it's something different. Cool. Let's be willing to actually hit the shot that matters.

That's brilliant. And again, it brings it back to what you said right at the start. Focus on what matters.

Correct.

That's. That's brilliant. And again, it really simplifies it. It's not this. We're gonna stay focused on all what could go wrong and what's going on in your brain. It's actually, where are we headed? What are you committed to doing? Becoming top 10. Okay. What's your brain telling you? Okay, let's do that. And it's great. It's just next level accountability.

Yeah, yeah, that's it. And normally I find that you only need to do that one or two times. And then they update their mental model of. Oh, for so many years, I let my fear and worry dictate my course management. You know, for so many years I would, you know, just decel that club face or, you know, hit a really safe steering shot or, you know, my target that I'd pick would be, you know, always a bit middle of the green, not a little bit towards the flag or the opposite. You know, I go into cowboy mode and just start hunting the pin because I'm, you know, versus actually taking the right shot, which is the middle of the green in this, in this instance. So so much of my work is around their course management and willingness to hit the right shot. And then, you know, my job's to do the psychological training in the background to free them up so they don't then change their biomechanical output.

Yeah. And again, it comes back to what I think you said earlier as well. Consistency and just being consistent with what they do physically and setting up the infrastructure up here neurologically so that they can do that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The old what would you do on a pro Am? What would you do on a Tuesday right here? Well, if it's a Tuesday or a pro, yeah. You know, I'd hit the three wood off the deck and, you know, blah, blah, blah. Okay, do that. Is that a high risk shot or is that a still. That's still a seven, eight out of ten shot. Yeah, no, it's a standard shot. I'd hit any day of the week. Oh, okay. Well, the fact that we're in the lead pack and your brain's telling you, don't stuff it up from here. If you're stuffing it up for here, you'll never, you know, you won't win and you'll be embarrassed and humiliated. Lots of, you know, loud narrative going on. Let's just notice that, make some room for it. Now let's talk about your willingness to connect to the best version of yourself, those values in action, in the pursuit of being top 10 in the world. And let's just stop, drop anchor, and then focus on the shot at hand.

That's great. And what you described beautifully there, Jonah, was building capacity. What you just said in the last 30 seconds was just the best description of how you actually build capacity for self.

Correct? Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. It's a really fun. Part of my job is helping people just realize they already have the ability. They already have the capacity. They already do it, typically in other domains.

Like.

I often say, when's the last time you went for a pretty decent run where you felt lactic acid? Like, oh, do that probably two or three times a week or whatever. Okay. Did you call an ambulance when the lactic acid showed up?

No. Why not? Well, I knew I wasn't going to die from it. Okay. Any other reasons? Well, I've felt it before. Okay, so it's familiar. It seems to always show up when you're working hard. Well, yeah. So it's almost feedback that you actually are running fast because you don't feel lactic acid if you're running slow. Right, yeah, that's true. Yeah. It tells me I'm actually working hard. Does it pass? Yeah, yeah, it always passes. Okay. Right. And you just sort of accept that and know that that's just the price of entry of doing a hard workout. Yeah, of course I do.

I wonder if I change the word lactic acid to anxiety.

Felt it before. Yeah. Does it show up when you're doing things of importance and maybe it's feedback that you're actually doing something well, you know, you've earned the right to feel it. True. Do you die from it? No. Does it pass? Yes. Okay, so how about we just let it be there and focus on what you need to do right now?

That's so good. And that's like I, I. My visual was like, I can see the pressure and anxiety, and I just give it a hug, like, hey, welcome back.

Let's do this.

That was just. You're embracing it.

Right. But think back to when you were 12 and you first did that running race and lactic acid showed up. You know, it did hijack my attention. I was stopping running and looking down at my legs and slowing down. And, you know, it affected my motor pattern. And, you know, until you get coached where it's like, listen, your legs will get heavy. You'll feel it. Let's not change you. You'll. You're patterning. Well, it's the same with anxiety, right? The first time we start to feel it, we normally respond and it wins and pulls us round. And then as we mature, we learn, okay, I need to keep running towards life with that there and see these.

Insights and this approach to really embracing pressure and playing with it. Can this be something we start at a young age, or do we have to wait till we're adults and wait till we're really feeling the weight of the world? Can we start this young?

We have to start it young.

I mean, we're probably going to be a little bit, I don't know, a bit philosophical here, but, like, the rate of mental health in the Western world is just going through the roof. And I would argue that a huge percentage of that.

Is because of how we're exposing our children to. To discomfort.

When a kid feels sad, we feel this immense need to instantly take it away.

When they stand up in English class and talk, they get anxious, and we need to send them to the sick bay to pat a dog or something. Like, there's all these crazy things out there. How are you feeling? How are you feeling? Tracking symptoms in schools and footy clubs? How are you feeling? Not.

Are you focused and ready to play today? Write that out of 10. We're obsessed with symptoms and internal experiences. So back to your question. Around kids, we have to let them know that the world is hard, life is hard, that if you want to feel joy, you're going to feel sadness. If you want to feel elation, you're going to feel fear and disappointment. Like they. They're one and the same.

Like, I love saying this. Just every. Every listener here right now, just in your mind, I want you to list every positive emotion you can think of.

Most would have thought of happiness, love, excitement. Then they would have got into the thesaurus and got a bit confused with does. Does joy? Is joy the same as happiness? What's. Well, probably not. It's all pretty similar, right? Like elation, playing the spectrum. So really there's only love, happiness, and, you know, excitement or something. There's probably a few others, right? If I said, now, list every traditional negative emotion you can think of that humans experience.

Anxiety, doubt, grief, spite, envy, Regret.

Depression. Depression or depressed.

Hatred.

Help me out here. What else can I do?

Anger comes up.

Anger way more.

That's easier to list those negatives, right?

Regret. I think I might have said that one. You know, all of a sudden I've got 10 of these negatives. Apparently, according to Western civilization, certainly marketing. If you're not happy and in love, there's something wrong with you. You need certainly some medication or that new car or that new outfit or that new whatever. So you better buy this product to get yourself back to that land of, you know, hedonism and what have you. So, you know, without getting too caught up in. In that, it's just really important for us to understand that if you want to live a life of meaning and sustained high performance and thriving, it's not this little bubble of happiness, joy and love. All my clients who seem to navigate life well and do really cool, interesting things, if you actually reverse engineer their last three months, it's full of tales of doubt and worry and setback and humiliation and confusion and, you know, tough stuff because they're trying to do cool things.

We've got to allow our children to scrape their knees when they're learning to ride a bike. You know, we're actually depriving them of learning those neural substrates and learning that. Those relationships to those feelings so that later in life when they leave this beautiful bubble of school where they're completely molly coddled or whatever and they go to their first job and their boss doesn't bully them, isn't sexist, racist, misogynistic, or hypercritical, merely says, yeah, we don't put coffee in the photocopying machine. And they turn around and claim that they've been bullied at work. You know, like it's. We're setting them up for failure.

So I've seen this in workplaces and I've chatted with people that have had personal grievance against them for saying very similar things to what you've just said and being told, you know what, I can't be given any feedback right now because it's Friday afternoon, my friends are going out tonight and I'm not going out. So I'm anxious and upset about that. So right now you can't give me feedback. And it's just a perfect example of what you just described.

Yeah, it's a shame, right? To think that somebody has been exposed to a world that has restricted their ability to navigate.

Some tough internal experiences.

Yeah. 100. And honestly, there will be some parents listening right now that that are high performers that are, you know, they've got lots of things on their plate, and they have this guilt of, oh, my goodness, I'm spending time growing my career and doing things I love, and I'm not getting that time with my kids, and they're suffering because of this. But actually, there's some goodness in that because your kids are getting to see that you're having to work and sweat and toil and go through stress to achieve what you're trying to achieve. So you're actually modeling some great stuff.

100%, particularly if you verbalize it. The greatest gift you can share with your children is that you feel the emotions that they're feeling in the grade four playground because they think that you're Superman or superwoman. Because as adults, we're pretty good at maybe state, you know, stability of behavior. We still go to work, we still come, you know, but we might, you know, internalize but not share it. Whereas they're wanting to not go to school because of that bully, or they're not wanting to go to school because I've got to stand up in English class and do that recital, or, you know, they're feeling these intensities of emotion, and they're naturally wanting to, you know, be governed by that. The greatest gift you can say to your child as you're driving them on the weekend to their sporting match is, you know, how you doing, champ? And if he or she says, I'm actually pretty nervous, you know, not saying I don't. Nervous. You've got nothing to be nervous about. Believe in yourself. You're right, champ. You're good. You know, like, instantly trying to invalidate their experience and telling them that there is something wrong with them for feeling that way. Yeah, flip it. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. I used to get nervous before my matches, too. Man, you should have seen me this week going into the boardroom. I was so worried. I stayed quite late the night before looking at my presentation notes, you know, and even afterwards, I was sort of a bit critical of myself, like, probably could have done a better job, you know, Look, I walked in there and I did the best I could, and that's the main thing, you know? But, yeah, I can totally get that you feel a bit nervous before the match because just tells me you really care about your team and playing well, hey, all of a sudden, you've given your child permission to worry, permission to be human, permission to feel, permission to have fears of failure. You're not gonna, you know, you might have to be a Bit firm in, hey, we're still gonna go out and play and not let your teammates down, you know, and that's that, you know, nudge into that behavioral exposure. But the invalidation of their experience means they literally think something's wrong with them for feeling what they do because they just don't see you. So, yeah, I know. I'm drumming into it. I'm super passionate about that. The gift you can give from to your kids is normalizing their experience and showing them that you feel the exact same repertoire of emotions. Forty years later, you're still feeling it in your work setting or your personal life setting or whatever.

Yeah, that's really powerful, Jonah. Thank you for sharing that. As a dad, that really, you know, really helps me in terms of. I've got a six and a half year old and that really helps me in terms of conversations because he's experiencing all these things with sport and school and people.

And that's really interesting. We want to take their pain away. Of course, the goal of a parent is, yeah, they drop their LEGO helicopter, they spent 25 minutes building and all, it's instantly, oh, mate, we'll quick, we'll, we'll fix it, we'll build it again. We'll instantly. We want to rescue and take away their pain versus just.

Sorry to interject, but what's the long term like? If we keep jumping in, we keep fixing what's the long term damage there? That's potential.

Well, we know they're experientially avoidant, right? So anytime they're faced with some form of challenge, they will seek an avoidance of it. So they won't pursue a career. That's scary. They won't speak up in the team meeting. They won't actually go ask that girl out at the bar. They really want to ask out. So all of a sudden they live a life of mediocrity because they take the safe option everywhere they turn. Or when true adversity comes, they then go into more destructive patterns of numbing that discomfort through substance, through Internet addiction, through whatever. So we see that. We see it feeds into future psychopathology or life choices that are far from where they may, you know, they could have lived up to.

That's brilliant. And one thing I was thinking about was incredibly, incredibly well studied on psychology, performance psychology. Can you remember times in your life, whether it was a high school or post high school, where you were in some performance setting where you thought, oh, my God, if I, if I knew what I knew now back then, that would have changed that whole experience, that's.

Why I got into the profession.

Now there we go. Tell me, tell me, tell me.

Yeah, yeah, I was about 13 or something playing tennis and you know, I was never amazing, but I was good enough to play in a sort of a competitive environment. And you know, that second serve break point just used to be my Achilles heel. You know, I would decel the racket head, I'll just tap it in because I was so caught up in not double faulting. And typically you hit a soft second serve and the opposition just steps in and you know, crunches it and you'd lose the point anyway. Right. It used to infuriate me because I'd be like, what am I doing? Ironically at the same time, at the time I was 13, I was lucky enough to live in a small sort of town where, you know, if you wanted to play sport, if you're any good, you're playing men's grade by the time you're 13.

Great.

So I was playing cricket, water polo with, you know, grown men, which was a fast track to probably learning some, some, some grit. But I was getting mvp. I was getting best in the water for water polo on grand final day against grown men or whatever. The harder the challenge, the bigger the game. The just used to bring something out in me where I just, just loved it. I just, I just dial right in. I think I was just so self sacrificial to the team that I had to forgo any nerves or anxiety and you know, learn to just be. That's is what it is. But me playing my role is more important. So I used to perform really well, but then I'd have to go home at night and try to reconcile that. How can I go and play a grade water polo and play well and go and absolutely stuff up in tennis when it's just me and of course the group versus the individual and all that stuff's very obvious now. But at that tennis tournament, a psychologist came in and presented and he did a talk and my life just changed. I just was like, that's exactly what's happening for me. And I was like, well, I guess that's what I'm going to do when I grow up. I'm going to be a sports psychologist. So from the age of 13 I knew what I was going to be and that's what I pursued.

Jonah, that's beautiful and it's incredible to hear that. I need to introduce you to a friend in the States, Dr. Haley Perlis. She shared almost an identical story. She was a Skier, a really good skier, and was on track for the Olympic team. And about 13 or 14, a psychologist came and had a chat, and it changed her life, and that's what she wanted to be. And I think you two would have a lot in common. You get on very well, and I love that you followed your nose. You were inspired by that, and you took action. You just didn't think about it. You took that action that you talked about earlier in the show.

I say I'm one of those annoying people who had clarity of what they wanted to be when they grew up and then actually went out there and did it. And so I do work with people who have that existential angst of career changes and nuancing, but I've got to be very careful that for me, I had a very. Quite a narrow sort of calling. Yeah.

And it's interesting you call it a calling, because I know when I've seen you on stage in person and when I talk to you, and I'm sure the listener can hear it, there's a passion about what you do. You're not calling it in. You know, I turn up and I say the thing, I ask the question, like, you're passionate about helping people fulfill their potential at the highest level.

Yeah. I think I love the complexity of it. It brings. Well, it brings my values to life. Right. It's. It's, It's. It feels like sometimes if you study something or you learn something and you're like, this is too good not to share with the world, and that's not coming from a place of ego. It's. I see so much psychology out there that I feel really uncomfortable around. I'm like, oh, that's actually not following the science, or that's a bit lazy or complacent or outdated. And when you sit there and you know the formula, it's not me. I always say this is. Yeah, I've got a certain personality and maybe an ability to, like you said, take psychological theory and make it relatable. But I didn't invent the psychological science. You know, I'm just the. I'm just the medium of what somebody else has already studied and shown works. I just want to make sure we can bring that at scale because I think a lot of human suffering exists and it doesn't need to.

Yeah, that's amazing. And for the person who can't afford to get an incredible performance psychologist like you, is there a book or a couple of books or a place you would say, hey, this is where some of the models are. And you can go and learn about them.

Yeah, sure. Haven't finished mine yet. I'm a couple of chapters in.

Is, you know, Dr. Russ Harris, he's a Brit who is an Aussie who was a medical doctor and.

He was consulting every day as a GP and saying something's just not right here. I'm just writing prescriptions for antidepressants and anti anxiety and just he's like, this isn't medicine. You know, somewhere along the way we, we got lost in what medicine is. Medicine is helping people be healthy, not just the removal of suffering and certainly not just pharmacological interventions. And he discovered the same framework that I use called acceptance and commitment therapy. It's one of the main frameworks I use. It's not the only one. And he literally put his prescription pad down and now he's become an internationally acclaimed train, the trainer of health professionals and alike around the world. And he wrote a really cool book called the Happiness Trap.

Cool.

Now it is a bit focused on anxiety and ill health, but you read it and you'll be able to transfer it into your world. Um, it's got the main tenets of what I do. I've just taken that same science and applied it to the high performance context.

It's incredible. Thank you for sharing that. And when your book is published or close to being published, let's get on again, let's talk about it and get it out to the listeners because I know they'll be keen to get their hands on it.

Yeah, I'd love to.

That's awesome. Well, look, one last question and I just want to thank you again for taking the time and making the space to connect so deeply. But I'd love to just ask you to fast forward in your mind, it's the last day here on earth. You know, it's your last day you've been told and it's actually your last five minutes. And someone very young in your family, someone near and dear, maybe a great grandchild or a grandchild, comes up to you and says, jonah, I really want to lead my life on purpose. What advice would you give them?

Great question.

Discover who you are in terms of what really matters. So life is about doing the things that matter with the people that matter in a values based way.

So take the time to truly find out the things that matter to you and don't do other things out of parental guilt or societal pressure. Find the things out that matter to you, surround yourself with the people that genuinely matter and then get after it in a values based way.

Amazing. Such incredible, incredible advice and wisdom. And I know that there'll be a listener right now that's going to help for them in their day and their month and their life right now. So Jonah, I want to say a heartfelt thank you. And for the listener, I'm going to say in the show notes, go down there and you'll see there's links to connect with Jonah directly@JonahOliver.com Please go and connect with them. Keep an eye out for the book which will be in the mix and I'll be sure to let you guys know. I'll be sure to get Jonah back on to promote it and talk about it. So Jonah, thank you so much.

Love the chat. Appreciate the time.

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