Colin Minto, Mental Wealth & Performance Coach @ Liberal Democrats

Hi everyone, welcome back to The Graduate Guide. Today I'm joined by Colin. Colin is the mental wealth and performance coach and currently supporting the Liberal Democrat Party. Um, Colin, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much for inviting me. It's an absolute pleasure to be here.

It's a pleasure to have you on. I think the perfect place to start would be to share a bit more about what you currently do, what your day-to-day looks like, and really what your mission is in general.

Yeah, no, fantastic. So, um, I'm a mental wealth and performance coach. So, um, I, I've called myself a bit of a Sherpa. So I've been up the mountain and come back down again multiple times. So I've broken and fixed myself multiple times. I've taken all of the experience and the learning from that and built it into a framework where I can help other people prevent burnout and improve their mental state, their mental fitness, and build resilience and help organizations that want to pass that on and pay it forward to their workforces for all the benefits that are available for doing so. So at the moment, I've got a really exciting task and I've been doing this for about 18 months now, but it's accelerated somewhat because I'm the mental wealth and performance coach for the Liberal Democrat Party, who are obviously, um, if you're watching this before the 4th of July, are going into one of the most pivotal times of their existence. And afterwards, they've obviously come through it. So they recognized obviously that this is a period of time where people need to be supported, and it's a tough time. I mean, going into an election and campaigning and the hours and the work and complexities that go into it is a huge undertaking. So I'm thrilled they partnered with me to work with them on a number of different things. One, we did a diagnostic to understand where people are and why. We did a programme of work for the whole organisation where people could learn what burnout is and how to build their mental fitness and their resilience and what are the things that can drive them to difficulties. So what are the things they need to do differently? And then work with a number of key individuals on a one-to-one basis who are in critical roles that, you know, needed to be supported to, to get the party over the line. So I've been doing that, and I work for other corporates and one-to-one with a lot of people. So it's, uh, yeah, it's a great, uh, it's a great, it's a great profession that I found myself in.

Yeah, you have a great, very fun day-to-day. Um, in terms of something that's very interesting to me is how did you, I guess, find yourself in this space? Um, I know previously you worked in talent acquisition and HR, and you mentioned there that you had kind of been through this. Is that kind of what drove you to kind of become the Burnout Peter, essentially to help companies and individuals actually solve these issues? Was it just going through it yourself?

Yeah, well, you mentioned purpose. I feel I've got a responsibility to share what I've learned.

Yeah.

So yeah, at the age of 10, when I started panicking, I was dying of HIV and AIDS. That's not right. And that's where my problems, challenges, difficulties started. And they've affected me throughout my entire life. Misdiagnosed at a young age, diagnosed properly at 25 with OCD, anxiety. More presently, understand that I've got ADHD, which I actually see as a massive superpower. And some of the elements of OCD and anxiety disorder I've now turned into what I call superpowers. So throughout my life, I've had half of it destroyed by mental ill health, but I've also been super successful in business and I've been in very human-oriented organisations and, and HR. So after the pandemic where I had my absolute worst bout, and that was the third time that I'd got to the point where I would call it the end, I didn't want to be here anymore. And I'd broken a few times savagely before and, and fixed myself. But this, after the pandemic— sorry, during the pandemic and after the pandemic, it was by far the worst episode I've ever had. Actually took me 2 years to recover. But because of my solutions brain, because of my OCD and the fact that I just like to solve, solve, solve, and I made the best decision for me and the right decision to fight this rather than give up. I came through it again, and I came through it with better learning, more of an understanding of the impact of medication. Um, I put more and more of my strategies into play and, and, and invested in them deeper and harder because I had to. And I came back again and I thought, you know what, um, I can't be the only person that's having these difficulties, and I want to pay it forward. So I now live my life helping other people, to, to not go to the dark places that I've been to.

I absolutely love that. I think there's two really important kind of learnings that I, I learned from definitely hearing you speak there, but I'm sure our listeners can also learn from. The first is the fact that you mentioned how you now see ADHD, OCD, all of these, these kind of conditions, as you'd put it, as a superpower. I think that's so important. I think often people are somewhat ashamed of certain elements of themselves, when in reality you should see those all as your unique advantage that kind of separates you from everyone else. And then the second part of that is it was the challenge that you went through in terms of experience burnout and experiencing bad mental health that then allowed you to kind of create what you're now doing. And I think often, again, people become ashamed about challenges. They don't like to own up to that they've gone through these bad stages because they feel like it makes them look weak or whatever it may be. In reality, everyone else, or a lot of people, are going through exactly the same as you are. And if you can spin that and, like you're doing now, kind of help other people go through those challenges, it's, it's extremely impactful, right?

Yeah, yeah. I'm an expert in, in not breaking, um, because I've broken. Yeah, uh, I've broken savagely, and I don't want to do it again, and I don't want anyone else to. So, um, yeah, and the superpower side of things— I mean, difference is great, and, um, there is a real self-stigma associated with mental ill health, showing weakness, etc. I'm not going to get the big job because blah blah blah blah. I found it to be the complete reverse. If you can be at one with yourself and accept who you are, um, and are comfortable in your own skin to talk about that, that shows strength. Yeah, that shows leadership. I know I have leaders talking to their organizations about their own challenges with all kinds of different situations. And the love that's generated for that individual as a consequence of them sharing some vulnerability is unbelievable. So yeah, I'm— I've had a real difficulty. And by coming back from that and having all of that experience and maybe sort of like, you know, the tried and tested, I've got this unfortunate but fortunate expertise and skill set. Yeah, that I just thought, you know what, others might be interested to know what I know. Um, and they are, and I help a lot of people. And it's not just about mental health and well-being because of the journey I've been on and, you know, facing adversity and coming back and, and the way that my brain is now learned from cognitive behavioral therapies, exposure response prevention therapies, the impacts of medication the impacts of applying the 15 drivers of human comfort and distress and getting the best relationship with them. I just live my life now optimally. So I'm on my A-game. You can throw anything at me.

Any—

I mean, I've gone through recently, we could be here for days saying the stuff I've been going through recently, but I seem to be bulletproof now because I have reached the end, survived it, and I thrive from it. And it's now, okay, I'm, I'm bulletproof. I want other people to be bulletproof. How can I help them? So that's where, you know, I, I just used to start talking openly, um, and then I started doing lunch and learns in the, the companies I worked for. And then, um, because of so many people require help, some people said, well, can you, can you coach me? It's like, well, I probably can. Um, I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a psychotherapist, I've not got the letters after my name. I'm the patient. But, and I'm very clear with people that I'm not a clinical professional, I'm not a medical professional, but I've been there, I've done it, I've got the t-shirt. I've also worked globally in huge organizations. So I know what that's like.

Better though, right? You've had that experience. Yes, you may not have learned from a textbook, but you've had the experience. You know exactly what they're going through, you can relate to it. Um, no, I love that. In terms of, in terms of burnout then, what advice would you give? What kind of key, I guess, key things you tend to look at to identify when someone is close to experiencing burnout or maybe already going through burnout?

Yeah. So burnout, the symptoms of burnout are obvious. If you're feeling out of sorts, if you're experiencing things that are very different, so lots of lethargy, making mistakes, your get up and go has got up and gone. You know, if you're feeling some musculoskeletal— I can never say the word— musculoskeletal issues. The symptoms of pre-burnout, let's call it, are obvious. We know when we've been pushing ourselves too hard. Great example I call a micro-burnout is if you— England play on Sunday, a few people are gonna have sore heads on a Monday 'cause they've overdone it, right? Go out 7 days a week and you're probably gonna catch a nasty bug or something because you're just so depleted. But push yourself beyond the limit for a long period of time, you start to experience the difficulties and then you have the Ctrl+Alt+Delete. And that is what burnout is. You cross the burnout bridge. So, yeah, pre-burnout is all the things that you'd associate with not feeling quite right and, you know, the changes in your mood and how you're feeling. And it's really important. That is the signal. That is the body saying, you're pushing me too hard. And if you carry on, I am going to take the opportunity at some stage to, to do a Ctrl+Alt+Delete and a timeout. Yeah. So it's super important to watch those signals and not push beyond them. One of the things that people do when they feel that they need more strength and impetus and they're not quite feeling it is they'll reach to stimulants like caffeine, etc. Once you do that, that is the biggest signal to put the brakes on, take stock and think, hang on a minute, my body's telling me something here and I'm reaching for something to push me Harder. Okay, I need to stop. And that's where you need to start thinking how you can reverse out of the situation you've got yourself into.

I guess within that, one thing that immediately comes to mind to me— and obviously I work at startups and maybe it's a bit different— but one thing that comes to mind to me is if I'm feeling those kind of symptoms and if I'm actually in tune with my body and I can feel that things are a bit different and maybe I'm starting to get towards burnout, but then I look at my list of projects, I'm like this is super important, this is super important. What is the mindset that you need to be able to say, okay, fine, I'll get to this, but I'm not going to let this push me into that burnout, and I'm not going to— it's overstress me. Because I find personally, I'm sure there's a lot of people out there listening that will feel the same, that even if I try to take stock of that, I might be kind of overwhelmed by the feeling of stress and anxiety from looking at my to-do list and looking at my project list and wouldn't be able to cope anyway.

Yeah, so, so that's a situation of being stuck in drive. You've got 3 psychological systems: one's drive, one's threat, and one's soothing. And We can gladly go into some detail around those, but we get rewarded with dopamine every time we deliver something, which is a drug, and the body loves it, and it's addictive, so it wants more and more and more and more. So that is why we get stuck in drive. Um, unfortunately, um, when you are in that situation, you're pushing yourself too hard and you feel that you can't put the brakes on. It has to be a conscious decision to say, stop. How good am I going to be If I break, yeah, what value am I going to bring if I have a control-alt-delete and I can't deliver? And there's also the impact of the build-up to burnout as well. Your loss of productivity, your loss of performance, the mistakes you make. So it's about like a finely tuned supercar, basically. If you put the, you know, the effort into maintaining the vehicle and putting the right fuel in and putting the right parts on when you've got to change them and really looking after it, it will perform and it will perform for a longer period of time. So one of the things that I educate everyone to do and leaders to do for their people is give yourself permission not to break. And leaders, give your people permission not to break because if you push yourself too hard, productivity, costs, risks, they all start to come in. I can scare the life out of people with regards to it. And if you want more motivation not to do it, then come, come to one of my talks when I talk about what it's actually like to break and the mental turmoil you go through and what you potentially will lose in terms of family. And unfortunately, in some cases, people, you know, take their own lives because it's so harrowing, it's so distressing. So I'm happy to talk about all of that and get it out there so people can think, okay, there is a, there is a, there's a, there's a really serious a challenge downstream here if I don't do something differently, and therefore, um, I'm gonna basically not do that. And I just think the really key point is sometimes you only learn from going to the very, very darkest places. The best learning comes from going to the darkest places. But I strongly recommend not to push yourself to this dark place.

Yeah, no, I actually really love that point because I think that is the issue when you're— when I'm putting myself in the, in that position, my mindset and my mind is going through 'What if I don't complete these projects?' When in reality, if I was to compare 'What if I don't complete these projects?' with 'What if I do and I push myself too far?' The latter is far worse. And actually, even for the organization, the latter is far worse because I become pretty much useless, right? Like you said, I'm not going to be able to kind of work anywhere near my best.

How many organizations have you worked for and how many educational establishments you've been through said, 'Right, Charlie, today I want you to break yourself'? Yeah, no one says that, but in our minds we think, 'Oh, we got to push this, otherwise You know, maybe we're not going to be thought highly of. I'm not going to get that promotion. We're not going to deliver this. We're not going to deliver that. That's the threat system triggering and going into fight or flight to say, right, fix. So let's trigger the drive system. So you trigger the drive system. The more you trigger the drive, the threat system becomes more active. It's a perfect storm.

Yeah.

And what we've got to do is just cognitively go, stop and take control. The most important thing I learned, or one of the most important things I learned, is we're all on autopilot. Yeah, our bodies and brains are capable enough to function without us giving it advice and, and, and, and, uh, and tasks. Yeah, it just does it automatically. But that is where it could be its most dangerous and disruptive. Sometimes we just have to go stop I'm taking control now. I'm going to do this and this and this because it's right for me. I am not going to allow you to take me to that, that point. And this is where it's really important that people need to give themselves permission and to interject and stop them being self on auto, flick off the autopilot and take control again.

And when you say like to stop, and so you said if you're kind of approaching burnout, you need to recognize that and stop. What does that stop mean? Does it mean going on a holiday, or does it mean kind of reducing your workouts? What would you recommend people do if they notice they're getting close to burnout?

Yeah, well, uh, interesting. People think have a rest might be the best thing to do, go on like a 2-week holiday. Now unfortunately, I've known people, and I talk to a lot of people, that that is the point of time when you push yourself too hard, you suddenly put the brakes on and go, 'Right, I'm gonna sit on a beach now,' that the brain and the body takes the opportunity to do a control or delete. And that's where a lot of people will go, 'Well, actually, I went on holiday and I got a really bad cold as soon as I got there,' or, 'Actually, I, I I stopped doing something quite intently and then I had a breakdown. So rest is part of it, but, um, and I'm a prevention over cure person, but if you are at that point where it's like, right, okay, I've got difficulty here, it's acceptance. Yeah, there's, there's 15 drivers and you can, you know, I can, um, you can look me up and you'll see them everywhere, but you have to start looking at the things that you're doing in life and establish, have I got a good relationship with them? Have I got a good relationship with health? Arguably, if you're heading towards burnout, you haven't. So, okay, I need to accept that. I need to know that something's going on and I need to do something differently about it. What about my financial situation? Can I do anything to improve that? What about the relationships I've got? What about all the demands I've got? Have I got enough control? What's my support for? There's all these things you can look at and go, right, I'm here because of a series of events and a series of situations I've put myself under. How do I dial those all back? One of the things that I invest heavily which is great advice to anyone, is I exercise like mad. So when I'm starting to feel it a bit, 5K run. Yeah. And that's enough just for me to do a reset and say, okay, I'm feeling it, I'm going to do something for myself. And it just so happens that doing exercise is brilliant. But then looking at your diet, looking at how compassionate you are, all these wonderful things you can do. But the first thing to do is work out which ones you've got I've got a poor relationship with, which ones I then need to do better with, um, and invest in things like that. I talked about your systems. There's a soothing system. If you imagine your soothing system, the one we don't actually pay much attention to, um, that can blow the cold air and/or the cool water around the threat and the drive system. This is your sleeping well, your meditation, um, your, your exercise, you're being compassionate. All of these things that you can do that will slowly kind of build your soothing system and smother the threat and the drive system. Other gradual things you can do to bring yourself back. But if you are really, really struggling with burnout, first thing to do, talk to a medical professional.

Yeah.

You know, get to the doctor, get to your physician and say, right, experiencing these things. And they'll say, okay, there's certain things you can do, give you access to some advice. You might want to take some medication. You might want to have some, some forms of therapy based on your current situation, circumstances. But then You've got to take your mind to the gym. Now we're easy to take, we easily take our body to the gym, don't we, and work out. You've got to take your mind to the gym. And I suppose the difficulty is these things build over time and there's no magic pill for bringing yourself back. It's just hard work doing better all the things that have got you there in the first place. And then you'll bring yourself to a kind of situation where I am, which is calm.

I guess it's no different though, right? To if you neglected your health and you became overweight, there's no quick fix. Quick fix to get back healthy. You just have to put the work in, in terms of exercise and fixing your diet. One thing that is really interesting there, and actually is a, a bit of a surprise to me, something I was gonna, gonna touch on, is like, I'm— so as I mentioned before the podcast, I have a tendency to work quite a lot. I also love exercise, I love sports, so I play a number of different sports, I go to the gym every day. One thing that I worried when I kind of started to feel like maybe I was experiencing burnout was, is this exercise helping me, or is this making me even more fatigued, that, that is then kind of compounding? So you'd actually— it's the complete opposite, and actually exercise reduces any feelings of burnout.

Yeah, exercise is— as long as you're eating well, nutritiously, and you're giving your body the fuel to be able to exercise well, you— I, I would suggest you can't get enough exercise. But if you balance it out with everything else— so, um, the interesting thing is there's 15 drivers of human comfort and distress. Just because you're doing well with one of them, that doesn't mean it's going to offset the other 14 that you're doing terribly with. And I'm not suggesting you are, but, but maybe you are, um, maybe demands, maybe there's some difficulties financially. I'm not just talking about you here, but other people. And some of these things can be like meteorically challenging and build your stress levels to, to a point where doing the exercise isn't enough. That's why it's a, it's, it's a workout. You've got to look at all of these things and you've got to dial yourself back. Um, but one of the things that you can do, um, that is quite instant is give yourself that hit of endorphins and burn off the adrenaline with, uh, you know, some serious exercise. But if you're saying it's not enough and you're still feeling stressed, there's 14 other areas that you can, you can, you can target and, and help yourself.

Yeah, that completely makes sense. And so in terms of— you mentioned there that you're more of a prevention over cure man, and I completely agree that I think in any space we should always be preventing rather than just trying to cure stuff. Um, what would you recommend to students and young people listening about how they can prevent burnout? What can they do in their day-to-day lives? You've already mentioned a few there, like exercise, meditation, But you also mentioned that you now feel like you live an optimal life in this sense. So what recommendations would you give to students, young people, to live a better and more optimal life?

So do what I do. Wake up in the morning and be compassionate to yourself. Put your own life jacket on, you know. Wake up and go, how am I feeling? Am I feeling on my A-game, or is— have I got something that, that I maybe need to address? Am I going to be bringing something into the day that is going to have an impact on my day and possibly be an impact negatively? And accept it. We've got to accept that we're We've got to accept that we've got to live and we've got to accept that we've got all these pressures and challenges going on in life. I think we've got to accept that our brains weren't conditioned for the amount of stuff we put ourselves through now. So that's why it can stuck in autopilot and can take us down the wrong path. But it's then starting to think, how can I be my optimal self today before then thinking, how can I help others be their optimal self? Because there's a really big lesson there as well, which I'll come back to. So you look after yourself, you look at all the drivers, you go, what can I do better? What are the things that are stressing me out that I need to rein in a bit? And what are the things that I can actually do well, like exercise, maybe do a bit more? Now, the reason why we need to be compassionate to ourselves is because we release serotonin when we're compassionate to ourselves. If we're compassionate to other people, we release serotonin in ourselves. And the individuals you're compassionate to have a release of serotonin as well. So that's why people like helping, and that's why people feel great when they help someone and people feel great when they've been helped, because the happy hormone is, is dished out in, in in spades. So by just recognizing some self-awareness— where am I and what do I maybe need to do to be my best self today so I can, you know, rectify anything I'm feeling about— a continual effort on the 15 drivers all the time, because as I said, that, that builds up over time. You've got this fluctuating dial that will get you to burnout and get you back to, to burnout. Um, and it's really, really important to just have that, that cognitive awareness about everything. And then, you know, just work hard at it. But if you're looking after yourself, trying to look after other people, knowing your limits, having great support environments around you, eating well, sleeping well, resting well, trying to drive out those, those areas of stress, and, and treat that as your kind of your, your routine and your workout, you've been a great place.

It's so funny because everything you mentioned there is, is very simple. Like, it's the obvious. It is the simple, obvious. A lot of people, but it's a people will neglect that and think that, okay, I need to go and do— take this supplement or, or do this, when in reality, if you just get this, like, the basics right, you're on a good path.

Yeah, absolutely. So I run an always-on global assessment of, of burnout. 11% of the world's working population are burnt out, and a further 11% of the world's working population are well on their way to burning out. And the 3 top reasons that people are struggling with their mental health is their inability to exercise, their inability to eat well, and their inability to sleep and rest well. Unbelievably obvious. We all know it. I'm a fraud. But the thing is, they're still the top 3.

Yeah.

And when you ask someone, why can't you do that? I'm too busy. Oh my God. Right. So, so this is, this is the point. Yeah. You'll— you all know this stuff. We all know this It's obvious. But if we don't hold the mirror up to ourselves and go, actually, by doing all this, it is going to cause some kind of downstream effect. And I saw what Colin went through and I don't particularly want to go there, thank you very much. So I'm going to work hard at it. So, you know, maybe get your drive system to not drive you to do stressful stuff. Get your drive system to get you hooked on doing positive stuff. Yeah, our drive systems are our drive systems that we have to have them to keep them going. We don't necessarily have to do the bad things. We can focus it on, on the good things.

No, I love that. And yeah, unfortunately our time is coming to an end. Um, I would love to sit here and chat all day too, as I feel like I'm learning so much myself. But just to wrap things up, what is your number one piece of advice to students or young people listening to the podcast today?

Um, I would be compassionate to yourself generally. Have a— come out of autopilot as often as you can and reflect and think about how you're doing, uh, and consider how other people are doing as well. Um, it's so important to look after yourself. There's so many things that are going to get thrown at you. There's so many things that, um, you don't even know exist yet that are going to get thrown on you. So to, to get yourself into a point where you can bank some resilience, um, and work hard at reducing any of the stresses on you and doing the things that are good for you, so you, you essentially become, you know, like me, I say I'm, I'm bulletproof. I, I don't think I'm gonna have any major issues downstream because I'm working so hard to ensure I've got that ability to tolerate a bit more, which I know is probably around the corner. Yeah. So look after yourselves, look after everyone else, um, be cognizant that, um, you know, difficulties are around the corner if you don't look after yourself.

No, I love that. I think everyone's goal listening should, should be to come but become bulletproof. In terms of finding a bit more about yourself and kind of the 15 drivers, where's the best people places for people to look?

So all over the social media channels, doitdifferently.club or The Burnout Beater, all over LinkedIn. I've got a website which is doitdifferently.club. And yeah, I'm out and about all the time. I'm on podcasts, I'm working with big organizations.

It's easy to find stuff.

Easy to find me. Yeah. And, you know, just get in touch. You know, it doesn't cost anything to reach out and ask some questions and it's no hardship for me to answer them.

Yeah.

Yes, I support, you know, corporates. I do one-to-one coaching, etc., etc., from a commercial perspective. But, you know, just what I've said to you earlier, me helping someone and giving them a little bit of advice on an email releases serotonin in me and it helps me with my own compassion and my own mental health. So as one of the world's helpers, I'm here to help.

Yeah, 100%. Make sure to check it out. Thank you so much again for coming on, Colin.

Absolute pleasure. I've enjoyed it immensely.

Thank you very much.