Theeiguruepisode5

Welcome to the EI Guru podcast, a podcast completely focused on emotional intelligence. Typically, the first question I get is what is emotional intelligence? In very simple terms, it's how we manage our emotions in our interactions with ourselves and others. Or put another way, it's being in the right state and, and not being in a state when under pressure. Emotional intelligence is another label for mindset, and we all know that when navigating those important conversations, we need to tap into our best. I'll be interviewing leaders and experts in this ever expanding field and sharing the data on why emotional intelligence is the difference that makes the difference in all of our relationships. Remember to share and subscribe to the EI Guru podcast and if you have any questions, you can post them once you've subscribed. Welcome to the latest episode of the EI Guru podcast and I'm joined. Joe's come back from holiday and I'm joined and really excited to be discussing the self Management scales today with Joe. And we're going to go into a deeper dive into and have a look into the, the Emotional Resilience Scale, the Personal Power Scale, and we'll see how far we get, hopefully Goal Directedness, and maybe into the Flexibility scale, which is measuring how you are as a human being, how you manage those aspects of your performance as a individual, as a leader, as a parent. And before I get into that, I'm going to just get Joe to maybe just quickly recap what we've covered so far. Joe, if you wouldn't mind.

Sure, sure. And yeah, nice to see you again, Jim. This is the third of our webinars, certainly that I've been involved with and certainly the first one. I was just outlining the background to my model of emotional intelligence, the Emotional Intelligence profile, how it came about in the early days and essentially how it was organized around a framework which is really where self management fits in the bit we're going to look at today. So as Jim said before, there's two streams as managing myself, personal intelligence and then see relationship management, which is the right stream and there are different levels to it. So we talked about unpeeling layers of the onion from the deepest level of our attitude towards ourself and others, self regard, regard for others, which filters up into how we feel about ourselves and our awareness of our feelings and our awareness of other people, which obviously manifest in our thoughts and behaviors in particular. And that's the part we're going to look at today on the left side of the framework which looks at managing our own behaviors, Personal power Goal directedness, adapting to change and so forth. And the other thing we did, we, the second, the second module we did look at a deeper dive into the awareness part, the awareness of our feelings and understanding other people and their thoughts and feelings and how to build relationships with that. And finally we, we explored in a bit of detail emotions how they impact our performance, being aware of our emotions and another organizing model really around what are the different emotional states and how they impact performance. We call it the emotions wheel. But you've got, you know, the intensity of emotions being strong or weak and the valence of emotions which are they more comfortable and pleasant or uncomfortable and unpleasant. And of course we spend time in all of those zones and it's learning to be aware of our emotions and how they impact our behavior. And that's why we're moving up this model because the arrows go from the bottom upwards. And today we're going to be exploring what we call self management, which is what it says managing yourself and your behavior pretty much in the, in the present time.

Yeah, and, and I, and I think that's a really lovely summary, Joe. Thank you for that. And what, what I find fascinating as a coach working with individuals and teams is when working with an individual, when they're not necessarily aware of how to manage their. So let's, let's look at emotional resilience, that scale first off, because that is its order, that's the one that comes up first in the self management scales. What I'm fascinated by in that regard is just how some people, if they're operating out of awareness, how they tend, they can blame other people about, well, it's not my fault, they make me feel this and then they knee jerk to a response. So it's, so it's, it's the sort of the red mist, it's a bit like the football player or the rugby player or the, you know, an athlete sees red mist and all their potential, their ability to, you know, show up and perform at a high level all of a sudden just leaves them, deserts them. It's of like, yeah, I just can't perform at that level now. I just can't find that groove that I was able to effortlessly find before. Now I've got, I've seen the red mist. I'm not tapping into my potential. So I find that funny. And when I say funny, I find it interesting because of course people, leaders also exhibit the same similar sort of behaviors where they see the red mist and they, they have what I call a hissy fit. So a Hissy fit is where they have a rant and a rave either at someone or with a team. And it's, it's quite remarkable. So, you know, this week I'm really excited about going into the Emotional Resilience scale. And in particular it's probably one of my favorite self management scales along with a couple of the others, to be fair. Actually, Emotional Resilience, Personal Power and Goal Directed, as are my three favorites. I get really excited about unpacking those when I'm working with clients purely because they have such a huge impact on how we manage ourselves and of course flexibility. And the others do come into play for sure, but these ones are the big hitters. And when I say the big hitters in particular when it's linked to someone that's got a low self regard. So if they've got a low self regard, those three scales tend to. The others also obviously are affected. But the Emotional Resilience, the Personal Power and the goal Directedness, they are the ones that really do get hit quite in a big way.

Yeah. And as you know, Jim, we ordered these scales deliberately, how they statistically correlate with self regard. So unsurprisingly, self. Emotional Resilience is the most closely, very closely related to self regard, although they are of course different. So Emotional Resilience is how well we bounce back from adversity. And you could be very good at bouncing back from adversity and dealing with setbacks, responding effectively. But underneath you may not still feel great about yourself.

Yes.

And even some people are very strong self regard, self sense of okayness, but they still struggle with dealing with setbacks. So, you know, they can be different scores. Yeah, no, all of these scales are closely related. And same with Personal Power, you know, which you might say is more to do with self confidence. It's about your belief in your capability. But just because you feel you're capable and able to doesn't mean you feel like you're a worthwhile human being. I think I've used the example before. You may think, yeah, I'm brilliant at football, I'm brilliant at maths or music, but underneath I don't feel like, you know, I feel like it's imposter syndrome. I feel like I come across as brilliant. I'm very high on self management, but deep down I've got concerns, particularly, you know, in certain situations. And often those deeper driving self doubts are the thing that drive us on to almost prove ourselves, show the rest of the world I am good enough or to show to myself so you often find the top people in industry or PhDs or whatever it is they've excelled in are unconsciously driven to prove themselves. And it doesn't mean that everyone successful is necessarily deep down riddled with insecurities, but it can be a very strong motivator. But unfortunately, you notice it doesn't necessarily deal with the underlying anxieties that a person have, basically feeding the insatiable fears that they may have.

Yeah, it is interesting and especially if we sneak back to self regard, it's. It's fascinating. So self regard, someone can have a low self regard and still function as, as you've just really described. You know, they still can function and be successful. It just means that they're just not particularly happy with themselves. You know, they're not comfortable in their skin.

Yes. And actually I think the difficulty there is it makes the person less flexible. Which is another scale of self management.

Yes.

We've become more rigid. So we're constantly say, striving or driven to do something in our way. And that can take you so far, but it might impact other aspects of your life, say in your relationships outside of work or even the motivation or do you get the best out of other people. So relationship management's quite likely to suffer if you're driven by that low self regard. And it creates a sort of rigid way of behaving that undermines all sorts of other behaviors and performance in what you do as a leader particularly.

Yeah. Now I can, I can certainly see with hindsight very clearly now, before I really got into emotionally intelligent myself as a coach, as a human being, that I know I have developed my relationship management scales. I know that my self regard has grown over the years. And I know what was masking me growing my self regard was the goal. Directedness, my emotional resilience, my personal power. You know, those scales were certainly masking me having to do anything with my self regard and think about it because they helped me be successful in whatever it was that I was doing.

I think that's a good term, Jim, is, is masking because sometimes we're so effective at the, the top layer of the framework are managing our behavior that we can disguise it not just to others, but even to ourselves, think, well, everything's. And eventually of course, there's a catastrophic tipping point where there's sort of this. I just can't keep going on like this and like pretending. I mean, we're not saying you should, you know, get rid of all those brilliant skills and capabilities and you know, outcomes. You've you've achieved but they aren't all. And to be honest, developing many of these scales will help, you know, developing emotion resilience and goal directions will help you build your self regard. But often it's if you, if you've excelled in those and maybe it's a different scale, different aspect of emotional intelligence that you need to work on. Maybe it's more on the relationship side like building connections.

Yeah.

Which meet the underlying needs that aren't being met as a human being. So the need for intimacy, connection, sense of meaning and purpose in your life, it's generally something quite fundamental that's not yet being met. And you need to look through the profile to help you identify which aspects of AI were going to help you most.

It's really interesting that you talk about the purpose, etc. I'm doing a speech at my aunt's funeral next week and I start my speech with Mark Twain's quote, which is the two most important days in your life are the day that you're born and then the day that you find out why. And I talk about my aunt and talk about. I don't think she ever really thought about her why necessarily because actually she was just naturally phenomenal as a mother and as a, as a wife. So she radiated unconditional love and so she didn't really necessarily think about that. But I think it's interesting that you talk about purpose there Joe, because so many people don't necessarily consider well what is it I'm here to do? Or what is my legacy? And which is a bigger, deeper which links back to the self regard piece. You know, so it's a really great question is okay, so why did I show up on planet Earth? What, what is this? What am I, what am I meant to be doing here? You know, and ultimately go on.

Sorry Jim. It just brings to mind two elements of emotional intelligence. One is gold erectedness, which is understanding what is it you really want. And not to confuse goal directedness with this sense of driving and continually striving for more which is what many competencies models it's about. You may really want just to take life easy or retire or you may really want to look after other people and be caring like your aunt. Or you may not want to be the high achiever, it's knowing what you want. But the other aspect is that comes to mind when you describe your, your aunt actually is, is authenticity and that congruity between yourself. You don't necessarily need to cognitively know that I've got these Values and this purpose all written down. I live by them. You just know it when you're doing it. Yeah, you should. You know, you could live your entire life just being fulfilled, satisfied and feel in tune and in the flow if you like, with who you are. Yeah, I may not know exactly what's going on, but you know you're doing it. Yeah.

And she was a great example of that. A fantastic example of that. So let's, let's get into the self management scales and in particular the one that kicks off the whole self management scales, those six self management scales is emotional resilience. And I find emotional resilience such a. It's almost like a superpower that people have. If they've got high emotional resilience, they're able to. It's almost like they've got a Harry Potter invisibility cloak that is bulletproof, that stops any of the bullets and any of the things that can potentially dent other people and it doesn't seem to get through their cloak, their bulletproof vest. And it, and it is like a superpower because it does help them as the, as the scale suggests that it's your ability to bounce back when things go wrong and you know how you handle that. So the image that comes straight flooding into my head is the, the image of, you know, a headless chicken. So someone that's got a low emotional resilience will run around and, you know, and not be able to handle themselves. Now as a leader, that's not particularly great. That's not exhibiting what good looks like when, when you're under pressure. And, and interestingly of course what we're talking about is being able to handle your emotional resilience when things are going well is relatively easy. What we're interested in, of course is when happens and curveballs get thrown, how do you handle yourself under pressure? And so I. Emotional resilience is for certain for me one of my favorite scales. So yeah, let me hear your perspective, Joe, because you've got a lot to say about emotional resilience and I know we've got some shared experience around our own personal athletic stuff that we've done and we can maybe talk a little bit about that, but I'm just interested from a psychological perspective and the scales. Perspective.

Yeah, well, as you say Jim, is definitely your ability, your capacity to bounce back from adversity. I think we should be cautious as well, not to say just gritting your teeth, the sort of mental toughness, old fashioned approach which is, it's not sustainable. It can carry you through difficult times, but you need to balance that with self awareness. Say, what's causing this setback? With why am I responding? Finding this so difficult, I've got through it. But the amount of cortisol and stress in your body's got to go somewhere. So you may need to go back a little bit further and say, where's it coming? Awareness piece. Rather than this sort of macho, be strong mindset. Don't let feelings out. And maybe for some people it's about learning to let them out a bit sooner, learning to share your concerns, connecting with others that might help you. So I think there's a, there's a balance to be struck with, with resilience. Just checking in with yourself. You're not kind of overdoing it. Just a point here. We do say that with all these, these scales, these aspects of emotional intelligence, you can't have too much. So this is your capacity to deal with setbacks. If you, if you find you are just being strong, holding it all in, then it's not a lack of emotional, it's not too much emotional resilience. You've got, it's a lack of maybe emotional expression and control, which is another aspect. Yeah, learning to release it and talk about it, or flexibility. So the other scales will help build emotional resilience. We've broken down emotional resilience into different stages. And in fact I created a different report for emotional resilience where the 16 aspects of AI build on it and there are four parts to that. We call it the Thrive model. I say we, it's a talagy product, but I was the creator of the Thrive framework. And the first stage is a survival response, you know, which really taps into the fight and flight response. So when, as you say, shit hits the fan and things go badly, adversity, some people will catastrophize. Oh, it's all me. There's low self regard and it comes from the underlying self concept of am I okay? Is everyone else out there safe or threat? And often that's a big drop off from everything going well to hopeless. The next stage is coping with that and just rather than letting continue go worse and worse, just adapting and adjusting. So the adapting phase, and this requires more of the middle layer, which is awareness. Say, oh, hold on a minute, how am I feeling? Just slow down a little bit. How is this impacting on other people? And you can start coping and it's flat lines, you don't want to stay there. But it's a good adjustment time. If you like on our feelings framework, it's about uncomfortable feelings, but they're useful ones just to get in touch with. You don't want to skip that stage, otherwise you won't deal with it, but you do need to move out of it. And Martin Seligman, who's a father of positive psychology and emotional resilience and so forth, he said there are three types of people. Those who get stuck there and in a state of resigned helplessness. Yes, there's not much I can do. I give up. And there are those who bounce back about third, people seem to get back to where they were before what we call the recover stage. And this part is very much about self management skills like personal power, goal directness, emotional resilience. The things you were talking about being tough. And you've got to draw on those strengths to get out of that trough. But the third he was really interested in were those who don't just bounce back to where they were, but they become stronger. So we always say that, you know, setbacks are useful if you learn from them. And this is the difference between the most emotionally intelligent people, the third of people that tend to go and thrive. Okay. And these are different aspects and they're hidden amongst the profile. For example, reflective learning. Do you stop and say, well, that was a tough, you know, roller coaster ride. What have I learned from that? How's it impacted me? What will I do differently? How am I going to change? So all the things you do in coaching would be helping people get through that. And then next time adversity hits, they don't have this catastrophic drop or it doesn't last as long before they manage to get back out of it. So yeah, when we think about motion resilience, I very much consider it in those four elements. We call that the thrive thrive model. In fact, I did a, there's a blog out recently I did on that, so HR resource.

I'll definitely put a link on this video clip for that resource because that would be useful for our listeners to be able to get a link and have a read of that. That would be fantastic. And you're right, Martin talked about in his book, I think it was Learned Optimism. Yeah, what a great book. And you know, great supportive data around, you know, bouncing back, but actually learning from it. And you're right. In the coaching piece, that's one of the main reasons I talk about inviting leaders to keep a journal because that's, that's a great way of learning, you know, from, from, you know, their experiences, you know, because that's the only, that's the only way to. Someone said recently in, in one of the recent interviews was that it, you know, there's only failure if you don't learn. So I think that's, you know, very true. We, we don't talk about failure as such, we talk about learning and that's, that's exactly what he talks about.

Yeah. Which takes us back to a sort of attitude level of mindset because under, underneath this it does come back to your, your perception of how you want to live your life, who you are and have the fundamental, you know, intention of where you want to go with it. So yeah, I mean maybe we're going to talk about development ideas around emotional resilience now.

Yeah, that would be great if you can maybe share some of your thoughts around. Okay, so. So someone if they've not particularly scored well on their emotional resilience and, and you see it, it's actually in, it's energetically they show up a certain way these individuals, there's an energy about them that they're just not, they're not at ease with themselves and I think that, that so strongly as you said, links to their self regard. So they, they're not comfortable in their skin normally and they're just at disease, you know, so they're not happy and not comfortable. So what, what would be some of the things that you would recommend suggest people.

Yeah, definitely go back to that, you know, find, find yourself go back to, you know, your intentions, your authenticity side. I think practically speaking, just before we started, I think Jim, you went off to get a drink and there were sort of special things that work for you.

Legal, but legal, legal, legal stuff. Legal.

No, of course, but it's about looking after your body physically. You know, if you're tired, you haven't eaten properly and all the things we take for granted but it's such a massive component to mental health and coping. You much? You know, I notice when I start getting croaky and I've not drunk enough water, generally it's a bit tired but I haven't drank enough and I just feel a little bit more grouchy and irritable. I filter things through a more negative lens and then notice everything's like a little bit more annoying. So if I look after my body, it's like looking after the workforce. It will look after you.

Yeah. So you won't be. Get become hangry as they say.

Yeah, it is. I mean it sounds simple but I think some of the simplest methods are what we don't pay attention to and then we go and see a doctor, then we take antidepressants and before you know it you're on a vicious spiral of depending on somebody else and something else. And we've lost personal power, lost sense of self empowerment which makes things even worse. So start with yourself, do these simple things, get good sleep, don't drink too much coffee, so on and so forth. The things you know doesn't mean you can't enjoy yourself. The other thing that might be useful is going back to. We talked about this feelings construct and the wheel and we talked about four different areas of zones if you like. And the one for me that would really help with emotion resilience is what we call the renewal zone.

Yes.

This is where you have positive feelings but they're not intense. It's not like enthusiastic excitable and stuff. It's more reflective, calm, slowing down and that might, you might acquire that through breathing activities or reflection basically just slowing down and trying to recall more positive experiences in your life or just noticing your own body at the present time. That renewal zone is, is the recovery place and you'll, you'll definitely need to go there if you're going to, if you're looking at bouncing back from adversity.

Yeah, it's interesting, it's interesting how you were saying it so strongly links to self regard and it sort of makes me think about situations that I've been in personally when I'm being racing. You know, certainly things like an Iron man or, or, or the Race Across America which is more extreme and my, I tap into my emotional resilience in those races of course. And the thing that is very obvious to me is when someone doubts that I'm not going to be able to do something or achieve the goal, that's when my emotional resilience comes to the fore. It's sort of like okay, I'll show you like how, how dare you even doubt that I'm gonna do this. And it's, and it is, it's my self regard sort of creeping up and saying I can't believe you've just said that. That you believe I'm not gonna do it. So it's a bit like if you want to poke the bear then that's the thing to do is say yeah, I bet you can't do that. You know, that you won't be able to achieve that.

I think it's very individual, isn't it? I often think of a seesaw and you've got certain resources and you know Yours very well, because you've been through an awful lot, certainly on the bike and other things you've done is knowing what works for you. And the more you tap into those resources and the other side, you've got stressors. On one side, you've got resources. If you've got more of these, you know how to use them, which is the other point is you know how to use it and galvanize yourself. That will be help you to sort of cope better. The other way of doing it, of course, is get rid of the stresses. So remove the things that causing you a problem, maybe people nagging you or giving you a hard time, but move away from them at times or find positive people. So you can change both ends of the scale. But the bit I really like as a. From a psychological fact, it's not just changing the improving the resources and getting rid of the problems or reducing them, it's changing the pivot point because, you know, you only have to move a centimeter one way perhaps, and it has a massive leverage effect.

Yes.

This pivot point is your perception of events. That's your perception of events. So if you change your perception of stressors, reframe them, look at them differently, accept that certain setbacks you're going to face in life, and you've dealt with them really well in the past, those types of things, suddenly your pivot point moves the other direction and those stresses become much more minimalized because your point is having less effect on them. And also it builds up your resources. You say, I'll show them. You draw on your stuff. That's what's going on in your head. This is the bit you can control. You can actually move your perception of yourself, of the environment you're in, of other people. And that makes perhaps much bigger difference than actually spending an awful lot of time trying to create strengths or change the world that you don't like. So I find that good metaphor really, when you're thinking about emotional resilience.

Yeah, no, I like the seesaw. And actually you just reminded me of the. One of the models we talk about in the coaching world is the E plus R equals O model that you, you know, you're familiar with as well, Joe, which is the E stands for the experience or the curveball that gets thrown. The. The plus the R, which is our response to that experience equals an outcome. So E plus R equals O. Now, most people would say, so we're pretty familiar with the experiences. Most of those we can't control. In fact, you know, they happen you know, the weather happens, traffic happens, rude people happen, etc. There's a whole load of stuff that's on the list, IT problems, etc. So that's something that's out of our control. But what is in our full control, and a lot of people don't necessarily always give credit to this, is that we have full control of ourselves, of how we respond to those experiences. And, and this is where we can start talking about the next scale, which is the personal power scale, which is people don't take personal responsibility. So they would prefer to instead of saying, oh well, it's, it's, it's not my fault the way I respond, it's because they make me feel a certain way. Well actually you know, your feelings, you're in control of those, not somebody else or somebody else shouldn't be in control of those feelings, is, is the point. So it's about managing your response. So the E plus R equals O framework is so clever because world class athletes, they know that the experiences are going to happen, so they don't even consider that. What they, what they are aware of is how they respond to those situations. So some, if they get interviewed, you'll see, they'll talk about, you know, the interviewer will be saying, what about, you know, Joe, he's your main competitor, what do you think about him? And you say, well, I can't really do much about Joe because that's Joe's responsibility. Joe's in, in control of Joe. I'm taking, you know, I'm focusing on me and my performance. So, so it's about taking full responsibility for you and how you respond. So the model is very cleverly manipulated so they accept that the experience is going to happen and before they respond they go straight to what their desired outcome is. So what's the outcome that I want in this situation? This has just happened, this curveball's just been thrown. How do I want? What does the outcome look like? What's a good outcome look like for me? And then they respond appropriately based on their desired outcome and then they've got a better chance of getting the desired outcome.

As you say, it takes us into the next two scales almost. You've got personal power of, you know, what degree do I believe I have choice in my circumstances and what I do about it? And interestingly you say you can control, you know, theoretically we don't know, we don't know the truth. But is it useful to assume that maybe you can control your pivot point, you control your thoughts, your Feelings, your attitude change, what's going on for you? Questionable. Can you change your circumstances, environment? We'll talk about that. But outcomes, where you want to go is very much about what we call goal directedness.

Yes.

Do you clearly know where you want to go? Because if you don't, you might end up somewhere else as someone else wants to say.

Yeah. So you. So with that E + R equals O model, you know, I, when I'm working with groups, teams, you can do a list, you can get them to articulate what are the lists of the things that are the things that burst your bubble. So you've got this bubble and you're having a great day and you're on a roll. What are the things that take you from being a 10, you know, on a scale of 1 to 10, you know, in terms of how you're feeling and your state? Feeling great. And what are the things that have got the potential to burst your balloon and take you, you know, spiraling down to a one or even into the minus figures. So they, they list a whole load of things and that becomes. That list is basically a predictor list of all the things that could potentially derail them from having a great day to turning into a, a nightmare of a day. And then once they are aware that actually these things are going to happen all the time. So curveballs are going to, they're constant, they're not going away. You know, we, we, we spoke about VUCA previously, Joe. Volatile, uncertain, complex, and an ambiguous environment. So VUCA is, you know, been spoken about for the last 10, 15 years at least in the, in the leadership world around the environment that leaders are having to operate in now. VUCA is, you know, the latest VUCA for all of us was covert. Before that in the uk, it was Brexit. We were running around like, you know, like, ah, thinking Brexit's gonna mangle everyone here in the uk. When Covid came along, Brexit just got dropped. It was sort of like not even a thing. You know, Covid became the thing. So Covid became the Vuca. Now Covid's settled down a little bit. There will be other curveballs, there will be other situations, other Vuca moments. The one here in the uk when Covid came along, Brexit just got dropped. It was sort of like not even a thing. You know, Covid became the thing. So Covid became the Vuca. Now Covid's settled down a little bit. There will be other curveballs, there will be other situations, other Vuca moments that leaders will have to navigate. One of them is actually the, the fallout from, from COVID itself. You know, attempting to get people back into the office now is a little bit of a struggle for organizations so that it's just interesting to see how people handle that adversity.

I think it's a good example, Jim, of how the brain works in terms of our attention is drawn to whatever's, well, pretty much newsworthy or high arousal events. Oh, there's been a catastrophe in China or over here and then suddenly that's the only thing going on in the world or in our world and we move very quickly from catastrophe to catastrophe and learning to step back, have perspective. Easier said than done because we do live in a social media world and we're all very connected now actually. Just look at what you're, what's going on for you right now. Are you really, do you presently have Covid or is Brexit currently affecting you? In what ways? But actually, you know, your health is good, maybe your relationships are okay, you're earning a living or whatever it is you're doing. Focus on the things that are giving you the resource to cope with, with difficulties. And a lot of those difficulties are in newspapers or on media. They're not actually happening to you right now. Empathy, understanding, sympathy is a, is a valuable attribute as well. But try not to get too sucked into too many difficulties and setbacks because you've probably got enough of your own which are real to deal with as well.

No, very true. So true. I mean, I don't, I, I skim the papers and in fact recently one of my mates said, you know, have you, did you hear about the airline thing? And I, I genuinely did not know about. There was a meltdown a couple of weeks ago where everyone was stranded in various parts of Europe and it was the air traffic control thing, I think went bust and, and I didn't have a scooby that that was happening. I didn't know anything about that until they said oh, you know, have you heard of. And. And they laughed about it. And I said, well, I'm hearing about it now. I'm, I'm now up to date because you're bringing me up to date with that information. I don't need to read a newspaper to tell me that there's doom and gloom around the world. It's been happening ever since time began. Began.

So this, this is, you know, this draws into personal power very well really, which is the degree to which you feel responsible for yourself, your circumstances and what you create in the in terms of the behaviors and actions you take versus say being a victim of circumstances, you say, you know, I can't help it, it's not my fault. Other people to blame. Yeah, this, I mean what we've been talking about really is around personal power. That, that fact, that facet of emotional intelligence which is the degree to which you feel responsible for your, for yourself, for your own behavior and to large what happens in your life, taking it to further extent versus do you believe your victim? And you know, the examples you gave were I can't help it, my life's very difficult. Other people have got it in for me. A lot of sort of blaming if you like. One way of looking at it is there are different levels of responsibility or even choice in how you choose to live your life. You might say at the very least level it's about, well it's in the lap of the gods fate or it's down to my genetic makeup, I'm a personality type and I'm always going to be this way or other people are to blame like my parents or my boss or the government. You know, it's just always externalizing it rather than having an internal sense of locus of control. I think a level beyond that is very much saying yes as you said Jim, in your model of I can choose my response to events, I can choose how I deal with this, I can choose my thoughts, my feelings. I think a very good example of that was. And if you think you can't read this book by Viktor Frankl.

Yes.

Which is called Man's Search for Meaning.

Yeah.

So he was in a. You've read it? Yeah, I mean he was in a concentration camp and he says they took away every freedom you could imagine. Of course we know this but they couldn't take away his beliefs, they couldn't take away his attitude of himself. He couldn't stop him being kind to others even though it's very difficult. There were people in that concentration camp giving the last piece of bread to their closest friend. So these are examples of very extremes that maybe we do have a bit more choice than you think you do sometimes. So. But there is a level beyond that. Not just talking about myself choice but can I create the circumstances I want in my life? So. Well of course you can't. They're just, I mean there's an element of acceptance. I agree with that. But also would it be useful to try it out and consider maybe I, I co created this situation I'm in. So rather than saying, you know, nothing I can do about it and talking about the emotional resilience cycle and the thrive cycle. Those who believe they've got personal power, that they can change events, change their circumstances, tend to be happier and perform better. Not saying, you said you have to blame yourself. That's a choice in itself because I'm beating yourself up. Or you could choose not to beat yourself and say, try it out. Maybe there's a little bit more influence I have over my friendships, you know, you know that the idea that if you, if you're positive, maybe other people around you are going to be more positive. And I talked in, I talked about motions last time as a leader. What climate do you create around you? How do people feel working for you? It's something to do with your behavior and your relationships and what you do that may impact on that. So I, I personally like trying out that view that you don't just create your response, you can create your environment to a large extent as well. And I would say that's an invitation really, to have an experiment. Don't beat yourself up if it doesn't work out, but you can if you want. But I wouldn't do that. But have a go. Start with the assumption maybe I have more choice than I think I do.

Yeah.

See how it goes.

Yeah, I love that thought of trying to experiment because actually that was a great phrase that I picked up so some years ago was life is an experiment. So, you know, the more experienced you, if you want to get experience or experiences, you need to have more experiences in life to be able to become experienced. So go and treat life as an experience, you know, try out those different ways of thinking. And, you know, neuroscience is caught up, thank goodness. And, and it's showing us that, yes, you can, you know, so, for example, with illness, with disease, neuroscience has caught up and they've researched this now. And, and a lot of people would have previously put diseases down to genetics predominantly. They would have thought it's all genetics. And many years ago, it's, it was proven that actually only 4% of disease is genetics based on the rest is epigenetics, which, as you know, is the environment. You know, the environment that we grow up in, the thinking that we do, the food that we eat, the exercise that we have, etc. All these things are so well captured in data from studies that have been done around the world that show that epigenetics is the bit that makes the difference.

So that's the idea that the way you live your life may switch on certain genes and switch off certain Genes, so they're still there, but some become more triggered if you like. And you could even pass that on as to your, your children to turn them on or turn them off, depending on what you do. So living more healthily might live, create more positive genetic, you know, influence on, on your child.

Yeah. 100. And going back to your, your levels of personal responsibility, I think right at, right at the very top is taking full personal responsibility for everything in your life. So I run me, you know, so everyone that I interact with, you know, I'm the key denominator in all of those relationships. So I've got to take personal responsibility for how those relationships are, you know, and whether they're healthy or not healthy. So I've got to take personal responsibility. Of course, there's an another side to those relationships, the other person or the other people. But if I don't take personal responsibility, I lose an opportunity to grow, is the way I've always looked at it.

Joe.

I've always thought, okay, I've got to take personal responsibility for my end and dig in there and make sure I exhaust to, to my greatest ability. The, the role that I played in this. I can't change that individual. What I can do is change me. And I, I take personal responsibility for that piece.

Yeah.

Not. And so that's, that's about, I think that's at the higher level. Personal responsibility.

Absolutely. When I mean. Yeah. You say you can take 100 responsibility for everything that happens in your life. I mean, that is going somewhere. So you could say it's very empowering. Yeah. So people who do that often feel or go further with that, say they feel more control of their lives. Yeah. But it's also quite a difficult thing because you say, well, what did I do that contributed to this incident happening? So, I mean, take a ridiculous example, but if I go out in my car and somebody drives into the back of me when I'm just doing nothing, particularly so. Well, it's nothing to do with me. I wasn't even, you know, driving the car at the time it smashed into me.

But.

Well, you could say, well, you chose to go out, you chose to drive your car. If you'd really wanted to play ultra safe, you'd not drive your car or keep you looking in mirrors all the time. But we choose not to maybe take that level of cautiousness because life would be very, very difficult if we did. So we're accepting. So to some extent, I'm accepting a certain amount of risk in my life.

Yeah.

Because I don't I want to spend my time differently. But it's coming back to the point of, you know, do. If you start accepting that everything is your choice, maybe you've done something. If you haven't been there, would it have happened? No. Okay, so you are in a way, co account. And again, I go back to the point. It's not about blaming yourself or finding fault. It's just recognizing did you have some influence over the situation, over your personal relationship going wrong, over your work situation, over you? Something awfully. When things go badly, we suddenly think, get into the blame game. And what you notice after you've done a lot of blaming is you might feel a bit better temporarily, but nothing's changed. Nothing changes. If you want to change it, then you change that pivot point, your perspective. Yeah, yeah.

And. And it's interesting that you talk about that because Leadership and Self Deception, the book that I spoken about previously as well, which is the, the book that describes beautifully Albert Semmelweis, the obstetrician who was working as a professor in Austria back in the late 1800s. You know, his, the book, that's the story that the book starts with, which is his awareness. He was. They had the highest mortality rates in Austria in all the Austrian hospitals. And he was looking at everyone else and trying to work out why what was happening in his hospital that others. Other thing other people were involved in, what were they doing that was causing this high mortality rate. And it wasn't until he went on holiday and had two weeks away from the hospital that the mortality rates dropped. And then he had to actually forced him to have to look at himself and say, okay, so this has got something to do with me. So what was he doing that was creating this high mortality rate within his hospital? And the thing that he was doing was he was doing all the, all the stuff in the mortuary. So he was doing a lot of the. Investigating the cause of death, etc, but he wasn't washing his hands well, wasn't washing them properly, and then going and operating on live people, which was then causing illness and disease in those live patients. So. And that was. It wasn't until he got that awareness that he had to look in the mirror and look at himself and say, okay, so what is it that I'm doing? So that speaks beautifully to the, the personal responsibility piece, Joe, in leadership. In leadership, yeah.

And as soon as you start adopting that view or trying it out, as you say, is maybe what did I do that created this? You start asking that question and then you start finding out man, in that example you found sort of life changing situations. But as a leader you might find actually maybe if I just said good morning to people, it's not often what you do, it's what you don't do. Of course, as well.

Course.

Or showed a bit more tension or changed my style a bit, whatever says maybe that would get a better response from this person or maybe I should and maybe I just need to be more assertive and tell them where they're going wrong or something. But you could do something perhaps.

Yeah, it's, you're right. It's, it's either what are they doing or not doing that's created this behavior in this individual. So that's where an exceptional leader will go there first they will ask themselves the question, okay, so I haven't got this, this relationship is a bit off. What am I doing or not doing that's creating this, you know, what am I doing to create this pattern of behavior in this relationship?

Yeah. And I like the idea of co creation as well. So they could do the same. Maybe over time they could work towards that place as well. Yeah, but it's, you know, I do believe that we influence our environment by our own behavior. And you talked about neuroscience and the idea of mirror neurons, oscillator neurons, and that we get into harmony with other people very much by changing art. And sometimes I'd say it's not what you do, it's how you feel. So if I feel energized, it will leak out in every mannerism and tone of voice and color of my skin. And whatever I'm doing will influence other people. Just because I've got a sense of a positive, you know, engagement or positive feeling. Other people start building on that. Quite possibly.

Yeah, no, absolutely, 100%. We spoke about smiling the other week and you know that that chemical cascade and it happens in every, so every thought that we have creates a chemical cascade. So when we do smiling, you know that triggers off the oxytocin and serotonin and the dopamine, the beautiful drugs that are great for us. And the same applies to someone that comes on energetic that that energy transfers. So it's no wonder that you know, you know, the birds of the feather flock together.

Yeah.

So, so personal power is a, is a, another what I, I class as a superpower. And, and I, I, it's really not trying to disrespect the other aspects of emotional intelligence, but the emotional resilience, being able to handle yourself under pressure. So a leader that is able to do that and just is calm. There is such a difference when they show up, walk into a room, into a situation that is, you know, all going off. How they hold themselves is massively impressive. And a lot of that is down to then their ability to take personal responsibility. So they, they pretty much own it. They say, okay, I'm the leader and I'll handle this. You know, they take. They take control and they, they take personal responsibility and show up.

And you tend to notice that individuals with high personal power are not those who necessarily seek to be in charge, but people gravitate towards them because they, the people can sense that they have a sense of direction. They tend to have a sense of. You can believe in them. And having somebody you believe in because they believe in themselves, of course, is the mark of leadership. So, yeah, it's a, it's a big factor when it comes to, you know, getting the best out of other people.

So is there anything other than. I mean, I spoke about the E plus R equals O model, which links to emotional resilience, but also links to personal power. Is there anything else, Joe, that you want to add to? How do you develop these things apart from, you know, the awareness piece you were talking about earlier, which is really important to be able to be aware of the renewal things that. So if you are emotionally low, you know, and you can feel that you're not particularly in a great space, what are the things you can do to get yourself back up there? You know, so go for a walk, take a breath, you know, all those things, you know, eat well, sleep well, you know. So what are the renewal. Renewal things that you can do at work that would be useful to build personal power?

I think, I think draw upon your previous experience, you know, draw upon times when you felt that way. It's very much a feeling state as well. Recognize your strengths and what you believe in yourself because, you know, you just walk taller, you feel stronger, you feel better when you're in that state. And we will move, you know, from time to time into a low personal power. It's a kind of confidence what builds your confidence. And I, I pinch this from the human element, this idea of what we call the 1% rule. Just. But just imagine that you and I say this to people when I'm coaching them. You know, they say, oh, there's nothing I can do about it. I'm stuck in my situation. It's not my fault. Well, just imagine you rather saying, let's go to the 100 level, which I described earlier. Let's just try, try out 1%. One percent, yeah. Even I will accept that I've got 1%. Well, what is that one? Describe it to me. And lo and behold, they start telling you what they could do about situation. You've just got to open that door of possibility. Because I think the, the, the emotional brain is quite categorical. Things are either possible or impossible, right or wrong, good or bad. Once you open that possible instead of impossible, people start asking questions and looking at different ways.

Yeah, that's a great. I love the 1% rule. I, I snuck that from the human element as well. And the other thing I cunningly do on occasion is when someone says, oh, I'm not sure, I don't know, you know, I'm not quite sure. And I then say, well, what if you were sure? What if you did know? And they say, yeah, but I don't know. But yeah, but what if you did know?

What would you.

And it's a sneaky, sneaky way.

You can't get that out of the, out of your head once you put it in there. Yeah, well, maybe I do with children.

Yeah, exactly. It's like, oh, well, maybe I do know the answer. Or it, you know. Another great question is, well, what would a great friend say?

Yeah, yeah.

Or what would you know, so and so leader say about this particular situation?

Yeah, yeah. Again, it's sort of opening up a sense of more choice in your life. If you have the language of choice. Can, will, may, can do rather than can't, never must, have to. They are words that indicate you're locked into your emotional brain because the emotional brain sees things in either, as I said, categorical. And when you're locked into a negative emotional trance, then things are absolute and you listen to people's language. I have to do this, I must do that. It doesn't leave any opportunity for anything else. If that's a fact. If it's a fact and you've got to using your, your questions, reframe that. So they see that on, maybe even unconsciously, they're accepting possibility all of a sudden. So this is personal power. I'm aware. We need to move on, don't we, Jim? Because of just number of scales. But they're all connected, of course.

So no, no, no, it's, it's beautiful. And it also speaks to.

It doesn't leave any opportunity for anything else. If that's a fact. If it's a fact and you've got to using your, your questions, reframe that. So they see that on maybe even unconsciously they're accepting possibility all of a sudden. So this is personal power. I'm aware we need to move on, don't we, Jim, because of just number of scales.

But they're all Carol Dweck's book Mindset, where she speaks about growth mindset and fixed mindset. And again, it goes back to. So you were talking about language and languages. You know, of course that's, that's our thing as coaches or connected, of course.

So.

No, no, no, it's, it's beautiful. And it also speaks to Carol Dweck's book Mindset, where she speaks about growth mindset and fixed mindset. And again, it goes back to. So you were talking about language and languages. You know, of course, that's, that's our thing as coaches. Picking up on the language patterns. So hearing what people are saying and using, getting them to, you know, take a different use of words and see the power that, that can have on changing the situation. So I, I, if I hear difficult, you know, if I hear a leader say, oh, it's really difficult. Well, picking up on the language patterns, so hearing what people are saying and using, getting them to, you know, take a different use of words and see the power that that can have on changing the situation. So I, I, if I hear difficult, you know, if I hear a leader say, oh, it's really difficult. Well, yeah, it may well be difficult, but a better word would be it's different, you know. Yeah, it may well be difficult, but a better word would be it's different. You know, the environment's different at the moment instead of difficult. So diff, diff. Difficult reinforces. Oh, it's really tough and it's, we're probably not going to be able to get through this. Yeah, I mean, the environment's different at the moment instead of difficult. So diff, diff. Difficult reinforcers.

It's interesting. Some of this stuff is quite theoretical and, but it's, it's fundamental. Once I find once people buy into the idea of it, then they go and do something about it. But sometimes people love the ideas but they don't actually take action. And certainly when we get to goal directness, it's very much about doing it. So if you want to build personal power, one way is, yeah, learn about it, realize it, accept the levels of choice, but then it's not going to be embodied. You're not going to do it unless you experience it. So go out and try it, Set yourself a bit more of a challenge, take a bit more responsibility, just incrementally try some moving outside your comfort zone a bit more than you normally do and see how it goes. See it as an experiment. Give yourself L plates. Often say, you know, so it's okay to make mistakes. All right, so you're just trialing things out. Extend your level of personal power just a little bit by doing something with that that demonstrates it.

I love that as well, the L plates thing. You know, I'm. I'm learning some new stuff here, so give yourself a break and just say, yeah, I've got my old plates on the moment. I'm giving this a whirl. I'm giving it a trial.

And it goes back to the. The original metaphor. Emotional intelligence, Jim. Learning of driving a car. Yeah, you can. It's all developable, but you've got to navigate the traffic. And obviously at the beginning, we've got L plates on, so we're practicing.

I like that. And. And I. The thing that really spikes my excitement around this conversation is the big word that you continue to use is choice. You know, so many people don't believe they have a choice. So when. When I. Whenever I talk about personal responsibility, I go deep into that. When I'm. If I'm speaking at a conference, I. I talk about personal responsibility a lot. And on occasion, I've had people come up to me and at the end of a. Of a. At a conference and say, yeah, but you don't know my life, you know, sort of like, well, you. You know, et cetera, et cetera. Well, they still had choices to make, some of them. So sometimes the choices are a bad choice and a bad choice, but there's still choice.

Yeah.

And. And it doesn't always stay the same all the time. It always changes.

Yeah.

You know, the situation always changes. So, you know, take a moment, take a breath, and it will change. You know, something will come along and. And change the. The whole perspective.

Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes it's, you know, putting it upon someone by saying, yes, you've got more choice than you think. And actually, it's down to you. Well, you'd say, telling me off. I'm not good enough. It's all my fau. No, no, no, no, no. Sometimes a softer approach of, you know, try this out. I'm not. Not. It doesn't always work, but it might work. At least you won't know until you have a go. So just assume for a moment you chose a situation. Just.

Yeah.

You know, put everything else to one side just for a minute, and try this little experiment. Why would that have happened. Well, I didn't, I didn't. It's not my fault. No, no, no. But I'm just saying we're going to try this out. So play, you know, do it as a little game or experiment and then get them talking about, well if that was the case then blah, blah. So it's just again opening up more options for that individual.

And that's what coaching obviously does is you're laying options at the doorstep for them to choose, you know. Okay, so which of these ones, which one would you prefer to have a go at? Which one would you like to have a, have a chance to look at?

So personal powers are massive user superpower. It is a massive one for life and I say it's, it's almost. The other side to self regard is personal power. One's belief that you can do things. The other one is self acceptance. They are different but hand in hand they're supercharging you to, you know, great, great success without arrogance. Of course.

Yeah.

You know, it doesn't mean it's acceptance of. Yeah, I hands up, I made a mistake. I'm responsible. I didn't do that as I'd like. I'm not going to beat myself up because my self regard is good enough. I'm not going to tell them a worthless person, but I am going to accept the feedback that I could improve.

Yes.

So that's self regard with personal power.

Yeah. Which, which leads us nicely into goal directedness. Because with great emotional resilience and high personal power or even if those two scales are low, the thing that you do need some semblance of is a sense of goal directedness. And I know that, you know, for you, for you Joe, with all the things you've accomplished in, in your career and also outside of your career as a, as an athlete, you know, doing Ironman triathlon, qualifying for gb, then going off and doing, you know, race across America as a part of the four man team at very short notice. That was my fault, I chose it. But yeah, I know I'm many jokes.

To meet you and.

Yeah, that exactly. Which was fantastic. You know, you flying into America and being part of the four man team at very short notice was pretty spectacular. But then you went on to do other things as well. So you went off and did the marathon de Saab and then you walked all the way to South Pole. I, I almost walked there with you but just couldn't.

North. North Pole.

North. Sorry. So north. Well, one of the poles. I was, I had a 50, 50 chance Joe, I did invite you. Yeah, no, I know I had, I, I also, but just couldn't get the, the, the cash together to come and join you.

Of course. Yeah.

But what, what an experience, you know, and that would have tapped into your emotional resilience and your personal power. But more importantly, you became extremely goal directed and I think you probably were goal directed before all that came about, you know, the athletic stuff because of course you were very goal directed in your business and your career as a psychologist.

Yeah. It's interesting you describe it as that because I remember doing something called 16pF when I was at school at university and okay. I scored low on factor G which is sort of kind of driven, conscientious, doing what you and that said considered goal directedness. And yet when I do the emotional intelligence goal directly I get a very different score. I'm quite, I'm pretty high on it. And I think that's because we see it in different ways. For, for the emotional intelligence is aligning your behavior to your long term goals.

Yes.

And that's kind of what I do. But am I a planner? Am I an organizer? I'm going to have somebody really structured this what I'm going to do. Not really. I do know what I want.

Yeah.

And I think I said it before. Do you know what you want? Certainly at that time my life I did, I was very single minded to do these various things and that drove me to do those things. While other people are very structured and organized in their lives and you say they're very goal direct in this, you know, always do what they say, you know. So I think there's slightly different things now. As I say, what you want might be just to switch, you know, switch off and relax or be lazy or be very casual, whatever it is. Be a, be a loafer and why not if that's what you want. As long as you know that's what you're choosing. Yeah. To be aware of what you want. A want is a need. You need to be self aware in touch with your feelings. So.

Yes.

Yeah. It's a bit of a surprise in hindsight later on life I thought yes, maybe I am very goal directness but not in the way that people often see it. Yeah. So that's, that's, that was, that's an important part of it. Aligning your behavior long term goals. I think there's another part which is not being distracted from what you want.

Yes.

So what we call impulse control and gosh, you know what it's like training to do race across America and whatever. That's, it's, it's, it's a year, maybe two years of pretty solid training. Going out in the early hours of the morning, not eating the food you might want to eat. And it's very easy to fall off the wagon. But what holds you back is having this very clear vision of where, where you're going and what has to be done to achieve that and sticking by it. So yeah, I think, I think, I think particularly in young people, this sort of impulsivity going to what's immediately hedonistically enjoyable rather than a deeper level needs which give you longer term wellbeing really which is sense of success, sense of achievement, sense of good relationships and so forth. To give you an example of that, I don't know if you, you know the marshmallow test, it's a classic experiment by Walter Michelle and yeah, yeah, I'll just describe it briefly and it's a great illustration of what we're discussing here. So you know, the children are about five or six years old and they were given a marshmallow and said, right, you can have that marshmallow, but I'm going to get the room and get you another marshmallow, but if you haven't eaten that one, I'll give you the second one. And they are videoing these children and the children literally holding that, you know, just trying to lick the marshmallow, holding their hands back. And of course some kids just couldn't help it and ate the damn thing, but they had the marshmallow anyway, they came back and some kids didn't eat it and they got a second one, said I'm going out the room again. When I come back I'm going to double, I'm going to give you two more marshmallows, but you mustn't eat those two. And they came back, same thing happened and it carried on and carried on. Some kids ended up with loads marshmallows because they had impulse control. I suppose what they, what the experimenter called deferred gratification.

Yeah.

Now the important thing is not just in that moment impulse control, but they follow the children up into adult life and see how they get on. Got on. And no, no surprise, the children who had more impulse control tended to do better in life and this, they accounted for the socioeconomic differences and so forth. I said basically a lot of what we do in life is about deferring reward. So a lot of youngsters don't particularly want to study for years at university or you know, train hard and in order to get later qualifications or save money because they, you know, it's this sort of holding back and as we get older we learn that's useful to us. But if you don't learn that, certainly in the Western society, you're probably going to struggle more. So this simple attitude of impulse control, goal directedness is very fundamental, certainly in the Western world to success, at least as we define success. But at the same time you, you need to combine that with knowing what you want. Because if you're just doing it because it's keeping your parents happy or doing what society expects of you, then you may not end up doing the thing you, you really wanted anyway. The two parts to goal directness and.

Both need to be combined really, really, really powerful. And that's a beautiful example, the marshmallow test. And I'll see if I can get a link to that for the people that are viewing this on, on, on video. So the cash together to come and join you.

Of course. Yeah.

But what, what an experience. I'll put in the YouTube because there will be a YouTube. I'm pretty sure there's a YouTube. I've seen it myself, so for sure there is. What, what I've never really sort of asked you though, Joe, is what was your compelling, why you got into some of that, that extreme stuff? I, we've never really sort of discussed that. And I'm just curious as we talk around goal directedness, what was it that drove you, what was your reason for doing Iron man triathlon? You know, Race Across America, the Marathon de Saab, the North Pole expedition, What was that about? Because there's some big, there's some big chunks of real tough, grueling physical stuff there that speaks to emotional resilience, personal power, that, and of course also speaks to goal directedness.

So, yeah, I, I, I don't know. Deep down, psychologically, I could explain lots of things. One of the things like competing with my brother, I was the youngest child and I think I was also striving to keep up as you do when you're younger. So maybe that's one of the underlying things about being a striver. You've got to work harder to get where you want to go. And unconsciously I think I did that. And I think my family upbringing was very much, you know, get on with it.

Yeah, okay. Step up a lip sort of approach.

Yeah, I'm from that background. Yeah, just get on with it and stop complaining. And there's good sides and bad sides to that, but Certainly a good side. And I know one of the things I often say when I talk about motivation from my experiences. Motivation comes from taking action. It doesn't come from some sort of eureka experience. I'm waiting to be inspired before I can write my next book. I'm waiting to feel the energy before I go out for a run. You'll be waiting a long time. It might happen, but you'll probably be what. I'll tell you what will work though. If you start writing, you might start getting inspired.

Yes.

If you start walking, you might feel like running and you energy comes from doing more often than not. So I often say the first step and I was quite good at that first step depth of going out and doing. I get bored easily and I'm quite a physical person. And I mean more than anything else I just enjoyed it. I enjoyed the excitement, the possibility. I mean there was an incident in my life where I was. I was doing an off off ski touring, ski mountaineering and I fell off the mountain. I had some pretty nasty accidents and took me a year to get through various. But I was 40 years old.

Was that when you broke your ankle? You broke your ankle?

Broke my ankle, yeah. Shoulder, various bits of my body and did take a long time to get through that. And I, I remember just, I do remember thinking, gosh, I need to do stuff, you know, because I might not be able to do it later. And every year I said I'm going to do one thing in my life I feel is an achievement and I like physical stuff. So I focused on the physical and I did that every year. I sort of. I was good at triathlon so I did that but I ended up doing a running event, I did a swim, lots of swimming distance events and cycling events. With you, Jim? Yeah, one or two other things. And I became a bit of. It became a bit habitual. I was obsessed. But maybe you do need to be a bit obsessed to go to that extreme. And the more I did, the more I wanted to do so I suppose what the point for me is what drove me was actually doing it made me realize I enjoy this and I can go further. I often think as, as a human being you're, you're in, you've got capacities and resources and what makes improves well being and health and everything as a human is using those resources.

Yeah.

When I take my dog for a walk, it's super fit dogs, only two and a half and I take him out to. Could take him to the park with a lead and he would sniff around and use his sniffing sense. But what I like is taking him into the, you know, I get in the car and I go to lovely outdoor fields and open countryside, and he is running for an hour, constantly sprinting. And I think, yeah, that is what the dog is built for. And that dog is happy as anything when he's doing what he likes doing. And it worked for me too. I'm not a dog. But when I was using my innate capability, things I was good at and I liked, I felt that made me feel good. And I'd say that for anybody. Find out what you're good at. Whether it's writing, dancing, singing, talking to friends. Doesn't matter what it is. If you. And I've got a son who's 20 and he's at that age, what are you. What gets you going? We may not enjoy it all the time, but when you do more of it, you. You feel happy about yourself.

Yeah.

And find that thing. I suppose that's when I found my thing. And it's, it's. It certainly helped me. So I did that for 10 years pretty much until Covid struck. And then I think we were all held back a bit.

Yeah. Yeah, we were.

Yeah.

Okay. Well, thank. Thanks for sharing that. And so goal directedness. So if someone scores low on goal directedness, these are individuals that I tend to. And you, you've already spoken about the, the distraction, the delayed gratification piece. So they get either distracted by their regard for others. So they, they are helping other people achieve their goals and they're not achieving their own. So that's a potential distraction and they just get distracted because they, I, I call them lures. You know, when people go fishing where the lure instead of bait, the lure is the shiny thing, they get distracted by something shiny. Something else is interesting that's come up and it could be actually the latest gen, you know, the Gen Z people that they are distracted easily by Facebook or whatever it is that they're looking at or a tick tock or whatever it could. Could be. But what are those distractions? So what are the things that are interrupting them from achieving their goals? So being aware of that, you know, so what are the things that are preventing them from doing the doing? You know, like you say, it's taking action. So what is it that's stopping them from taking action?

I think one of the things is wanting to please others. And it's a wonderful thing. But yes, I know to some people you say, oh, could you, could you do this? And they'll drop everything they're doing even. It's a very important task to suddenly keep everyone happy. And it gets reinforced because they do that. People think, oh, they're the go to person. I'll always ask them. Yes, I had one or two colleagues like that, really nice, nice people and dare say that, you know, it tends to be females who just give themselves up for other people and don't say, what is it? I want you to. You can do both, but just say, actually not right now, there's other things I've got to do, then I'll come on to it. Or. And the danger is when it comes to authenticity and you talked about people get low scores on that scale. If you try too hard to please others, you may end up displeasing them because you commit to things you can't deliver. So you say yes all the time. And actually you let people down. So it's not that you're inauthentic and you're manipulative or lying or anything nasty. In fact, you're too nice. Yeah. You're trying to keep everyone happy, but because you're overburdened, you end up exhausted, not achieving, not delivering what they asked for. And they think you're unreliable.

Yeah.

So a reliable person is somebody who knows what they want and has a reasonable degree of assertiveness to say, actually not right now. So that's an important element of goal directedness.

Yeah. Or maybe you're not. It might not be not right now, or it might be not right now, but I will come to it, you know, so absolutely happy to support and help.

Yeah. But there's, or maybe, you know, this isn't for me and actually I feel like I'm doing my fair share and right now is what I've got to work on is my stuff, if that's okay with you. And you mentioned about, you know, the other impulse control. And I think if you look at people say, you know, I've got this, I want to do this, that and the other, they tend to find that they're often not very important things or they're fun things. And I'm not saying you shouldn't have fun and watching telly, playing on games, going out with your mates, but if you spend your entire time doing that, say, I haven't got time. Yeah, well, I think you do. You're just choosing to spend it differently.

Yes.

How much time do you spend watching telly or playing games or doing things that are just relaxing or switch off or nothing to do with the objective you set and how Much time do you spend doing the things that are your objective? And you'd be surprised how much time is spent doing the non objectives. But just be, just be aware that's a choice. It may be unconscious that you've chosen to spend 90 hours, 90% of your time watching telly or reading a book, whatever. And that's. If that's not your objective, maybe you could change it from 10% on your objective to 15. Right?

Yeah.

Don't give up all that stuff. Just a little bit more.

Yeah, it's interesting with the goal stuff. It, one of, one of the things some people have a list of, you know, a to do list. What I recommend people to do is start their day with the most difficult task. So get that done. You know that we, we, you've just spoke about it. You know, we get distracted with filling our time with insignificant little goals that we might be achieving that might be helping serve other people's needs, not ours. And that goal that we need to lean into, we're not leaning, leaning into. So lean into that first. Knock that one off your list, your to do list because it's not going to then show up on your to do list tomorrow and the next day and the next day. So making sure that you lean into it and, and sort of chunk it down. So, and, and NLP Neuro Linguistic programming talks about chunking up and chunking down. So the, the goal is, you know, the bit that you want, this big thing that you want to achieve, then break it down into smaller component parts that help you say, okay, so which is the, what's the first step that I need to take? You know? Well, the first step is I need to go out and get some new kid if I'm going to go walking to the North Pole, you know, so what is it I need, you know, I need some pretty good gloves, I need to reset. And then before you even do all that, you would have researched it all quite heavily. So you would have got into a lot of research on the Internet.

Yeah, this is, I mean you asked about my own situation and all the events I did. I'd actually go on the Internet and read about it for ages. And yeah, I felt inside me a massive amount of excitement. You need that level of excitement and energy if you're going to do it. If it's like, oh God, I want to do a PhD, I really want it, but I don't really want to read 600 papers or spend four years. Maybe you shouldn't, maybe you're not ready. It's not ready for you right now. But if you get totally excited like I did about the things I did achieve, then maybe, yeah, you're gonna, you're gonna keep doing it. But you've got to check that excitement. Don't just do, read about it one day or talk to a mate in a pub and say, I'm gonna go do it. Check it out for a few weeks is my advice, maybe even months. Read about it, get really into the nitty gritty. The downside of it, the hard part, the expensive bit actually. And then if you still got that excitement, go for it. And you must have found that because you did it, you did the Race Across America. I'll just make sure everyone else knows this. 3,000 miles on your own over something like 10 days, which is basically, I know, 20 hours on your bike every day for 10 days. And you didn't just do it once. I think you've done it more than any other person, not just in, not just in the uk, but perhaps more than most people in the world. Is that true, Jim?

I mean, so I've done it three times as a solo, once as a four person team, but the three times as a solo was consecutive. So it was, you know, year on year and going faster each time. And yeah, I'm, I'm one of very few people that have done it well. I'm the only one in the uk, for example, that has done it three consecutive years running and gone faster each year. There are other athletes that have gone back time and time and time and time again. A, because they've got great sponsorship and probably B, most importantly, they're just completely addicted to it.

I mean, our motivations are different really. Even though you might say, oh, we both love doing endurance, I would love to do something once and feel like I've done it. Get me to do the North Pole again or swim 20 miles again or something like that. No, I've done it. I want to move on to something different. While you, you're, you still get that tingling in your stomach and you, I think you eventually had to stop. You're pulled back by everybody else rather than you wanted to stop doing a fourth time and you had to earn a living.

I think exact, exactly earning a living. And yeah, the relationship situation took, it took a bit of a dive as well. So when you're so focused, goal directed is great and it does help you achieve goals when you're so obsessed and so goal directed like I was in particular, I think that I became obsessed with it, but, but My why? My purpose was very different compared to a lot of other athletes. I wanted to put myself up there as a normal human being. And a lot of people wouldn't say I'm normal. I still believe I am a normal human being with a family, a job, etc. Not that I was focusing a great deal on the job, but I was training and I was attempting to juggle all those things and I was wanting to be an example of, you know, a normal human being and what was possible. So I was trying to stretch people's imagination around what was physically possible to do, even though I wasn't an Olympic cyclist, etc, as you know, Joe. So my why was very different. I wanted to create the awareness for other people that we all have greatness inside us. Not greatness to go out and do physical things necessarily, but to achieve anything that we set our mind to. And, and that was my purpose and still continues, as you know, is my main purpose still as a coach, you know, to talk about what is possible, what is doable. And actually goal directedness is a great tool to help people when someone's low on goal directedness. As a coach, I use the handprint model and I know I've spoken to you about the handprint model before. And the handprint model is basically, you know, you write the goal in the palm of your hand, you take a, you take a, a four piece of paper trace around your hand, and in the middle of your palm you write the goal down and then you ask the question, okay, so that's the main goal that you want to achieve. What are the five things you need to do that are critical to helping you achieve that goal? So they write those five things down and then, and then you put a stake in the ground and say, okay, so where are you, you know, 20%, 40%, 60%, 80%, 100%, where are you on each of those finger points towards achieving that particular point that is critical to achieving the main goal. So they then calibrate it and then they get a good representation of where they are right now with all of those five things that are critical to achieving that goal. And then you can ask the next question, which is, okay, so what are the five things you need to do to get this point to 100%? And what are the five things you need to do to. So that's a separate handprint. So that then becomes the goal. So that's chunking it down so you've got the main goal and then you chunk it right down into bite sized pieces and you can Timeline those aspects as well. You can say, okay, I want to have achieved this particular point by next month or this particular point by the end of the year, etc.

I think such a. I really like it, Jim. Not because it's just chunking down, but you're going to be taking this with you for the rest of your life. Yes, you can change them, but these digits, it's like you, some people get you to write it down, put it in your top pocket. But it's so powerful, isn't it, to have something kinesthetic like that.

Yeah.

And as little children, you say, you know, this little thing went to market. This little. It's something you've always had throughout your life. Yeah, that's, that's brilliant for goal directedness as a technique. Yeah.

And I, I use that as a, you know, if I'm working with a leadership team, I use that on a flip chart and just say, okay, so I'm, I haven't got any agenda here, but let's, let's do a handprint. What's the goal that you want to achieve? And then in a team environment, every individual in the team gets to contribute to the, the thinking of how they achieve that goal.

I can think about somebody who's trying to go from couch to 5K. Isn't that one of the things? And you could be running your 5k, and this is your 5k and you're running along and with you with your goals. If that's K1 done, K2. And you know, I can see it being really tangible way of embodily making these goals happen.

Yeah, no, it, it is really powerful. And it's, as you say, it's kinesthetic, but it's also visual. So I quite like the visual aspect of, you know, tracing around your hand and, and then doing it one on one with somebody. And that's, that's really, really powerful. When, when working with goal directedness is.

I just, I just, just connected to, that is in terms of developing goal directness, I say visualization is a very powerful way of, of that. And we've talked about athletes sort of not just visualizing the end point, I think we mentioned in a previous one, but it actually fires off the same neurons as if you're doing it by visualizing in your head. And the more real you can make that, the more likely your brain is preparing yourself for doing that. It's an expectation. Equally, if you visualize bad things or not achieving things or things going wrong unconsciously, you'll be orientated towards that. So it's learning to use that innate capacity of imagination to help you to get your. Achieve your goals.

You've triggered a funny imagination and a visualization in my head about your walk to the North Pole because I know you took. You had to watch out for polar bears because that's a genuine risk. And I. You wouldn't have wanted to be visualizing that at all. You wouldn't have been visualizing, you know, being eaten by a polar bear. But.

Well, I wouldn't want to visualize it. But there's another aspect of that is I was kind of. It'll be okay, you know, don't worry about it. And head down, which you should be more vigilant. And of course the danger is you're not expect. If you do kind of need to expect the worst because otherwise you're not prepared to. There's various ways you can prepare and one of the groups, there's four different, five different groups doing this race and there's 400 miles and they did get, I say attacked, but they managed to. You now just, just to be clear, you're given a shotgun. You don't shoot the animal. All right? You use it to shoot the snow in front. Even if you were to hit an animal, it wouldn't, it wouldn't kill them. So the worst thing you could do is that you use it to scare the animal. And so that was done. You do it in front of them. They used it and they scared the animals off, but they came back. But this is just because you've mentioned it, the aspect of preparation and so it was a very real threat in, in what was called Polar Bear Pass.

Yeah, I think I'd take a pass on that. That's probably one of the reasons I didn't want to come Joe. It was too a too cold and couldn't get the, the money together. But what an achievement. And I still. There's still another book in you for sure. You need to write about the, the fire and ice experience that you experienced in, you know, the marathon de Saab and you know, the marathons in across the desert, but also the North Pole.

As well that it's interesting, Jim, because I mean the North Pole is the exciting one I tell people about because they want to see the pictures and stuff and it's probably something that nobody else does. And it was a one off for me too. But the, the hardest thing apart from I did the, you know, group we did Lands and John a great. So that was pretty. A lot of cycling and Running. The hardest thing I did was the swimming actually. And it's probably the most boring one to talk about.

Yeah. Wow.

Swimming, endurance, long distance swimming. You're basically doing exactly the same thing in exactly the same environment for you know, 12 hours or so. And although it's not that exciting, it's certainly, it's certainly the most demanding I found to, to get through.

That's interesting.

It's almost like you're in a trance, running to trance but you get different environments, your feet are lining different terrain and stuff. But with water it's exactly the same and you're maintaining a very constant pace. But it's a mental game with swimming. Very, very strong mental game that speaks.

To your board aspect component comes, comes flooding into my head and thinking, yeah, Joe was probably bored after the last couple of miles, you know, within the first couple of miles because it's then same, same.

Well, the training is, you know, you could be doing six hours a day just swimming but the boredom you get beyond it. It's like you get very, very bored. But then after an hour you, well, after half an hour your mind just starts wandering and you're in a different world and you think, God, another hour's gone by. That's like driving on the motorway for hours. You don't realize the time just flies by. But it's, it's very calming thing to do.

I, I know you, you were keen to talk about other aspects of the self management scale, but I do believe that, you know, we, we've probably done about an hour and a half now, Joe, on, on this episode. I think it would be useful to come back again, just maybe touch on these elements of emotional resilience, personal power and goal directedness and, and, and come and finish off the self management scales if that's okay with you. I mean it's, I've been again completely, you know, excited about our conversation today and again thank you for putting aside the time for us to be able to have this conversation because I think people will get some tips and some clues about themselves, how to handle themselves more effectively in their personal relationships, their professional relationships.

Yeah, good, I hope so. And I think, I think all of these, the ones we've talked about this morning, emotional reserves, personal power, they're very, the most related to leadership and effectiveness. They're the performance scales.

Yes.

They're the hardiness, driving and they need to be balanced of course with other aspects. But if you want to achieve something, it's going to be tough unless you've got those scales. I would also say that they also relate very strongly to happiness. If you know what you want, which is halfway knowing what you want in life, which is goal directedness, working that out and then making it happen, which is largely personal power, then those two components are really essential to, you know, well, being and knowing what you want, making it happen, if you get those two scales. But a lot of other factors may filter in to make that achievable.

Okay, well look, thank you again, Joe and I look forward to our next session, our next episode on the podcast and have a great rest of this week.

Thank you, Jim.

Well, that's a wrap for this week's episode. Thank you for listening. Remember to share and subscribe to the EI Guru podcast and if you have any questions you can post them. Once you've subscribed, you can follow me on Instagram at the eiguru and you can get more information from my website, theeguru. Com. Have a fantastic week. Bye for now.