The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - I Won 11 World Titles Because They Said I Couldn't - Anna Hemmings MBE

Episode Date: January 19, 2021

My guest this week is kayaking legend Anna Hemmings MBE. Anna is Britain’s most successful female marathon kayaker with a staggering eleven World and European Championship medals, 9 of them gold. By the age of 24 she had been a World Champion 3 times and competed at the Olympic Games. In 2010 she was awarded an MBE for her services to sport. Hemmings achieved this success against all the odds. She was told by the British head coach that she was not big enough or strong enough to be a great kayaker. She proved him wrong. At the peak of her career, Anna was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and was told by medical experts she might never race again. She battled her way to full recovery and went on to win a further 3 world titles and compete at her second Olympic Games in Beijing 2008. She has become an expert in the field of resilience and high performance. Anna is now an Executive coach and founded Beyond the Barriers, a high performance training consultancy which works globally with leaders and teams giving them practical tools and strategies to enable them to thrive under pressure, build resilience, be mentally tough in challenging environments and deliver world class performance. Anna’s sporting achievements were recognised at the Sunday Times Sports Woman of the Year Awards, where she won the 2005 Champions Award and then again in 2007 when she was voted BBC London Sports Personality of the Year. This week's podcast gave me more realisations than I’ve ever had from a guest before. We spoke about the multiple challenges she faced throughout her career and how despite all of the hardships, she was able to keep going when all the signs were there to give-up. We also delved into her expertise in resilience and high performance, discussing the steps she takes to help people become the greatest version of themselves. Follow Anna: Website - https://www.annahemmings.com/ LinkedIn - https://uk.linkedin.com/in/anna-hemmings-mbe Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo

Quick one, just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio.

And thirdly to Amazon Music who, when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. All of that stuff prevents us from being at our best. We can only be truly great at what we do if we believe without doubt that... My guest today is an 11-time European world champion in her field, Anna Hemmings. She has a remarkable story. Not only is she this incredible elite

athlete, not only did she get to the Olympics twice, but she's undergone some of the most incredible mind-bending adversity to get there. She's now a coach, she's now an entrepreneur, she's now an incredible businesswoman. And she has a remarkable story to tell you. She's also a mother and a wife and all of these things. And she's really incredibly self-analytical and self-aware. And as her journey unfolded and as she rose to the top of her career, she got news which all athletes must consider to be the worst news in the world. I'm so excited for you to listen to this conversation. You're going to get a tremendous amount of value. And I'll be honest, as a host, you ask the questions, but in this conversation, I had more realizations than

pretty much any conversation I've had with a guest before. Without further ado, you can see I'm excited. My name is Stephen Bartlett, and this is the Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody is listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself. kayaking it's um it's not this the type of sport that a child would typically dream of getting into so i guess my first question to you is you became a world champion in kayaking you reached the very sort of peak of your your your career in that sport how did you get into kayaking? Yeah, you're absolutely right. It wasn't something I was going, mom, mom, please take me kayaking. I did lots of different sports as a child and I loved sport. My mom was always trying to get my brother and I, partly because we enjoyed sport, but sometimes just, you know, summer holidays, go and do a week of tennis camp,

do a week of basketball, a week of this. And it was just something that we tried. I loved being on the river. You know, the Thames in the summer is gorgeous, right? You know, it's pretty miserable right now, but in the summer it's lovely. But also the club was competitive. It was Elmbridge Canoe Club and it was probably one of the best clubs in the country at the time. So this is late eighties and, and they were all about racing. They were all about competing. They were all about, you know, working your way up to the national championships, getting on the Great Britain team, going to the world championships, making the Olympics. That was their mission. It was to produce racing athletes. And that played into my competitive nature really well. So I think it was

one, I love the, you know, the nature of the sport, but also I'd stumbled on a place where I could be competitive. I could race. I could, I had access to these brilliant coaches. I mean, as time went on, I was there with, at my club, there were people who were going off to the Olympic Games who were going off to Seoul um Olympic Games that four years later they're going off to to Barcelona and so I was surrounded by people who were going to world championships achieving great things and making me realize that actually this is this is possible so I've got two questions there the first is what age were you at this point so well when I first stepped into the kayak that first summer I was just under nine years old and and I can't say that at that age I was going my first day in the kayak I'm going to

go to olympics it wasn't that and it probably wasn't until the following summer that I actually really started to train and go regularly and really get into it. So you said there as well about you were surrounded by people that had these big ambitions that I'm guessing you probably never even considered. And I think for, I think that's such a valuable, but also interesting lesson about like the company people keep generally because i can imagine that if you were in a different kayak school surrounded by different people that didn't have that level of aspiration you may be and this is a presumption you maybe wouldn't have believed that it was possible for you is that right um so i yes I agree. I also had discovered the Olympics probably around that time and was inspired by the Olympics. And I do recall from that young age thinking just the Olympics is just this amazing event. So I think really early on, I had a dream about the Olympics and I didn't know what sport that would be. Can you say you had a dream?

Did you see yourself actually getting there in a sport someday? Yes. Really? Yeah, I did. I did watch the Olympics on television. I recall Los Angeles. I definitely recall watching Soul and really being into that. So, you know, by Soul, I'm like 12 years um, soul and really being into that. So, well, you know, by soul,

I'm like 12 years old, I guess. Um, watching thinking I, I want to be an Olympian. I want to be in that event one day. And then, and then kayaking came along and, and you're right. It, because of those people, it didn't feel like, cause I thought, I guess probably when you're watching it on TV, it's like, Oh, because I guess probably when you're watching it on TV, it's like, oh, this is this thing that other people do. And it's far away. And how do you ever, yes, we'd all love to be in the Olympics, maybe not everyone, but, you know, but how realistic is that?

And then I stumble upon this sport and this club and these young athletes that are turning up, training, they're just like normal people to me well if they can do it and these normal people who just work really hard can get there then why can't I I'm so fascinated by and you probably saw me being very inquisitive because I'm in my head I'm trying to understand how what the factors were that came together that took you to the Olympics. And like, I think in all of our journeys, we can, um, we can attribute a, some level of like coincidence and luck to various stages. And I think one of the moments of like luck from what you've said is like being

around the right people to some degree, because, um, yeah, I've just, I think especially lately in my life, I've really been able to look back and say do you know what if i if i hung around with a different group of people if i didn't have you know a mum that was like this or i didn't have those five friends um i probably wouldn't have uh believed that like that as you i find it really interesting you say the word normal people because i think we all view ourselves especially when we're younger it's like normal people and we think that normal and you look at the tv and as you, like you don't think normal people can do that stuff on there. And at some point someone like bridged the gap and was like,

oh, by the way, normal people do that. And I think that's a moment that I had in my life, which I found really interesting from what you've described there. There's like the thing where the, like the third wall shatters and you realize that all of your icons and like, you know,

the people you love are also just like, were just like you yeah I think that's super um inspiring so we've talked a little bit about circumstance and like the the luck fortune part of it and being in the right place at the right time but also within everybody's journey there is a lot of intention there's a lot of like often discipline I imagine what what are the things about you that maybe the few defining things that maybe other people don't don't have I always have to be careful this question because no one wants to blow their own trumpet but I'm like why you like why you and not someone else we've talked

about circumstance but what are the things that you within your character got you there versus everyone else who might have quit or not tried as hard or wasn't as competitive or whatever that's difficult um i definitely worked hard um and lots of people work hard right and i worked really really hard and i think i think one thing that made me even more determined was that so as i mentioned already when people see a think of a kayaker they often think of someone quite tall yeah they often think of a rower right and and we're and they're different sports but most people think rower and they think super tall big and and i am a little bit small um not typically the typical size for a kayaker so generally a little bit taller um broader shoulders i'm five six um and i was i was told regularly too small um one of my coach

actually um the club coach who was also the great britain team coach came up to me at a certain point um when i was really into the sport and said i just don't think you're ever going to be big enough or strong enough to ever be a great kayaker, knowing that I was really wanting to be a great kayaker. And, but also knowing that I did some other sports and was kind of going, maybe you should go and do those because I know you're, I just don't want you to, um, put all your heart into this and not succeed. How did that feel? Devastating, right? This is the sport that I'm falling in, fallen in love with. Um, that I'm with. This is probably I'm about 12 years old. So at this stage, I am training quite regularly. I've already been to the national championships.

I've got my sights set on being in the Great Britain Junior Team. Devastating. But I think because of that, I just went, well, I'm just going to keep going. I'm going to keep trying. I don't care what you've said. I don't care. You know, this is what I want to do. I'm going to give it a go. And I love it. And I think I'm doing okay at it right now.

And I'm just going to keep trying. What that did for me was made me work harder to prove that actually, because I was told specifically, you're not big enough. You're not strong enough. And yeah, I can't change my height, but I can become stronger. And when I was at the peak of my career, I was the strongest girl in the gym, in the Great Britain team. I've got to admit, I saw the photos. bench pressing 100 kilos you were strong and so and I I was determined that no one's gonna tell me I'm not strong enough because I I can't change how tall I am but I can change how strong I am why did it matter though why did it matter to be successful to you at this good question because a lot of I think about that moment where someone

tells you you're going to fail whatever we've all had that moment i think every successful person's had that moment and people typically go one of two ways they'll either go forget this then you know chuck it in whatever um or they'll have the adverse effect i almost don't know anybody that sits in the middle you either get really you get some kind of insecurity which takes you either one way which either means that i'm going to triple down and become obsessive or i'm gonna avoid um avoid this at all costs and i tend i tend to think that people who this really really really intrinsically matters to for whatever reason are the ones that go the positive way and use it as motivation yeah definitely i'm I loved winning. Why? I loved the joy of, I loved winning, but I also loved

improvement and I loved getting better. Quite often I was told, so in kayaking, there's singles, doubles, fours, K1, K2, K4. And I was always told, you know, not big enough, not strong enough, but also definitely not big enough or strong enough to be in a k4 definitely not big enough to be in any of the crew boats k2 k4 you need to be big and strong for those boats and i probably shouldn't say this but they they used to it felt to me defined big and strong as fat and if you were were, so I was skin and bones, I was really skinny. And so it didn't look strong, but they thought someone who looked chunky, had a big backside, was strong. And I know that just because they're big doesn't mean they're going to be faster than,

they're going to be more valuable in that boat than me. So do you think you're like underestimated unfairly yeah i do and and that so winning world championships in the k2 getting to olympic games in a doubles was very satisfying for me um whenever i was able to prove that actually you don't have to be what you're describing as this kind of shape um that's not what makes someone fast and useful in a kayak in a double kayak or on a four um so that used to annoy me i saw you talk about uh one of the things mentioned when i was doing a little bit of research on you is this idea of like healthy conflict in teams could you explain because i've never heard of the term i could imagine i could guess what it means but i'd love you to explain what healthy conflict is in terms

of teams and so in a team um it starts with trust if we don't have trust in a team then we can't have healthy conflict and healthy conflict is when we healthy debate. So this is about being able to know that all of the people in the team have the same objective, the same rule, got the same goal. We're trying to achieve the same thing. And you put forward an idea and I disagree with that idea. But if we don't have trust in the team and you're the boss, then I'm not going to put my hand up and say, I disagree. I don't think we should do it like that. I think we should do it like this.

I think that this is the way we should go. I think we need to go down this route. We won't have that argument, an argument, debate, conflict, whatever you want to call it. If there's not enough trust in the team, if you think that you're going to be shot down, if you think you're not going to be listened to. And then the problem with that is that we then walk out of the room and you've probably been in meetings, right? Where people all sit in the room and they all nod and go, yeah, brilliant. Yeah, we're all going to do that. And then they walk out of the room and they go, you got another thing coming if you think I'm going to do that. And they do that because they haven't had their say. They haven't

been able to disagree and back and forth with their ideas and have that debate. Even if your idea isn't gone with, they at least want to feel like I've had my say and I've had my opportunity to put forward my thoughts and my opinion and my suggestion, but actually at the end of the day, this is the best idea for the team, then fine, let's go with that. But at least I've had my opportunity to speak up. And you talk about, you know, that sounds very sort of analogous to like relationships as well. Cause I think, you know, like romantic relationships, right? People get a little bit peeved if they don't feel like they're being heard and had a chance to express themselves. And also when they have that, when they do express themselves quite often it's perceived as in the name of being right or winning versus in the name of like progress or solving the

problem it's like me and you versus each other versus me and you versus the problem right yeah how do you build the trust foundation they're like what's the well how do you get a team to trust each other and whatever because if that's the foundation of healthy conflict i'm like how do you build the trust foundation? They're like, what's the, how, how'd you get a team to trust each other? And what are the, cause if that's the foundation of healthy conflict, I'm like, how do I, you know, what can I do to. So one of the things that, that you can do, and this is what I, you know, I work with teams and leaders and it's about vulnerability. It's about being, um, able to be vulnerable with your people, with your team, being able to admit weaknesses, admit mistakes. It's about being able to say, I don't know the answer. I don't know where we're going. I don't know how to deal with this or just being able to be vulnerable and, and that isn't always easy to do, but when you

start to do it, it gives permission to people. You know, if you, we do workshops where we're trying to build trust and people always say, you know, at the end we might ask them something like, share something about a challenge from your childhood. And when people go around and they share and we say, what made it difficult or hard to do? And they say, well, it made it easier when someone else went first, because once you've opened up and you've bared yourself a little bit, then I feel, oh, well, he's done it, then it's okay. And no one judged him and, and no one knocked him. And, and it's like, oh, okay, well I can do it too. And knowing that no one's, and when there is that trust, then we know that actually I'm not going to be, that's not going to be held against me.

Whatever it is that I share, it's not going to be held against me in the future. It's not going to be used and I'm not going to be shot down for it. You, a lot of this is like about the psychology of how people think and operate. And I know that you spent some time working with a psychologist or a sports psychologist when you were rising in your career. I find that super fascinating, but I'd love to know what some of the key sort of lessons you learned about high performance or about, I guess, like self-regulation that that psychologist as it relates to becoming a world champion and you know yeah yeah um yeah so I did I worked with a sports psychologist for

from the age of 16 oh really yeah so really young and and I think that um that was part of and you talk about um you know you asked me earlier what is it that made me a little bit different or why did I succeed when others didn't? And I think part of that was, have you heard of growth mindset? Yes. Yeah. So I think that my, I didn't know about that then and neither did, you know, a lot of people, but my mom was pretty quite growth mindset. And, and I, and instilled that quite a lot in me. For example, this idea of just constant learning, constantly wanting to learn and be better and recognizing that we can be better all the time, we can improve, and looking outside for other areas of expertise, learning from other sectors and all of that. And she was the one that, it wasn't like I was struggling with my mental

strength and confidence or anything. It was just, what else do we need to do what who else can help us who else can what are you know we don't have all the answers we want to learn we gotta learn from everyone and i always encourage clients in the business world you know who who can we constantly be learning from all the time what was the what are the like some of the key things yeah and also what are they what are they trying to do i i guess they're trying to make you the best athlete you can be but what are the things stopping you from being the best athlete you can be ourselves yeah exactly most of the time we are the ones that get in our own way how how do we get in our own way the doubts the the thing the thoughts that we think um the doubt that that seeds, the nerves overcoming us. So,

becoming so nervous that you become paralyzed almost, choking under pressure, focusing on the wrong things, not being confident in yourself. Yeah, so many things that we do. Fear, doubt, anxiety, nerves, lack of confidence, all of that stuff yeah, so many things that we do. Fear. Doubt is a really interesting one. Fear, doubt, anxiety, nerves, lack of confidence, all of that stuff prevents us from being at our best. And that essentially is one of the big parts of what a sports psychologist is helping you to do. When you line up and there's nine of you on the start line at the Olympic Games, all of those athletes have trained hard. They're all in amazing shape.

They're all super fit. They're all, you know, strong. They're, you know, physically, there's not a huge amount of difference between those nine, you know, think about a hundred meter sprint at the Olympic Games. There's not a lot of difference between them. What is it that makes one of them win on the day and not often it's often not the strongest fastest fittest who wins on the day it's the one who's the strongest up here and i really believe that that this is often what stops people from fulfilling

their potential and that's what i love helping people with now yeah yeah absolutely their mental game is what stops people from being the best they can be of all the things that we do in our minds you talked about fear doubt anxieties all these kinds of things fear and doubt like lack of self belief not believing that you can or those things that's probably one of the most common sort of mental games that um holds us back or limits us from our full potential. How does one go about overcoming their own limiting beliefs about themselves? Like they think, okay, well, no, I can't do that. Everybody thinks they can't do everything it seems these days. Like, I don't know why, maybe it's just because of what I do for a

living, but I'm just surrounded by an audience of people that have real limiting beliefs. And I wonder why, but I also wonder how you help them overcome their own limiting beliefs. Big question. It's a huge question. How do we overcome our limiting beliefs? It's actually something that I work on a lot with when I'm coaching clients, identifying beliefs that, so, you know,

we would start probably with what are some of those limiting beliefs and start to unpick how are those beliefs, how are they serving? I wouldn't be interested in necessarily where they've come from. I would be interested in how are they serving us right now and how are they not serving us? Because sometimes we're believing them because they're serving us for a purpose. They're helping us in some way, but more often than not, those beliefs won't be serving us. So starting to unpick that, you know, almost like what are the pros and cons of having this belief here right now that I can't achieve this, or that one of my limiting beliefs was that I'm not very good at sales. You know, I was, I had to, I have to, you know i've run a training consultancy i have to you know find clients and um how you know so what's more helpful belief um and starting to

unpick what would be a better way of seeing this what what are my strengths um and what would be a new belief that would be serve me better i think in in some point in your journey you probably not at one particular moment but gradually i imagine you started to build evidence within yourself that you could be a great kayaker. And I imagine that was over a long period of time, probably. There wasn't one day where you woke up and thought, fuck, I'm good. Yeah, exactly. And I think that is a big part of where we get our confidence from is like our past experiences. Yeah.

So whenever we do something, we, we start to build a bank of memories. And when we're at the next situation that is similar, we can choose to draw on the bank of negative experiences where we cocked it up, or we can choose to draw on the bank of positive experiences where we succeeded and we did it really well. And the trick is, and you know, if we, if we, and where we succeeded and we did it really well and the trick is and you know if we if we and if we're not conscious about it chances are we might pick the experience of when we failed and then that's when we start to regurgitate all those thoughts and feelings of embarrassment and anxiety and nerves and and that doesn't help us and that's like that probably would then hinder performance absolutely it

perpetuates the you know the doubt and the because you're reminding yourself of oh remember last time when you did it you cocked it up and you messed up and you did then you then cock it up because you're thinking and then you cock it up because you're and we think in images yeah and so when you think of something that you messed up you're seeing yourself doing it right you're imagining it in your mind right here and now and so the trick is to consciously recall the positive experience, the past successes. And if there's nothing in the bank exactly of that experience, there's chances are there's something similar. There's always something similar. And, you know, so I would work with clients to identify what are all of the successes that you've had,

not just in that specific scenario, but let's look at lots of different successes. And then let's pick out what are the attributes that allowed you to achieve those things? Because quite often someone will go, oh, well, I achieved that, but it was because the weather was good on that day, or I achieved that because my team did it really, it wasn't me. So it's about starting to unpick, actually, what role did you play in that success? And what are the attributes that allowed you, your strengths, your attributes that allowed you to achieve that? And then we start to build up the bank of successes and the strengths and the attributes which we can transfer into any scenario how much do you think people and this is i don't know why i'm asking this question because it's not quantifiable

but like to what extent do you do you think people underestimate their potential generally oh massively like would you say like over 95 because i think i'd say over i think i'd say people realize what like typically the average person realizes about five percent of their potential and i only really i need to say this because again like you said i'm a very normal kid from very my parents bankrupt like we i dropped out i got kicked out of school poor grades everything but this one thing i had and i always say like the one thing i had was i genuinely believed that i was going to be where i am today just for no without a ton of evidence just genuinely believed and in fact the one of the reasons why i believed it was not because i had

any bank of successes yet but i had a little bit but it was actually contrasting me to my peers when I was 14 and thinking, I think that I have skills they don't. And I think that if these are the people that become adults, then I will have, I will always have that advantage. So that was my way of like, and so when I cocked up my grades and GCSE and when school starts with that narrative that, okay, well, you got an E, so you're going to have an E life. You're going to be broke and unhappy. I'm like, no, you're wrong. So you were gathering evidence, you were looking at your strengths, which is part of the puzzle, you may not have had the experiences and the evidence of the achievements and the certificates and all of that, but what's more valuable is what you had is the non-tangible stuff yeah because

if we go through life only assessing our success on the tangible stuff yeah then our confidence our self-belief actually and they're two different things will be quite fragile oh yeah i can i can see that because you're always assessing yourself against. A trophy. A trophy or society because you're compared to, oh, I got this award against all of these other people. And, and, and I won this trophy and I went past this grade and I, and it's always against somebody else and a society rather than looking at the intangible attributes that allowed you to achieve those successes because that's what isn't measurable against society and is transferable to other domains and this is the and you're completely right and i've never actually thought about it that way before

because i've always tried to figure out why at 14 i was convinced that i would be successful and 18 i wrote my diary i'm gonna have a range of a sport before I'm 25. I'm going to be a millionaire before I'm 25. Achieved all of those things. Just knew I would. But it was, as you say, it was purely based on almost a strength audit or skills audit versus other people that I knew.

And I thought, oh, those skills are really good skills and they'll take you far. But school is about tangibles. And I would say a grade is a tangible. So school says, okay, you got an E. So unfortunately, it creates the impression from all angles, you're going to be poor. And you're not going to be that successful.

But Timmy over there, who's got an A, he's really going to kill it as a surgeon. And I think how you make it alive out of that system and still with your self-esteem and self-belief intact is remarkable but i and i think that what you had is is better than the certificate yeah yeah but but what it does is it allows you to go this is intrinsic in me no one can take it no one can take that away and my self-worth isn't based on a certificate and a trophy and an award. How do you give people that?

Well, so you work on identifying those strengths. What are those strengths? We do this all the time. We work with clients on what are those strengths and where's the evidence of those strengths. And when they start to see the evidence of those strengths, well, you know, so I'm, I'm working with a client and, you know, so one of your strengths is being an authentic leader. One of your strengths is building relationships. Where's the evidence of that? Look at all these people. What do you do about weaknesses though? So would you highlight their weaknesses? I think it's important to highlight both. I think it's more important to work on exploiting your strengths. And I would, so we do a lot of diagnostics. We use behavioral profiling and all of that kind of stuff. And all

of that will bring up both. And I think it's important to really be aware of your areas of development. But ultimately, if I'm sat on the start line of the world championships and I'm focused on my weaknesses and all the things I need to avoid my confidence is fragile yeah chances of performing on best slim and so in that moment I absolutely need to have on the tips of my fingers what my strengths are and I need to know them and I need to be able to exploit them and I think the more you work on those, the better. What do you think about this idea of like labeling yourself and your line of work and the broader labels we give ourselves, even if it's just like bad salesmen, you talked

about that being one of your like previous limiting beliefs or labels. I think they're not helpful. And I think it's really important that we're aware of those labels that we're giving ourselves. And the awareness is the first step, right? We can't change it if we don't notice it. So we need to notice the label in the first place. And then it's a bit, you know, it's like, it's a limiting belief really, isn't it? And so is that label serving me? Is it helping me achieve my end goal? It feels like it sometimes because it's making me fit in and it's giving me comfort. So I see this a lot with people that will say, I am a, in my case, I'm just gonna use my case.

I'm a social media CEO. And so I've been a social media CEO for 10 years. It gives me some kind of like community to be part of. It gives me a sense of identity. But at the same time, it stops me from being all that I can be. And this is one thing I was going over in my book is like, now I've left my company. It's so tempting to just start another social media business, but like, there's so much more I can do. And so what I'm asking you this question, cause I'm in the midst of really

thinking about it is like, how do I just resist my labels and be a fucking DJ? I'm doing this big theatrical show and working in biotech. And I don't know, I just, this idea of like liberating yourself from your own labels has been super relevant to me. I think that it becomes your identity is a bigger part of the problem.

You know, it's like when an athlete retires from sport, it took me and it still takes me, I catch myself saying, you know, I'm an athlete, I'm sport it took me and it still takes me I catch myself saying you know I'm an athlete I'm not a business person and I go oh I um you know I don't have a background in business yeah I've been running a business for 11 years and I was a professional athlete for 15 years so it's almost this you know I have almost the same amount of experience in business as I do in in sport yeah I labeled myself for so

long and I that became my identity and your identity is CEO of a social media company and so that's who I am and it's hard to let go of that because it's part of who I am yeah and it's comfortable right and and you know you know who that person is what the behavior of that person's like and and you're stepping into a new role that what does this new person look like but how rewarding has that been for you to kind of I guess reinvent yourself from being an athlete to now being an entrepreneur and a business person was it worth it that's what I'm saying is was it worth it to step out of that label yeah totally and and we should all have multiple careers um and I think as time you know as we're living longer and longer we all will have multiple careers and I think we need to find the courage to step into

new careers all the time and reinvent and and just recognize that there's so many skills that we can transfer from that other career label identity and bring into the next one and that's what will allow us to succeed into the next one and recognizing that we're never going to grow unless we step out of that comfort zone and yeah get a little bit scared of who this new person could be or would be or should be and we'll find out and that's the exciting thing is we're going to find out how do you put some for some people that's terrifying yeah the thought of like throwing themselves into that place of uncertainty that they have to travel through before they get to their new self how do you get someone to come

willingly into uncertainty to leave that job or to you know take on that promotion or to pivot in their career when they're scared of the unknown or you know it's like well then I would think about what I would think about rather than what I'm afraid of I'm think about what I'm excited about and so rather than I'm afraid of what I'm going to leave behind or I'm afraid of what might happen I'm more about what could happen and when we focus on what we want and what we could have, and, you know, it's, it's optimism, isn't it? It's about what's possible and what could I achieve, you know, and you asked me earlier about, you know, some of the things about sports psychology and visualization was one of, was a massive

technique that I learned from my sports psychologist and employed and still use all the time. And I think when you can start to visualize what that new role person identity could be, and when you bring it to life with all of your senses and see it really vividly, then that's exciting. And what could I achieve? And what could this look like? And the power of visualization is that your mind does, when you see it really vividly, your mind doesn't know the difference between a vividly imagined experience and a real life experience. What's your process for visualization? Now, is it something that you do actively? You set time aside and do it? Or is it just something that you naturally now do when you're pursuing a goal? A little bit of both as an athlete, it was definitely something that I would

sit down. Usually I'd be lying on my bed. I would have done some relaxation because the more we clear our mind and relax, the easier it is to visualize and to see really clearly. And so I it would be a conscious, right, I'm going to spend the next 15 minutes or even two minutes or five minutes or whatever time I had visualizing my next race and seeing myself execute that race plan as perfectly as I can and in exactly the right way. And I would visualize everything from, um, if it was the, the, the Olympic discipline and we've got nine boats on a start line, I'm seeing my, I don't know which lane I'm going to be in when it comes to race day. So I'm seeing myself race in every

lane. I'm seeing myself with, with the headwind, with a tailwind, with it raining. I'm seeing myself cock up the start because that might happen, but then I just going to recover from it. And I'm going to see myself recover and I'm going to see myself win from behind. I'm going to see myself win from the front. I'm going to see, imagine, you know, the start being delayed or it's a full start, you know, all these eventualities so that when it comes to the event, I'm prepared and it can just all unfold and I'm not phased by anything that happens. But most importantly, I've seen it happen the way I want it to happen. And then I believe that it can happen. And what visualization also does is when we're visualizing a goal, for example,

it starts to activate the subconscious to generate creative ideas about how we can achieve our goal. I don't know how it works and why it works, but it's mind blowing and it does work. And it starts to get your brain resources, the environment, the circumstances that you need to achieve your goal. And so now what do I do? I probably, I do spend some time consciously going, right, I'm just going to spend two or three minutes visualizing my goal. I'm seeing it happen. I'm seeing it realize. But then other times I'm probably just, you know, driving in my car and subconsciously, you know, like daydreaming almost. But I think the conscious, right, I'm going to visualize now is really powerful because then you start to really, it starts to ingrain in the subconscious. So the law of attraction stuff, I think sometimes it can take people one of

two ways because i do believe in visualization my visualizations over the years have been very like the daydreaming stuff but then also when i was like really really really broke and living in moss side and like a boarded up house i would frequently look at stuff that in the future i wanted so i'd look at these like mansion houses and whatever. And that was me kind of just setting my, I don't know, trying to peer into my future life. The bit that I think sometimes gets lost when we talk about like the law of attraction, it's almost akin to like, when you set off in the morning, you put your sat-nav in and you say, this is where I want to go. I want to go Tesco. But then if you don't like put the key in and put your foot down, you're just going to be sat in your garage. And, but there's something about knowing where you want to go. And as you

say, like almost programming your brain to trick your brain to think, to completely be convinced that you will get there, that I then, that from my experience then makes you take actions in that direction. So like, I'm sure you then you visualize yourself as a world champion, but then you're like, you go in the gym and you, you, you train like a world champion because that's where you, that's your destination. And the opposite is also true. Like if you visualise yourself not being a world champion, what's the point? You know, you know. all of the actions and the discipline it takes, especially as an athlete, to get you from where you are to that visualized destination. I'm really keen to hear about like the discipline, the consistency, because you're in a physical, a very, very physical endurance race. And, you know, it's like, I think Muhammad Ali said, like it's one in the gym, it's one in training, a lot of it. And we all struggle with that. We all struggle with like showing up on Monday when it's one in training a lot of it and we all struggle with that we all struggle with

like showing up on monday when it's raining so like what's the what's the key there so i think i think you're absolutely right you know when we visualize it it gives us the motivation to believe that it can happen yeah yeah and that's that's at the core of it because if we don't believe it can happen then what's the point and so yes we absolutely have to take action, but we need the motivation to take action. I can't say that, you know, 100% of the days that I was training, I was, oh yeah, I can't wait to get out there and go training. It's really freezing outside. It's like the middle of winter on the water and the River Thames and it's like ice. Yeah, that wasn't appealing every day.

Luckily the funding came in and we got to go travel and train in warmer climates in Florida and wherever else. But yes, there's this goal that's the world championships, it's the Olympic games, it's those big dream goals that are highly motivating. But on those day, every single day, I'd be lying if you, you know, if you could say that goal in four years time is what got me out of bed on that rainy, freezing cold, you know, January morning. But isn't that the answer then? Like it was just take, like do today. Well, yeah. So it's, but, but also I do a lot of work around intrinsic motivation and understanding what drives us. And, and we're all, we all have different drivers and unsurprisingly,

one of my drivers is a sense of achievement. And so my driver wasn't necessarily on that particular day, oh, I've got to train really hard because I want to win the world championships in two years time. My driver was probably more that my coach has set targets every month that throughout the winter, you know, for five months of the winter, we would have targets every month in the gym. There'll be certain exercises in the gym that we've got to hit. We would do tests on, we would do tests

on, we would do time trials on running and swimming and on the water. Um, so as part of our cardiovascular training. So, and for me, that was really, um, I loved hitting those targets basically that monthly, right. So if I do, and I know that if I do this training today, then I'm going to get better and I've got a test on the weekend and I want to hit that target. I want to smash the target actually, because yeah, then there's a good chance I'm going to win the world championships. It's not just hitting the targets. I need to smash the targets. And so that sense of achievement for me was a big driver. For other people in my team, it might've been, and actually on other days, it might've been, actually, I want to get out and go train because I want to see my teammates because we have a laugh and there's banter and it's fun.

And I enjoy the connection and the sense of that being part of a team and the community and all of that. And so it's the affiliation that's driving me on some days. But for others, I can think of some of the girls in my team, actually a sense of recognition was a big driver. So needing that, you know, ah, today, you know, you worked really hard. You've, you know, really put everything into that session, you know, like hearing that from the coach or, you know, look how far you've come or look what you've, you know, the progress you've made or so everyone. And so when a coach can tap into that, knowing what is it that's going to get you out of bed today, that's when we start to get the best out of people or the best out of ourselves. And so,

you know, when I work with leaders, it's about what motivates and drives me intrinsically, not just the carrot and the pay slip and the promotion and, you know, and all of that. That's the external stuff, which isn't very sustainable. We need to know what drives us in as individuals, but also what drives our team and tap into both of those and start to ask what, what is it that am I getting that every day? And if I'm not, how can I get that from work? What is it that I need to get? And also really interesting, you know, if you're a leader of a business and you're working with a team, are my drivers influencing how I operate with others in my team? You know, so if my driver is a sense of achievement, but your driver is to make a

meaningful contribution and I'm pushing you, go, no, we need to, we need to, we need to win this. And we need to get the next pitch. And, and you and you're like no i just want to really help these people i'm pushing my driver onto you and that's not working for you so it's really important to be aware of what my driver is and know that it's not the same as yours chances are yeah that's a good that's a really good point and i think i've probably as someone that probably values a sense of achievement and forward motion and progress above all else at times when i'm trying to motivate people especially like friends i'm trying to sell them on the value of achievement when they're probably just not asked about that particular thing i don't need to win yeah i just want to matter to me i i want to feel ownership of this piece of work yeah actually

that's what's really important to me and how do you find out what someone's driver driver drivers or motivations or intrinsic motivations are is there Is there a system or like a test? Yeah, so there's some brilliant work from a chap called Dean Spitzer. And he talks about super motivation and this idea that there is, you know, there's intrinsic and there's extrinsic motivation. So what we use a diagnostic actually when I work with clients and it will identify, it forces you to, to pick, cause you know, we've all want, you know, maybe some recognition or some achievement or to feel like we're making a contribution or to be with people, all of these, but it really forces you to identify what really is your big driver. Um, so yeah, so I use that, but I mean, I think when you talk to people,

you can start to, you know, the more you get to know someone and you ask them questions and you see the way they operate and, and you see them light up when they get certain feedback or when they're doing certain pieces of work so we can start to get a feel for that just when we get to know people I you when you know I asked you there about the that like discipline and consistency and what gets you up every day on like a rainy Tuesday or whatever. And it was interesting that, um, you kind of like shortened your horizon or your skirt. Like people, I think people typically think they, they want to get to the top of the mountain. So they think, okay, um, let's make a plan to get to the top of the mountain. But you were so focused on these like short term, shorter goals,

which meant that I guess your progress sorts of almost like invisibly compounds um to get you to the top of the mountain so instead of like we want to get to staircase number a thousand we're like let's get 10 let's do 10 stairs today and then 10 stairs tomorrow and 10 steps and 10 steps and by the time you know it you're at the top of the mountain right yeah well literally i i um four four years ago I climbed Mount Tubcal. Of course you did. As you do. And there was probably 10 of us in the group. One of the girls that was on the group was a friend of mine and she had, I don't know why she joined the group, but she had a fear of heights.

Oh God. And we're climbing a mountain. And it was fine for the first day and a half because it's just like a windy road. The morning of the summit, it's literally, we're going up, we feel like we're going up a steep mountain and there's boulders. And she literally cannot, she's so scared of heights. And she's like, Anna, I can't do it, I can't do it. And eventually I was like, Julie, you just need to focus.

What her biggest fear actually was also getting down. Okay. Looking down and thinking, shit, how I might get, but how the heck am I going to get back down? Because that looks really scary and it's slippery and there's the scree. So the ground is loose. And I i'm like don't even think about that right now all you need to do is take one step at a time one meter at a time that's all i want you to focus on and one meter and one meter and one and we'll figure out the rest and you might not even get to the top who knows you might you might not we might stop but just do one meter at a time and then we'll figure out the down bit and we'll take it one step at a time on the way down. Because that's all we can do, right? In that moment is take one

step at a time. And it's the same, whether it's a goal to achieve, you know, X turnover in a business or this many sales or whatever the business is or whatever walk of life. Yes, we need to know the end goal, but actually we just need to focus on the process. Because the summit looks scary, but one meter doesn't look scary. Exactly. And if you just do one meter at a time. And also, you know, or whether it's the fear or, oh my God, it's so far away. We've got another four hours to go. It might be, you know, whatever it is. Well, actually let's just do the next five minutes and let's see if that is feasible because it probably is right can i do one yeah can you

take this next step yeah i can definitely take the next step okay can you take the next one can i take the next one and that feels really feasible you mentioned earlier getting at the very beginning of this conversation getting news i think when you were about 24 25 that you had an illness called chronic fatigue syndrome i'm now going to be incredibly naive and narrow-minded when i when you read chronic fatigue syndrome you think tiredness that's what you think right but um but i know it's a lot more crippling than that and i know that it's a lot more devastating that especially for an athlete um talk me through finding out you had this disorder, but also what it meant for your career and how it changed things. So, yeah, I, like you say, was 25, 26 when I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome.

And yes, it's more than just fatigue. It's not just I'm tired today. It's being devoid of energy, exhausted almost on a permanent basis. muscle ache to the point where it was painful to the point where I couldn't stand in the shower and hold my hands up here to wash my hair for more than 10 seconds because it was too painful um some people have symptoms I didn't get this so much but sort of you know like can't concentrate can't focus brain fog um Some people are actually bedridden. Some people are actually in a wheelchair. Luckily, I wasn't as bad as that, but I was bad to the point where, yeah, I couldn't be in my kayak paddling for more than 10 minutes at a very light, gentle walk type pace. Having gone from winning world championships for two and a half hours at a very high pace to can't get my hands, hold my hands up here.

I was literally two months earlier able to rattle off 100 press-ups in one go and then can't hold my hands up here for more than 10 seconds. So that's the physical element and that's only the physical element. But the mental and emotional battle was just as challenging because you can't see it. So it's not, you know, I got frustrated to the point where I actually wished that my skin was covered in spots so that people could see that there was something wrong with me

and could understand that I was going through something, that I was in pain, that I was unwell, but I looked fine. So I got diagnosed with the illness in 2003, beginning of the season, it was like April. And then, so following year is coming up to the Olympics, 2004. So I'm training for the Olympics or wanting to be training. So six months later later it was only six months later that they actually diagnosed it because it takes six months for them to eliminate everything else and go oh this is fatigue that's been going on for more than six months therefore you have chronic fatigue syndrome and I went off to Florida and the sports team doctor was saying right you need to do this graded return to exercise. They think originally, and they still thought it was overtraining.

That's the immediate assumption, right? Athletes, tired, muscle ache, must be overtrained. So they diagnosed you. They offered me this program of, right, gently build up your return to sport. So you start with 10 minutes at a heart rate of 115, I can't remember, and then 15 minutes at 115 and then 20 minutes and 30 minutes. And when you can get to 40 minutes,

then we can go up to 120 heart rate and so on and so on. And so I went out, my training group and my coach were all in Florida. So I went out to Florida to train and I just couldn't get past 20 minutes. And so I went to to Florida to train and I just couldn't get past 20 minutes. I went to see a doctor in Florida. The doctor, he ran some blood tests and basically, I still looked like an athlete. I'm still pretty muscly, I'm fit, I'm lean. I'm in Florida, I've got a tan. He basically looked at me and said, well, we've run all the

blood tests. There's nothing coming up. Nothing's, there doesn't appear to be anything wrong with you. You look really fit and well, I think you're fine. And so that just this frustration of, I can't see it. And therefore there must be nothing wrong. It's mental health, right? You know, people who are suffering with depression or anxiety or whatever it is, we can't see it. And so we don't know it and we don't understand it and so the mental and emotional battle was really challenging and um even people in my sport not understanding what's wrong with anna oh she she can't cope with it anymore or she's too lazy to train or whatever they're saying all these things and and that's hard um how did it make you feel so in the beginning um

frustrated devastated confused um sad uh lonely um so many different things and frustrated because also we didn't really know what it was. And the doctors saying it's over training. And actually when I reflect on the previous two years, I'd had episodes of fatigue, which I now know were episodes of that same illness, but that only lasted for two weeks or three weeks or six weeks. And I would stop training or I'd really cut back on training and then I'd be able to come back and I'd be fine again. And, and so I only know that it was, I knew in my heart when I went to see the team doctor that one day, and I remember it, that it wasn't overtraining because for six months I had been doing less training than everyone else in my group. And I can't be overtrained. I'm doing less

than everyone else. Cause we were so conscious of this, Oh, Anna's overtraining that I wasn't, I was, it was just, was not overtraining. And the doctor's like, oh, you've overtrained. I was like, Jesus. And I just, and then that was it. I didn't train again for 18 months. Um, and I did, I did, I, after working with the sport, the team doctor, I went to other doctors. I tried conventional medicine. I tried alternative therapies and, and nothing was working. And that was the, the hardest part as well was that one, you can't really tell me what's wrong with me. And two, you can't tell me how to deal with this. And, and then, you know, I went to see one doctor and he said, basically there's no cure, there no treatment and you're don't don't don't think you're ever going to get back in a kayak you never well you might get back in a

you're never going to race at that highest level you won't race again so that was that was a pretty big moment um you said that to you yeah and how is that to hear yeah just like this is this is my you know this is my identity this, just like, this is my identity. This is who I am. This is my life. This is my career. I still have ambitions left to fulfill. And I don't want something like this to end my career.

I want to end it on my terms when I choose that I'm done. And so, yeah, that summer watching the Olympic games on the telly in Athens, it was devastating. But I guess I always believed that I would find a way. I was like, there has to be a solution to this. There to be a way out um and i i guess that i'm a very optimistic person and a very much a possibility possibilitarian i call it that i don't know if that's a word but believing that it's it's possible yeah that there is a way out there has to be a way out and and i and I guess I didn't know whether there was, but I just had to, I had to believe that there was, and I had to believe that I would get

out of this and that I would find a way back and that I would get back to training and macing one day. Otherwise, what hope, what, what did I have? And not that my life would be over if I couldn't paddle, but just that's what that belief I think is what kept me going um in that in that time and and eventually to cut a long story short I did find a treatment for the illness and I did recover and I did get back um but it wasn't an easy journey do they before we get into what the treatment was and your recovery do they know what's happening to you like physiologically when you have um that disorder have they do they know what what's causing your um the problem is is that there are many different schools of thought okay and it depends who you talk to and it depends which doctor um and what clinical or study or what study you read or which one do you believe i believe

based on the treatment that i did um which was a treatment called reverse therapy and it's founded by a chap called dr john eaton and back quite it was it was quite a new therapy when I did it back in 2005, four. And essentially the symptoms are like alarm bells going off in your body. So these symptoms, the pain, the fatigue, the exhaustion, the can't focus, any of the symptoms that you're experiencing are alarm bells and your body's way of telling you that there are things going on in your life that your body doesn't like, whether that be pressures, stresses, relationships, environment, emotions, all sorts of things that are triggering these symptoms and these alarm bells. And basically, if you don't listen to the alarm bells, they'll get louder and louder and louder to the point where eventually they just go, right,

done. You're just not going to move now. You're not going to, until you listen up, how loud do I need to get before you're going to listen? And for me, it was to the point where I couldn't train. When I can't train, now I'm going to listen up because now it's really bad and now I need to pay attention and so um I I'm I'm not particularly articulate explaining what the physiologic what's going on physiologically but that's that's my interpretation of what how the symptoms arrive and how you deal and and then what I did so that the the treatment that i did is about identifying what are those triggers what are those things that um that your body and mind are saying i don't like what were they and so for me um non-expression of emotion is one of the most common triggers

and that certainly was the case for me to the point where I didn't open up to anyone, really. I have really close friends. I have family. I have a sister I'm really close to. And of course, I shared it with them, but I cried on my own for sure. But I never cried in front of anyone else. I didn't really express how bad it was. In fact, to the point where people would ask, and you know, how are you doing? Yeah, I'm fine. I'm fine. And I would just block it out to them all the time. And that was just making it worse. And actually when I started to, one of the biggest and most powerful steps that I took was opening up to people, to the people closest to me, sharing what I was experiencing with them, allowing them to see my struggle

and my vulnerability and let them help me. That's, that was a big turning point for me, um, was being able to just express that emotion and share and open up because part of what I was doing was I was isolating myself by not sharing it. And that was perpetuating it. And these emotions are worry or pressure that you're experiencing because of the sport? Or what were these emotions that you were suppressing or causing you to cry? When I was competing or, you know, before with the, in the beginning, the emotions are different, but in the middle of the illness, like not just not sharing it with people, not expressing how hard I'm finding this, how tough this is, that how sad I am,

how frustrated I am, how just I can't cope anymore kind of emotions. Those emotions I wasn't even expressing in the middle of the illness. You're being tough. Yeah. I'm being poker face, Anna, who has learned to do this because that's what you do in sport, right? Isn't that, isn't that almost like there's a bit of a paradox there that the thing that made you successful was also the thing that kind of undid you to some degree, it sounds like. Well, so. That composure and resilience. Yeah. So when you're on the competitive arena of sport and you turn up on race day, poker face on, game face, I'm tough. Whether I've missed the last two weeks because of an injury or

for whatever reason, you're never going to know that because I'm, I'm here today and I'm, I'm tough. Whether I've missed the last two weeks because of an injury or for whatever reason, you're never going to know that because I'm here today and I'm on fire and I'm ready to race. And that's brilliant on the race arena. But outside of that, not helpful. Not helpful in so many ways in terms of building relationships in terms of building trust you know we talk about trust earlier um you can't build trust and relationships unless you open up unless you express vulnerability so true i think that's one of the reasons i struggle with my relationships my romantic relationships is because i bring the tough guy thing into my into like my personal life sometimes and um it doesn't ever help and I think the the progress I've made actually in my personal relationships as you said

has been by like admitting more that I'm wrong and like saying how I feel and being like I you know what I mean and that's but that's not conducive with the whole like resilient tough guy business thing that I have to do i don't i don't think they're mutually exclusive it doesn't feel like they are but you're right as like they're definitely not mutually exclusive but um they're two different people trying to achieve two different objectives in business there's a sense of like you know you've got to really like stand up for yourself you've got to be ruthless to some degree in some situations especially when you're dealing with teams and there's bullshit landing on your desk every day and you're getting horrible horrible

news and you have to put on a brave face for your team because you just found out that your whole server's been hacked and they've basically half of them have lost their jobs or the pandemic has just struck and then going like i know what you're saying. Do you think of certain moments? I'm thinking of one particular moment, which I always talk about in this podcast, where on the way to work, I got this news that we'd been hacked and I've got a ton,

I've got a hundred or 200 people sat in the office in front of me that are now looking through the window and thinking what's going on. And my need to be composed and optimistic at a time when I probably was panicking a little bit inside I think got us through I think if I'd walked out there and been like listen guys I am but in my personal life it's very important to have that intimacy and vulnerability

I think there's um a balance actually and I think in business you are if you are able to be a little bit vulnerable and I'm not saying vulnerable to the point where you look really weak, but vulnerable to the point where you're honest and you might go, do you know what? Shit's happened. And actually I'm a little great. And, but you know, it's about having confidence in who I am and what we do and confident in the people around us and my team and you lot and all of us that we're going to figure this out. So there's a balance there between I'm human. And yes, I'm scared like you, because this is shit. And this is a bad situation that we didn't want to happen. And let's admit that. Let's put that on the table and be honest about it. Because people, we build trust with people when we're honest and we show a little bit of vulnerability and humanity. And that's how we build relationships because otherwise we're just

putting up this tough guy front all the time who doesn't have any feelings, right? Yeah. Can't relate to that. Can't resonate. Can't connect. just putting up this tough guy front all the time who doesn't have any feelings right yeah and can't relate to that can't resonate can't connect yeah how do we connect with people whereas actually oh you're just a human being who's scared too and i'm scared and therefore it's okay to be scared but actually i'm scared but we're going to find a way yeah so it's confidence and we're going to figure this out because we we are good at what we do. You know, our definition when we do our resilient leader workshops is a resilient leader has confidence in who they are and what they do and understands their areas of strength and their areas of development

and finds a way to bounce back and create opportunities. And so if I'm confident in who I am and what I do, yeah, I can admit that I don't know what to do right now, but I know that I have the skills and the resources within me and my people that we're going to figure this out. I don't know what that way forward is yet, but I know that we're going to find a way. What if, okay, so what if you, and this is me playing devil's advocate, what if you don't know that you're going to find a way? So say you're scared, you don't think you're going to find a way and you think it's all over.

Say you've got, I don't know, 500 employees out there waiting for you in the middle of the pandemic to make a statement to the team. Do you walk out and lie? If you, within yourself, genuinely, as the CEO of a company, don't think, you think it's over because of, I don't know,

the pandemic has just happened and the business has evaporated. When you walk out in front of your team, surely you've got to just lie to their faces to some degree. Like you've got to find that. I think that you have to believe. We always, no matter what the situation is,

we can only be truly great at what we do if we believe without doubt that the future is bright. Yeah. Some leaders don't. Naturally, you think of, you know, just some people don't. So by like, probably probabilistically, there's going to be some leaders that when the pandemic struck thought we are finished. And that, as we said earlier about like the self-fulfilling mindset will actually probably take them out of business. And I just, I don't know, just because I don't think I've ever been comfortable in my career to tell my team that I'm scared. I don't think I've ever actually been scared because I kind of resist in moments where I probably should be scared. I'm so focused on solutions that the fear or joy all these other

feelings don't really seem to be relevant or useful to me but i don't think i could bring myself to tell the team i was ever scared when i was maybe you don't need to say i'm scared but it might be that do you know what yeah this is shit yeah yeah yeah i could do that and and actually right now i don't i don't know how we're going to get out of this, but I do have confidence in my ability and all of us together as a team that we're going to find a way. The leaders have to lie sometimes. I think we need to be honest. I think that we need to be transparent and we can be honest in what we do the better relationships we build the better connections the more trust we have in a team and we figure it out together i'd agree

yeah so going back to your i want to know so what exactly did you do in terms of you know um daily to overcome your disorder was it was there you addressed you know, daily to overcome your disorder? Was it, was there, you addressed, you know, started expressing yourself more. Was there anything you had to take or was there, you know? So there was no medicine, there was no pill, there was no massage treatment. There was nothing like that. It purely is a recognition that the mind and the body are connected. And therefore I needed to figure out what these triggers are. So to give you a bit of context, so I, leading up to the Sydney 2000 Olympic games, I left the coach that I was working with that had got me to become a world champion, but I now wanted to go and race

at the Olympic games. And he was very much a marathon coach and encouraged me to go find someone who really specialized in sprint racing. So I ended up for three years having a coach who was based in another country. And I would go and train with them sometimes. And then I would come back to the UK and I would train on my own. And he would send me the training program. We'd speak on the phone. He'd email it to me. I'd do the training and I would basically train a lot of most days. I would turn up to the training, do the training. And I was motivated enough to be able to push myself really hard. I had no problem with training on my own in the sense that I,

you know, some people can't push themselves hard enough. I haven't got the motivation to turn up and do that. But the problem with that was that I, and I didn't realize this at the time, I was isolating myself. And I think I, so I wasn't engaged. There was my club. I was at my club, but I would turn up to my club and they'd all go off and train separately and I'd train on my own. And then I'd often turn up at times when they weren't there. I wouldn't engage with the British team really much. And I was just more and more isolating myself and then getting frustrated because I didn't have a coach who was by my side. And I thought that all I needed to do was train hard. I thought, and the reason I stuck with this coach was because he was a great coach. And I thought the training program was brilliant. And I thought, all I need to do is follow a great training program and work really hard. And I thought that was enough.

And actually I didn't, I'm not a robot and I needed, I needed human connection and I needed emotional support and I needed a place to vent and I needed to be able to show frustration. And when the training was hard or when I was exhausted and had no one to even talk to on the Riverside Bank, you know, I'm talking to the ducks, you know, it's like I had no outlet for my emotions. I had no, and I didn't even speak up and tell my coach that I was frustrated that he sent me the program only two minutes before I needed to be at the training, you know, I was going to train train because there's this five-hour time difference. And I just was probably quite unhappy, but didn't realize because I was so focused on the goal and the

end goal and got to train hard and this is what it takes that I was so not in tune with what was going on emotionally. And I was at my best when I was training in a group environment with a coach by my side every day, supporting me. I'm an extrovert. I get my energy from other people. And there I was spending my days alone, doing this really intense training program on my own. That is not conducive to a really good mental and emotional health and so it was really clear that that was not yeah that wasn't sustainable and that was why i had these periods of oh yeah three weeks falling apart and i'd have to stop and um and then when i'd get back to an environment that I was happy in, it was all good.

And I would train hard and I'd be amazing and I'm full of energy and I had my best year. And then it would change and the environment would change. And so my environment and the people around me and my emotional happiness was some of the things that I needed to get a grip on. It's so fascinating that people really underestimate the value of human connection

but also the environment we're operating in like hugely i i've had a conversation with a friend and he'll be listening to this podcast because he's never ever missed one um he's he was working at our my old company's um social chain for many years and he's he's gone freelance and he was talking a little bit about feeling a bit burnt out he came to my house he was like feel a bit burnt out i'm lacking motivation in the mornings and things like that and he was talking a little bit about feeling a bit burnt out. He came to my house and he was like, I feel a bit burnt out. I'm lacking motivation in the mornings and things like that. And when I was a freelancer before I started the company and had 700 people around me all day, I just couldn't find the motivation to like go to my laptop and send the emails. But the minute I was in that environment where we had this kind of like

shared goal and I had feedback and community, my motivation was higher than anyone's in the world but I don't think people appreciate enough the the importance of the environment and the community that you're operating in and I think there's a certain thing which people don't talk about which I've talked about this podcast a couple of weeks ago which was the side of like freelance depression and even like you're seeing it with the world now everyone working remotely having to get up and like now you're realizing what your job actually is because before it could have been like seeing Susanna and hearing about her weekend and engaging with the office dogs and this in the sense of community you've kind of conflated them

with your tasks at work and now it's just your tasks now you're waking up and on a computer looking at your to-do list and so I think freelance depression and it's almost what you've described there is this like in a lack of fulfillment because you've lost what was a huge part of what made this pleasurable enjoyable but also your so I guess your support network yeah um and that's why you know we talked earlier about motivation and what gets you off in the morning and and actually going in to hear about Susan's weekend or, you know, to see your friends and the connection and the buzz from the atmosphere. And that might be what gets you to work. Not the tasks that I've got to do,

but actually the people I'm going to hang out with and that environment. And we need to understand what is that environment that we thrive in. And I think people are realizing that over the last 12 months, you know, and especially the extroverts have found this really hard. And if live on your own and you're still and you're not able to go into work you're a speaker you speak around the world and stuff and you you love speaking but the minute it

becomes just speaking to a laptop over zoom to 100 people you realize that maybe it wasn't just the speaking that I enjoyed right yeah yeah exactly I don't just enjoy hearing my own voice yeah I enjoy telling my story over and over again I love the connection that I get and the feedback and the you know I can't even hear people laugh at my jokes that I think is supposed to be funny I don't even know if they landed or not um and you know when you meet the people afterwards and you go and engage with them and how are you going to apply this and what are you going to put into action and all of that stuff. That's the energy that I get when I go and do my work. And that's missing right now.

You're getting it a bit, but not in the same way. And so, and I remember actually one of the very first things I did with my sports psychologist, he got me to do, I think it was like a Myers-Briggs type assessment, identifying what kind of personality type I was. And I was a stable extrovert. And I don't know what he ever really did with that information, but looking back now, that's such useful information. So for someone, if someone had known that and they could see that I was training every day on my own without support, without people to feed off, that's where I get my energy. Of course I was losing energy and tired. I wasn't getting...

Your body was sending you a message. I'm like, I need people to get energy and I'm not surrounded by people. That's just one example of one of the triggers. So it you know, so it was about finding out what do I need to thrive? It's fascinating. We had Yohana Hari, who wrote the book called Lost Connections on this podcast. His book is behind me, one of my favourite books of all time. He's coming back. His whole book is about the nine real reasons for anxiety and depression. And to kind of conclude it in a very sort of narrow way he talks about these feelings we get of loneliness and lack of motivation and anxiety and depression

when you look at all the studies and he was someone that was depressed and given the pills and you know they said oh you're broken chemical imbalance when you look at the studies it's it's almost indisputable that much of it these days is because of social factors and our lack of human connection. They've got examples where they've given a guy in Uruguay a goat who was depressed. And because he's got now that connection with an animal, his symptoms of depression almost evaporated. But the lives we live in 2021, between four white walls, if we want food, we press an app. If we want to see our parents, it's through a piece of glass and living alone in these industrialized cities it's actually completely against our innate human programming and he says one of the things he says which i've written in

my book as well is about how these feelings are our calling to get back to being more human it's like your body calling like loneliness is this calling like get back to your tribe you know what i mean and then and i and it sounds like woo woo wow wow bullshit because it's like well my loneliness isn't the thing but what you've just described there is quite literally something that's happened in your mind having a real substantial almost devastating and crippling impact on your body and health the thought that your mind can disable your body is um terrifying on one hand but also kind of like a really powerful important you know but if you think about many illnesses ailments from

getting a you know quite often people get a headache when they're stressed people will get a migraine when at the end of a stressful period people will get thick i got sick you know so there were so many illnesses that can be considered as emotional but manifest physically yeah it's crazy so it's not the first example yeah and and you know like your loneliness is caught my calling to get back it's's an alarm bell, right? You're feeling really lonely and it's a warning sign to you. It's a message to say, you need to do something differently. In this example, get back to your tribe. And in the same way that my body, the alarm bells were, I'm going to make you so tired that you can't train. So then you're going to listen and you're going to figure out what it is that you need to do differently to get back to training in a really healthy way. And when I returned back to training,

I was able to change lots of things about my environment, about the people I was with, about the pressures I put myself under, you know, all of these things that I'd figured out. And then I trained harder than I had before because I was in a really healthy environment and place. And I was listening to my body and my mind. They call it mind body. And I was able to tune into that and go every time I was anywhere near just not feeling quite right. I'd go, what's my mind body telling me right now? What is it that's going on that it doesn't like? What do I need to be aware of? And then I could thrive after that.

It's a big shift in conventional thinking because whenever someone exhibits physical illness, people say, oh, what tablet does this person need? You know, what's the chemical? And that's why you'll get lots of different, if you research CFS, there's so many different schools of thought. Oh, it's a post-viral fatigue.

It's, you know, there's lots of, yeah, I guess, physiological explanations for it. And maybe, and there's probably lots of, you know, clinical research behind that suggests that it is. I don't know. But my experience was that something else and that's all I can go by really and you came back to the sport competing again I'm guessing yeah so I returned two years later and won the world championships and European championships

in 2005 and then went on to win two more times after that and compete in Beijing three years later incredible so now all of that's know, that part of your career has ended very, very successfully. And you've, you know, you reached the real, I mean, you were the world champion multiple times, looking forward at your, your, your, the career since then and into the future, what, what matters to you and what's getting you out of bed now and what's making you excited for, yeah, life? I love helping others now helping others sharing learning from my experiences in sport and taking those lessons and bringing them to other people mostly in the business world and developing people you know i you know, spent a lifetime with coaches who were developing me,

um, or the athletes and the team. And it's the same thing. It's about developing people, you know, in business, in sport, it was about getting results through people, developing those people to get results in sport. And now I'm using that to get results for people in business by developing people. And I get a real kick out of, you know, if I'm coaching someone and coaching a director or a leader, whoever it is I was coaching this morning and seeing them have that aha moment about a limiting belief, you know, getting the new dream job, um, engaging with the team, being a more confident leader, whatever it is. I love it when I see that change and that transformation in other people, um, helping them to change habits, to change behaviors, to excel, to get the best out of themselves. That's what really, that's what motivates me now is, is helping others to fulfill their potential. Well,

listen, it's been an incredibly interesting, diverse conversation. One that's made me have a couple of my own personal epiphanies. So I thank you so much for coming today and sharing your story. Where do people find you if they want to get in touch with you? Where's the best way to reach out? So AnnaHemmings.com.

My training consultancy call is called Beyond the Barriers. So beyondthebarriers.co.uk. I'm on LinkedIn. They'll find you they'll find me 2020 we can find everybody but i thank you so much your stories i mean it's it's incredibly like multifaceted with twists and turns and um you exhibit you know so many of the qualities that i think are typical with the most successful people i've ever seen. These topics of like resilience and dealing with pressure and like the understanding of oneself and your mental state. And I mean, you've got these incredible twists and turns with, with your illness. So, I mean, it's just, just so incredibly inspiring. And when they, when they suggested that you were joining this podcast, I thought it was, you were just like the perfect guest for these

reasons. And you've, you know, you've, you've, you've blown me away on many occasions and made me feel quite emotional as well. So I just wanted to say thank you for coming. And I hope that we can stay in touch. And yeah, just to thank you more than anything. Thank you for inviting me on the podcast. you