The Uneducated PT Podcast - #25 Lewis Potts - Find The Gap

Episode Date: April 6, 2024

In this episode we speak to Lewis Potts who is a mindset coach who helps other fitness coaches get the best out of their clients by helping them to understand how to approach poor adherence. Lewis speaks to our members about how he ended up in this position from playing american football and DJing to now impacting coaching and the fitness industry for the better. 

Cars asked me to come in to talk about mindset, which I'm really excited because I like the sound of my own voice, and I also really like mindset. I'm going to go through and kind of basically how this is going to work. I'm going to tell you about me and I'm going to tell you my story. We're going to pluck some tools out of it, and then we're going to have a bit of a more, I don't want to say rant at the end, but the thing that I want to kind of like say in advance is that this is all from a place of somebody that's been through it, and it's all from a place of coming from somebody that wants the best for you guys.

I might piss some people off. I might trigger some people. It's just the way that I kind of see mindset and my experience of it as you'll start to see. So I do apologise in advance. I just want you all to know that it's genuinely with the best intentions. So first things that you need to know about me

to kind of like give you the context is first and foremost, ex fat bastard. So 152 kilos at my heaviest. Playing semi-professional sport at the same time. but in no way, shape or form healthy. I was obese from being a kid right through until being 28 years old when I started to saw my shit out.

I fucking loved it. I absolutely loved being able to eat what I want, a drink, what I want to play sport. I was technically still healthy in terms of, like, my athletic capabilities, but obviously being six foot three and 152 kilos and carrying that amount of weight around, it's got kind of like long-term repercussions, right?

Next thing is before I started coaching, I was actually a DJ. So I spent years touring the world, playing at festivals, in clubs, in raves, and living the life that came with it. And I'm not saying this to glorify it whatsoever, but the drink, the drugs, the partying, the girls, everything, the lifestyle that came with it, up until 6 a.m. every single morning, waking up at 2 p.m. every single afternoon. lived that lifestyle for 11 years. But at the same time as both of those things,

I was an ex-international American footballer to the point where I was captain in the best team in Australia, playing on TV, flying around Australasia, playing sport every single weekend. And again, living the life that came with that kind of semi-pro-life, semi-pro athlete life, to the point where we were playing in front of thousands of people. And like, this is this picture,

I say this every single time, this is where I peaked. Like, I know Carl thinks he's cool, but I don't know if he's ever been playing sport in a different country with people with your face on the t-shirt, cool. And everything went downhill for me from this point, right? And I also loved a beer, a bag and a boogie. So, again, I am never going to glorify partying, drinking drugs, but it's just who I was. I used to get up to all sorts of fucking nuisance. Like, I was just, if I met me then, now I don't think I'd like me very much.

And then finally, I'm an absolute self-proclaimed mindset wanker. So the reason that I'm telling you this is because if you are following accounts like Carl and hopefully me, you're probably following other fitness accounts, mindset accounts, stuff like that as well. A lot of those people, from being in the industry and meeting a lot of those people, have been born with a silver spoon in the mouth, never had to overcome anything, whether that is physical challenge, weight loss themselves, you'll see PTs all the time that had abs from being born and don't get it.

They, again, they've kind of like just landed in the position that they are with no real life experience. Okay. I'm not like that. I'm not that person. I didn't, I, I'm 33 years old now. I didn't even consider a life in coaching until I was 28, 29, just turned 29. And the mindset thing I only really discovered in 2020.

20-ish, 2021. So again, it's not like I've been doing this forever and how I found all this sort of stuff is from shit that has happened to me, which we're about to cover. So the reason that I'm so passionate about mindset, I'm passionate about fitness and health and fat loss, if it's what you want or need and all that sort of stuff. But for me, it all comes down to the mindset side of things. And without the healthy mind, you can't have healthy anything. Okay, it's all interdependent. but the reason that I'm so passionate about it personally is basically we're going to go through a whistlestop tour of the last five years of my life now and the peaks and the troughs, right?

So in 2016, I moved to Australia to play semi-professional American football. I was over there, captain in, like I said, flying around the country, and all that sort of shit, and I absolutely loved it. On the 23rd of February in 2018, I woke up one morning and I tried to say a sentence to my partner at the time. And all the words came out in the wrong order. Weird as fuck. I was like, right, that's odd.

This was within like 10, 50 minutes, 25 minutes as they put in the doctor's notes here. So all of these I'm about to share with you are when I moved back to England, the NHS needed the doctor's notes from Australia. So these are real life notes like the doctor out there. David I is on a bit of a knobbed, which I'm going to cover why. These are the notes that he covered. So I couldn't speak. I tried to say the same sentence to my partner again.

and the words came out, the right words, in a different order, but still not the right one. I was like, right, this is weird. Then the vision went in, so he me, I'm not even going to try and pronounce it, right? So dysphasia is the speech, and then my vision went in my right eye. And I was like, there's something not right here. So let's get straight to the hospital. Went straight to the hospital. They sent me for six emergency tests.

So they checked the Dopplers, which is the arteries in your neck. So basically they were looking for a blood clot. They checked my heart. They checked my brain. They checked my, they did ECGs, EGs, which is the brainwave, everything. They were like, we need to figure out what's going on. A couple of weeks later, so on the 9th of March, they dragged me in and basically said, right, good news. Terminology that they used.

You are the fittest fat guy that we've ever seen. Obviously, I was playing semi-professional sport, even though I was on the larger side, I was training hard for the sport and everything that came with it. Your artery is a fine. Your blood pressure is absolutely fine. your brain is fine, everything in that side of things is sound. Bad news is we've found this thing in your heart, okay? So they'd found that I've got a bicarspid aortic valve,

which is something that you're born with. One in 100 men are born with this. Most of them, most of those men will never find it unless it kills them, or they find it by accident. So the thing that I had is the thing that a lot of premiership footballers and sprinters quite literally just drop dead with. Okay, I was one of the lucky ones that they found it when they were looking for something else.

So a bicarisput aortic valve, which meant the main valve in my heart had only got two pieces instead of three. Every time it beat it opened and closed, it was slow to close. So it was regurgitating blood back into the heart. Because of that, the aortic root, which is the bit of your heart that pumps the blood out to the rest of your body, was dilated because it was getting more blood than it should have done. And it developed into an aneurysm. So the L.A. is an aneurysm, basically.

It developed into aneurysm where it, which is. where the wall of your heart starts to stretch, kind of like when you blow a balloon up, blow a balloon up, it starts to go a little bit see-through, and then eventually it'll pop. Aneurism will rupture, and that is game over, good night, goodbye. So I didn't understand the severity of this at this time

because Dr. David Aisone's feedback to me at this time was, you're the fittest fat guy we've ever seen, crack on. Keep playing sport, keep doing what you're doing, partying, don't worry about it. You're good, you sound, you're really healthy crack on. So I did. Okay. At the end of that month, I went in to see him again. And this is why I think Dr. David is on is a bell end, because I didn't know about this. He didn't tell me this. But on the 23rd of May,

March, sorry, in 2018, I was diagnosed of anxiety. I didn't know. I genuinely had no fucking idea until I got back to England and had to request the notes and see what it was see what it said to feed back to the NHS. So this is where I'm like, hmm, maybe there's some power in this mindset stuff. I've, I didn't know that I got diagnosed of anxiety. So to me, didn't have it. I was sound. I was, I was, I was, I was, I was cracking on. There was no, I am not for one second downplaying anxiety or depression. Okay. I've got, I've had clients. I've got family members. I've got good friends who are diagnosed, medicated, serious, serious shit. But me, my personal experience with it didn't have a clue and it didn't impact me.

Which I thought, right, there's something in this. There's something in this. So then when I moved back to England, I went in to see him to get the feedback. And he wrote this, obviously thinking that I'd never seen this. Funny cun, okay. Back to the UK. Good luck. You'll need it.

Cheers, pal. So this is the guy that I told me to crack on, keep playing sport, which I did. don't worry about my health, don't worry about my weight, you're good, you'd be fine, okay? So then I got back to England in 2018, December 2018, and I carried on, I carried on playing, I carried on, playing sport, I carried on partying, going out, drinking, everything that came with it, DJing still, living the life, okay, until this day, which was my rock bottom moment, okay, actually, in the chat, because this is quite a, this is quite a topic of conversation, right?

So in the chat, who's had a rock bottom moment? Just me, yes, whatever you want to put. Because I firmly believe that not everyone has to have a rock bottom moment to make something of their life to actually change. I also think it's harder if you do. But I do tend to see that people that do have that leverage. Okay. So yeah, yeah, we've got some yet.

So you'll know what it's like, right? So my rock bottom moment, I was at a festival in Manchester at Part Life. Major Lays were playing. They were playing Get Free, which is one of my favorite. songs. It was the second day of the festival. So if anybody has been on a bit of a bender, you'll know that the first day is sick, the second day you spend chasing the dragon, doing whatever you can do to kind of top the first day. So fuck knows what I was on, could not tell you. And I had this weird, I don't want to call it an out of body experience,

but it wasn't, but it was like almost an epiphany of, holy fuck, what are you doing in your life, I feel uncomfortable, I'm out of place, I need to do something about this. And it was almost like one moment, I was fine and the next I wasn't. There was, no creep up on me. There was no sort of, right, there's, there's some warning signs here that you need to listen to. It was very much, yeah, sort this shit out. So again, I understand that my story in that sense is not like other people's. For me, it was literally like, the light switches off, now the light switch is on. Okay. And I think that I'm very fortunate in that sense, because for me, at that point, I was like, right, now I need to start making

these decisions. There's still nothing to do with the mindset. I start, I need to start looking after myself, after my health. And I want to go off on a tangent here because self-belief, every time I talk to, so again, a bit of context, I was a coach myself, I now coach coaches on mindset.

Every single time I do a talk about this, I always get a question on kind of like self-belief because it's quite a big topic, right? So again, in the chat, who struggles with self-belief? Or who's previously struggled with self-belief? Yep, naturally, me, their thought, yeah, yeah, cool.

So this is the first bit where I might start upsetting people. So at this point in my life, I'd tried probably hundreds of times to diet. Me and Carl actually spoke about this because we were in Dublin in January and Carl gave an amazing talk on fat diets. And afterwards I pulled into one side. I said, I tried to be fucking one of those things. I tried everything. I had tried and failed to diet and get in shape and improve my confidence in social scenarios

and my self-belief and all that sort of stuff, I would say 100 times by this point. I'm 29 at this point. I'm 152 kilos. I've tried everything. To the point where I've just given up and made my weight and my size part of my identity. Okay, so I tried and had failed.

And I'd tried and I'd failed. People think this is how self-belief should work, right? People think that one day, you're going to wake up with self-belief, and it's all going to be fucking sunshine and roses, and you're going to be able to take action. So the self-belief comes first, then you start taking action, and eventually you'll start to see the results.

And it's as linear as that, and self-belief is the thing that you need before you get started, right? I'm probably preaching to the choir, because again, you've got a great coach in, I was going to say, in the form of call, in the short stature of Carl. You've got a great coach who's probably covered stuff like this with you before, but that's not how it works, right? If anybody thinks that's how it works, unfortunately, and I had, I'd been trolled. I was like, I need to wait until this self-belief and I need it. Yes, there we go in the chat,

action first, exactly that. So for anybody that's kind of like unsure about it, action comes first. You are 100% right. With action for long enough, you start to see progress. But I don't want you to think of progress as progress, right? I want to start thinking of progress as evidence. So the action comes first. You do the right actions for long enough. You start to get evidence that you can actually do it, then and only then the self-belief comes, which nice, it's nice that it does. I wish it was the other way around, but after you've got the self-belief, then the action gets a little bit easier and you can keep rolling forwards. So for anybody that still struggles with self-belief, bear in mind, at this point,

I'd tried to lose weight, like I said, a hundred times. I'd failed and I'd failed and I'd failed and I'd failed. I didn't deserve self-belief. Why would I have any self-belief if all the evidence that I had was screaming at me that I couldn't do this. Okay. So make sure you're not waiting for that self-belief piece, whether it's in your journey that you're on with Carl, whether it's in a separate area of life. Maybe it's a career thing that you're on about,

maybe a relationship thing. I don't know. It could be anything. Take action first. And the question that I started to ask myself at that point was, why the fuck I'm waiting for self-belief? What if I just got started without it? And I've reframed that question.

many times. What if you could do this thing without confidence? What if you could just do this thing anyway without motivation? What if you could just do this thing anyway without courage? What if you could do this thing anyway without the thing that you think you need? Okay. And again, so it's at this point that I'm starting to think there's something in this fucking mind stuff. There's something in this, the power of the mind. This was rock bottom moment number two for me. No, not that. this was rock bottom moment number two for me so on the 15th of November 2019 I'd finally moved back to England

I'd been through the NHS they'd look through all the notes they'd done all the tests on me again I got a phone call on the morning of the 15th for November from a cardiologist which was weird because all communication was normally done through letters got his phone call and he was like Louis we've had the results of your tests back please can you come in I'm like yeah

of course can mate David Hutchins great guy when can you see me mate is like can you get in today and I'm like right okay this is something fairly hairy so he sat me down and he said Lewis I'm afraid basically the aneurism in your heart has progressed the use the word progress which is odd has progressed to the point that you are now classed as borderline intervention and I'm like in English is I you are at the point where we're going to need to do emergency open heart surgery and I'm like sick what does that mean. And it's like no more sport, no more training, no more nothing. So bear in mind,

I'd had my rock bottom moment for five months previous. I'd decided to start sorting my shit out. I'd start taking action. At this point, I'd already lost 20 kilos. Then the guy goes to me, no more movement, no more exercise, no more gym. And I'm like, right, sick. And I went into a full on tailspin. I actually posted about this bit of area of my life today talking about my identity, shook. I was an American footballer. I was a powerlifter and that's all I was. Immediately, it got removed. So I went into full on victim mode like most people do and why me, this isn't fair. Like, what can I do about this? Nothing. Nothing. It took me weeks. It took me moms to come to terms with this, but absolutely nothing. So I did, which I did all I could do. What can I

control? And I'm going to start talking about controlling stuff later on. And just by controlling my diet, I got to this point and I don't look like that now and I'm not going to leave it on the screen for too long because it makes me uncomfortable. But the point I'm trying to make here is I couldn't exercise. I couldn't train. I couldn't walk. I still managed to lose 70 kilos by paying attention to the mindset first and trusting that everything would fall into place after. Okay, so controlling my choices, focusing on what I could control control and doing that to the best of my ability on any given day. So I lost all this weight. And it took me, from start to finish, it took me just over 18 months to get to this point.

A few more months went by, so that was, so four, four months later, the 1st of December. So on the 31st, 30th November, I got a phone call basically saying, we've had an opening. Can you get in tomorrow for open heart surgery? And I'm like, that's a very, very odd conversation. I panicked. I ended up crying my eyes out, ringing my dad, ringing my best mate, looking for any excuse not to do it. and my best mate at the time turned around and said to me, shut the fuck up and get it done.

You're going to need to have it done at some point anyway. Get it done. So I did. So on the 1st of December 2021, having found out about this thing, just under three, so it starts 2018, so three in a bit years earlier,

having gone through all this process, lost all this weight, still needed the surgery, started to work on my mindset through it, knowing that it was going to get to need to be strong, I got called in and I turned up to the hospital in my The Rock T-shirt to send a message that I was going to go in there and fucking smash whatever I needed to do and my favourite pair of crocs, which I've actually got on right now.

And on the 1st of December, 2021, I got checked in, I got admitted for open heart surgery. Up until this point, I'd met my surgeon four times. I'd met the nursing team that was going to be looking after me. I knew everything about it. I wanted the gory details. I actually asked, we still talk now, my surgeon, we meet once a year. I actually asked my surgeon if when I was basically under and they got me opened up and stuff, if they could take a picture of my insides and send it me,

and the answer was no, apparently. Because my thinking was right, who can say they've seen their own heart? Who can genuinely say that they've seen their own heart? I was fascinated by it, and he laughed at me and he told me no and told me to fuck off, and it is what it is. So, but up until this point, we'd have had so many meetings that I knew everything that was happening. So they were going to cut me open from my neck to underneath my sternum. they were going to soar down my sternum and separate it.

They were going to open it up. They were putting me on a bypass machine. So I was on a ventilator, which during COVID scared me the most out of all of it. Got put on a ventilator. They switched my heart on my lungs off. They put me on a bypass machine. They basically my heart stopped beating. They did what they needed to do.

They put it all back together. They stitched my sternum back with metal wire. Then they sewed me up and woke up. They were like, it's going to take your foot. It's going to take us four and a half hours. You're going to be sound. It's going to take four and a half hours. It was a 97% chance of survival.

So 3% chance of death, which I take my odds on that until this, me and my surgeon, All Water, great guy, have got a good relationship. And we were joking about it after. And he was like,

yeah, 3% is a pretty good chance. But if 3 out of every 100 planes in the world crashed, would you still fly? And I was like, fucking out. Maybe 3% is not actually that. that's something to be like bragging about.

So I knew it was going to take four and a half hours. The most complicated bit was I've got a big Excel bully. If anybody's got me on Instagram, you'll see I've got a big Excel bully. It's fucking massive dope of a dog. Because of that, basically the wound, my sternum was going to take up to 12 weeks to to stitch itself back together underneath the wiring. So what that meant is I actually had to move home to my parents. And they told me on this day, they told me in the run up to this day,

that I would be up to one week in what's called CTCCU, which is cardiothoracic critical care unit. So bedbound, two to one nurse, so two people looking after me at all times, I'd be there for a week. After that, I would then get moved to a normal ward where I'd be there for another week, so I'd be in hospital for two weeks.

After that, I would be bedbound for up to three months. And I was prepared for this. I thought it was going to be fucking shit, but I was prepared for this. However, the last conversation that I had with the surgeon, he said, yeah, we expect you. And I've picked up on this little bit of this little language that it said, we expect you to be in CTCU for one week, in, we'd call it C wing in the great Northwest Heart Center, which is where I am there. We expect you to be in CTCU for one week. We expect you to be in C wing for one week.

We expect you to be three months bed band. And I questioned him on it. I said, when you say you expect me, are you telling me, I will be or that's almost like what you, the thing that you say to people, that you have to like prescribe to people. And it was like, well, that's the average time it takes people to recover.

However, the average person that has the surgery that I have to have is 65 years old. They're older, they're not as healthy, they're not as fit. So again, straight away, I'm like, right, I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure I am not on CTCCU for one week. I am not in hospital for another week and I am not bedbound for three months. It's not me. It's not who I am. So on the second of December, I had the surgery. I woke up. They allowed me to take. Has anybody had liquid morphine, by the way? It's fucking fantastic. It is

absolutely fantastic. So on the second of December, I woke up. I don't remember taking this picture, but I took the picture. I sent it to my mom. I sent it to my dad. I sent it to my partner at the time. I was like, yeah, I'm sound bang, straight back out. On the third of December, a day later, I was like, I'm feeling pretty good, you know, like, can I start journaling? Can I start? Yeah, call.

I've seen you in the state before you, before this looks like you, that Friday night in Manchester where I brought out a tray of tequila. Nobody else wanted to drink it, so I just gave the entire trade to call and he just sat there and dumped off about 11. So, but I knew I was like,

I'm doing everything I can. I'm journaling, I'm reframing, I'm practicing gratitude, all these things I'm going to talk to you about, okay? And I felt better. And the thing that was causing me the most stress was this fucking mask. So I remember saying to the nurse at the time, is there any way we can get this off?

And she pulled the surgeon down and he was like, yeah, give him this thing. I can't remember the name of it. Give him this thing instead. So they got that. And straight away, I'm feeling better. And when I woke up, I'd got a line into both sides of my neck. I'd got one in both elbows, one in both wrists, both sides of my groin, a catheter, drainage pipes.

Has anybody had drainage pipes? That is the worst thing ever. They're basically a quarter inch thick, which they put into the bottom of your chest. chest cavity to drain any excess fluid. I'd got pacer wires directly into my heart, which was shocking me every, every beat just to keep my heart in rhythm.

It was fucking mayem. The most annoying thing at that time was this. So can you get that off? I think I'll feel better. So they did. Okay. On the 4th of December, two days after the surgery,

when they told me that I was going to be in critical care for a week, they discharged me from critical care within two days. And I'm like, right, okay, now what can I do? Can I start standing? standing up and they were like, well, we advise that you don't. I'm like, can I start standing up? And they're like, yeah, you can start standing up. So I was literally with wired up, literally stitched up, still got a catheter in, pretty much doing

fucking box squats in this chair, right? Just standing up, sitting down, standing up, doing anything I could. What can I control? Well, I can do this. Everything that they gave me, I hate, every bit of medicine, I ate. I'm sat on a wing with four other people that have had the same surgery that are just refusing to do anything, refusing to get out of bed. And I get it, and I don't want it to sound like I'm being a dick, and this is where, again, I said I might upset people. Being victims, refusing help,

not doing anything the nurse has asked, not eating, not trying to breathe, not taking the medication, nothing. And I'm like, I'm going to do every single thing that I can. On the 5th of December, three days after the surgery, when they told me that I'd be bedbound for three months, I was literally doing lengths up and down. on the wing. With this thing in front of me and this woman, she must have fucking hated me because every time I wanted to get out of bed, she had to come with me. I don't know what she was

going to do if I fell over, six foot and God knows how much I weighed at this point, but she had to come with me. And she did. I had my lovely little stockings on to increase blood flow. On the 5th of December, taking my first steps, they were like, you're going to be bedbound for three months, not a chance, okay? On the 6th of December, four days after the surgery, they discharged me. They let me go. I walked out of hospital. On the 7th of December, I'm then taking steps. I said to him, what can I do? One to 200 steps, that's it. Your fitness is done. So what I'd forgot to mention is that for some reason, the surgery that should have took four and a half hours, apparently there was a problem with the anisphetic and I stirred twice during the surgery. Can't remember

it, thank fuck, but I stirred twice during the surgery. So the pump me full of whatever they needed to, it ended up taking nine hours. My mum and dad genuinely thought I was dead. So for nine hours, I'm on ventilator, I woke up with a collapsed lung. So they're like, right, you can do one to 200 steps, that's it. And genuinely, that is it. This thing here is called a bear. It's not a bear. It's a towel with tape

wrapped around it, but they call it a bear. You meant to walk that round, and every time you want to move further than this, you have to remember the bear and hold it to your chest. Because obviously, my sternum had been separated. You go like this, it dislodges things. So I had to stay within the radius. They call it a sleeping bag radius. So you have to imagine that you're in a sleeping bag.

But again, I'm like, what can I do? They're like, one to 200 steps. And I'm like, sick. I must have done that 15 times that day. Literally, 15 times that day. Every single day, what can I do? I can journal. I can practice gratitude.

I can reframe this. I can now I can get out of bed. Now I can do my steps. My partner at the time, who's the girl that filmed this video, she must have fucking hated me. It's freezing in Manchester in December. I'm like, right, come on. Alarm's gone off.

Get outside. Again, needed somebody with me. Six months after the surgery, who, maybe not. Does anybody recognize this telephone box? It's a random question. So this telephone box is basically, it's at the bottom of penny fan.

Six months after the surgery, I knew that I needed to test myself and I knew that I wanted to give back and do something for charity. So tiny tickets are a charity that diagnose and fix what I had in babies. They're pushing forward to start scanning people if there's a family history of it.

If you've got it, it's like a 90% chance that it runs in your family. My dad got scanned. Luckily, he didn't have it. I was a lucky one. But normally it's a ready to race. So if you've got it in your family, they don't currently test babies.

They're wanting to start scanning babies and fixing it at birth. So then it avoids all of this shit down the line. So I was like, I need to do something. I want to test myself. So six months after surgery, when they told me that I'd be bedbound for three months, I completed the SAS selection fitness,

the fitness bit of the SAS selection, which is a 25 mile weighted hike, up and over penny fan and then back. And it's the postbox is where it finishes. So I'm like, there's something in this, right? This is how I did it. Genuinely, this is how I did it. These are the only tools that I teach to people now.

Carl, I don't know if you started actually doing this shit with you. There's some of these tools that we've, that I've talked to Carl. I know that he's massive on journaling anyway. I didn't teach that to Carl. He's very, very good at that. But goal setting, journaling, reframing, gratitude and gamifying. That is quite literally. the mindset tools and techniques that I used.

Go setting in the sense of not I want to be lighter, what do I really want from life and how am I going to get there? And I'm not going to spend too long talking about each of these because I could genuinely be here for fucking hours. I've developed this out now into a course that is six weeks long for people, for coaches. So goal setting, I believe that everybody needs a solid goal.

If you don't have a solid goal, how can you make goal-aligned decisions? how can you make decisions that align with who you are, who you want to be, if you don't actually know what that is and you've not defined that. Journaling on a daily basis, every single morning, every single evening.

An hour on a Sunday, recap in the week. I use prompted journaling. I'm not sure of the sort of stuff that the car covers with you. I don't sit in Dear Diary, not me. I sit and answer a set of 10 questions every single morning,

and I think it's eight questions at the end of every single evening. Same questions every single day. Questions like, how do I want to feel today? What am I willing to do to make that happen? What do I need to overcome today? And then at the end of the day, what did I do well today?

What did I not do well today? How can I do it better next time? Very, very basic questions. I answer them every single day. And I've been doing it every single day for what you're doing? Four years. In fact, four years this month since I signed up with my mindset coach. Reframing.

How can I take the shit situation and find the positives in it? How can I find the lessons that it's trying to teach me? Sounds wanky. Really works. Gratitude practice. Same thing. How can I find reasons to be grateful for this thing? One of the things that I did in the hospital and the nurse, one of the nurses actually sat and had a full on conversation with me.

Every single day from the moment that I was able to use a pen, and I've still got the journal, I've got a big stack of journals here. Every single day, I sat and found 20 reasons that I was grateful for having open heart surgery. First day, it was fine. It was like, well, I'm alive. by day three, it's quite hard to find that 60th reason, but I managed to do it, and it took me fucking ages. And then finally, game if I am, which is something that not a lot of people talk about,

and there are some downsides to it if you've got a bit of a, if you've got an overly, if you've got a hyper-competitive personality, sometimes this is not the best thing to do, but it works for me. From my sporting background, from my athlete background, turning it into a game that I could win on a daily basis,

made it fun. maybe not fun. I'd add open art surgery, but as fun as it could be. And just to prove that I'm not chatting shit, okay, I know that car loves a study, right? So I knew these in advance, right? A review of studies found that positive mindset factors such as optimism and reframing, gratitude practice, all the rest of it are associated with faster recovery from surgery and better outcomes. I knew that in advance. So when people are asking me, how the fuck did you do that in four days? And I'm like, I'll tell you, how?

It's this shit, right? The next set of studies, we know that people that have got a more positive mindset engaging healthier behaviours. They also don't rely on things like drink, drugs, gambling, sex, basically all the list of vices. People are less likely to use that if they're engaged in positive health behaviours, okay?

Obviously, the link to that is we then know that people have got a lower risk of obesity if they've got a positive mindset, which is wild, okay? from somebody that was obese until 28 years old, wild. Because of that, and again, you can kind of see the links, right? So, low risk of obesity, better health behaviors, better health outcomes, lower heart disease, lower blood pressure.

They all kind of make sense. It's the next studies that I was like, right, these are fucking mind-blowing. So I then started to find these papers that show things like this. Okay, so just by changing your mindset, you can have a real life, physiological impact on your body. There's all sorts of cool studies out there. There's basically, the one that I use to make the point is, one of the oldest studies that I've ever read is about milkshakes.

Carl, have you ever talked about the milkshakes study? I haven't, I haven't spoke to the group about the milkshake study, but I know the one you're talking about the psychological. Okay, so basically, I'm going to really, really, really breeze over this. Basically, they had a study group and a control group. what they wanted to see was if people's perceptions of things would change physiological, would make physiological differences, right? So they gave one group a milkshake that had a very plain label on it.

It was labelled something like low fat, low calorie chocolate diet shake, something along those lines. The other group, they were given a milkshake in a bottle. It had like a fancy label on it. It was in a nice bottle. It was called something like the extra thick, decadent chocolate fudge shake or whatever, right? they're the only two differences, okay? They ask people to rate their hunger before and after. They ask people to rate the taste.

They ask people to rate, I think they even asked people how many calories they thought they were in it after the drank it, loads of different kind of like factors. What they also did is there's a hormone called leptin, right? Which is basically the hormone that your body produces to tell you that you are full. Okay? So they tested this before drinking the milkshakes and after drinking the milkshakes. Okay. The group that had the diet shake produced less leptin than the group that had the extra decadent, thick chocolate milkshake.

Okay. So one group thought they were drinking a diet shake. They produced their body, released less leptin, a hormone, okay, than a group that thought they were drinking something high calorie and thick and decadent and luxurious and whatever words you want to throw in there. So just by what they thought made. a real life physiological difference to their body. It was the same milkshake in both bottles, the exact same milkshake. Right? So the studies that I started to find interesting is that people that see stress as something

to be taken on, something to be challenged, physiologically produce more growth hormone, which has been linked to resilience, not just physiological things, growth hormone. We know people that produce more growth hormone, have higher levels of resilience, high levels of delayed gratification. So this shit really works, right? But the people that view stress as something that is to be avoided produce more cortisol,

which again, without going into it too much, cortisol, a little bit good, too much, real bad. Real, real bad. Okay? And then finally, this fucking thing. People that look after their mindset and regularly practice mindset techniques,

on average, factoring in all-cause morbidity, all causes of death have longer life expectancy. This is a longitudinal study where they were doing this for fucking years. So that's how I walked out of that fucking hospital, right? Is by focusing on the mindset. So now I want to actually move on to the things that you can take from this. Because I realize that I've been rambling for 40 minutes, okay?

And this is the bit that pisses a few coaches off. I don't know if me and you have talked about this, Carl. I don't know if Carl gets you to set habits, okay? but just in the chat box, it's trying to form habits helping you or harming you. Nobody wants to answer this one because they know it's a trick question. So, I think there's no research about this, it's just me, okay, from having been there, done it, worn the T-shirt, the lot, right? I think it's harming people, for the most part, okay?

Having been through it, having done it, having done the steps, and the tracking and now the training again after the surgery and all that sort of stuff. I was told so many times that what's the number car? Is it 21 days to form a habit? I don't fucking know. Yeah, I think they say something like that, 21 days and then six weeks

and some bullshit like that. I don't know though. So, let's say did he break up for anybody else? I know, was it just many? Sounds underwater. One is the standard. Right. So 21 days to form a habit.

Okay. I was told this. I read the fucking book. Atomic Habits, everybody's favorite book. 21 days to form a habit, 65 days for repetition, all that sort of stuff, right? I am telling you, as somebody that tracked his food religiously, for 21 days, it did not become second nature. I am telling you, as somebody that went out and got there 10,000 steps,

21 days on the trot, it did not become a habit. I'm telling you for a fact, as somebody that tried so hard to form all these habits and hit the 65 day streaks and all that sort of shit on my fucking Apple Watch. it did not then just start to happen on its own, right? I think people are emotionally and mentally blackmailed into doing these things,

thinking that one day it will be a habit and it won't have to think about it anymore. Now, one thing that I've not shared in this because I had to put this story down is after that photo shoot, I rebounded and ballooned back up to put over 100 kilos. I dieted solidly for 18 months. surely if I've done these things consistently for 18 months

they should be a habit right but it turns out when I stop thinking about it and I stop doing the things guess what the weight piled on again so the reason that I kind of get this out there is do not think this game is ever over and this is morbid do not think when you reach your goal

whether it is a weight a physique a fitness level a task whatever Do not think when you get there, you're done. And you can just stop paying attention to it. We all have been blackmailed into doing things for 21 days or 65 days, thinking of it will get easier. It doesn't get easier. It just gets more repetitive.

And the things that you do over and over and over again get more repetitive and they get ingrained. And the way that I kind of use, the analogy that I use is a cornfield. Right. When you first start doing something, you're faced with this big cornfield. And you've got to get from one side to the other. and you fight your way through the corn and it's fucking tough. Okay.

But then the next day, you fight your way through the same path, it's a little bit easier because you've started to bend some of the corn down. You do that for 150 days. There is going to be a proper path trotting down through that corn and it's going to be easier to walk through. But if you stop doing it, the corn starts growing back. And then every time you try and start again, it's harder to get through that path.

Same thing. So rather than trying to form habits, if I could have a legacy, it would be to pay attention to choices. Choices are way more important than habits. Habits insinuates that it's second nature autopilot. Choices puts the responsibility right in your fucking hands. Okay? So choices over habits always. So true or false? You always have a choice. True. Yes. Thank you. Who was that? Beck, was that you? It was me, yeah. I say as I'm sat here eating an ice cream,

but Mommy holidays, and I've made all these choices to be so good. I'm making a choice to have a caramel, go on. Sick, good. So this is the bit where when I was coaching people, and I was talking about it, and this content,

this got me a lot of clients, and it also got me a lot of unfollows, because some people find this triggering. Some people don't like to admit that. There's always a choice, and there is. in every single situation, I could have not turned up to the hospital

on the day that I was meant to have my surgery. I literally, I could have just not turned up when I was employed, way back when, before I discovered I was unemployable, I could have just quit my job on it after a bad day. I'm not saying, nobody's saying that the choices are all good or that there's one good and one bad. You might be faced with two shit choices,

but there is always a choice, right? So when we start to realize that, we can start to talk about this. And this is, I read that book, Daily Stoic. I'm sure people have tried it before. And in January, I never got past March. Bored me to fucking tears. Never got past March.

I've read January to March probably four times. Never got past it. But one of the Stoics, I don't know, I think it's Marcus Aurelius, talks about controlling the things that you can control, right? And I'm quite a visual guy. I developed these tools and models and Carl will know he's done the course. He's got 20 of them in his back pocket, right? This for me is how I used to think about it.

it, right? So three circles. Awareness, influence, control. Your circle of awareness is the stuff that's going on around you and you can do fucking nothing about. It's what the weather is saying, it's if your football team lost at the weekend, it's what celebrity is shagging, what celebrity, like it's all of that sort of shit. You can do nothing about it, right? The circle of influence is slightly inside that. This is a circle that, as the name suggests, you can have some influence over. You still can't make the final decision. This is like, the age old argument that me and Maria have every single night, what we're having for tea, right?

I have an influence in it. It's not my sole decision to make. It's where we're going on holiday. It's how we're spending our time. It's if your boss is trying to power work on you, it's can I actually manage that workload, right? It's you controlling what time you get to work. You can leave it a certain time,

but you can't control the traffic, right? And then inside that is your circle of control. And this is the things, as the name suggests, that you control. what you think because people don't like that but you control what you think what you say what you do

how you feel people don't like that one either but you do okay what you eat who you spend your time with how you spend your time how you spend your money the things that only you control okay the more time you spend worrying

about the circle of awareness I had a friend who was a diehard United fan and we worked together at one point and he would go to United every single weekend and they'd lose and he'd be a fucking dick for the next three days

because this football team had lost. I have friends that get stressed out about the weather. I have friends that all this sort of shit, right, apply anything that you want. You can do nothing about it. What you can do is if you're getting stressed out about the weather, what you can do is you can choose to wear a coat, but you can't stop it fucking raining.

You're getting stressed out about the football. You can choose not to watch it. So there's things in your circle of awareness that we all get, I still do it, by the way, I'm not sitting here preaching, that we get stressed out about, that we can do nothing about when really we need to be looking at what's in here. What can we control? What can we choose?

Okay. So from there, I then started thinking about it this way, and this is where people get really pissed off, right? If I was stood next to you and you're choosing not to do something and you're convincing yourself and you're justifying it and you're telling yourself every fucking reason under the SunWire, it's okay. If I stood next to you, we've a gun to your head and said,

if you don't do this thing, I'm going to blow your head off and you find the ability to do it, then what you need to admit to yourself by default is that you're choosing not to do it. Okay? So personal training is a perfect example. Carl's got you on a leg press. Your legs are shaking. He's going, give me three more. You're going, I can't call. I can't do it. I can't do it. My legs are shaking. He pulls out of fucking pistol and goes, do three more. blow you head off, guess what? Bet you're doing three more. Oh yeah, I need to get a gun to their head to go to the gym more so than getting

onto the leg press. Mate, if they think they're going to see you there, maybe that's why they don't want to come. No, I'm not coming. I'm not coming. I'm sick at this guy. No, guys, look, I know a lot of coaches and cars actually a very good coach, so listen to him. But the point stands, right?

This is not me trying to be some macho dickhead saying you need to put a gun to your head to force yourself to do things. The point I'm trying to make here is, if you aren't sure if you can actually do something, because if you can't do something, there's no point stressing about the ability to not do it. What you need to get very, very good at is acknowledging, can I actually do this?

And if you can't do it and you're not doing it, then why not? And again, that sounds like a confrontational question, like, why are you not doing it? Not the point, not the intention. not what I'm trying to get across to you. But if you can do something and you're not doing it, figuring out why you're not doing it is going to be more important to your ability

to actually then start to do the thing. Okay, it's that is what's in the gap. Okay, so there's you on one side, there's the thing on this side. If you can't do it, find a different way. If you can do it and you choose to do it, great. If you can do it and you're not doing it, figuring out what is in that gap,

crucial. You will never get from A to B if you don't figure out what's in that gap first. So this is true. So your current situation in this point in your life, accounting for taking fault out of the account because whether it's your fault or not, it's your responsibility, right? Your current situation in your life is a direct result of your past choices. Some people don't like that. Some people do. Okay. Some people find it triggering, some people find it empowering. When you can truly accept this, and I'm not going to leave it on this morbid note, don't worry, when you can truly accept this and you can truly accept that you are responsible for where you are,

by default, you also accept that your future comes down to your choices. So we talk about habits, fuck that, and we talk about routine and fuck that, okay, if you can well and truly sit there in the mirror and accept responsibility for your current situation. By default, you are accepting that you have the power to do something about it. Okay. And I mentioned gamifying. This is quite literally talks called no zero days. And that is my legacy. I went out my fucking tombstone. Okay. Every single choice that you make that aligns with the version of yourself, which is why a goal setting is important, which aligns with the version of yourself that you want to be gets marked as one.

That's one point. Okay. The goal is to reach, I think that's a trillion, but the goal is, the point I'm trying to make there is the goal is never ending. There's never a deadline.

The deadline is when you clock out. Okay, you're done. Time over. Time's up. You're done. Every single choice that you guys make, that aligns with who you want to be and your future self and your goals

and what you want to get from life, get scored as one, okay? The aim of the game is just to not have any zero days. It is that simple. If you only score one on a day, you move closer to your goal. If you score 20,

you move closer to your goal a little bit faster, but you're still moving in the right direction. So this is the mindset that I want fucking engraving. I can no longer get tattoos because of warfarin. I'm on warfaring for the rest of my life, which pisses me off. If I could get anything tattooed on me at this point, I'm pretty covered as it is.

it would be no more zero days. I want, like I said, this, I would love this to be my legacy. When you realize that every single thing that you do that aligns with who you want to be moves you closer, it starts to become a little bit more, that responsibility lands in your lap and you're like, right, okay, now I can do something with this.

Now I'm empowered instead of triggered. Now I can move closer. And if you can score two, great. If you can saw 20, great. Because there's no top limit. It's a never-ending fucking game. Just don't have any. zero days.

And that is everything that I've got for you. Am I unmuted? Yeah, I am. Lewis, that's perfect, mate. So I have a couple of questions here, but I don't know if we have time for me. So I'm going to move straight over to the group and let them ask a couple of questions.

And I'm going to start with...