The Uneducated PT Podcast - #37 Bradley Rix - Turning My Life Around

Episode Date: July 1, 2024

In this episode we speak to business mentor and fat loss coach Bradley Rix. Bradley grew up in difficult circumstances but found an outlet through coaching others. Expect to learn about emotional responses to food, taking ownership for your life and much more.

Hello and welcome to the uneducated PT podcast with me, your host, Carlo Rourke. The goal of this podcast is to bring on interest and knowledgeable people from all walks of life, learn a little something from each conversation and for you, the listener, just learn something from each episode. So don't forget to subscribe to the channel, press the box below, show some support, and I'll see you on the next episode. All right, folks, thank you very much for joining us, really appreciate it. So how we're going to work it and how we always work it is,

we'll do it in kind of like a podcast format first with Brad and then any questions or let Ross on there any questions you have once you think of a question just put straight into the chat box and then we can do a little bit of a Q&A at the end and go through them questions in a little bit more detail. Christy's on Melissa's on welcome Orla's on Orla's on I hope you're feeling better Lucy's on well done Lucy Jennifer's first call first group call welcome Jen Annalise is on, she's in the car, I think.

Hamer's on, she's in the car, I think. Sarah, and she's going to put you on mute there, Sarah, all right? Ross has just jumped on as well. Okay, deadly. All right, cool. All right, so we'll get cracking. So first and foremost, Ross, do you, or Brad, do you just want to introduce yourself and tell the group a little bit about what you do?

Well, what don't I do? Let's be honest with you. I said, just like, I'm an absolute nobed in the nicest possible sense, loud, obnoxious. I'm joking. I'll be a coach for a long period of time. I used to be morbid obese. I used to be a fat, depressive mess.

And there's a lot that we'll probably touch on during this call, which I'm very, very open about. And some of it, though, I'll come with a bit of a trigger warning in the nicest possible sense with my life and story, depending on what we go through. But yeah, morbid obese,

depressive, suicidal, turned into skinny, anorexic ill individual that thought I was doing the right thing, then got mega fat again, then got absolute. absolutely handsome and incredible shape. And I've done over 10,000 PT sessions, become an online coach, a very successful

online coach, thousands and thousands of transformations, which then led me into also mentoring coaching other coaches to be better coaches. Yeah. I think we'll go through your actual career and what you've learned in terms of the amount of clients that you've worked with, the struggles that you've seen come up in terms of them and essentially what you do now. But before we get into that, do you want to just talk a little bit more about even your journey before you even actually started coaching how you actually got into the fitness industry and the struggles that you had before that and how that came about? Yeah, I'd have to really, if any of you got questions done this, honestly, like, feel free to open.

There's no, I'm not, I'm not ashamed to ever answer any of this. But the story is that immense that it would take up multiple hours of your time because I've done talks specifically on small topics that have taken. taken hours for people in specific illness. But long story short, I was brought up by essentially alcoholic, heroin and crack addicts parents. So lots of use, lots of violence. Um, seen a lot of fucked up up. And food was always like that kind of thing for me. I was never fed by parents. It was always like, uh, right, they're all off their head now. They're asleep. So I can now go and snack galore, um, which was one of the main catalysts and triggers to having no rules around food, no discipline with food, no relationship with food, no understanding with food.

Was quite a chubby young lad, as you can probably imagine. And growing up with the type of parents and lifestyle that I was, it's very hard to fit in in school. As in, I'm very hyperactive. You'll learn that very quickly. Very energetic. But coming from a very, very poor background and all your mates are very rich, posh types of individual, you very much lose. yourself, which is quite funny because we were speaking about this, not longer, won't we, Kyle, at the event about losing your identity. I don't know where you want me dive into this, but essentially throughout my youth was just a little shit in school,

kicked out of school, arrested, left, right and centre, bad behaviour, probably just looking for levels of attention. I had to make money in ways which you shouldn't be making money, but when I was brought up in a life of all what I knew was things like that to be able to feed myself, support myself, these sort of things happen. long story short i've got two children during my first child when i was around 21 years of age both of my younger brothers got taken off my mum by social services that placed into my care and he was in my care for a long period of time um during this stage i was really fat really depressive really

suicidal um had an attempt on my life while i was also going through a major court case potentially going into prison because of being caught for said things that were no good, which caused a miscarriage for the partner that I was with at the time. And the only reason I didn't go to prison was because of the great work that I did with both of my brothers. There's a big story there, but that was essentially the catalyst when I was like, fuck, I got spared prison, like potentially lost the life as a direct result of my actions and the stress that I put people through and realized they're actually being fat and all these

things that were leading in my life weren't positive. so I had to start doing something to make positive change which elicited the kickstart to a weight loss journey which then led into fitness and so forth. And you were looking after your, you were looking after your brothers at that time as well as only a baby. Yeah, yeah, literally.

They literally got given to me on my 21st birthday. Like on my 21st birthday, social services, police at the door. Here's your brothers. And just the context, like I was 21, my middle brother was 13, and he's, Asperger's high level of asperger's, pretends he's a cat half the time because he hates human beings and my other brother was eight at the time. So as you can imagine, 20 when you're old, I'm still a fucking kid myself, you know, doing all sorts of stuff that's up to no good because

it's the only way that I knew how to survive, be able to pay for a house that I lived in and support partner and X, Y and Z. I still also had to show up and be present even though I didn't want to for two children that I didn't want to have. But obviously, there were a brothers. I had to look after them and they kind of, they had a kind of similar journey to me growing up, not as extensive with like hard drugs, but their dad was a severe alcoholic. So there was still lots of abuse and bits and bombs inside of the house. So like I had to kind of like care and nurture them essentially. But yeah, it was a lot all in one go, a very lengthy court case while also battling two kids inside a school, one with special needs and making sure that they did well.

I did so well with them actually that my mom was able to get them back because not only was I helping my mom rehabilitate and break up with a toxic thing and making sure that they looked off themselves and got better in school. My autistic brother actually was staying in school instead of doing a runner. But while that was going on, obviously I was an absolute crumbled mess. And the pressure that led onto that, obviously led to lots more eating,

lots more problems. And it was something that you said there that really struck the chord with me there. Even when you said, like, growing up kind of in poverty around people who had a lot of money and there was, you know, the overeating is kind of like a food scarcity thing, isn't it? It's where, like, you don't know where your next meal is going to come from, and that leads people

to overeat them when they get the chance to it. Yeah, I used to find comfort, and do you know what? And it is a thing for you, and I'm sure loads of people relates to us, and Carl's one of the coaches that I massively respect because he's a fucking incredible coach, and he will say stuff as it is, and if he doesn't know of anything,

he will go well out of his way to go and understand more than anyone I've ever met. And something is to be said, and I don't think enough of this has spoken about for people, but let's look at some level of disorder eating, right? When you get people that have like anorexia and bulimia and stuff like that, they have a level of comfort in feeling empty, right? It allows them a feeling of self-control.

I used to find and still do at the age of 33, like 12 years into this journey, I still feel satisfied in comfort in this sensation of feeling overly full to the point that I nearly feel sick, right? I don't have a problem with food anymore. I mean, if I'm emotionally volatile, I've got stuff going on or lots of stress because we're not all superhuman, just because we look like it sometimes on social media, we still have shit that we've got to deal with from time to time. Carl's Irish, so of course he's got issues that he's got out of time.

But I will find myself still sometimes I'll eat and I'll over it. And in the moment I feel a bit sick and a bit like, ugh. It gives me a level of comfort which does all the way back down to childhood because that was when I felt safe and good because I'd finally eaten. So there's lots of things that don't really get spoken about for a lot of people who are overweight. Sometimes it is actually a case when you've gone through emotional trauma and bits of bobs and that was like your only sense of happiness it kind of it stays with you as some very deep rooted neurological based like issues so difficult childhood you know at 21 having to basically

parents to kids you know having to put kind of food on the table having to make money and dabbling and drug deal and all this stuff in the courts when did fitness come into this and And I said, so I'll be honest, some of it's a bit of a blur. So in order to actually save the right things in the right order is a bit difficult because it was such a bad hard time my life, you know, juggling with therapy and so much going on. Sometimes things get like a little bit blurred. But in a hindsight, essentially I got spared prison. I got given 500 hours of community service, a four years suspended prison sentence.

And loads of conditions that had to show up weekly for certain bits and bulbs of that. So the first point of goal was I couldn't get up to no good because I was being watched often, you know, dropings on the house and this, that and here. So rather than being occupied of find a waste of money, I had to think, fuck, what do I do here with myself? And through my ill activities, I'd also developed and built a window cleaning business. So I had a way of earning income. And the problem that I had is I couldn't really keep up with a day's work going up and down ladders. The weight restriction on the ladder was 16 stone. I was 24, 25 stone, and I was having to buy new ladders every couple of months because they were

fucking bent, you know, in half from climbing up them every single day. And in my head, it was like, hated how I learned, hated how I felt. I've also got quite a few health conditions. So I've been kind of diagnosed of fibromatia recently. I was born with severe levels of hypermobility. I was actually born with hip so hip dysfacious. So I'd be put in a specialist harness. So I've dealt with chronic pain my whole entire life and I had SO joint problems. I've had spinal issues. I've got decompressed spine front and two lower damaged discs. And it was stuff that I've always had them because I was always in pain and I was always used to suffer and I just kind of dealt with it. And when all this stuff went on and I've realized I kind of got spared it in my head, I don't know where it really come from,

but there was a couple of issues. It was obviously I'd lost the child and part of me. It was like, fuck. Like, no, that's a bad thing. And family's quite an important thing to me, especially not having it and always wants in it. It's always been quite an important thing to me. And I was like, I don't want to be that fat dad. I don't want to be there. So, I don't want to be down. These were some of the roles that are playing in my head. As well, there's a lot of guilt for putting people through situations

to make them feel a certain way. And then there was the fact that it was like, I couldn't feel any shitter than I already did. I'd had multiple attempts that I'd tried on my life. And it was like, if I have to stick around, like I at least want to make the time that I stick around more favourable. And I started getting obsessed when I was window cleaning, listening to podcasts.

Carl knows that likes to like Ben Cumba and stuff like that. These are people I learned from from me. early stages. But I didn't really know what I was doing. I've got a very obsessive behavior. So, you know, when I do so, I get very obsessive with it. And I got hooked up into keto because at the time, like everything I was learning, keto was this incredible thing. And as I was learning about keto, I then started learning about calories, but I didn't understand it if I, fuck all calories, it causes problems. So there's me dieting on sub-700 calories per day while running a window cleaning business, eating nothing but meat, like literally snacking on

pepper on he's going to McDonald's sometimes and just getting the burger out of it just to eat while I was on the go made myself very fucking ill but I lost like eight stone in a very short period of time I think it's like I seen that the transformation was I looked like a

the wake up call for me here was sad enough I had a few friends that had come out of lengthy prison sentences and from the estate that I'm from I'd seen some of them and one of them took me out all day and I wondered why and he took me out all day because he genuinely thought I'd become a crack addict like my dad

lose the weight he didn't believe that I'd been in this this fitness journey because I wasn't so fitness with weights I was going to the gym and just moving around but I was doing like two hours of cardio a day as well as like full-time work passing out halfway up landers and stuff like that but I felt good because I've been accomplishing something and then when the wake up call was like Brad everybody thinks you're on crack mate like I was like shit really and it was almost like I see myself with a very different reflection from that moment, which led me to go, I'm a fucking failure and I put all the way back on and more. You know, develop binge eating again at a very fucking high level pile all the way back on

in just the same amount of time that it took me to lose it essentially, which then led me to a stage of, well, depression, here we go, not fucking doing that again. That was a lot of effort. I tried something for once as positive and failed. And again, that whole negative feedback loop of your fucking worthless, your pointless, your shit, which stem from childhoods all come back into play and so the behaviours with food

become really, really fucking difficult again. During, like, again, I'm just trying to be quick with this. Again, if you've got questions, because I'm going to imagine there's going to be a lot here from there. Yeah, they can put them, any questions you have to shoot them into the chat

and we'll go through them near the end anyway. Yeah, and during this stage, I'd obviously regained all this weight and then along came my first child. Yeah. That was when I was like, okay, this was actually the reason where I was like, okay,

I've actually got to fucking do it. I know I can. can do it and I did it in a fucking really difficult way but this time I have to do it in a slower way I have to learn properly what to do I learn how to do it so fortunately when you're working six to eight hours a day in a window cleaning job with nothing but yourself it's quite easy to go ahead and put headphones in and study all day every single day I'll be up a ladder two three stories high with a notepad in my pocket and I'd hear something on a podcast it was like a bit of knowledge and out again I'd write it in there two stories high wind burn at me shit to my pants

know I need to get this bit of information down which fed me into this massive loop of making sure everything I did, I did perfect. You know, I got so obsessed with the likes of biomechanics and endocrinology and understanding a lot about, you know, coaching from a philosophical level and a psychological level, like so many different ways. I just wanted to know everything. Again, I'm very, because I'm slightly autistic. If I want, if I'm going to do something, I want to know everything about it. I want to know every angle. Even if it's pointless information for me, I want to make sure I get to know it. And then as far as I was like, right, going to do this gym thing again, but I'm not going to do cardio. I'm going to try and lift weights.

I'm going to try and get strong. And because of my health conditions I was aware of at the same time, I know the only way to have a better quality of life as I grow up is to develop strength and make sure I'm back. And I've very much got a bug for it very quickly. And I'm sure Cole probably share something about like my transformational pictures and bits and box like that. Like I made a very drastic change in a very short period of time. And what was really mad now that it looksie looking back is I'd had all these massive transformations, but I still felt shit every single time, no matter what stage I looked at, because although I was very much focused on dietary, very much focused on training,

very much focus on looks, I attached myself worth and my value in how good I was based to an image and scale weight. And I actually haven't got many pictures of me at my leanest best shape because I actually thought I looked like a piece of shit. and I would speak to myself saying you're a failure, you're a piece of shit, because I attached the whole notion to when I achieve this, I will finally feel like this.

Do you think that that's why it's, and with everything that you went through in your past, do you think that's why it's important that when people are on a fitness journey, because a lot of people go on fitness journeys thinking that's going to be the be all and end all in terms of solving all their problems. But a lot of the time,

what they really need to work on is obviously, you know, their body, their health, but also up here as well. Yeah, so one of the things I always say to people is obviously being a coach as well, and we've actually spoken about it before. I always say we work from the neck up, then the shoulders down. I don't care if you come to me and you tell me that you've got two stones to lose because you've got a wedding coming up.

No, you need to feel better about yourself and more energetic and proud of yourself, weight losses, the byproduct. And I think a lot of coaches, and this is the thing that I deal with inside of my business, helping coaches. And it's someone to me and Carl Share a lot of the same values with is, we think that losing weight is going to help us experience the lifestyle and the emotions that come alongside that with what we see on social media and the perceived notion of that, oh, they look happy and they're in great shape and it's typically the notion that you typically see.

I've had so many women, and I'm sure Carl has as well, where they tell me they want to feel better. So I'm like, let's work on the actions that make you feel better. Let's work on the actions that make you happy. Let's work on the actions that energize you more. weight loss will be the byproduct of that. And I've had so many women come to me like, Brad, I'm so happy, thank you so much. I'm wearing smaller dress sizes. I'm doing this.

I'm doing that. And I'm like, you actually haven't lost that much weight, but you've just developed a much higher level of confidence and more self-worth and less critical on yourself, that you're willing to wear stuff and not be so worried. You know, and it happens quite a lot. There's some women that I deal with that actually have genuinely very happy being bigger women. And, but they just tied onto this notion that I'm depressed. I'm sad. somebody's left me or something's been said or something's happened, I need to lose weight and things will be fixed. And it's like a lot of time, they just need a higher level of mental

resilience. They just need to have a higher level of empathy for themselves or understanding of certain situations to be able to handle it. And I think that's one of the things that like, I really hammer home. If somebody comes to me like, Brad, I'm going on holiday in 10 weeks, I need to lose weight quick. I won't work with them. Because for me, I'll only work with them if they're willing to work on the actions but not expecting the result to be for the holiday but the actions to help them for when they're back from the holiday

so that they feel better because I won't be a part of this vicious cycle of people just helping people get fast transformations for the same of a transformation and I think that's so you do quite as well isn't it? And you've been there where you've gone to this stream where you've lost all the weight

but also still hate and how you look so therefore you didn't actually get what you wanted in the... Yeah I would say I would say I've been happy with my body as a, he looks like he lifts, but he also definitely looks like he doesn't say no to pizza. And like I had a, I had a higher level of confidence and happiness looking like that because of the work that I've done extensively. Obviously, like, I'm a level four mindset transformational coach and I'm one of less than 100 people in the world with a specific qualification around mindset coaching. I'm in some of the highest mental ships that are physically

is around personal development and it's something that I literally sing from the fucking clouds everywhere and it's like if I haven't done that work I wouldn't be here today because actually the catalyst with the guy that I work with in particular is somebody I signed up with the very next day after my fourth attempt on my life there was quite an extensive one so it's like if it wasn't for the mindset work it like nothing else comes in alignment of like you can't have a great mental health without physical support and you can't have a great physical being without mental support they come hand in hand and depending on where you're out of your journey and when you come into it it will just depend on which percentile needs more focus yeah so that's what i wanted to talk to you

about next is you getting your your first mentor and and and what that did for you in terms of what you learn from being coached yourself uh rather than so my first coach was the mindset coach so even now though i've got a i've actually got a personal development mentor i've still got a business mental i've got a fitness coach but i've actually got a mental performance coach okay so i've got coaches in specific areas i'm a fucking busy guy and i like to take away all decision making for myself because decision makings can lead to emotional responses and if i'm in a high volatile stress state and we've got to remember stress isn't always a bad thing a lot of people label stress in a bad way like we can have high stress environments that are positive you know and i'm in

that state a lot that's where i thrive that's where i perform carl knows exactly the sort of stuff that i can get up to and it's people say to me, they think I'm superhuman, but it's not, it's just those are environments that I'm really well at, but I have to take away all decision-making, and I have to take away all the ability to make decisions myself. So when I start to work with the person development, the first start thing that I started learning was learning how to question myself. So I don't know if anyone here has read the book, The Chimp Paradox.

It's very good in the sense of understanding when you're making a logical decision versus an emotional decision. And the first thing I was able to do with that mentor in particular, learned to actually dissect my decision making and a lot of it was turned on to food. He wasn't working on food specifically, but it trans fled into that world. For example, if I was stressed and I wanted to eat something, it was like, well, do I want to eat this because I'm hungry or do I want to eat this because I'm stressed? And if I'm trying to eat it because I'm stressed, like, is this going to make me feel better

after eating it or is this going to make me them feel worse? and I think having a coach help you question yourself is probably the most powerful things on the planet. It's certainly that Carl does really well. I was actually quite shocked the first time we ever started speaking about mindset stuff because I didn't think, you know, waving Kildo's around on Instagram.

I didn't think that's the sort of thing. You're out from first of developers. I think the ability to be able to question yourself from a logical perspective is it's game changing. Yeah. So to explain that journey that I, had is very difficult because it was so impactful, so hard and so fast. It's fucking horrible at the same time as you can imagine you're having to really fight your own ego of shit. Oh, I'm just so busy.

Shut the fuck up. No, you're busy because your brain's taken up so much time in space, focusing on negative energy, which wastes energy, which then you think you don't have time. So working with someone really helped me learn to slow down the way that I think, slow down the way that it is that I make decisions, learn to be able to take a few seconds before I actively eat or take an action or do something. Learn to play chess, not checkers with my actions to be like, well, if I do this, what's the next thing that I'm likely to do? And then the next thing, rather than go, I'm going to do this and then I deal with the consequences and then there's another problem. So that there was probably like one of the biggest, but I'm still with the guy 10 years later,

do you know what I mean? So this was exactly Lucy's question, which I think you just nailed the head on. She goes, you mentioned a few minutes ago that you were able to change your mindset around emotional eating, how did you manage that? And I, I, I, presumed then. So a big part of that is questioning your actions and taking that pass. Yeah, I think it's a very difficult thing and something that I still have to do to this day and ages. Some people don't have the intelligence. And when I mean intelligence, I'm on about emotional intelligence, right? Don't have the emotional intelligence that learn how to handle their emotion or how to dissect their emotional, how to get themselves out of thinking

and feeling a certain way when they're triggered by a certain reaction. So sometimes I actually don't think there's a negative element to using food as an advisor as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, advice to kind of help you deal with an emotion. But it's when you learn to go, okay, I recognize that I emotionally eat. I recognize when I do emotionally eat this, it can get out of hand. But when I do this, it almost acts like a, you know, like Mario Carts and you've got the thing that slows you down and the time slows down type situation. I'd almost picture it as like, well, when I do this, if I've given myself a list of foods that I know that would be very hard to overeat really quickly on when I want to like, you know, binge emotionally eat, it will give me

this space and the time to sit there and go, well, is this going to make me feel any better or not? It helps having children, because we've got fucking tons of little 100 calorie chocolate snacks everywhere. So, like, it's a pain in the ass opening and 100 wrappers, you know, but it gives me the chance to start eating and be like, actually, why am I doing this? Am I mostly eating ever or am I tired or am I, like, if I had a really stressful day? And I think sometimes, rather than just trying to avoid or cutting out emotional eating, if you're an emotionally volatile person, and it's more about what food rules can I put in play. If I know that I'm going to do this,

when's the likelihood that I'm going to do it first? What can I put in play as a protective mechanism? So I deal with a lot of people that have, like, you know, emotional eating disorders, disorder eating and things of that nature. And the first thing I always say is I'd always dissect it. Like, when's the time that you typically stress eat? Well, it's when I get back from work and then the kids are in bed and whatever. And it's like, I'll give an example.

The amount of moms in particular work full-time jobs. They get home. They start cooking dinner. They're starving because they've not looked after themselves all day because it's up, get the kids ready to school, off to work, manic, manic, manic, manic, they get home while they're cooking dinner. They're having handfuls of snacks here, there and everywhere. To the point that by the time dinners cooked,

you're actually not hungry anymore, but you still eat your dinner because you've made it. Now we won't go into the science of blood sugar levels, getting risen up, ghrelin and leptin, having a fucking field day, a trampoline inside of yourself. Then you sit down, and although you're full, your body's literally having hormonal warfare telling you you need to eat, right? So the first things that I look at is, okay, cool, if you,

because we also got to understand and I don't know if Carl would agree on this and it would be really good to get his opinion on it. It's not. I think a lot of people really label emotional eating and stuff when it doesn't need to have a label in the sense of like sometimes I'm an emotional leader.

Yeah, or like let's say for example, you've had a long day, you're stressed to high heaven, which is normal, right? Because most of you don't, if you work, you don't have an emotional trigger or a routine to help clock your mind off from work mode

to mum home mode. So you carry that energy, that high stress energy, which you need to have at work to be able to perform, you know, because high stress is high energy. It's needed to require it work, right? And then you come into this environment that you transferred and kept that energy and you come into this place. It isn't going to fucking serve you, right? So then when you do eat, because you're just busy serving everyone else, you go, ask because I've had a stressful day at work. No, you are because you haven't eaten for a while and you wasn't paying attention because your attention is diverted elsewhere. That's not an emotional eating issue. but it's very easy to go and label it as. And I think sometimes people kind of, you know, get into that realm. And sometimes I think it's also a case of like if you're really tired and you've not managed your energy really well and you're going to sit there and eat in front of the TV and then you can't stop yourself from eating.

Also remember, you're paying attention to something else. You're not paying attention to the food that's going in. So are you emotionally eating or are you just like subconsciously snacking away because you're enjoying it while you're doing something else? And I think learning to question yourself like that can really help. because a lot of people fall victim to emotional eating and go, I'm emotionally when I'm stressed, when I'm tired, when I'm this.

Everybody has their thing that they do within certain emotional states, right? But the moment you call yourself something called you do something, you become a victim to the label. And the first thing you have to do very quickly, and this is just my opinion, a lot of people have very different opinions, but because I've been in that situation,

I'm quite strong with my opinion on this one. The moment you let go of the power, you disempower it, you become the victor in that situation. rather than the victim. And so what I would do in a situation, like I'd do with my clients, I'm like, well, cool,

if we know that you typically binge, over-e, over-indulge, over-enjoy, right? That's a word that I like using. I over-enjoy stuff sometimes. Go, well, can we take a percentage of your whole daily allowance and factor it in for that first? Then we reverse engineer.

Are you willing to suffer and be a bit more hungry at these points of time so that when it comes to the end, are you now a victim of emotional eating if you fitted it all in and you was able to actually factor in the snacks and the crap or whatever it needs to be. Because when it comes to making that decision,

half the time you won't want to do that anyways because you've given yourself permission to. Yeah, I think it's also important. And I love that you said that. A lot of it's like labels. Like there's not a person on the planet who doesn't emotionally eat. Like emotionally eating is like you have birthday cake. That's emotionally eat and you have pizza. And guess what?

That's a happy emotion. Like when I want to, what do we do when we want to celebrate? Yeah. We drink. And weddings. at birthdays and everything. So emotionally eating isn't a problem, but when it becomes your only coping mechanism

for stress, for heartache, for whatever it is, you know, then it can become a problem. And it's like you, Brad, like you would eat food out of high times of stress when you didn't know where your next meal was coming from because of the environment that you were brought up with. But eventually over time, you found other outlets and the gym actually became an outlet for you,

even to have something else other than to overeat them to make yourself feel better. And you know, it's really mad. It's actually funny you say that because where I was very much on the autistic spectrum, but I'm very functional, right? I was very funny for years with like my son's on the autistic spectrum as well. And I never ate outside of about 10 different food groups until I was in my late 20s. Like I didn't try steak until I was like 27, 28 years old. Now I pretty much have a steak every single fucking day, right? but it's like I was so funny and strange with food that I only stuck to certain things because of fear of not having control over certain situations and again it was because of what happened and something that like the gym really helped me to do was it helped me to open up my environment of being willing to try other things because I noticed how much better I felt after eating certain foods like how the digestion like all of you all to experience your energy is shit when you've gone on a binge of eating loads of crappy food right or like like my partner is a

example, she's, she's cut out sugar immensely for the past few days and she's been feeling dizzy and got a bit of a headache today. That's, that's a common sign of something you're eating that's not really serving you. Is it wrong to have it? No, but you know, it's like we get used to certain habits and responses with certain things that we eat and we don't pay attention. We don't ask ourselves that question. Like, we just suddenly feel tired and we feel ill. The first thing goes, oh, I'm coming down with a cold, right? Guaranteed change your eating habits. The likelihood is that's, that would change very quickly or you get healthy. So it leads back to that whole, like, learning to question your actions at the

same time, if you learn to question yourself, not just be like, oh, I'm getting ill, actually analyze yourself why I'm off eating ill. What have I been like the past few days? What has my eating been like? You very quickly start understanding where your actions come from. Yeah, it's funny that you said that you were afraid to kind of go away from the then maybe 10 foods that you might have before. I think that happens to a lot of people when they're first on the wait last journey. That's why they love meal plans. It's like, I stuck to these foods. And if I, you know, go away from this meal plan, then I'm going to put. put all the weight back on because they essentially don't trust themselves.

Yeah, yeah, massive. Drew as Maddo, I was having this conversation with, I think it was Lewis the other day, we're speaking about meal plans. I'm very heavy against giving clients, meal plans. I don't do that unless there's a very specific response for, like, photo shoot competitions or anything along them lines. And again, I'll only give them to the type of individuals that, like, it will serve well. I'm a massive fan of meal plans for myself.

But that's because of the lifestyle and type of character. I am. And the more people. Yeah. If you, with the amount of choices that I have available to me, I have like an, I end up getting like an executive function disorder, especially with a high capacity type of brain. It's like, fuck, there's too many decisions. I can't make a decision.

I'm just going to get the first thing that comes to my mind. That's just what's going to happen. So I have stages. And with me and my, me and my coach, actually, we work very closely together on this. And we've realized recently, it's like we're not meal planning me because at the moment where I'm going through so much change at the moment. with certain directions in business and other bits of all that. My life is so different day to day.

There actually, there's more risk of me not sticking to the meal plan process. So we've gone back to a calorie and macro perspective. And I think like they're all just tools that serve you at the right stage. And again, the only reason I know what serves me well is by asking myself the question. If I had meal plans, is the likelihoods that I can stick to this with the types of days that I have and have an access to a microwave. And it's another nose that that's a catalyst for disaster. You know? So there's something

There's a lot that said about with coaches where they don't like meal plans and they hate meal plans and it's very much slated them in but sometimes they really serve a purpose for people with emotionally eat as an example, right? We want them to have autonomy over themselves over food.

That's a big plan. Yeah, but sometimes I actually think it serves a time and a place to have a certain percentage of your day, calculated, not necessarily given to you, but you make decisions that you make with food that become part of your routine. because it takes the thought and decision-making process out of it.

It's just like, at least I know that I'm catered for, and I'm looking after myself with this. And then you only give yourself little space for decision-making. So, like, for me, breakfast, lunch, third, fourth meal, exactly the same. Last meal of the day, oh, I can't wait to have this today because I made the decision, that's the thing that I'm going to look forward to. So it very much suits different people, doesn't it? Yeah, I think I 100% agree with you.

Like, I'd have the same breakfast and lunch every day, and it's more so just because it takes to the decision fatigue out of my choices so I can keep keep my mind keep clarity on what I what I need to make decisions on but the whole point is that like I understand that if I wanted to go off what I usually eat have something else there's nothing wrong with that whereas some people who haven't kind of understood or done the work in terms of their nutrition don't understand that okay you don't actually need to follow this to get results but you could follow this and get results yeah I think there's a lot to be said for giving power to the clients by teaching them and

giving them the tools to be able to form a meal plan. Right. So if the client actually does want it, I'll never actually write out for them. But if they ask me, I'll be like, what do you think you could do? What is it? Do you think you're going to need this? Like, again, it's all questions. Help them, you know, understand why is they needing?

Like when you class put in there, she's ready now to make a meal plan with the knowledge that she has. And that's, that's the powerful thing about it. Like, you should have enough knowledge and understanding and education around food to one know how you feel, how you digest it, what you enjoy. because we've all got different taste words. If any one of you ask me to make your meal plant, I can guarantee you it will just be filled with the foods that I fucking enjoy, right?

Even if you gave me a list of all the stuff that you like, I'm going to make it with the stuff that I like and try and cater it from that because I'm going by what's creative and what I enjoy, you know? I wanted to ask you a little bit about, so obviously your coaching coaches at the moment, you've been coached, you've been on all ends of it. What do you think makes a good coach client's relationship

so that the client can actually see success. Well, I fucking love this because this is actually, I'm going to give two flip sides of the coin here because I have to play devil's advocate in both areas. So as a coach, I'm very involved with my clients. Like, I know everything about them. Their kids' names, their partner's names, like absolutely everything,

because I want them to feel so open with me. If they're failing, I don't want to use the word failing, if they're not moving at the pace that they want to move at or like they're kind of going in opposite directions to what the initial onset was, I want them to not feel afraid to go, Brad, like, I'm struggling, things are going wrong, what do you think is going on? And I don't want them to feel like I'm going to be dictating to them and being like, well, you're not going to get a result if you're not doing what I told

you do. It's more of a question of like, why do you think that you're not able to do this? What is it about this method or this situation that you're currently struggling with? So have an extreme, like, I'm a very open book. There isn't anything that you could ask me that I wouldn't be willing to tell you in detail, even down to deep, traumatic things that I've worked through I have no problem and I pride myself on vulnerability because that is what enables the women that I work with to be able to speak to me and feel safe because they know I'm not going to judge because of the way that I am. And I think it's really important. The issue that we find with a lot of coaches, a lot of coaches don't have the tools, knowledge or skill set to

cope with that level of vulnerability or the openness that a client may come to them with. So, for example, I have to help my coaching clients set a lot of boundaries with their clients based upon their comfort and skill set, but also what energetically drains them. So, for example, and I know Carl will understand this as very giving, caring coach. My biggest value is giving, right? And I've got a motto that I kind of live by every single day, which is leave people better than I find them. I don't care if someone's in a fantastic position when I meet them. I leave them better than I find them. I could smile, make him laugh, whatever the fuck it be, they could be the happiest person on the planet, but my mission is to make them a little bit happier when I leave, right? And I've got the

tools and the skills to have people unload on me, some really dark, horrible shit I have to do with sometimes, but I don't take it on. Sometimes I can do. It depends if I've not looked after myself. But a lot of coaches are trying to take on this notion that they can help anyone under any situation. And when we latch onto why people have certain eating habits, behavior habits, physical habits, based upon past, similar to like mine, most coaches aren't equipped with that. You know, 90% of coaches, I always make a joke, fell out of their mum's vagina in shape and seemed to think that they can now help people. And it's like they haven't got some mileage on their wheels yet in order to be able to deal

with that type of thing. I think it's a very difficult fine line because to be an incredible coach, you have to be willing to be vulnerable. You have to be willing to speak and be open, but that you also have to be willing to be firm in the sense of knowing where places like, my client's nicknamed me a cunt, but a caring cunt because I'm willing to say the shit that they don't want to hear, but I know how to say it in a way that doesn't offend them. Sometimes it does, and sometimes I'll blatantly offend them on purpose,

but I'll put a little smile just to soften the blow and dimples come on. It kind of... A shit sandwich. Yeah, yeah, and you get away with it, but coaching also comes with a bit of an off topic here, but this is, well, Carl was so good at this. You can only be a fantastic coach in certain areas of coaching if you've got personality to match it. And I think that's quite a big part of it.

Having, like, a flexible personality to be able to cater to people's emotions is huge. but I see a lot of coaches get really damaged, taken on lots of stuff from clients. And most coaches just want to save people and help people. But they do a work, they can damage the process if they take on too much. So it's a very fine line. Great relationship between coaching clients, vulnerability and they're willing to be as open as possible. But on the other side.

But on the other side, to make it a great client for coaches having them expectations and barriers of, gosh, it's a very difficult question. I think the way that it works really well from a coach to a client perspective is if the coach helps elicit the response to critical thinking to the client very early onset so that the clients understand

that this is somebody to help me with my fitness and nutrition and help me have positive behavior change they're not my therapist. And I think that's the thing that's really difficult. Coaches don't set that boundary and expectation and that's when they end up being terrible coaches.

You know? and it's like they're not at heart terrible coaches. But Cassandra, would you generally recommend the therapist along with coaching? So here's the thing. I hate therapy. And this is very controversial because I had therapy for years

and it left me in a much worse place for a long period of time. It has its place 100%. There's no if sounds or buts about it. Therapy, I believe, leaves you stuck in the past. Most conventional, I've had CVT and I've had, you know, DVD and there's a lot of different therapy types I've had that being through all the steps to

well-being stuff and the services that are in the UK, I've had private therapy. But what I found is a lot of it was how to figure out why you behave and act the way that you do based upon your past and here's some tools to cope with when you feel like a certain way. But the thing I always found missing from my own personal experience and with thousands of women that I've dealt with is there's never the steps of this is what you went through. This is how you felt. This is why you feel this way. coping tool rather than looking at the other end and going, this is how you want to feel. These are the actions that are required to take it. And here's the tools to start moving that way.

So I think it's, I think it's very, it's definitely recommended if you don't understand why you behave at and think and feel the way that you do because you need to have an understanding of it. But you need to make sure that you have it in a sense of making sure that there's positive and force moving forward therapy. So although I don't like it. that's just because I've had lots of bad experience, but that was likely because I was in that area for such a long time.

It was like, by the time I got therapy, I was already wanting to move forward. And all day did was keep bringing me back. Yeah. You know? So it's like, I think it just has its place. Everybody, I think, will benefit from a level of therapy of some sorts. But if you're trying to get better at something,

you need therapy in the sense of like future vision-based actions, in my opinion. So, so in terms of understanding. understanding why you feel the way you feel and having awareness around that, but not being stuck in that, not being stuck in that kind of bubble for the rest of your life. What's, what's that saying? Like, you don't, you don't drown from falling in the river. You drown from staying emerged in it. So it's like, get out of the river, get out of your kind of talk. So, John, now that had the part of the learning for the future. Yeah. So the way that I was looking, if we think of like, if we've had an injury, right, let's say we've had an injury and we've hurt ourselves, but not like a blatant injury. We've got a repetitive problem. We're not sure what's going on. The first thing we've got to diagnose the problem, figure out what's the repetitive problem that's leading you to the actions that's leading to the injury. Now, what muscles do we need to stabilise and support and strengthen in order to make sure that that never happens again?

The way that I look at mental therapy is a muscle, you have to strengthen the correct muscles in order to not be a certain way, right? So, for example, one of the things I used to from being very insecure, because obviously when you're completely neglected by primary caregivers, it causes a lot of stress and a lot struggle just to tap into something which I didn't touch on air for a lot of you as well which blows people with mind with my mom's quite young she's having when she was 17 during the time that both my brothers were taken up on mum by social services and placed into my care when I had my window cleaning business I had an employee and he's a couple years younger to me and my mom wasn't getting

any benefit money anymore for the children because she wasn't there and my mom's got like osteoarthritis she had like two knee replacements at the age of 28 like she's fallen apart right and also that is sped up by copious man to them, Fememones and lots of other issues like that. But she wasn't getting enough money now to be able to stay where she lived because she wasn't getting any money from the children. And I wasn't getting it enough yet. And obviously I wasn't earning the money that I was and need to pay for things.

And so I put my employee in her spare room paying rent in order to help. Behind the scenes, they were getting drugged up and drunk most nights. And my mom felt pregnant with them. So I had a mum that I only abused my trust my whole entire life. She'd let boyfriends beat the shit out of me. that's it and all sorts of stuff. When I saved both my brothers,

managed to get them into great care, helped my mum escape an abusive relationship. I've done a whole training on this for some people. I don't blame her. I'm not angry at her because my mum only did the actions that helped her feel better in the motion. She didn't do anything to hurt me, but she took the actions to make her feel better

and didn't think about our consequences, right? But like, the act, that whole entire process, there was some guys about to clack on your money to really remind me on that in second call. But like that whole entire process of like losing trust from primary caregivers led me to be such an insecure mess for such a long period of time that while I was having the therapy, it was just like, oh yeah, you're like this because of this situation and this situation and this situation and this situation and this. I was like, yeah, cool. I understand that. How do I stop feeling that way?

I understand why I feel that way. You're giving me coping mechanisms, but I don't want to just cope. I want to excel. I don't want to just when I feel like shit, stop feeling like shit. I want to know how do I turn this into a lesson. that I move forward from, that I now thank as a result. And one of the things that I learned as a direct result of there is what I touched on there, is I learned to stop being a victim of my mum's a scumbag.

She distanced to me, how there, she do this, you know, blah, blah. So my mom was in a really bad fucking place. She just had a children taken off of her. She'd been an abusive, drug-fueled relationships a whole entire life and had no help to get out of that. And I put someone in the house who gave her comfort because he was there helping throughout the situation, which led to them drinking and developing a relationship behind the scenes,

they then kept hidden from me. And to the point that she found out she was 16-week pregnant. And because my mum's got a lot of medical because she didn't know anything was going on, there was no signs, there was no showing, it was no anything. She was actually losing weight the whole entire time that this situation arose. So when I, because I've done so much work on personal development, I learned to understand empathy in the sense of she didn't do that to hurt me. She did that to do something to make her feel better.

And she got put in a situation where unfortunately my 10-year-old son now has a I'm not see there's too much younger than him. You know, so quite a situation. So here's a question, right? So even on kind of victim mentality, because like there will be people, I think we all fall into kind of the victim mentality trap to some degree.

Obviously, some people won't have as big of extreme cases. Like, to be fair, like a lot of the things that you would victimize are justified victim, but a lot of the time will end up falling into this kind of victim mentality, where I was like, I couldn't get my training sessions as I couldn't do my steps because this is probably you know, my husband's not helping me and the kids are acting up and, you know, to keep me laying work or whatever it is, how do we recognise that we're falling into this victim mentality and that

it's not actually serving our best purpose in terms of who we want to become? First thing that I say to end at the moment, your sentence starts with, I feel like you're straight away telling a story and that's part of it, right? And something that's really difficult to do and I had to do this a lot and it was something that I was very grateful that I learned from Paul. I don't care if your mum's just been fucking your friends and had a kid.

I don't care if you've been left and cheated on. I don't care if you've just been, had your leg broken by someone hitting you with a car who was drunk driving. Find a way to thank them for it. Okay? And this is the hardest thing and I can tell you, I can do this in any situation.

You've been through the... I've only touched on it. Carl knows quite a lot. Touched on 5% of the shit that I've been through in life, even over the past couple of years. Like, I've learned to be able to say thank you. I've had three lots of very extensive hand surgery, which you can see through here.

But these two fingers are connected. I wasn't able to try. I've only been able to start training him properly after the past couple of years. What I'm trying to get is when you learn to thank something, there's always a fact. There's always a thanks for something. I'll give you an example. My hand was horrendous. I had an injury through a very toxic relationship.

A big last friend all the way through my hand, severed the tendons to my hand. It ruptured. six months on the cast, physio, just to end up having to get it done again. This is all during COVID as well. So lots of complications, not been able to get surgery and this. I had three years essentially not been able to use my right hand. I can tell you now, Carl, give it a test. As a guy trying to piss holding with a different hand is a very different killer fish.

It doesn't work, right? It doesn't work. You'd think it'd be simple if it's fucking doesn't. If I want to wipe your ass with an opposite hand, it doesn't work, right? It doesn't. Very different. Life was very, very difficult. but I was able to thank the situation

even though it costs me lots of money lots of time, cost me the ability to drive, cost me the ability to get fat again because I couldn't train and old habits started creeping in. I was able to thank the situation because it helped me put my time and attention into things that I was neglecting,

such as working on my education, my mental development in certain other areas. So though, yeah, I was able to lose out on certain things, it enabled me to develop insanely at some other skills that I'd been putting off for years. So like whenever you got something bad happening, you still have to go, well, I can even choose to put the energy into complaining about how bad this situation is. I can choose to find something that I can channel this energy into to help me

do something better. I'll give an example, like working with at one stage, I think it was like 157 clients that I have in total. I couldn't type because I couldn't use my fucking hand. Even now, I can't actually lift my index finger by itself, but I have to use the middle finger with it because they're attached. So I can't point. I do it with my kids at the top, like, you little shit. And then I'm like, fuck's sake, I have to trigger finger them. We have to use both at the same time, right? but I had so many clients I had to type to all the time on the laptop that I stopped doing work a lot of time because I was letting it put me off. So it forced me to adapt and learn to think of other ways and I realized that you can use dictation on the MacBook. So I'd speak to my MacBook to make it right out what applies to people.

But what that situation led me to do is it actually enabled me to unlock quite a few things in business and the quality of coaching I do because I found alternative ways to go around things. It enabled me like, because I've still done PT as well during some of the stage, right? it enabled me to coach people inside of a gym when I was doing PT sessions through better communication because I couldn't give examples of it anymore. So I was able to just constantly look okay, cool, this is shit

and yeah, it's holding me back from doing this, this and this. But look at all the things it's enabling me to focus on. Let's look at this situation my mom just because that's a prime example of like an extremity. It enabled me to have a lot more empathy for a lot more people

rather than just thinking certain people of scumbags because of their behaviours and it would be actually like, why do they behave like that? you know, yeah, I'm ambitia, but I can't write for shit with the left hand, you know. But it's like, it enables me to be really, really good at understanding and looking at situations and analysing it from a very different perspective. You know?

How did you get better at doing that? Because a lot of the times we don't even realise that we're, like, a lot of times we're in that situation where we're emotionally charged, where we're feeling bad for ourselves. And it's hard to find that kind of ground standard, that thing to, to, to, to, to, to, to be thankful for or to improve that kind of emotional intelligence. Like was that from the work that you did with Paul? Was that from Jordan? How did you improve that?

That's from the repetition of doing the work every single fucking day and not getting rid of my coach because a coach really should not be used to get a result and that's it and invite only. A coach is there to help course correct you. A coach should always be there for course correction. My coaches in all of my fields have a glow at me that I don't speak to them enough.

but I don't speak to them enough because I know that I've got my shit handled, but then when shit start isn't being handled, I make them aware, I tell them what's going on because I'm so critically. I don't think there's, this is my sound egotistic, but I don't think there's many people is self-aware that I come across in my circle and in my life as myself, because I've done so much work on it. So when situations happen, I know when I'm behaving or not acting or be in a certain way,

because I've done. So when I know there's issues going on, I'll lay it out. Like I'll give you an example. I had a call with Paul today, Carl, funnily enough about how I'm feeling about some certain situations. I had the answers and I was right. But I wanted a second opinion just to give me the thumbs up because the problem is when we're emotionally charged, we make emotional based decisions, not logical.

So I wanted to make sure was my decision logical or was it emotional. Turns out it was logical. I was right, was given a thumbs up. That then assures me that the decision that I made was correct. Whereas a lot of the time, even if we make a decision that is correct, if we don't get that little knobs from someone, or a little like thumbs up from a level of authority or someone that we seek,

we leave doubt. And any seed of doubt that you leave in your head stays there in the subconscious. And I found within the, I'll use some examples actually. So with my fitness coach, had a lot of changes in business in life and all sorts in a fucking very short period of time.

Yeah, I went from losing 10 kilos again in about eight weeks now that I'm able to train properly and really started getting into stuff and then life got my amount busy. and I wasn't sticking stuff and I wasn't doing that. And my coach is a very good coach, very bodybuilder because it's routine structure, which is kind of what I need from somebody.

But then when we realized that I was sleeping in certain areas, I said to him, I was like, mate, I'm a bit disappointed in myself, that I've not sucked to my food, I've not done this, I've not even been tracking. But I've been able to accomplish this. I've been able to accomplish that.

I've been able to do that. And the trade-off I'm willing to put a pause in progress in that area for the extantial progress that I've made in this area, but do me a favour, don't let me keep making a habit of saying, but I've made lots of progress here, here and here, if the one thing that I'm paying you to help keep me on track with is this, and I'm doing it,

don't let me out with you being, I'm doing well here, so it's okay with it. So again, it's really important for a coach, not just for when I'm fucking up, but there's sometimes that I'm really excelling, but I have to get into course correct to me. Because I'm like, this is the goal. This is what I want to focus.

we had to have a call not long ago. He's like, I hope that your goal and your vision is still the same. Let's have a catch-up call to go through it because you've been saying a whole lot of noise, which is very different lately. And then when we got on a call again, he called me out on some stuff that I've been saying. So again, it's like, although I'm very self-aware with situations, very self-aware, but sometimes I need that. It sounds like I've got coaches for years. Do you not think you would ever not need one? I've had many of years in my life without having coaches, but I will always favour having them. you know like it'll make a lot of people feel sick but i spend nearly three grand a month in total in my mentorships in coaching that i have and i know that i'm very fortunate to do that

but when you see the hours that i work and the businesses that i do in this and i wouldn't be able to function at the level and do the stuff that i do impact and help the people that i do without it so for me that's a prerequisite to greatness to being able to do what i do you know like even if I wasn't doing some of the levels of stuff that I do, I would always allocate at least 10% of what it is that I have income in to actually do stuff. So basically we have entered into it a long time. Yeah, like I'm going to like,

I, one thing I work on with a lot of my clients is I give them actually a financial spreadsheet to help them understand their income, to their outgoings and this, that never when they work for me. Because one of the first things that I've said to them in my relationship with my clients is like in my first couple of months of you, I want this investment to be paying for it. with the lifestyle changes that we help you make by making you actually aware of the stuff

that you spend. And I don't want people to lose out on quality life. I'm not the type of person says, oh, we're talking to getting rid of a takeaway once a week. Fuck off. I encourage it, right? But I'm the type of person that wants them to understand the benefit as a direct result of it without getting too airy, fairy and too mindsety and too hippy, like, if you are in a better place

because you're focused on yourself and you're looking after yourself and you're heavily investing yourself, better opportunities will come as a direct result of that. the amount of my women that I have told to go to their boss and say what will it take for me to get a pay rise what will it take for me to get a promotion because they're too scared to ask and they're just waiting for it and I've given them confidence and just being like you know if you are working on yourself do you feel you're a better a better employee now yeah I've got loads more energy I'm so much more productive okay let's present that I don't personally for myself anyway the minute I started investing in myself by investing in

a coach, my quality of life drastically improved, my confidence in myself drastically improved, and then opportunities that came off the back of that drastically improved. I think with someone has never had a coach before or doesn't feel like they should invest in themselves to get a coach. What they're essentially saying is that, you know, I'm not worth investing in myself. I don't have the, you know, self-esteem or anything like that to be worthy of being coach. And I know that there's a confirmation bias from me and Brad because we're coaches, but I think that's also because we've been on the other end of things as. Well, I actually, well, I fell in,

all of your questionnaire is incredible. And I'll answer on a second, but sorry, don't forget this point. I actually got forced into the coaching industry. I didn't decide to become a coach. I was helping so many people naturally inside of the gym from seeing the positive change in my attitude and behavior

and all the people on my estate going, and Brad come from this absolute lunatic booting off doors for people that are owed him money and this, that I know everyone coming through this life, to somebody is actually helping people get. in an incredible shape. And I've got a screenshot of it somewhere. And I created a website, a blog, and it was called bradshealthtips.co.com. UK. And I've got my journey on it. I used to just write blogs, just teach people. It was reaching people over the world. And eventually one day, when the government were funding people to become coaches, I actually had a mate who was working on someone

and the companies. They put my name into it about me knowing and actually put me through into the coach. And I was never going to fall into it. Long story, short, I ended up taking one of the biggest risks of my life when my child was only a few months old and I sold my window cleaning business and only had enough money to pay for all my bills for the next six weeks and I went to pure gym and I was like, right, I'm ready and they're like, Brad, we don't have any spaces to take anyone on and I was like, well, let me just pay rent and I, and I, I've got a magazine clip where I was featured in the magazine for being one of the fastest up-and-coming PTs in the country, you know? So it's like, there's a lot to be said from coaching the feel-good factor that I had from it,

but it wasn't that. It was actually me investing in other people in a non-financial way as well. You've got to remember, like, investing into coaching isn't always just the case of, like, you being coached. Like, even you helping other people helps you as a person invest in your time and energy into places. So rather than looking at it as like a financial metric, look at it as your energy. When you invest your energy into better places, better things come to you at the same time. Oh, I have a good question there. Yeah, like that's what I say is, do you believe in goals center or is the recommendation that there is no end point, no goalposts? Let's look at who, children, right?

children don't have many problems in life because they're always looking to be 1% better every single day. They're always learning. The brain thrives on education and learning in stimulus. And the moment like people start becoming depressed, though, hate themselves when they are stuck in a repetitive notion of no improvement. So the moment you're just stuck in a job where there's no improvement, you're just showing up, you're just doing stuff, there's no level up. I always like to say life is like a game, you know. We're always trying to get our experience points up. We're always trying to level up. We're always trying to accomplish the next boss.

We're always trying to move on to the next thing. There is no fucking end point. And that's the brilliant thing about it. Because if there was an end point, you're like, yes, I made it. You would be so depressed because you'd be like, but what's next? And rather than looking at goal setting is,

I can't wait to achieve this. It should always be, I can't wait to be that 1% better. I can't wait to be that little bit more effective. I can't wait to be that more efficient. And the beautiful thing is, though, is you also got to remember we've got like five key areas in our life, essentially. And in Poole's world,

we call it the five-fs family finance focus fun and fitness fitness finance focus yeah and it's like every single one of us an area of our life if we focus think of it is like a big circular notion and they're all in like you know five different like categories sometimes you're going to put like a lot more percentile into improving in this area and then your life's going to level up on that area these other areas don't necessarily like you know elevate at the same time and the way that i always like to work on myself as a person and develop is i always like to go let me work on my weakest link first. So for example, I know sometimes we do this like specific training where every quarter we analyze our life and where have we done really well, where are we

excelled, where is the areas that we probably neglected a little bit and we probably want to improve on. And I look at a lot of the time, my family is the thing that I've not focused or put as much attention in. So I'll set goals around dating my kids more, dating my partner more and dating my things more. And it's not that like I retreat or go worse at certain situations. It's just I put so much energy and time into focusing on this area that was a weakest link prior, that of course something else is going to suffer. So, for example, like, a lot of you if you're in a health and fitness journey, don't feel so bad if you're not making progress the way that you want,

if you're excelling in your career or your business, because you've got to remember you can't transfer that level of energy in an even playing field across all areas. It's not going to happen. Same as seasonality. You're not always going to make the same level of progress in January as you are in November, you know, different things go on and different. The key thing is, is are you still trying?

Are you still put an effort into it? And I think the thing is goal setting is massively important and it's okay for your goals to change. So we do loads of different techniques. There's a thing called a hot pen technique, which is essentially like it's a way of going to society, where it's tapping into the unsubconscious mind of when you're writing about things that you want, right? And what we do is we set like a three year goal of what we want to achieve in different categories of our life. And we plan the next 90 days. So go, what do I need to do within this year if I want to achieve this within three years?

then we break it down, go, what do I need to do within the next 90 days to be on track for this in a year? And we break it right down until we go, well, what the fuck do I need to do today to work towards that? Because as long as we've got a North Star, we've got a direction to move towards. And it doesn't matter, I can tell you how many times I've got like 60 days into my 90 day goal setting plan. And I get here and I'm like, actually don't give a fuck about half this stuff. And I course correct to myself, but at least I've set myself moving forward. The moment you're stagnant and you sit still, you're sat with your thoughts, your emotions, your feelings,

and you're just not improving. And if you think about a lot of the stuff that people say, right? Like, when they're depressed, stuff, I'm not good enough, I'm not this, I'm not that. Like, I'm getting nowhere. I'm a nobody. They're not working on themselves. Most depressed people that have come across them,

and I've helped a lot of people come away from medication, not by me, like saying, get off of it, but people are actually wanting to experiment and be like, I want to get help with my doctor, to reduce my medication and come completely off of it because I'm starting to feel so much better now with the actions that I'm taking and looking forward to doing things in life that I don't think like I need these things hardly back

because I can control it. Like, I'm unmedicated. And for the level of ADHD and certain things that I've got, it's always highly advised that I should be, right? Being labelled bipolar, like, borderline personality disorder, like emotionally unstable personality disorder, anxiety, beat it. Because I've been on all sorts. I'm actually sometimes just a little bit too excited

and my emotions get a bit all over the place and I'm hyperactive, right? So I've learned to become self-aware. That's my level of medication when it comes to it. But again, the end is I'm so good is because I recognize myself. And I'm like, what am I doing really well at? What am I not doing so well out? Okay, the stuff I'm not doing so well out, what goal can I set to improve that?

And I think sometimes goals we get too honed in on a specific metric rather than just going, what's ways that I can be better? So I'll give an example. With, like, if I, like, one of the goals I say quite frequently across the board for like, like, like a relationship, for example, with dates. a certain amount of dates across the next three months. You know, when it comes to like certain fitness goals, I don't always like it to be set on a weight metric.

It might be, because I've got a lot of health conditions, like I said with fibromyalgia and all the damages. I can't lift the heavy weights and the shit that I used to do. So sometimes my goal will be to just do certain amount of sessions, like, and hit a certain amount of total volume, which I'm not sure if most of you understand about total volume yet, but it's like, I'll set goals that just give me something to focus on because devil makes work for idle hands.

If we are left with nothing to do, we are either solving problems or we are creating them. So I would rather spend my days and my weeks and my months solving things rather than spending days, weeks and months creating things there, then we then can't solve. So I think goal setting is a big thing there. And you know what? I love the way that you said in terms of goal settings.

Because whenever people hear goals settings, they hear of like financial gain in terms of a career or weight loss in terms of a fitness journey. But the fact that you said like even goal settings of, you know, dates with your kids, dates with the misses, whatever it is, like looking at kind of relationships and all them other things that need to be to be set as well. Think about this. A lot of you, if you struggle with your own self, like a lot of us, with the worst, most horribleest people to ourselves, we're worried about the opinion of other people.

Yeah, the shit that we say to ourselves is fucking relentless, right? Take yourself on a fucking date. you know whether that's under the sheets with something that goes or whoever you go into the cinema right like take yourself on a date if you need to go take yourself on a day set yourself like the car next video is coming out soon but it's like take yourself on a date if you notice your relationship with yourself is pretty shit take yourself on a date go do something go like go to like one of them like boots or something

and go pretend you want to trial their makeup to get a free makeover you know for the day to make yourself look at like find things to do that just make yourself feel better about it, you know? And it's like a lot of people look at goals, if goals are got to be something massive. You know, they don't have to be. And I think it's really important as well just to like recognize going, okay, I've retracted a little bit on this. But like, how can I just like make it a little bit better? So for example, if you know, it's like, I do this a lot of my clients in their

relationships. If they're like, oh, my husband's not really support me and this than I ever, sometimes was setting up a goal, like, okay, cool. You might have felt like he's not supporting, you know? You've thought that potentially if you sat there, if he's not going to do anything about it, why don't you just listen more fast? because then you hold the power to understand why is you behaving away and let's give you the skill set to be able to not manipulate the behaviour of the other people but help you understand why they're behaving a certain way

because then you will get the reaction that it is that you want and some ways that we do that is by setting a goal so for example I'll give you an example and being a room full of women head like you can't judge me for this one because I'm a man because I only coach women because I care about men are fucking annoying to coach right but like I'll use an example one of my clients Nicola her husband is a moody fucker every time he comes back from work which then triggers him

and he's always go I've had a hard day at work she works as well and she deals with the kids right and I literally said so I was like if he's complaining the moment on time he's hungry and all this sort of shit why don't you just make dinner sometimes and she kind of got a little bit of defense I was like hear me out every time he comes back at this conflict and you argue look at it this way you want that to stop you want to be the bigger person but it's said emotionally affecting you more than anyone So how can you be in control of this situation instead of just getting heated and fucked up with it? How about we set a goal two to three times a week?

Dinner is ready when he comes home so you can sit there with him and the kids, ask him how the day is. After week three or four of doing this, if the behaviour is changed, let's sit down with the partner and set a goal of when he comes back a couple times week making dinner together.

But by setting a goal like this, At first, it was an ego. I'm not doing this because I shouldn't have to, because he's being a dick. To nothing's going to change if you don't take an action to help make and facilitate that change. So you can either put the energy into arguing

and having a problem, or how about you put the energy into understanding he's had a tough day, he feels like shit, you've had a tough day and feel like a shit, but you are a stronger, better character. Let's give you the tools to get the situation that you want.

And I shouldn't be saying this. My and Carl's gender are fucking stubborn little wankers. in the sense of like the way that we respond and do stuff is very different we're all suckers for affection and attention but if we're in bad head spaces we can be very terrible at that

and then a woman will react very mirrored in the same way which makes men's ego just go off the rows right so sometimes when I'm setting goals we're not just looking at goals of how can we be better we're looking at goals of how can we improve our situational circumstances to make our life easier you know so like with my

children, sometimes they're a fucking burden and they stress me out. And for those you that moms don't like, because it is true, right? We love them to piss. But when they're asleep and they shut the fuck up off the time, right? Or when they had that one moment of, I love you, daddy. Oh, thanks so much. Now I'll go to bed. Right.

But it's like sometimes I realize, well, actually, why are they imitating me so much? Because I'm not fucking present when I'm with them. So can I make sure I finish work early enough so that when I get them in the car, wrong, I'm like, oh, guys just shut the fuck up. They're excited to see me. So can I set the goal of making? sure that I have 30 minutes to myself in peace and quiet so I can change my emotional states that when I pick them up, they're fucking ready, I'm ready for it.

You know, so sometimes the goal set, I think it's not just about you level and up. It's about what needs to be put in place as a stepping stone in order to facilitate the next level of change. And a lot of the time, the goals that we want, someone else is in control of. So how do we put something in play to help us steer what we want in a better direction? and relationships is a huge one with that and I see it a lot of the time. Melissa said,

Melissa is a good question now. Did you find there was a turning point on your fitness journey for you when you weren't worried about the number on the scales as much? Yeah, massively actually. So there was a stage where when I was in the best shape of my life

and I looked absolutely incredible, I was still really struggling with like feeling massive episodes of depression and like suicidal thoughts and tendencies. And I want to try this out here because I'm sure some of you have experienced this possibly do still experience this. And sometimes I say,

still do too. Having images or processes in our brain of suicidal tendencies or thoughts or processes when we feel sad, we have to sometimes recognise that's actually normal. You know, sometimes it's our brain just going, that's a much easier way to just fucking not have to deal with the pain and the problem right now. Doesn't mean we're going to act upon it. So it doesn't mean that we're a bad person because we sometimes think about. And this is something that actually did help me with a therapist, certain little things like this, which is a case of it's okay to have that thought of roses. We can't go, oh, no, that's a bad thought. You're a bad person now. You know, but what I found is when I noticed the correlation for how it is that I felt

after I step on the scales, and I'm on a hard step on it in the morning. I'd step it on the evening. And I know full well that if I go and drink this, I'm going to weigh half a kilo heavier, but I don't give a fuck. I'm a fat piece of shit if I weigh in the evening to the point where I'd start trying to dehydrate myself just to be like, I hope I lose this much weight. when I realized how draining I was and as a direct result of it, that was, remember I said I'd like to do things to the extremes and I'm going to at a very fast pace, right?

I put myself in discomfort very quickly, whether I want to or not, and then I have to learn the lesson very quickly. So I actually then set myself the challenge going, well, if I filled this fucking shit every time I weigh myself, how could I get away from it? Again, being extreme,

I took a fucking hammer to the scales. I got a video of it somewhere. I smashed them. because I know if I just take the batteries out I'll just put the fucking battery back in. You know, I know if I take the food and I'll go put it in the boot with the car so I try and I know I'm going out

in the fucking boxes in the middle of night and I'm opening that car and I'm going to go for a drive and get more fucking food, right? Like, I know myself so I go to the extremes of situations and don't get me wrong after like two, three days,

it wasn't until I was like, I'm actually waiting myself in a bit. But I noticed how much better I felt but it was only because I journal every single day and take recognition of how I think and how I feel. And one of the my favorite questions in the day is,

what happens today that I could have handled better? And I'd say the situation. And then the next question is, knowing what I know now, what will I do next time? Because that helps facilitate like a little seed in my head so next time I find myself in a situation like that. I've repeatedly told myself how to handle it.

So I've almost thanked my future self for like, you know, doing that situation. And I found once I done that, and I had to put myself in that, extreme position of getting rid of the scales to kind of understand how it is that I felt. It was very freeing. But also it helps with, you know how I was saying earlier about being able to look for

wins, self-evaluate him? I'd monitor. How many days am I an absolute fucking moody asshole compared to normal? You know, what were the inches across the body? What was my weight in terms of the weight that I was lifting in the gym? What was my effort? Because I was tracking the effort on my effort, the intensity that I was working towards. and then I would start analyzing all the data.

So even if my scale weight didn't change, I'd be like, okay, cool, but look at all the extra positives across this. And I got into this stage where as long as there's one win, it's a fucking win. You know, and I think that's one of the biggest, most important aspects of it is as long as you've got a win somewhere, you're still moving forward. And a lot of people go, I've won here, I've won here, I've made progress here, but the scale weight's fucking shit. I'm a failure.

And it's like, for fuck sakes, Angie, you've lost weight. You know, you slept with your husband more than you have done in the past 10 years, because your relationship's fucking better, you're sleeping better, you're experimenting with your foods and you're still going to fucking complain. What's wrong with you? You know,

because you have to start to learn recognising the wins. And so for me, that only commas an accumulation of doing the reps every day of journaling, analysing data, searching for the wins

even in the hardest fucking places. You know, I think that's a huge thing. Kirstie, what helps you to trust the process without having a scale number or something to cling onto for security?

That's again, having, giving myself a volume of opportunity. A volume of opportunity to seek wins. The volume of opportunity to track as much as I can physically track in a way that is not an

emotional based decision. Like, this is logic. Did I improve? Yes or no? While the fucking weight that I lifted and the amount of reps that I lifted and the total volume that I lifted, that's a fucking positive. The amount of hours that I slept, that's a positive.

Every single day I write three to five wins down. So by the end of the week, I've got 21 for 30 wins. So if I've written out 30 wins, have I had a fucking good week? Well, of course I can. If you sit there on a Sunday and you go, have I had any wins this week?

Most people are, oh, no, it's been a fucking shit week. I won't accept it with my clients. You write me five minimum. I don't care how shit your week's being. I've had women who have lost their moms and dads in the same fucking month, and I still make them try and find wins. You know, because at the end of the day, there's a lot to be said about positive, you know,

um, reinforcement of your brains. to consistently seek our positive. We've got like a, what is it, like a two to one negative bias, don't we? You know, bad news travels much faster than good news. And we will very quickly seek out danger from our primal instincts of, you know, we've got to the stage in life where we used to fear a noise for a saber-tooth tiger trying to kill us. And now a notification on fucking Instagram can trigger the same emotional,

scared response. And it's like, come on, like, we might have evolved into incredible human beings, but some of us a bit pathetic at the same time. The inbox anxiety did I guess. Yes, yes, I can imagine, mate. Just to give you guys a funny one, if any of you see what I sent out an email to 10,000 people today. I got some triggered guy. The subject line was a bit quick-based.

It was like, do you fancy it with a wink face and question mark, right? And it was an invitation to a six-week challenge of my run. I got some very insecure guy going, why are you messaging my wife like this? I'll find out where you live and I'll fight you. It was quite a funny thing. But I get anxiety every time I send something out, I know that's going to happen. But don't worry,

don't worry, my, went down to 10,000 other people. Yeah. To answer that, to let go and find other levels of security, you have to find wins in as many opportunities as possible,

but things that are much more important. You remember what we said at the beginning? You get into this journey because you want to feel better. So if the metrics that you're winning are things you feel better in, you feel happier, you feel more energetic, you're finding more positive wins.

If that's the reason why you want to lose weight is to feel better, why is it than when you are making the metrics that prove that you are feeling better, which is what the original goal is. Why are you then letting a scale fucking weight determine that when that wasn't actually what the goal was? So reaffirming that is, I think it's a very huge, a huge thing. And I know what, Kirsty, one of our goals was to get back consistent in the gym, which

she is. So therefore, that is another metric of her progress. I guess, I guess one of the things you want to look at you know, he said it was, we just said that if I'm overstep and just say, but if one of your metrics is to get more consistent than the gym, why? Like what's the, why is one of my most favorite questions. If I've got an answer, I'll ask why five times. You know, like, why do I want to be more consistent?

Well, what's that going to do for you? Well, I'll see better progress. Okay, what are you trying to progress towards? What I want to look better? Okay, well, why do you want to look better? Because I want to feel better. Because I'm feeling tired every single day. Okay, why are you feeling tired every day?

Well, I'm probably also working too much and not sleep. Like, you can get into a deep rabbit hole. And until you get to the stage of asking yourself so much that then nothing else can come out because you've got to the bottom of the problem, Sometimes I think there's a lot to be said about finding yourself in discomfort by asking yourself the difficult questions again and again and again. And so you actually get a real answer. And I think that's a very important thing. But I'm very curious, Jennifer, you put I'm right in the middle of that realization.

I'm guessing that was when we were speaking about looking at what wins to make and what things to detach from. Hamis said supporting relationships change that also supports our personal fitness goals. is part of the mindset journey. Cognitively, I'm there, but sometimes my emotional intelligence is lacking in the moment. It can be, you know,

this is the thing that's really important about whatever you've gone through something that is emotionally triggering or something along their lines, write it down. Write it down, but don't try and analyze that situation until the next day.

So I've got notebooks everywhere. So if I find something challenging that emotionally charges me, I'll write it down. I'll write how I feel. We used to do this task, which was really petty. Let's say if Carl said something to piss me off, I'd say what it was,

and then it would be like, and how do I feel about Carl? I think he's a fucking little nobbed, right? And it would just be loads of stuff, and you get it all out. But then the goal and the trick is to try and reverse that round about you on every sentence.

There was a list of questions we got. There's a woman called Byron Katie, and there's a book called Loving What Is, and she's got an app as well, right? Fucking incredible woman. It helps you learn to change and reflect a certain aspect. So if I was like, they said, like, we'd ask questions if I was like, Carl's an absolutely fucking knobbed.

I, I'd be drops off the face of the cliff, blah, blah, blah. And you have to get petty with it. The task is to get petty. After you do it, you have to go back through to work and look at it. Like, is what you said here completely true? Yes or no. There's no. And you go, okay, no, he's not.

Or if you go, yeah, it is. It would be like, can you be 100% that's factual and you're going, okay, no, it's not. then you have to write the question like what you have to turn it around about you what is it about you that you hate yourself and that you're a little prick and it's only like I'm fucking not really happy with myself because I called them a little prick and all we was trying to do was give me a bit of advice on something and I just wasn't ready to listen and you suddenly go like shit like it's there's again a lot of work that's been done on learning to be able to like kind

of like flip that script but when it comes to like if your emotional intelligence isn't there in the moment understand it's really powerful to write it down let your emotions come out let them experience but try not to let your emotions fuck up someone else's emotions because that's you not taking responsibility of your own behaviour. Remember, everybody's only responsible for their behaviour, their reactions and we only have a problem based upon our perception of how it is that we interpretate it. One of you could be having a bad day and I could say you look tired and you'll call me a jumped up little prick because you assume that I said something negative. If you're having a fantastic day and I'm like, you look a bit tired. You're like, yeah, do you know what? Yeah, I've had a bit of a

I had sleep last night, be working a little bit too much. Your perception of how what I've said can massively and dramatically change based upon your emotional state in that very point moment. So if you want to learn how to work on your emotional state and learn your emotional intelligence, just like in a gym with a weight and developing a bicep, it requires repetitions. It requires repetitions of recognizing the reason why you think react the way that you do, writing it down next day looking at how could I have handled that situation better, knowing what I know now next time I fall into a situation like that,

what could I do to prevent it? This creates data inside your self-conscious to help you develop it next time. It's why I'm a very big fan of the journaling process just because it buys it gives you stack of undeniable evidence of how to support situations. And all emotional intelligence is, it's like as time goes on,

your reaction to a situation speeds up. So if you're finding yourself, like with my partner with the husband, every check in it, it was always fucking dinner, of shit because of this and because of that and we order takeaway. So that situation, which actually probably should have added on for the women there that was going, I ain't cooking for none man, right? It probably would have held to, but added it. It was affecting

her diet and the choices that she was trying to make. So we were like, you're responsible for that still. So let's take responsibility here. If you're fucking up because of this situation, stop blaming someone else. What can you do in order to make the situation better for yourself? And we created and formulated a plan around it. A lot of it comes down

to really taking complete ownership. but it's really difficult to get to that stage, isn't I? It took me until probably only a couple of years ago that I really took full ownership. There was a lot of stuff that I used to blame on my labels, like my ADHD and this, that the other bit. And don't get me wrong, there is a lot of stuff that I really do struggle with and I can't do things like, quote, unquote,

some normal people do. But everybody's also like that. We are all wired in certain ways. Like, there's certain things, for example, that I do, that my brain just doesn't function. Just doesn't matter how much I try and do stuff. I've got Alexa in this room, and it will screen reminders at me every hour

and I just ignore it. It doesn't matter what I try and do it. It's because I just don't perform it in certain ways. And so what I do is rather than going, fuck, I need to keep trying to do that and keep failing. I go, okay, cool. Can I at least understand why it is that I do this this way? And then I'll go, okay, cool,

what can I do in order to at least, like, make this situation? Like, we've got a fun joke inside of my, both of my coaching business. And we called it, I'm doing a Bradley. And it's, how do I Bradley-proof things? Like, I'm terrible. getting shit left writing centre. So I purposely speak to my phone and I speak to Alex all the time and I write notes down all the time and I speak to myself. God knows how much. I spend most of my time

on myself speaking to Siri and Alexa like them, my mates sometimes, right? Just getting them to remind me shit. And then what I'll do is I end up having all this shit to do and then I'll look at it and realize half that I don't need to do. Like I've got a bit of a rule of fun. If there's something that's urgent, I feel like I need to get done, I write it down and I wait until the next day before I actually look at it. Because if it's really urgent, I'll get reminded that day that it needs to be done. but before I used to every single day try and do tasks and realize that I set far too much myself burnout, feel like shit and it was the pet of the process. So when I learned why do I keep doing that to myself?

I was like, well, that's just actually the way that I am. So how can I analyze it? And again, it just all feeds back to because I write it down. The zone that emotionally charges me, write it down. What is it about that situation that made me feel this way? What is it that I think that I can do better? I think a lot of people try and solve problems in the head and you can't solve a problem with the same level of thinking it got you there in the first place.

So you have to revisit a situation in a different emotional state. So like, you know what I said earlier is like, if I said to you, you're looking tired, you'd think what a jump up little prick, depending on what emotional state you're in, how you perceive that is very different. Come out, come back and revisit that same thing in a different emotional state. You'll see a very different side of it. So that's where your perception and things can massively change. And that book was the chin parallels. I actually send that book to every new client's house as their first thing to read because it is that powerful. I believe everybody should read it

and then once you've read it I believe everybody should listen to the audiobook version of it because reading something I'm listening to something two very different different things and I also read it I've read it about eight times now because every time I read it

I take something new from it depending on what state that I'm in at what stage I agree good books should be read multiple times I'm reading I'm reading an ECO is the end enemy. This is my third time reading it and the third time reading that it feels like it's a completely different book than I'm reading. Because depending on what situation problems you got, it's like I was just about saying, like I say with movies, you'll always see something different

the next time you watch it or the next time you read it because we take things what we want to take from in that moment. And what a lot of people don't do, right, and I say this quite a lot of people, in fact, here's a great point for a lot of you. A lot of people need to learn to, I said this in my talk to me and Carl was speaking out the other week. A lot of people need to listen to. to hear, but most people listen to respond. Yeah, so a lot of people don't listen to something about before they make a logical decision in their head. You know, they'll take what they want in the instance and their chimp sits there as ready to react before something's been finished. And a lot of this happens with coaches as well. Like, so when a coach is trying to like explain

something to a client, a client's telling the problem, but a coach is just trying to solve the problem that they haven't listened to the whole situation to get the scenarios. They haven't heard to the person. They've gone, oh, there's the problem when I know how to solve that. instead of listening out to the full context of it, you know? All right. If anyone else has any last questions, put them into the chat box. I'm going to leave you with two more questions, Brad, and then I'll let you go because I know I'll keep you here all night.

Number one, what advice would you give to your younger self when you were struggling the most? Do you know what it actually would be to start writing earlier? Because I wouldn't want to change anything I've been through, which is quite bizarre. A lot of people we say that. I wouldn't want to. And I don't want to be that cliche.

It's what's made me who I am today? Like, I'm only great with the skills that I have and the insights and development that I have as a coach and the ability to help people because I experienced a lot of shit really quickly. And even now, whenever I find myself feeling scared of something, I'll force myself into that situation faster because I know what comes from the other side of it. As much as it's horrible and all my senses fight against it, it would just be to lean in discomfort quicker. So if you're worried about doing that workout routine, fuck it, fucking go get it done.

You know, if you worried about ending that relationship with a friend or someone that's not helping you about, fucking do it faster. Like, yes, just like, my brother's going through a situation at the moment with a very toxic relationship and I helped him really forcefully fill the emotions quicker because it's like, you're going to fill them at some point. You're going to feel the situation at some point. So you even deal with it, get it done quicker, harder, faster, and see out the other side of it. So the advice was to say it was to just go faster through that process and actually reflect on it.

And then the last one, for everyone in the group here who was on a health and fitness journey, what advice would you have for them so they can, you know, stay on track and get the results they want to not fuck things up? I would say you don't want to get into, let's say, journaling at the moment

because journaling is a very, you've got to do it in a specific way. It can't be like a dear diary, I felt like this type of situation. You're not trying to get your thoughts and your feelings out. But I would start writing questions for you, And I would maybe even Carl will have some fantastic coaching questions.

I know this for sure because of some things that he's involved in. But I would ask yourself questions like, did I do my very best today? But don't be like, well, yeah, I did because I know, like, did I do my very best in every situation that I handled today? You know, asking the questions of if there was one thing I could have focused better on today, what could it possibly have been? You know, just find, go on Google literally and go and type in like powerful coaching questions. You will find so many questions and any question is incredible because questions

of the steering wheel of the mind. And the more you become self-aware of asking yourself questions, the very, like the quicker you will find yourself coming with better solutions. A lot of people are looking for answers, but most of us have the answers. Carl will agree with this as well. Coaching doesn't come from telling you what to do. Coaching comes from facilitating the emotional and logical change by asking you the correct questions to help you come to the decision yourself. Everybody has the answer,

but a lot of people need steering in the direction to facilitate that answer or they need challenging on their thinking with a question to make them come with an answer that's different. Lucy said not a question, but you've said some things that have really resonated

that haven't been mentioned on these lives and forth. So thank you. It's been really work well, isn't it? And I would agree with that as well. Oh, thank you. I really appreciate it. Like more than welcome to come on another time if there's anything that comes in it. Because there's a lot that I've been through that I'm very proud of even though there's a lot of battles with. There's lots that I haven't touched on inside that journey. And I think it's just like something that's enabled me to be a fantastic coach. And don't give you wrong. I still make mistakes. I'll make loads of mistakes. I'll make loads of mistakes. Like no coach is absolutely fucking incredible. And I think something is actually a really good thing to do, touching on that whole relationship with your client situation. And this comes from both ends. is the understanding and knowing that like having a coach doesn't mean that they've all got

the complete answers, but they've got the ability to hear you listen and help you bounce back ideas. So like the coaches that I've got, for example, like my fitness coach, he's no higher of a level than me. You know, I actually help him with certain situations in the terms of mental development. But having somebody to soundboard from this willing to say no to me and willing to call me out of my bullshit is the biggest thing. And I think a good coaching relationship for coach, but also client is a client to almost be willing to call their coach out on shit sometimes, you know, because a lot of the time a coach will believe that they've got your best interest at heart. And then the client doesn't want to say anything because they're like, well,

they're the professional, they're the expert. But they might not fully, they might be pushing their intentions of what they want for you. And I've been giving you that many times before where we just get excited because they're like, they're doing so well with this, I really want to push it. and I've actually needed the coach, the clients sometimes comes to me like, Brad, like I'm absolutely buzzing with how I look right now. I don't, you know, I want to focus on, you know, these other aspects. I'm like, oh, but come on,

just this little bit more. And it's like, sometimes it's actually really good to be challenged from a client to a coach. It sounds a bit bizarre. I always say that like, okay, your coach might be the expert of what your nutrition or your program or whatever it is, but you are the expert of you. So it's important for you to become self-aware in terms of, what's in your best interest and not just

blindlessly go into whatever someone says for you because, you know, it might not be the right thing for you. But that's the whole point of good communication, isn't it? Yeah, and I think just as a thing for you to think, right, it isn't to make Carl's life easier because trust me, I'll like to make his life harder for, you know, if I could possibly, if you've ever got a question from where you've got a problem or something you want to present it with,

ask yourself the questions first. If you come arms to a conversation or a process where you've actually excluded a lot of the potentials because you've done some of the work first. You're like, Carl, I'm presenting it with this situation. I've done a bit of work on it. I think this might be the answer. I think this potentially could be the answer?

Could you help me? If you come into it and not being lazy, and a lot of clients don't do this because I like, well, I'm paying for the advice. No, you're paying for a result. You're paying for progression. But if a coach has to spend most of their time helping facilitate diagnostics,

it's much harder to facilitate that. So if you come actually preloaded with some of the work already, you're going to have a much better relationship, a much faster relationship, and you're going to overcome and exceed levels of growth in a much faster way because you've actually been willing to go, okay, cool. How can I make the coaches life easier

so they can facilitate their excellence in a better space because I've at least done some of the work first. So I think that's where powerful coaching questions are really helpful. And that also comes from taking ownership on your own life and not needing to be held hands the whole way through. Yeah, massively, massively. Brad, it's been an absolute pleasure. Really, really appreciate it.

I really appreciate you for coming on and taking the time. I know he's all a busy lives, so the fact that you're here and showing up means that you're dedicated to what you want to achieve and I think that should be applauded. So again, Brad, thanks very much and everyone for showing up. I appreciate it. Thanks for watching.

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