The Wellness Scoop - Jonny Wilkinson: suffering in silence, insecurity and cultivating self-worth

Episode Date: March 1, 2023

This week Ella is joined by Jonny Wilkinson for a candid conversation on replacing external validation with self-worth. They discuss the disconnect between Jonny’sexternal accomplishments (becoming one of the world’s greatest rugby players) and his internal struggles, his experience with depression and anxiety, the catalyst for addressing his mental health and the tools that enabled him to transform into the man he is today.    They discuss: Why external achievements and validation don’t bring lasting joy Succeeding professionally while struggling internally The pressure to keep on achieving Jonny’s experiences with anxiety and depression Getting off the hamster wheel of acting out of fear and low self-worth How to reframe your thoughts to accept difficult circumstances and feelings, unconditionally Cultivating self-trust and a supportive inner voice, and releasing the need to control Why nothing will change if you don’t apply what you understand The importance of regulating your nervous system Jonny’s practices for feeling well   Links: Jonny’s podcast I Am… For new subscribers, use code podcast20 to get 20% off the Feel Better App  Wellness Toolkit for this episode Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is an ad from BetterHelp Online Therapy. We always hear about the red flags to avoid in relationships, but it's just as important to focus on the green flags. If you're not quite sure what they look like, therapy can help you identify those qualities so you can embody the green flag energy and find it in others. BetterHelp offers therapy 100% online, and sign-up only takes a few minutes.

Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. Welcome to Wellness with Ella, the Deliciously Ella podcast. This is a podcast that aims to inspire you, to empower you, to leave you feeling uplifted. And each week I want to share what wellness really looks like as we unpack the simple tools that have helped each one of our guests turn a negative into a positive and unlock true happiness and genuine health and by health I don't mean how they look I mean their energy their excitement their fulfillment the question is how can we all get more from life? So if you don't know Johnny Wilkinson he had that famous drop goal kick that won England the Rugby World Cup in 2003. It's one of those moments that felt

we all knew where we were when it happened because it was just it was just so huge and he retired from playing rugby in 2014 and since then he's been coaching rugby he's a regular rugby pundit on ITV and Johnny spent his formative years striving for success at the very highest level of sport and his whole life was driven by chasing the next accomplishment the next title the next record the next game he was constantly comparing himself to his peers in terms of his stats his speed his points his cats and we all thought that he had everything and yet he felt empty and I think there's a huge amount for us all to learn from that so I hope you enjoy listening to him I have to say I was really taken aback by some of the things he said there are some moments that are incredibly poignant and

revelationary and I've certainly not really heard anyone with such huge success talk like this before so I really hope that it's inspiring and empowering particularly on this idea this quest for happiness and that we're not always necessarily all looking for happiness in the right places and to never ever compare ourselves with others because we just do not know what they're actually going through. Johnny, welcome to the show. It's such a pleasure to have you here and I'd love to start, you know, people listening will likely know you, obviously world-class sportsman they might remember the goal that you got the rugby world cup but I'd love to give you the opportunity to introduce yourself as you you know who really are you as a person good question this may take a while I don't know what a nice answer I don't know I don't

know much about who I am i'm revealing it and the most authentic experiences i have of me are the ones i can't talk about but when i do i feel like that's not it i can't get it when i try and talk about it but i know when i start getting really interested in talking about me and who i am i know i'm heading in the wrong direction i spent a long time when i was younger talking about what you were talking about there like a sporting career lots of beliefs and values and and this is my opinions and this is me and how I look and what I've been through in my life and all those things but what I realized after a while was these are just things that I've I've picked up there's nothing to it was me that picked them up these things are mine they're not me and I think that's really interesting when people say

you know tell me about you I'm like well what can I I can't tell you anything about me I can tell you some stuff I've been through but even what I've been through I change my mind on all the time you know look back at things now and I think that was terrible the next day I think that's pretty awesome look what it's done for me so to to cut a long story short, I haven't got a clue. And in that respect, it makes life quite interesting because I feel like I'm finding something out and I'm learning every day. I have so many questions on that

that we'll pick up on in a minute because I think there's openness and curiosity and this internal search versus the external validation and such a universal conversation, actually, no matter kind of what stage in life you're at whatever your focuses are but before we get into the episode you know how are you doing today good yeah very good I'm feeling like I'm getting somewhere health-wise in terms of just you mentioned that openness I'm sort of becoming so much more open to all these things

which I was a closed book on when I was younger everything was so physical when i was young if you asked me what's health health and well-being i'd be like well it's looking like this and it's being able to run this far and lift this much weight and all these kind of things and maybe there's a bit of stuff in there about what you ate and how you slept, but that was to do with how you looked. Now, when you ask me about health and wellbeing, it's my potential. I think that's such a refreshing attitude. And I guess just to give you some context, what I'm so interested in, I've been working in the health and wellbeing space for the last 10, 11 years. And I've got fascinated by the kind of ins

and outs and the intricacies and the data and the science but what I've become really interested in now is how do we actually utilize that every single day as you said to really unlock your potential I think the world of wellness is so often so inherently connected to everything you're saying it's to the physical and whether that's in your case to performance or in lots of people's cases it's to weight loss or wanting to look a certain way or appear a certain way as opposed to how you kind of truly feel on the inside and the reason I was so interested to have you on the show and I so appreciate your time today is it sounds so much to me like that really defines your experience in lots of different ways and that you have almost lived a life of two halves from everything I've heard from what you've said you had this first

half which was so much about the external and in a way looking for happiness in other people's views of you and ticking off accomplishments and by any stretch of the imagination gosh you ticked off more accomplishments than you know anyone could really imagine achieving. And yet, it didn't really seem to serve you in any way on a kind of deeper level. And it's created this huge U-turn, this catalyst moment to live what sounds to me from the outside of fundamentally completely different life, where you're searching for inner peace and calm as opposed to trophies and I think in a way people would be relatively surprised if they hadn't heard your story before about that because this grass is green attitude is so deeply embedded I think in the world where

people would look at you and think gosh he must have everything I wish I was him the luckiest person in the world and I wondered if you could talk to us a little bit about that moment that catalyst where you thought okay everyone looking from the outside would think that I do have everything and yet that wasn't the case for you on a personal level it was very briefly very very briefly how brief is brief? At its optimum maximal level, pretty much a single moment. It is that euphoria of immense completion and fulfillment and a sense of worth and aliveness. It is. It's so brief though the reason it's so brief is because in the truth of the message this too shall pass does not just for your suffering it's for your

joy as well in that respect when it's placed in that area and it did it just was immediately through the fingers to the extent that you have then have a breather you go from that jumping around celebration to them breathing and and looking around and sort of going, wow, this is amazing. But that's already a different experience. You're so connected to it in that immediate moment. But when it becomes the past, you just can't touch it. You can't derive that same pleasure out of it. And that fleeting nature was quite depressing for me because I banked on that Hollywood ending you

know those credits rolling and me walking into the sunset and kind of going well that's it bring on my joy and obviously as everyone says you know I understand the destination the journey analogy it's a big understanding but even the journey you've got to break that down to understand how do you make the most of every moment and how you don't it's by trying to hold on to every moment but i've been too i guess enslaved by this idea of holding on to my past because my past has given me an idea this is what felt good and so therefore what will feel amazing will be just more of that and so that's been my past dominating my future and my evolution has just been well

I'll win another one which is why people struggle so much when they finish their career in sport because it's almost like well I can't win another one well what do I do now well it's like well hold on the adulation the adoration that kind of thing how do I get that respect and reverence well I'll go and become a coach I'll go and be on the tv or i'll go and build a business and have this much money or whatever it is but all of that stuff it's the same dead end just repeating itself the evolution into the unknown has been the beauty of that challenge for me every challenge i have is a question of saying are you willing to to surrender whereas my answer has always been in those challenges on the sporting field i must conquer but there's a difference when you're playing a game and you're trying to

conquer a situation but when you're looking at internal experiences those challenges you mentioned big emotions huge fear for me being my main one sense of that imposter syndrome the inferiority the the kind of weakness whatever it might be all of that stuff lack of worth those feelings you don't conquer them you don't find the answer and win over them that just sort of keeps them alive you need to face them and let them out because it's underneath that where the beauty is and that's why i mentioned at the very beginning who am i i don't know is that therefore i trust the universe a bit more when it points me to a challenge i say right thank you what is it i'm supposed to understand from this not i'll take you on one-on-one because when i did try and take the universe on in that respect with my challenges i spent so much time absolutely battered mentally emotionally physically and not not that long ago

maybe sort of five six years ago i was sat in the presence of a realized yogi who took one look at me and just said wow your physical mental energies are battered and i sort of said how do you know that he said well i see it straight away in you he said you've you've had a hard ride you've you've pushed it hard and you that's that's where your opportunity is to heal and this is my new journey I guess is that you don't heal back to where you were you heal into your potential which is why everything's about healing you don't win your way to your potential. You actually win your way essentially away from it, but you heal into it and you can have the best of both worlds. When I was at my best in my sporting days, and even now when I perform, if I'm coaching,

if I need to perform, I'm at my best when I surrender and I become one with what I'm doing. But everything I've done in the past is to be, look at me, look how distinguished and defined and different I am, look how I stand above. And now this me is gonna do this. And as soon as you have that separation, you have pressure because that me looks at what it's trying to do and says, oh, it's so difficult. And that proactive decision to move towards humiliation

in time sometimes is that going into the unknown, removing those boundaries. And what you do when you surrender, for me anyway, you don't end up nowhere. You end up finding more and more of your gift, your reason, your purpose. Life becomes more vibrant through that surrender. It certainly doesn't become more of a kind of, oh, well, I can no longer be part of the game now. I've got to go and sit it out and do my inner work. The inner work connects you to everything and everyone. I couldn't agree with that more. And it's certainly been a big experience in my life to try and switch

the external to the internal. And I think everyone listening listening whatever it is that's going on in their own lives I think we can all relate to this very common mentality of when I get a promotion I'm going to be really really happy when I marry this person I'll be really happy when I get this new boyfriend this new car I lose weight I change my hair whatever it is we're kind of we're always assuming when we achieve something or when we do something or get something that is when life will be really really easy and I think it's one of the biggest misconceptions that we have because fundamentally I don't think that's ever the case with anyone but I think what's so powerful is that everything I mentioned there I guess is on a slightly smaller

scale is what you're talking about is kind of the 0.001% of accomplishments that people could have in their lives. And yet it's still, you said you still had things like imposter syndrome. And I think that would, it's just surprising to people. And again, one of the things I really want these conversations to do is just show the human nature and the fact that we all have these brains that can kind of be monkey brains and feed us all these kind of really complicated emotions. And we can all pin our self-worth on the external no matter how successful in a conventional use of the word successful we seem and I'm really curious before we really move on to how you did that because I'm so interested in your kind of toolkit for want of a better word because it's such a

different way of looking at the world but clearly it sounds like it's given you an inner contentment and joy like you you didn't have before but what what was it that you feel created this need for external validation and that the achievement had to be what would bring you happiness and were you surprised in some ways when you woke up the next day after achieving the goal of goals in your life and you felt empty did that surprise you yes it did when when I woke up day after that workup final or there were other big moments all around the place and sometimes it would last a bit longer but it would always drift away and to answer your question about what it was that was driving this, it's probably the same as maybe lots of people. And when there's a disconnection with your true self and your true worth, fueled by this society's view or things you pick up or things you go through that leave their mark or whatever, that represents itself certainly in my life as fear

when you don't realize your infiniteness your eternalness you're going to be wrapped in fear about this apparent world we live in where everything's so finite so if you're lost in the finite that you're dissociated from the infinite part of you you're going to be blown around by the wind you're going to be struggling i think of it as almost like a tree with 10 mile roots when the wind blows it kind of goes oh this is beautiful when the tree's got no roots in there it's got you know just a couple of feet of roots it's going to be thinking i've got to hold on for dear life here and grounding ourselves in that is a is that inward

place you can't but just sit there and go well I believe I am right I've done it now you've got to find experience you've got to find actual empirical kind of moments where you deeper sort of sensory stuff so I had this journey when I grew up when I was dissociated from myself in some ways whatever I picked up about not being good enough here, not being this, not being that. I had huge, huge fear. And that fear was making all my choices for me. So I had this, as I see it now, as it sort of comes through me, this massive, massive gift and drive and purpose and meaning about expressing myself and my talent for sport and the competitive

nature and a ball in my hands and being able to be creative with it but when that hit this kind of gap between or this dissociation between me and my real worth it then kind of almost becomes fed through that sort of prism and comes out filtered into this desire to please people, to win, to be successful, to be respected, to be known as the best and all these kind of things. So even though that gift is expressing itself, is expressing itself through that kind of dissociation, it just made it

a lot of suffering. And did you feel in lots of ways, you're almost on a hamster wheel, you know, you can't get off it, you can't win, because the fear is there's always something to be afraid of, you know, if you don't win the next game or get the next accolade or the next success, then, you know, you're not worthy and you take another knock to your self-esteem but also if your self-esteem is always defined by what other people think of you then it's almost you're always having to vie for more attention for more validation you can kind of never breathe did it feel a bit like that like you just couldn't stop running because if you stopped running what what were you definitely and stopping running essentially was was being at peace how difficult is it to say wow things are going really well I love this but when things were going well for me

I was at my most fearful that was when it was going to come and get because you were fearful that it would end and then be taken away and so I always like to be in that position where I believe myself into a corner where I could say right no one likes me no one thinks I can do this and I love that I'll show them attitude and the more that people praise me the harder it got to create that story but the thing with the fear is is that that fear element that insecure me when it does well in terms of it gets results albeit through suffering that me is almost proving itself so you're not going to get rid of it the same way that a mindset of fear when you feed it just becomes a bigger mindset of fear and insecure me when it seems to win i'm gonna protect that because it's got the answer so i did actually think i had the formula for how

to be successful at sport and i wrote a book on it just after the world cup and it's full of dogma and ridiculously intense statements that are just so rigid and dangerous because it's the insecure me saying i'm doing well and this is how i see life. And essentially it was always leading to where it was led. It had actually been into places of real crisis moments and suffering and depression and anxiety and panic attacks and what have you. And it carried on into those spaces. And the funny thing is as much as I love talking about these things

and exploring and experiencing, does that mean I'm finished with those things? No. I have them all the time i've had i probably had plenty over the weekend i had a big one about a couple of years ago that lasted for maybe six seven months now you look at the two thinking well hold on would i go back to being that that player that most of my suffering was just oh god I lost that game and I've got to do this and uh and then have those fleeting moments of it's going well but oh gosh now Sunday's gone it's played Saturday Sunday was my day of where I can enjoy it but now Monday it's all about the fear of what's coming would I go back to that or

would I have would I face the challenges as I do now I would choose only one thing I would be here now and I wish I could in a way I wish I could I do this in my coaching to allow players to explore that whilst they're playing so they can have more moments of genius more moments of realizing that I probably had a handful of great moments out of an 18-year career. And would you say at this point, listening to you talking about panic attacks and feeling depressed, would you say you also had quite low self-esteem at this point, which I think would feel quite surprising, again, to people when you're doing so well that you could see yourself in a light that was so different to how they saw you?

I think I just had a different view of my worth so you could put me on a rugby field put a ball on my hand and I could just go bang I'm I'm here I'm everything I need to be and people would have this you know like certain sports people would just say when I'm on the field I'm just at home I would have that but for so many other moments I would be there thinking oh my god and I'd be putting on a facade and image as I did most mostly in the rugby as well just because you just don't trust yourself you don't value yourself it's difficult because when you're in that space of vulnerability in the first sort of times you're coming to terms with it a lot of the conditioning

comes in and life can be quite harsh in that way people speak about the way that boys speak to each other men speak to what people put as important how people put people down in these respects and it can really gather and accumulate and it can be difficult but there is an absolute truth to the my in my experience i don't know if there's many but it's an absolute truth that the deeper you go down the more you realize that everything just comes clear and that there isn't this separation there isn't this kind of some are more worthy than others it's just not the case but when we live in that surface area which is very very physical as you mentioned how we look yeah how much we earn what we've amassed what wealth we've got what we know how we live in

what job we do all these kind of things by nature that is a very you know separate and i guess difficult space to try and find worth because it's all relative. And like you mentioned about pleasing people, I know that I can bounce up and down. We could have a great chat and we could all be here. Tomorrow I could be going through something. You say hi, and I walk past you. Suddenly it's like, oh gosh, what's happened? You know, what have I done wrong? People are flippant. People are all over the place over the place just like me yeah so if you're going to base your worth on anything don't give it to other people and also don't give it to events in the world because they also unfold unpredictably give it to something you really know and if you want to find out what you really know you've got to go deep yeah you

can really only define it yourself and I couldn't agree with that more and I hope you don't mind me saying this but I think it's really brave to make such a big change to make it so publicly you know you said that that you wrote a book after the world cup when you know you must be one of the most famous people in the country and to then say now you know I really fundamentally disagree with what I wrote there and I think that was dangerous advice in lots of ways that's a very honest and brave thing to say and I'm sure getting to that point to be able to say that so openly and so calmly despite nervousness you know I'm sure initially that people would come at you for it that's not an easy thing to do and you know changing your life around isn't an easy thing to do and again

that's that's the conversation that I'm so interested in having because I think so many of us have these moments whether they're big or they're small where we feel stuck in our lives and we have this moment where we realize we don't want to be where we are anymore whether that's with our physical health our mental health whatever facet it is but making the changes can feel almost impossible and I really want to talk about how you made those changes and how you went from this such a different mindset such a different set of beliefs and what was important to where you are today but I was curious before we get to kind of how you got from one to the other was there a moment where you thought okay I can't live like this anymore I imagine it kind of built up and built up but was there do you remember a sense or where you were or what you felt when you recognized that this

emptiness this kind of lack of self-trust self-belief it was getting you down to such a point that something just had to change so I I had most of my reactivity was very fear-based. If something happened, I would almost have that massive and then that immediate, I can't do this, I can't deal with it, I don't know what to do, everything's gone. It would be that kind of very, very... Did it feel anxious? Yeah, hugely.

So very internal, though. From people on the outside might say, oh, I didn't realise because I'd be walking around, but almost like I couldn't feel my feet on the floor. Whether it be, you know, when I was was young I might have made a mistake in a rugby game that I thought was humiliating I would I remember there was one that I for about sort of I mean for months months my mom and dad would be sat somewhere in the house and I'd just be sat somewhere else in the house just doing whatever I was doing and all of a sudden bang that thought

would come I'd remember it oh my god and I would just be in floods of tears unbearable i'd go and do a kicking session down at the park i once kicked for just short of six hours non-stop as an 18 year old 17 year old rode my bike down to the park was there for six hours just lost in this idea i could not get something right and the fear was driving me to say if you don't't get this right, you have to stay. My mum turned up in the car and went, we've been worried sick. We didn't know. What are you up to? And I said, I can't get it right. And she said, look, you've got to come home. I went home and just spent the entire afternoon just in hysterical sort of crying or whatever. I went back again in the evening. Did you find there was this strange disconnect where people from the outside are saying,

they're celebrating you. They're saying, wow, Johnny, what discipline, what focus. If only we could all have so much focus in our lives, then we could be as successful and being a bit kind of reductive in the way I'm describing it. And then you're there and it sounds to me, I'm not a psychologist, but it sounds like kind of verging on compulsive and obsessive and it kind of destroying you to some extent it's controlling you and yet from the outside we're celebrating that there's a very interesting dynamic going on one is that it's a gift that there are times when I kick a ball and I'm home. You can't touch me. I'm just, I'm at one for that brief moment.

But there's also, so there's like massive energy and a gift that's telling me to be there. But there's just also this other part, which is saying, I need it to be this way. I don't have that trust. There's a gift saying, this is you, go express it, which has got nothing to do with what I get. It's not, I'm doing this so I get this. The doing of it is the beauty. And that's essentially the engagement of living in the moment. But then there's this other part, which is all about what I get.

And when that part was strongest, I'd be on my way to go and kick a ball or whatever. I wouldn't even know why I'm going. I wouldn't be able to say, oh, I don't want to go, but I'm going. Because I wouldn't even have that much awareness to know what I wanted. I was just going. And I get there and I just go. It's automatic.

It's robotic. Put the balls down. Off we go. Get really annoyed when a ball doesn't go right start to panic when two or three don't go right feel a bit of survival kind of relief when they start to go where they want to go very rarely did i ever feel like excitement about oh well yeah i'm really excited about tomorrow now it was just okay i'm ready for tomorrow now it's life or death in that way but in terms of that kind of you mentioned before about those moments where where you feel like you can't go on anymore for me it was massively in that fear and when that fear locked on because

i allowed it to lock on i didn't know any better when i engaged with it when i indulged it rather than being able to have those tools you mentioned that fear then wound and wound and then built up to a crescendo at which point it then tips over into the depressive element so that anxiety and anxiety anxiety is playing in it and it's then it becomes a lot of anxiety but also the beginnings of depression and it's still anxiety and then more depression and it's less anxiety and it's more and then it just sits in that kind of what's the point and was it you that identified that you'd sunk into that place or just did you need someone else to say to you yeah i think this is where you're at we need to i knew something i knew that i was down because it was so not me, you know, walking out of training sessions, not turning up to things in the club, you know, crazy moments where the team might be going off to do a signing session at a local business who sponsors a club.

And they're kind of like, oh, where's, you know, where's Johnny? And if they knew, it would have been mad, you know, the fact they didn't know that i was sat on the back training pitch up against a fence in the pouring rain in my smartest gear just on a muddy field just bawling my eyes out you're just like okay that's not quite right you know and i knew that was not quite right but it's difficult because the tools i had at the time were just conquer conquer conquer conquer so i've got this thing and everything is telling me you, something's not right. You need to work it out and you need to get over it. You need to beat this emotion. And finding answers is what I did. I had a massive archetypal kind of foundation in being a savior and being a fixer in that respect and being in some ways also preferring to play the martyr as well you know finding a lot more worth in that kind of i've given it all and i'm suffering so you don't have to that kind of idea so that's what i brought to it that's what

all i had i mean it's just hugely indulging it that's the fear saying the fear is driving that the fear is not going oh god don't come at me with that the fear is going no i'm i'm actually part of that i'm the reason you think like that and now you're using me to try and get rid of me it's not going to work and i knew i was down but there was a point just in my late 20s where something clicked for some reason and i i just realized i have to change and otherwise this is it and that's what kind of the depression is is that sense of like this thing that you've built this thing that you even though you that you've disconnected from your worth this thing has found its place and even though it's painful at times and the inner voice is criticizing you to mad and

it won't let you go and everything it's still what you built and it can no longer be and giving that up the way that it's often done is well we'll turn it into this but that never worked for me the answer was like i said not to go from one known oh well hold on this car you know is kind of not really working for you but what about this one you're kind of like but who am i without that shiny exterior who am i just now and that's been the journey because i thought well if i don't have that next car how am i going to take how am i going to perform but actually your performance is in you it doesn't take that long to learn physical skills people sort of say the 10 000 hours thing i question that hugely because that's 10 000 hours often through doubt imagine what it's done through

pure worth it's not 10 000 hours it's it's immediate intelligence applying itself. So I did have that, it often would be the case, immediate anxiety peaks, indulgence of it, and then winding it up and then over into depression, and then deep it would come to that space of being like, I've got to give this up. And there would be a huge amount of sadness in those moments. I think it's always such an interesting question that who am I without all the labels that I've put on myself or other people put themselves and I um had a real low point with my physical health and therefore my mental health it was 2011 and you know my dad said to me for a long time you need help you've depressed and I I just wasn't able to recognize it I was so ill physically that I think I couldn't really cope with someone telling me there was almost one more thing wrong with me and I put off making any changes for so long I just I just I just

couldn't really accept it even though I knew I knew really how bad it was I knew how much I didn't care for anything anymore and I was really interested what the what the first thing you did was when you when you okay, it's not enough. I imagine it's taken you time and process and various different tools, I'm sure some of which work really well and some of which maybe didn't resonate as much to get to this outlook that you had today.

I presume it wasn't an overnight change. The most powerful thing you can have, I think, in terms of that mindset change is... Eclipse Rise Visa Card, the credit card that rewards your good financial habits. Earn points for paying your credit card bill in full and on time every month. Level up from bill payer to reward slayer. Terms and conditions apply. You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements

or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn ads. Email bob at libsyn.com to learn more. That's B-O-B at L-I-B-S-Y-N dot com. The most powerful thing you can have, I think, in terms of that mindset change is you being your own best support and your own best friend within yourself. People talk about that mind that's kind of always on at me and always telling me this and bringing me down and blaming me for this or whatever or blaming others or whatever it might be but when you have that best friend inside you and when I say best friend it's not a friend that kind of just says yes to everything it's a friend that's urging you into the unknown to be uncomfortable but when you're no friend in there at all when the pure you but on its way it's almost like you

have that difficult friend and then you're a difficult colleague and then you have this amazing friend which just almost like arm around you and eventually just kind of lets you go when you're no longer needed, you know. And what helps you cultivate that, as you said, because it's moving from so many of us have that inner critic. I think everyone talks about that fairly frequently

that you have someone that's always planting that negativity, that self-doubt, that you're not quite good enough. You know, this person didn't reply to you because they actually hate you you know there's always those little niggles but obviously you had that on a kind of more extreme end was there anything in particular that you did to help shift that voice along the continuum at the beginning when you have a lot of critics in there you really need friends around you if you can't find the friend within you those friends around you do an amazing thing but often you know you end up finding

yourself like i said that insecure part of you chooses your friends for you so you end up kind of in the corner all talking about the same stuff and having the same opinion about why someone else is this or shouldn't be this or is useless or whatever but surrounding yourself with people and in that moment of challenge when you find people that aren't trying to tell you what you should be doing but are actually just saying right I'm here with you so to use the analogy of a rugby game when you're in the changing room before you're about to go out in the field there's a lot of anxiety a lot of kind of stress and everyone's looking to each other for the answer you know say the magic word to me that's going to make me go you know yeah we can do this give me that emotional speech but whatever the speech is it only points that we're going to be okay but it

can only do so much with words but when you get in a huddle just before you go out everyone puts their arms on each other and you look at each other and the kind of hidden message is like we said at the very start of this conversation we haven't got any guarantees we don't know how this is going to go but that's the whole point of living why would you want to be here if you knew the thing is it's going to be there'll be tough moments there'll be awesome moments and it's going to be uncomfortable for us all but i'll go with you so did you change a lot of the people around you then at this point no because I was I was probably powerful enough with my status to be leading that okay so I think I was kind of the people were great around me there weren't many at all but there were but I was influencing a lot of

the conversation people were sort of saying okay well we better do this you know I was so intense and I had such a story behind me for other people saying, oh, look, like you mentioned the dedication and this. So you've got to be like him. When people say that to me now, I'm like, no, no, don't say that. Jeez, don't do that to anyone. That's awful. But I think starting with those friends around you,

the first person I came up to really was kind of obviously family, hugely important. But then I spoke to the club doctor who just had that mindset was just so unjudgmental so non-judgmental and just sort of said you know we just need to get you some help and it felt a bit like like you said your father said you've got to get some help it just feels like okay it's the start of a journey and it's not about that somehow you're doing worse than someone else because they're not going through it's you know that whole kind of coping idea that you can't cope and you can so you're better at this it's completely irrelevant but also you're such

an example of that really you know I hope you don't mind me saying it people would have said oh he's coping great but you weren't coping and it's such a it's the ultimate example of the fact we never know what's going on behind closed doors no exactly yeah and that's a big one you can always do that when you always sort of liken it to when you meet a couple and you're kind of you spend about five minutes with them you walk away you go geez what a lovely couple and you just think that they're just like the perfect thing and then you hear oh they split up you're like all right okay it's never as you think yeah I guess in a way for me that change of that inner teammate was a constantly unfolding understanding with everything I went through and everywhere I was pointed to go and where I felt my passion

excitement I went there and I went full-on into it the understanding just comes that when you act through that insecure side and you're gathering you're gathering you're trying to gather this you're trying to survive you're trying to get through you're trying to win and conquer now you've had moments where you've won you've had moments where you've not won and you look at what happened from those and it gives you your big term picture you sort of go okay well you can pretty much extrapolate from that what the whole life's going to look like you know okay well i won the world cup and it and it felt like this okay well then we need to win another one right well do you realize that it might just feel like that well at the end of my career if we win both these tournaments for this team yeah but it will feel at the end of my life

i have a boat in a port it will yeah you see you ask yourself to what end because i have enough understanding now to what end am i doing this and that's enough now to for me when I face a challenge to say well if I get through this unchanged without having to adapt and be flexible and move and expand and and somehow grow it'd be a travesty and so when you mentioned looking back at the younger version of you I'm able to speak about the books I wrote or the things i said because i don't have any judgment upon that me that me was doing his absolute best he's giving you can't actually do any less than your best you do what you do according to who you are and how you see the world how you feel and think about it so i look at that me and just go good good for you. Now, when I make a comment that I'm different,

it's not me saying that I've grown or changed. It's no, no, that was you and this is me. We don't have to be linked. And I think that's the thing. Everyone's sort of thinking, well, because I did this. I've used this analogy before or this metaphor when you play a game on a Saturday and on the Monday they have the team review. And there's something you've done on the Saturday. Maybe you've thrown a bad pass or someone's intercepted you pass and

scored or you've kicked and missed or missed a tackle or something big and you sit there and you can see everyone in the video sat there thinking oh my god he's going to show what I did wrong and when it comes up on the screen the person sat on the Monday is feeling a humiliation because they are still the person on the Saturday. You're unable to have that any objective growth from it because you're still tied emotionally to what that felt like. And then I look at what I went through as a child. I'm still tied emotionally to what I went through as a child. I might live this entire life as a child. I won't change. I'm not saying that being a child's phenomenal i look at

my child i'm like geez you're the most beautiful example of human life i could imagine but living your whole life through those child life or what i was given or or what hit me as a child to say that that's going to answer all my questions for me for the rest of my life i think that's a travesty i'd like to think that i'll look back on this interview and you know if we met again in two years and we'd be like yeah we're both very different why well because we've lived and we've evolved i think there used to be a stiff upper lip sort of worth or or credibility and being able to say i've always done this you know but it has are you happy now because of it no and that's what i live my career doing i always kick for this much time

and i always do this right how happy are you not at all yeah it's such an important question isn't it and i think we're we're often not compassionate enough to ourselves but to each other in kind of saying, this is who you've always been. So this is who you should stay because that's how I know you and breaking free if that's really difficult. And I'm curious again, just to dig into these tools. So you kind of, I guess we're going down the, for once for better word, we call it the conventional route through the doctor who, you know, saying, you know, know look I think you need some help I'm curious about what that looked like but then it sounds like alongside that you did quite a lot of work in terms of the more spiritual side and Buddhism but then also nutrition and breathing

and mindfulness and I'm one thing I wanted to pick up on I guess which wraps it all up quite nicely it's I have heard you say that in your kind of peak, you were really fit, but you weren't healthy. Because healthy incorporates this much more kind of 360 approach of the full mind and body, you know, our stress management, our sleep and everything, not just for performance sakes. I'm really interested in what that all looked like, but also sounds like it's a very, very different view of health today than it was then when you're probably at peak fitness, you probably can't really be fitter as a human. But yeah, that's not leading to health, which I think, I guess I'm keen just to point out as well, we're recording this in January, and it's the time where everyone's like health equals getting shredded equals having a six-pack equals looking a certain way or dropping seven dress sizes in the next four days you know it's this someone looks a certain way so they must be fit yeah definitely so in terms of the tools there's kind of three and they're always on it's

not like you do this you do this you do this they're always on one of them is is awareness you've got to be aware of how you're feeling because if you what you're not aware of you can't do anything with it remains unconscious there's all different kinds of techniques of bringing up things that you're not aware of into your awareness space so they become conscious the second part this again is always on is acceptance and this is where i had a big issue i was kind of aware of a lot of these well i wasn't actually because i wasn't aware of these thoughts i didn't accept i resisted i just i like i said i kind of indulged them i answered them i tried to get rid of them i tried to do all these kind of things to these

thoughts and feelings which just kept them alive because it validated the fears i reacted with urgency to them it was almost like there was a scoring system saying well if people come sprinting out of a building you're kind of like there must be something in there the same way that if i'm running around doing this it must be something real so you validate it and it just stays but the capacity to accept and that is in so many different forms whether it's just sitting breathing meditation whether it's that kind of feeling welcoming feelings just being slow walking can be all these kind of ways feeling your feet in the ground becoming more sensitive in your body whatever it's just slowing down anything you can do sleep a huge part of acceptance getting your sleep and all

those kind of things but just massive relaxation when your whole body is saying go in order to challenge that you need to do the opposite which is to say stay stay relax and when it says get rid you say welcome when it says hate you say love and but it can't be a trick if it's conditional it's not acceptance if you have a if i'm doing acceptance so i can get this it's not it's conditional so therefore you can't say i'm going to do my acceptance work so i get rid of this feeling we're still trying to get rid of the feeling i'm going to do my acceptance work so i can become one with this feeling and And if it may stay for the rest of my life, then it will stay. So you just fully accept yourself, whoever you are at any point in your life.

You accept this moment for what it is and these feelings for what they are. What you don't accept is what they're telling you about things. You don't accept this person's just called me an idiot. So I accept I'm an idiot. You just accept that, okay, I have this feeling. I have this, this person has said this. I have this feeling. It's like, okay, let me breathe in this feeling. Let me own it by realizing that I don't have to run. There are moments where things happen and you know, you've got to run, you run, you know, like I said, that building's happening and it's on fire. You don't

just stand there and breathe into it. You go, you know, the difference. And the third tool I think is part of that awareness still, but it's becoming more aware of your passions and excitements your impulses your insights that drive you towards this is interesting to me I want to go and explore this what's my gift because that will reveal I think the meaning and your your your purpose whereas often our purposes are a lot I need to do this because I was brought up this way and because this is the good and right thing to do but underneath that there's there's a reason why we find ourselves where we do why am i doing this it was the same gift behind the rugby that wanted to connect with people i know i know i feel like i want to connect with people i want to speak on a deeper level i

don't want to talk about surface material stuff about this this this I want to connect with people the rugby was part of that but because of my belief system at the time it came out as a massive suffering journey but still I connected with people people come up to me and say you know you playing on the field I really felt that added this to my life so it was getting there but through suffering through effort and I find now i'm in a much more effortless space because i do sort of spend time just sort of being a lot more sensitive to those subtle things of like i want to do this i feel more like this at the moment and just seeing how far i can explore that within which is what you know you might call exploring your highest excitement in any moment obviously if you're at work and you say i really fancy

going out for a walk and you're like yeah but you're doing a presentation right now you're like well i can't do it now but then okay well what can i do right now what's my highest excitement right now and it might be is it is for me breathing i mean breathing, we can last without eating for weeks, drinking for days, breathing for a couple of minutes. When we're talking, we're breathing. When we're eating, we're breathing. When we're performing, we're breathing. Breathing is as close to the first step as we can get alongside heart beating. And yet, no one goes near it.

Everyone wants to do the, what should I say? How should I perform? What can i train but underneath all that is your breathing now you ask anyone that does any kind of yoga or anything when they try to do something challenging your breathing will determine how your balance and when you look at someone who's not performing look at the breathing and why wouldn't you spend all your time becoming more aware of something you're not aware of? My breathing.

And as soon as you do that, even with me just looking into breathing, so many things come up. You think, oh my gosh, I realize that. I realize I've been holding my stomach in for about 35 years. I have been. I look back and think, why did I do that? I see some times at school when there was some shaming going on about people and I was kind of like oh my gosh well my stomach pokes out a bit now I've held my stomach in for nearly 40 years and you kind of go so what's my breathing be like well there's a thing called your belly breath I wouldn't even gone near it so suddenly I'm kind of like whoa what an opportunity

I performed an entire career without even knowing how to breathe. Now, how exciting could that be? Now, what about if you could bring out your heartbeat? What if you could start to operate on a much more conscious level with the way your body moves, with your circulation, with your feelings, with everything? That's where the opportunity is. And it's there right now.

It doesn't matter whether you're sat on a train, whether you're sat in a car and stuck in traffic whether someone's having a go you have the opportunity to say oh what about my breathing what about my posture the way i stand the way i align the way i connect you have this every moment and yet because i can't be in the gym i'm like oh god this is a waste of time oh completely i think that it's a lot of the challenge for me within the wellness industry with being well with feeling great in yourself is this association of the perfect enemy of good you know you can't be in the gym or you can't be in a meditation class you can't help yourself as you said you can always focus on the simple things like breathing grounding how you're

sitting and you know it seems to me from from where I'm sitting and and the way you're talking that you're really filled now with a huge amount of self-compassion and self-acceptance which I think is it's a goal for so many people really because I I really agree with you that I think that's the unlocker of of contentment not of happiness because I don't think happiness and contentment are necessarily the same thing but the sense of true calm and enjoyment from life and I really don't mean this as a flip and I can't think of almost a better word but I know for me this whole for once a better word journey it's been 11 years now and when I started I was at rock bottom with my physical health with my mental health and actually with my self-esteem my self-worth and I didn't know that really at the

time but as I've gone through the last decade I've really realized that and that's been the thing that I've worked on the most and I certainly feel like an unrecognizable person to who I felt I was before but I would say it's been a really difficult journey to get from one to the other and one that sometimes you really don't feel like doing and it's much easier to stay in the past and as I said I don't want to sound overly simple but I guess it's reassuring to know you know did you find it hard going from where you were to where you are now because the way you speak makes it sound so natural it's clearly very much seems that it's inherently who you are today but was that a difficult journey where there are moments where you thought oh it's too hard I can't

do it I can't break myself into a million pieces to put myself back together yeah definitely there is nothing harder there is no harder journey and that's the courage of it that it takes if it was easy everyone would be doing it but But if you look how easy, in retrospect, the other journey is, that's why everyone's doing it, no matter how much and how stressful it is. To compulsively react takes no intervention at all. It just happens automatically. But to move against your habitual conditioning, it takes those things, awareness, it takes acceptance, and then it takes a deeper kind of listening to yourself.

And that's taxing. It's more taxing definitely at the beginning. It's not taxing now. I have an excitement and passion for it. It's taxing because there's this momentum behind what you've always done and how it's always been and how it should be there's a momentum and the danger is is that people think that this journey is you know that that ball that's rolled that rock that's rolling down the hill with that momentum is that you say right okay i'm going to just stand in front of it and stop it and push it the other way

you'll get flattened that's what people do they go for a day and they're like oh no and then it's gone it that's the part of acceptance is that actually what you do is you run alongside the rock you're kind of like looking at it and then gradually you just kind of steer it a bit and you steer it and you steer it and then it goes to flat ground and now you can start using that same energy to push it in a different direction all the time it's much more effortless but at the beginning it feels like you want to just get in there and go oh i'm doing badly it's a classic example of standing in front of it you're kind of saying well i need to be more compassionate i haven't been compassionate myself i'm doing badly it's like well you're now being even less compassionate it's the obvious it's almost like that reinforcement without being able to see it but the ultimate

space i think is having some silence and some solitude in your life having especially just before bed i find really works well for me to sit there and say okay before i go to sleep i will have at least 10 minutes i'll sit here and i'll i look at whether i just become very aware of the sensations around my body and just use that as my focus and then just try and tune into them for that 10 minutes or you might repeat a mantra in your mind or focus on your breathing but the thing is straight away that other part of you is going well this isn't working is it what am i doing i'm yeah i'm not i haven't got a halo above my head yet i haven't i'm not shining an aura my world hasn't changed but the thing is is that just do it how long have you been doing it now from where you started this well initially

i didn't initially i sidestepped it initially i i spiritually sidestepped my issues because when i was speaking to someone they pushed they sort of like men just happened to mention the buddha and i really connected because i was kind of here's a guy that's gone out there and taken it on but it's just enough catching on to my savior archetype my warrior archetype my martyr archetype and i'm sort of like that part of me sort of gone i could do this and still stay rather than have to go so let me go and take on that spiritual journey like everyone else so i'll read all the books and i'll understand all the knowledge but i was still doing it out of some way that i might because i'll get something out of this so i was almost i was kind of understanding a huge amount but I wasn't applying it if you said to me do you want to

meditate I'd be like no I want to read books I want knowledge I want to be able to tell people what I've read I want to be able to stand there and be like yeah I'm into that because you know that's the the new thing and it did relieve that stress because my mind was on something else but the the real power is in applying and so for that part you know probably for the last difficult to say I had such an amazing period between about 2015 to about 2019 where if someone asks you how you are you can't help but you're like i feel amazing everything's unfolding for me i found that connection and then i got hit hard again about 2020 for about a year a bit less maybe and since then with the challenges with your mental health big one yeah i mean i get

them all the time but when i say it's a big one often it's difficult to know because actually a big one starts the same way as a small one for me now. It starts the same way. But when you're not ready and you go there, you indulge it and then you push the ball down the hill. When it's rolling fast, you'll say, I feel terrible. I can't deal with this. But all it takes instead of pushing it down the hill, you just gently stop it when it's, yeah, you slow it down when it starts. At that time, i let one get going

and then i really indulge it and i just it showed me that i had sidestepped a lot i had a huge huge amount of learning to do and i still have loads i can feel it i mean i have so much to go but i can't help the fact that whereas my life used to be survive survive survive i feel my life now is a lot more revelation revelation revelation growth like expansion world's looking different daily whereas at the time i can point out easily for 18 years the world looked exactly the same whereas now you know that's that effort i find myself more effortlessly engaging maybe who knows you never know whether any of these ones i've had recently could have become big ones but you're able to sit there and go stay with it you know just trust in in yourself and what have you and that's like i said with those kind of tools there is no

there is no better option than just going to quiet and just observing lovingly observing what's going on and knowing that as we said before this shall pass and then get your evidence from that when you feel yourself feeling better make sure you mark that in your mind and say look i was feeling like that and now i'm feeling like this it's only taken this long it did pass it always has passed and then make sure that's kind of an understanding that goes alongside the reactive one that says oh my god oh my god oh my god there's the other one that says this has always passed but also i think it's an important point as well which is that it's not linear you know it sounds like you've gone you know very much on a one to a better word upward trajectory from you know early 2000s 20 years later to where you are now but it's not without

dips and you know ups and downs and rounds and rounds along the way and I think sometimes again we look at wellness and this industry and all these various different tools as okay well I'm going to start meditating or I'm going to start eating well we're going to start exercising or yoga or spiritual practices and then everything's going to be fixed and I'm never going to struggle again and then we're almost disappointed and frustrated when we do and I think it's such an important point which again is the point is never it's not that you'll never feel stress again or never feel anxiety or never feel depression or flare-ups of different physical health conditions it's just that it helps us create a toolkit for for the bad times and and a belief system that perhaps there's a way through it or maybe we won't go quite as low as last time I

remember when I was getting better specifically on like a physical basis but elements my mental health my mom would and I'd be so disheartened because I was working so hard to get better and I felt was doing all the right things every day and then I'd be bed bound again for a week or two weeks and I would, you know, I just give myself a real berating for it. And I remember my mum always saying, you know, measure the fact that today's bad day is actually a much better bad day

than you would have had three, five, six months ago. And just remember that. And I always thought, yeah, I've always held onto that. But I'm really curious, you know, as we kind of start to head towards the end of this are there any daily non-negotiables you have kind of facets of looking after yourself whether that's through your diet through your mindset that you do daily or daily-ish to keep looking after yourself I want to just pick up what you just said because it's really really interesting just on the one before as well my brother works as a in the physical health space very much so we work together on a lot of things he comes at it

from a very physical perspective but then moves into mental through that doorway and he's always telling me about the stress adaptation this positive stress adaptation so in the gym you know you you kind of go and train but the training breaks you down it kind of actually harms you a little bit and he says that it's actually people get bigger if that's your goal in the kitchen in the bedroom when you eat when you sleep when you respond and through that supporting of the body you actually end up with a positive stress adaptation now if you don't do those things you end up the negative stress adaptation just add stress on top of stress and you break yourself down so i did during my career with just constant stressing rather than any healing so that's what i meant before about saying you heal beyond where you were before and it's very much the same as in life for me anyway

is that if you want to grow if you have any desire to explore and i think we all do who we really are what we're really capable of how this world can really look how we can connect with each other but you don't want challenge well then it ain't gonna happen and that challenge in a way breaks us down it does harm us it's hurtfully that's why it's you it's why everyone reacts you do react but the question therefore i guess is how long are you going to react for before you start getting in the kitchen in the bedroom metaphorically speaking and that before you start relaxing and breathing and soothing and looking after your body and taking that walk and following your passions speaking to people you love how long are you going to stay in that

cycle for and that kind of positive stress adaptation is why every time I have challenge I'm grateful I hate it but I'm so grateful because I know I'm asking for this I'm asking to find out I want to see I want to feel what life really is and this is part of the path the fact that if I was younger I'd say oh well the universe just won't let me feel it look it keeps telling me I can't have this and that it's making me feel like this but actually now I'm like no it's asking me to go and feel it I've got to do my job which is to get out the way and allow and in terms of the the daily stuff which is all part of that meeting those challenges those challenges can be small when you know you feel like I can't be bothered do it if you can if it's if there's enough in there breathing as i mentioned it's huge i do something on the breathing every evening

massive focus on breathing whether that's techniques in with regard to deeper kind of guided breathing things or whether it's just focusing on breathing throughout the day whenever i can even when i'm training i'll focus on nasal breathing massively nasal breathing all the time especially sort of bellywise to see when I can be doing that. Even in situations, I mentioned I was sprinting here to get to the interview. Whilst I'm sprinting here, I'm going, and every now and again I went, panting, I'm sort of, stop panting. You know, like, come on, this is the challenge. This is today's, this morning's challenge.

Meditation every day and in some way i think to become aware of a space where i've been challenged every day to be aware of my challenge when i'm in the challenge when i have a bit of a a feeling towards someone i stop and go right brilliant noticed it rather than get to the end of the day and look back and go i've had a bit of a stressful day i want to notice it when it's happening because even just noticing it goes it's incredible when you notice it you can't avoid the fact that oh i've seen it and it looks so ridiculous compared to at the end of the day when it looks so valid and similarly the the last thing would be in the same way as being aware of things that my real time stress i'll be aware of my real time gratitude as well as i'm in the middle of a day just to be

like oh my god how lucky am i and how great is life and in that respect i really like to do that by other people and every time i meet someone i'll just be like how fascinating are you whatever your apparent story is on the surface i'll be like how fascinating are you and those things look after every day and if you have time for it my brother and i's kind of cool thing is see the opportunity to be in life's gym every day and what that means is flow through the day i'm giving the most tools in one day here. It's a ridiculous amount of tools, but it's kind of how my mind works in exploring this. But if I have to run here, as I did to get here for the interview,

how do I want to run? Am I running as I want to run? Am I running smoothly? Am I puffing and panting? Or am I actually enjoying this run? When I in the car how do i easily do i get in the car and you know when i stand how how straight and easy do i make that how much do i flow with grace through my day and if i have to pick up shopping carry it realize that you know when people carry shopping in their house they kind of go ah i just didn't have time to go to the gym today so you just carried a heavy weight 50 meters you're in the gym all the time you have this opportunity to move beautifully to flow with your life and focusing on breathing as i mentioned that quietness and that gratitude it kind of brings that all about anyway but sooner or later that kind of conscious experience of every moment

starts unlocking things because in order to do that you've got to release a lot of things that were standing in the way and once when they kind of release a bit they kind of leave a bit of an understanding with you as they go and they're always things you you didn't have it for you know you always think well I know what that meant and when it comes out it'd be like wow yeah I never looked at it that way I love this idea of consistently checking in with yourself as you said you meet someone it could be literally just a passing getting a coffee from a coffee shop but it's just that sense of wow I'm really lucky to have this coffee even when the day's so hectic you can still have these little punctuations throughout it and I

think the more certainly I've seen that in my life the more you're able to stop and notice that the quicker the mindset shift is because you you really do retrain your brain to seek that out and yeah that it makes life feel a lot lighter and a lot smoother as you said and am I right in saying that you've got quite a big focus as well on nutrition in terms of that everyday outlook and feeling yeah so I mean so much so that out of this journey and exploration came a desire when at the end of my rugby career to kind of do something in the nutrition space because i was sort of starting to really desire as you can imagine through it was kind of my late 20s that i really hit a really deep deep hole or fell into a deep hole early 20s sort of mid-teens you know just

before I was about 10 and then when I was younger I'd had these sort of moments but the late 20s one was a big one and so I was working my way processing a lot of that stuff and when I was about 32 so you know maybe a good three or four or five years later I got to the stage where I was starting to look at diet and realizing geez what do i eat how do i eat looking around the changing room thinking we're performers and i get it that there's this very laboratory designed diet everything packaged up is so processed because it gets that way so trying to get to that that kind of ground in nature i realized just how dissociated we were in this fit but not healthy journey you were mentioning all these fit muscular people around me eating this stuff but you could

tell in so many ways not to get too graphic that they weren't healthy neither was i and so i wanted to find something that that kind of connected in that way and something that really meant something to me on that mental emotional health journey as I started to explore deeper and deeper, came to the understanding of the body, the understanding that we are part bacteria, virus, fungi, very much part of who we are. And actually, without it, we're 20,000 genes. With it, we're 2 million.

So much of our intelligence is in these things that we spend our life trying to get rid of. Outside, you know, don't do that, watch this, watch that. And so we lose that connection. And this became a real focus of mine because it was so unknown as well, this unknown intelligence, but needing to feed it, nurture it, it really fell with that journey of this love for the unknown. And so I got into living foods, fermenting sourdough starters so we can make sourdough bread at home kefir yogurt kombucha and making things like kimchi all these kind of amazing things at home

and and it really stuck sort of made a difference to my lifestyle so we brought out a kombucha first drink we brought out was kombucha with water kefir we have shots and we've got adaptogenic drinks now and they're all under the name of number one living which is the brand it's been out for a while but it's it's one of those brilliant things and it was inspired by this journey it was one of those things that just spins off you're suddenly going through this journey and then something comes out of you that says i really i want to do this why because i feel it's important it's part of the meaning i feel like you can make a difference i feel like the world's moving in a direction with antibiotics finding their way into food chains that you know we're losing this kind of enormous intelligence and health and and and what have you so yeah that's it is a big part of

me and how you eat as well huge when i was younger you know i had such a monotonous diet my choice i just wouldn't i was so fussy i wouldn't go out of my way and then later on i and now i look at it and i do eat a hell of a lot of vegetables i can't stop just sort of trying new ones playing them out and i don't know it's difficult somehow to say oh well i feel so much better than i did when I was young. But I know for sure that I feel so much more connected, definitely. And it's a privileged opportunity I have to eat like that. So when I do eat, I try and make sure I'm sort of respectful and grateful for it.

Honestly, I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed talking to you today. I think it's that open-mindedness to things changing and life looking different and how deep you've got to dig to do that I don't think can ever be underestimated and I just really appreciate the vulnerability and honesty with which you've shared that because I think it will mean a lot to people as they said what I'm really keen to show is that we all have these moments whether they're big or small where there's lots of little catalysts or one big catalyst but moments where we perhaps know if we're completely honest with ourselves that something's not quite right but changing things doing things about it it's not easy and I think knowing that you're not alone ever in that journey that even people that we can look at and admire so deeply I mean there's so few

moments in my life where I could tell you where I was when something happened and I've got to be honest and say I'm not really a sports fan save that to the end of the interview but I remember where I was when you got the goal like I remember it so clearly I was probably about 12 and it was one of those huge moments and I you know it just that's one of the reasons I was just so fascinated to talk to you is because I know that was in in a room of, I don't know, 800 people and you were just a god. And yet you're sitting here saying, that's how everyone else saw me and I saw myself as empty. And like, I didn't have huge self-worth. And I think to be able to recognize that and turn that around and now have this wisdom

and the courage to share that wisdom with such openness and authenticity is just very very unusual and so I just really want to say a huge thank you for taking the time to share it my pleasure thank you thanks for having me on and giving me a an opportunity to talk I think just just before I finish this something really really important to me is that speaking about all these things you mentioned before people meeting their own unique challenges everyone's going through things so different I'm so so aware when I was younger I was so dogmatic I was so I've got the answer do this do this and I was telling people how to be how to act what to say whereas now I'm in a space where I realize more than anything that I haven't

got anything for anyone else. I've just got my experience. And to be able to share your experience, that's kind of it. And I even steer away from saying I haven't helped anyone do anything. I haven't given this to anyone. I just kind of live in my life and exploring that. And so it's really important that I think everything that gets said that there is that massive respect for people that are facing things that I can't even imagine and it's so nice as you mentioned when you meet people on the street to look and go wow who knows what it's like to be you and what you're going through but

what I've found is that these things have some kind of truth and and meaning for me and they have opened up into a space of of a freedom that I know I've always been after well thank you honestly it's been amazing I so appreciate it pleasure I have to say and I'm sure you do as well I've got the utmost respect and appreciation for Johnny's vulnerability and openness in this episode the way that he talked about sitting there in his suit in the pouring rain crying his eyes out because he just couldn't face what he was doing I think is it's an extraordinarily poignant moment and I think he was very very brave to talk about all of this the way that he did and I hope it's meant a lot to all of you and as I said in the introduction I think I don't mean to use his life

in this way but I think he would say himself is just the ultimate example of fact the grass isn't always greener accomplishments and external validations aren't always the key to happiness in fact I think from what I'm gathering they very very rarely are I think it's that internal journey that's incredibly hard and and not linear and takes a huge amount of discipline in a way to do it but I do think that it can have such huge rewards in the end and I think there's a lot to be said for the importance of taking responsibility for making those changes in your life and even when you're in a seemingly impossible place and I think that's what he really alluded to a lot and how deep you've got to dig

you know despite setbacks I really resonated with a lot of what he was saying along the way there and as every week we'll be putting together that toolkit on feel better the deliciously Ella app to help you along the way if there are topics in each episode we've talked about that you want to be working on too so we'll pull together all those into one easy place for you if If you don't have Feel Better, you can download it now from the App Store, from Google Play. It's a seven-day free trial, so you can try out these tools, see what difference they make to your life. But I just hope you enjoyed the episode. If you do, please share it. It really means masses to get the

feedback. So much goes into each show. Just tag us on social at deliciouslyella send me an email podcast at deliciouslyella.com rate it review it subscribe it does mean more than you know all that's left to say is thank you for listening and as always just a massive thank you to Curly Media who are partners in producing the show you're a podcast listener Thank you. endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target