Jonny Wilkinson - Full Extended Episode | High Performance Podcast

welcome to the podcast johnny wilkinson thanks for having me nice to have you with us let's start as we always do what in your mind is high performance i think high performance is about if you'd ask me some of these i imagine these questions coming up middle midway through my career you get a very different answer than towards the end and essentially it's a very very different answer to where i am now which is high performance when i was younger was was about outcomes i would have painted a picture of you know it was all about whether the ball went through the post where the past hit this whether it's you know hit the mark whether the guy was tackled whether he went backwards all of these things were written up on a stat sheet and that defined who you are and whether you're a success and what have you as i got further down my exploration of performance and potential these things start to understand that for me high performances is about absolute engagement just there's kind of i looked at it more now instead of at the time of playing rugby it was more about what does what does a good game look like what is a good number ten look like what does a good career look like i look at it now i've been like what what would be the you know a great life lived and no answer satisfied me until i sort of started to come to something which started to vaguely feel right which was all of me in every moment and that's performance you're either fully attentive and engaged um or you're not and that presence um that uh i guess that deep involvement is performance there's for me there's no other way of defining it the the the out uh out to win version of outcomes and you know ticks and all those sort of things and crosses and that is what led me down the root of great mental health um it was more of a manifestation of my my kind of conflicted inner state um and breaking out that is where i suddenly realized all the flow or the um intuition or the feel all the grace um and all the real possibility lied and and i kind of fought that for most of my career until the end when i gave into it and suddenly started to find all that passion again so do you think that you could have lived in this present flow-like passionate completely engaged state when you were playing rugby or did you need when you were an elite rugby player to be obsessed with the stats because that was what was going to determine whether you won or lost a game it's it's a a good question but it's it's quite a simple answer is that that's how i lived yeah between the whistles so on a saturday afternoon for the majority of the time between half two and four o'clock i was in that state that's why i was able to do what i did the thing was is i just created an idea as most people do that that state is revealed or earned through great suffering and sacrifice so there seems to be this deep understanding which i've explored and experienced otherwise since that by suffering and stressing and fighting you somehow end up in a joyful flowing state whereas my understanding my own experience of it tended to be that by spending my time suffering stressing and sacrificing what i did was create stronger habits of suffering stressing and sacrificing it's a bit like the whole kind of you know when i grow up when i get my car when i get my promotion when i get my family when i get my big house when i get to retirement that's when my joy is going to hit me when i've got enough money but then even when you've got the boat in the in the you know in the in the sunny port you're still suffering and setting for the next thing and unfortunately it's become a new one which has taken shape more recently which is is going to leave no opportunity for turning inward which is people now think that leaving a legacy after once they've gone was what bring joy i miss ludicrous and that's kind of where i was you know my whole rugby career was like i'm going to suffer through this because i'm going to leave the greatest mark it's like well what happens to just flourishing enjoying and loving life and then you realize that being in a changing room before a game is where you see it happen you see that fragility of people that believe in themselves this idea that self-belief is going to create self-exploration on the field is crazy self-belief represents itself as fragility look at anyone that's in the middle of self-belief you'll see someone who's covering up fear look at someone who's willing to be open to the future and say let's just see you'll see someone who's physically and ready mentally ready but the story always ends with that i'm always fine when the whistle goes which is like saying well i've spent my time in the change room trying to live ahead of myself and when the whistle goes i'm prepared to live now why not just live now all the time and it's and it's been my exploration for the last 15 years because of mental health issues that that left me in nowhere else to turn but it was and there i found i've never found anything of substance anything of truth i've sound nothing solid i've certainly found no boundaries all i've found is opportunity space and deeper dimensions of experience see johnny it sounds that a lot of that description that you've that you've given in terms of what you've found describes childhood in many ways that you don't see a child planning for the future they play in the moment in the playground it's it it is the immediate so would you say that some of what you've discovered is almost coming back to that childhood state of playing for the pleasure of it but living for the moment yeah definitely that i look at yeah the the childhood experience and i remember from my own that you become you're able to become whatever you need to become to make the most of every moment like the child says i'm going to be an astronaut they are an astronaut they're not me pretending to be an astronaut they become an astronaut because there isn't that sense of this is who i who i really am and therefore i'm pretending they haven't got an idea of who they are yet so they can be anything they want which means they can engage fully in any moment the imagination is is is vibrant because there isn't this solid path to who i've become the thing is though is that that childhood experience for me and my exploration of things is unconscious it's an unconscious freedom which means it can be lost and it is lost and it's influenced by the outside and by me being falling into that cycle of trying to become someone that self-importance of wanting to know myself and knowing how the world works is that that's the path towards going back to that child life childlike experience but consciously so without the sort of the the experience for me of suffering the mental health stuff there was no way of going back there consciously and there's no other route but to the only way to go back to being free of the identity of who i've become you know this stuff is is to in i want to i want to say just let it go but eventually essentially what that means is it's got to die now that sounds very strong but it's almost like in order to fully live you need to are you willing to die to fully live yep or are you just living to die now that's the thing for me is i got to a point where i was protecting this old identity this all this stuff that become me i usually the the um the kind of way of articulating it for me is that that old me was choosing how this now should be for this now me and this now me is capable of anything but i was being held back the way i was feeling was decided by the old me so yeah when i get a feeling in my you know stress or whatever i'm like well i don't want this so who the hell is choosing it for me right all my old beliefs and my old conclusions and my old ideas they're deciding how this life has to be for me now so what i've decided was i'm going to think for myself i'm going to start deciding how i want to be on the inside and who i want to be now and it goes against the whole mentality of a lot of the values around sport that you are who you are and this resilience of fight stand up and never give in it's kind of like but it creates this idea that there is something solid inside that you need to protect and you only get one choice in every moment are you going to control it or explore it and if you've got something to protect you're going to control it yeah and you look at anyone that's trying to control a situation they won't be fully engaged they'll live through the mind and not through the life so this was the choice i had am i going to try and control the rest of my life on behalf of some old ideas i had when i was younger or am i going to drop those and start exploring it for it is now and the child is exploring there's no other way of looking at it so when did you unconsciously start to be shaped by this new identity when did that happen when you look back now i think for me and this is not so much experience of so much concepts and ideas that i i came into this world with the leaning towards picking things up in certain ways and that leaning goes back generations or goes back culturally or whatever you want to call it previously and that leaning was to start to shape things understandings in certain ways and one of the understandings i picked up very early was about mortality and it scared the hell out of me at a very very young age probably younger than normal and what was it that so that triggered that fair i i don't know that was just the there was there was a sense of doom about being alive right and that for me was was in the mortality and what i did was sort of say right i need to come up with an answer to mortality and from a child-like state what i came up with kind of was was just a big self-belief or big belief that if i'm perfect when i get to the pearly gates i'd heard about i'm gonna hand over my cv and be like come on that's good enough to get it isn't it and i needed ticks everywhere so that would decide yeah therefore my definitions of what's good bad so all the uncontrollables in life just destroyed me right and and therefore whatever you were obsessed with perfection at this point in order to rid myself of this sense of doom so there wasn't a pleasure in the perfection which is where the compulsive what age from yeah from i guess four or five you know so your your daily actions and your daily thoughts at four or five years old start determined by this desire to get rid of the feeling of doom well yeah to a degree i mean when i'm talking about it's not like it wasn't every moment yeah i was a child i loved life i went and played basketball and i played my rugby and i had my friends and it was great but often there were periods where i just fell into these big holes where it became whatever and i i created this idea that that by being perfect i would be spared the you know that would be my i guess my yeah yeah that'd be my my saving grace and as a result i then unfortunately had at the same time a ridiculous passion for competitive sport so now i'm going into competitive sport with a need to be perfect yeah now competitive sport is a is an environment where you've got a lot of other people also wanting to have their way and you can't guarantee anything so therefore i had a passion mixed with a deep kind of understanding of life that put me in a state before games and after games in terms of over analysis and and the anticipation beforehand just crippling fear of this idea that what i was about to go through or what i'd what i'd already been through would define me and that no matter the crazy thing was no matter what i'd been through how many kicks i'd missed the next game held the opportunity to rid myself of that which was kind of almost counter sort of my own belief that i could somehow change my past by being more perfect in the in the next game so i just put more pressure on the next game so this idea in rugby that you're only as good as your last game and your next game will define you just added to the fuel to the fire you said unfortunately there though when you were talking about it like unfortunately i was obsessed with being perfect and i loved elite sport isn't there an element though of fortunately i was obsessed with being perfect i loved elite sport because i was of the opinion that the reason why you became the leading rugby player of your generation was the combination of obsession and love for the sport yeah yeah maybe or was it in spite of that that you still got to the top no there's it's all in there yeah i'm sure it's all in there um but it was a classic journey towards heading down a dark yeah pull there's no other way for it to go because and and the inevitable part of that cycle is as i was succeeding a bit more i was reinforcing those old ideas they were getting stronger and stronger and stronger and you could hear it in the way i was speaking and i call that doesn't matter what those ideas are whether they're negative or positive about yourself when they get reinforced they become more important therefore call that self-importance knowing who you are with more more surety becomes self-importance and that self-importance was clearly uh evident in everything i spoke about so as an 18 year old you mentioned that child-like side i went to newcastle in 18 year old and i'm stood around inga to igamala and rob andrew and dean ryan and and pat lamb and and these you know gary armstrong and dodie where all these amazing i mean i could name the lot i just thought i'll just name the internationals i'm like oh the entire team and um and i was just a kid in there and if i got five minutes if i got two minutes or one play in the team run before a game i was on the bench most of the time in that first year for a half the first half of the year if i got on the team run the the session before the the game if i got on there for one play i was kind of like well when i did got on there i was just like look what i'm gonna give it fast forward eight ten years i'm the guy in the change and the only thing i'm talking about is pressure expectation i'm judging the hell out of everyone around me you're not professional other guy's a waste of time you'll never make it no it needs to be like this our guide you know that coaching is rubbish they should be this is what i'm talking like go back 10 years i'm just opportunity i'm a walking embodiment of opportunity and passion now the only result of that is self-importance because when i was 18 i'm like i'm a nobody i've got nothing to lose i'm just exploring now i'm a somebody i've got everything to lose and that's why i'm feeling pressure i've become solid so those forces are all compressing me whereas when i'm nothing i'm just fluid hence flow so nothing can i just wind blows me this way i don't need to stand against it because i'm not this direction i'll go any direction you look at the most beautiful geniuses on the field they're not solid so they bend they flow they hold your beliefs like look at a zidane or a federer the ball goes here it's kind of like they don't expect anything or they expect everything at the same time it's the same thing it's otherwise known as being completely open and ready now what i was before the game was just absolute rigidity but on the field you let go because you because what i designed myself into was a plug that fit the socket of rugby on the field so anywhere that wasn't on that field i couldn't plug in at home i'd be thinking about the next game after the everything at this game if i'm trying to eat a meal i'd be half thinking about this am i doing this how do i look but as soon as i went onto the rugby field that first whistle went who i'd become fit that socket you plug in and suddenly you talk about being in the zone and effortless and but as soon as the referee blows his whistle and says penalty suddenly i'm like now it's about me so i the way i articulate that self-importance is the thought what about me now as soon as you see a referee give a penalty you look at a kicker moments before they're playing the game and they're just effortless as soon as they suddenly the referee blows the whistle you see them change they go and you're like well hold on just be as you were why because the thought what about me comes in and it may be what if i miss this but it ultimately reduces down to what about me if i miss this and then people talk about like i did self-importance oh the pressure the expectation but take away the thought what about me where's pressure take away the thought what happens if this goes wrong where's fear of failure and it just comes down to self-importance and what it was i'd allowed myself to think that i knew who i was and i knew how life worked and as a result i had that to protect and now i'm talking about pressure and expectation so when i hear that i say i realized more towards the end of my career that i was just kind of like there's no such thing it's up to me how i am on the inside and what i just didn't know i was doing it now i do it's my choice now so can i ask you a question then johnny around we get a lot of people listening to this that are teachers or sports coaches they may have gone no no but i think that some of the characteristics you described that someone like a traditional sports coach would see you as the perfect player you're you're the embodiment of what i want my players to do and yet you're challenging that convention yeah so what advice would you give to an aspiring parent with a a parent with an aspiring sports child or a coach or somebody to avoid that trap of of of building up this idea of perfection or self-importance it's there is no right or wrong there's a very nature of lack of self-importance there is no good bad right and wrong it's just it's just it just is there's a deep acceptance to everything and what i mean by that is there's also an exploration to everything so if that's where when you talk about childlike it's the curiosity that comes with it that means that anything's a possibility so if there's great disappointment be curious about the disappointment yeah don't be angry at the situation be curious about the disorder it's an inward journey and if you point inwards there's no limit there so a degree of just pure curiosity exploration with the aim of finding new space which is new opportunity which keeps passion alive so how much was that encouraged for you in the dressing room environments you were going into well you probably know the answer to that already you know we had team talks where before a game yeah you have this week and i'm chatting to the boys before a big game i'm saying let's just go out there let's just do it it's what we've trained for it's beautiful to be here what a privilege just go out there and love every moment i mean breathe it in yeah and then you go in and the coach says boys we can't lose this one if we lose on the susan and i'm set they're going right now that's that energy gone and you can feel the energy palpably change the the fact is you ask any coach or or captain or player what do you want from your team i just i want them to to perform brilliantly so what do you need them to feel i want them to feel at their very best so if that's the case look at everything you're doing what do i need for myself i want to feel liberated okay is what you're doing liberating you or doing the opposite is what you're doing for your team allowing them to be all they can be or are you needing them to be how you want them to be the i have a situation now you mentioning about the the conventional idea of what i brought to the game was a lot of practice and dedication now when that was through passion it's not work it's not dedication it's just enjoying your damn life it's doing what you love doing and spending all your time doing it i say that to anyone what they'll tell you is it sounds like a holiday that's what it was it was a choice now when it becomes effort people think that's somehow courageous and worthy it's like no it's just a loss of passion and what that means is there's no new space if if anyone feels like they're improving and they're growing they'll be passion no one steps away from a journey when you're feel like i've just opened a new one you don't go into a house and go oh this is rubbish and then you see a door and you're like that door's unlocked wow and then just walk off you go in the door you're suddenly like wonder what's in there that's what the journey is so the journey of that is to reveal new space in everything reveal the space of opportunity in disappointment reveal the space of opportunity in losing now there was an uh stories about change or invincibility for me was that people were standing there being like we haven't lost or unbeaten or you know we can do this we're not going to lose now that same invincibility or sense of invincibility also parades itself in this feeling deep down i've been like i hope the opposition don't travel well i hope there are lead guys injured i hope that guy's not playing or he has a tough game i hope the refs on our side or that wind dies down i mean there's no invincibility there at all now look at the invincibility of someone that sits in the change room and says you know what if we win that's going to be awesome and i'm going to do so i'm going to do everything to win but if things don't go my way i know that's going to bring out so much more of me so i would love to win this game but i would also love to be challenged and to not have it my way now that's invincibility sure not someone going out there being like i can do this and i can make it happen it's going to go my way now what does that look like as a person that goes on the field look at a boxer look at any team that's unbeaten you start to see them get more and more shady the performances get worse and worse less exploratory yeah it's a movement away from potential because it's a movement away from exploring so yeah the point for me as a kid was that success is either an external thing or an internal thing and the being determined by what happens on the outside which is up for everyone to have their involvement in if something you can't control determines something you can control there's a degree of of sort of of an issue there now surely you control what you can control and you allow what's on the outside to be an exploration it's not being painted that way and as a result a lot of solid people for me who have been wound to be this is who i am and now being unplugged from the rugby environment through injury or through the end of their career and then i go around trying to plug that in and the only thing that half seems to fit is if i can get back into coaching that kind of fits but not not fully i'm not fully charged from that maybe punditry but eventually like this isn't the same i remember stuart lancaster telling a story when he took over the national team where he asked the players to do a survey to tell them what was the greatest experience of a team environment that they'd ever been in and why and the answer that he got was twofold most people spoke about playing as a child or in their amateur clubs because he said and the reason was i was playing with my friends yeah so people i enjoyed the company of and the second one was we played for the fun of it rather than the outcome of brilliant of a goal and things like that and it sounds like you're trying to shift the dial to to do that but what's your appetite for actually getting into rugby to actually get that conversation to be more more common so i work with the kickers in the england team um and that's the journey the journey is a journey of understanding that when you let go of old conclusions you re gain the opportunity to define redefine everything so when you say about i was playing with my friends well why can't we be friends in here why do we why are we strangers now that's a definition like it's the same way that you're willing to allow your family so many things to go on there but with other people it's not but it's like well where does family end and stop now that's just an exploration you know it's a definition that because i was born into this line this is my family and you are not but that line of of where i draw the line will determine where i draw on the line on my enjoyment of life now if everyone becomes family and i connect to everyone then you're in that state what about why is it for the fun of it well if it's just passion for now and it's about performance and exploring what you're capable of that's fun so put that at the top of the list this it's it's everything is achievable the world can be how you want it unless we're unconstantly holding on to old ideas which are doing that definition for us so what's the response then when you go into this world of old ideas and start talking like this because because it's so refreshing to hear but what's the general reaction to this but it doesn't come across like this you guys have asked me a direct question and i'm responding directly if i was working with someone on skills you go back in through the door that they present right so it's a it's a gradual movement towards and ultimately that you could get there straight away with the simple answer of like what's the most important thing to you and it comes down to performance and then that comes down to health and happiness and you're kind of like let's go there then but you can't do it straight away because health and happiness is perceived as is a as a kind of like it's almost a separate journey to being on the field where it's all about this but if you had a chat with someone recently and they were saying someone's told me to be you know they think i should find more joy in my playing i'm like right tell me what joy feels like for you and the answer i didn't get was big smiles on the field and i'm joyful they were like it's kind of like just when i'm i'm fully in it i'm like there you go that's deep engagement misunderstanding of what joy is is that smelling the roses involves big smiles now laughing is a definite sign of joy real deep laughter and but it's because you're deeply involved in the situation you look at someone who's pretending to laugh or trying to laugh you'll see something far from joy the same way you see someone trying to laugh on a field when that's not deeply engaging you so you say well hold on how do we get joy in everything you just deeply engage and then what happens time flies now i i watch i love the odd film and time flies to me when watching a film and i might be like geez that was incredible what i'm not doing through the film is this yeah i'm not i'm like this sometimes i'm like but i'm deeply engaged and time flies and people that's that's what that's what joy is it's a deep engagement in life it's not about smiles and happiness so what we say is right i want to be healthy and happy so well what does that mean to you well let's get that now what's stopping you from deeply engaging in this an idea that it's not as it should be it's not good enough for me it's not right enough for me it doesn't fit with who i am so you're like well let's change let's work on that so that every moment fits i don't understand how you let go though like i sit here listening to this and i am jealous of the things you're talking about because i want to live in a life of deep engagement fully committed i want to flow i want to have that growth mindset and a flexible perspective towards everything but then i you know i'm also looking at other people and thinking oh they're doing well why am i not doing well and then i'm wondering whether i'm being a good enough parent to my kids and i know that i've got a really busy week coming up and i know that i haven't spoken with my parents i feel like i'm carrying with me external pressures external expectations internal pressures and expectations but i don't want them yeah and there'll be lots of people listening to this probably coming at it from the same angle bloody hell i want to live a free life like johnny is explaining yeah if you can get there from where you were as the rugby player representing his country a couple of decades ago then i i'd like to think all of us can because you've come from a really full-on very different mindset so if you were able to move i like to think that all of us can how do we do it well i think that for a start there is no arrival yeah there's no like we said that otherwise you fall back into the idea that i'm going to arrive at retirement yeah and all that work is going to be worth it you know it's a bit like winning the world cup you think that's amazing it's the most i mean it's it's it's the immensity of that the ecstasy of that moment incredible but within three or four seconds it's on the decline there's no lasting nature to it and that's kind of then a day later you're like oh and then and then two months later you're in trouble because now you're way down at the bottom of the hill looking back at my glory days and then you add injury to that and you whatever you go through that experience so there's there is no part where you think oh it's going to be this the very nature of having an idea of what my potential is is what prevents you from going there sort of have a a story about this we say you know someone you say to someone just go into that room with you and just find your potential for me and if they come back with anything you're like you're moving further away from it if they come back and say what do you mean i don't even know what i'm looking for you like now we're on the right track the point is if you've got an idea of what your best is it isn't your best it's just your next limit it's a limit to your best so how do you know you're going in the right direction then good question now we're now we're talking that's the kind of curiosity now now the thing for me that makes this a big opportunity or did for me was that i built myself hugely on the idea that who i am was a result of everything i've been through and it's quite a common one it sort of falls in line with the idea that i'm just a physical being so like my body's the result of all the food i've eaten all the growth and all the scars i've got it's all linked in there but if i align who i am with that physical existence you know of mind and body i'm just on the decline from the day i'm born you know i'm dying yeah i don't like these terms i probably would reword this if i was doing this again but but you know i'm on the decline but when you realize when you just seek a bit deeper for ask the big questions about who i am there's no beginning no end it's already there and i think it's the same way that people talk so investigating that [Music] as an opportunity is big and the way the way that one way to do it is just to look at right well if if i catch you on a a day where you're just feeling good for for just you're just feeling good and i say well tell me about you know that period of your life and you'll be like yeah it's funny it's like sort of thing it happened and i think i've learned so much from it and now look at the world for me but if i catch you on a rough day and i say tell me about that same period you'll be like bloody well was against me do what i mean what if on your good days what i mean by the point of that is is that if you're a result of what you've been through how can you have two separate causes for the same effect surely there's one true way is there not the point is is that for me who i am now is not a result of what i've been through what i've been through is a result of how i choose to be now right and so you understand that if you start to explore that choice you start to realize that everything you've been through doesn't decide who you are now you're talking about being liberated but how could you possibly be liberated if you're a product of something the same way that people talk about leadership and yet one of the biggest values is who i am is just a result of all i've been through but people in unpredictable world determine your situation and therefore they're deciding what you've been through they're deciding how you are now so other people and the world holds your potential or do you hold your potential so once you get excited about that opportunity to be like you know i'm going to go deeper so i did it i went looking for who i am where did you look in a good question straight away you're kind of like well hold on this voice in my head whose is it these feelings i've got who do they belong to and all i found was just a load of old ideas i never found anything and i've been acting i'd been acting on behalf of this apparent me and i couldn't find it i asked for a meeting and he didn't turn up and i'm looking at being like well gee so where's it coming from it's just old ideas now exploring those old ideas there was no logic to any of them there's no logic to any of them even the what was the biggest one that didn't make sense to you the probably being a result of who i am now because i was kind of like or other ones would be you have i had all these immense fear of the failure and the future and all those kind of things and they were so true when i was younger and yet on one day i'd be so happy and i'd be like hold on how can i be happy if those are still there if they're true they must be constant and if they're constant they're still there so how can i be happy and you create this idea that i'm just distracted from it you're like but no i'm not distracted because i'm fully engaged so i'm not taking my mind off elsewhere and trying to think of nicely i'm just fully so how can i fully engage in what i'm doing if there's this potential consequence that i need to think about i realized that the problem for me had always been living in my mind and what that meant was that my old ideas of who i was was deciding for me my memory and my imagination so i wasn't in control of my memory and imagination as i let go of those old ideas my memory expands and my imagination opens so i start to be able to to piece together all the old things i've been through in my life i can piece them together in different orders to create different imaginations whereas before that's who i was and how i got here so all i could do was translate that into the future that's how i have to get away from here whereas now it's the same it's the same understanding that people i get the impression that people think that the now is a result of the past i would think that yeah but it's not how show me the past well the now for me is like sitting here having this conversation with you right whilst thinking i don't want to be home too late because we've had a busy few days and my wife will be putting both the kids to bed yeah um but i know i put that beef in the arga this morning so at least there's some food made yeah that's all stuff that happened in the past yeah all of which is determining what i'm feeling now yeah so even though we're having this remarkable and brilliant conversation there is still a part of my brain obviously cracking on with stuff that's already happened in the past but that but that's the the now has become the content of the world right not the experience of it so the idea that now is a is a time you have to try to get into or live in instead of the now being a state you live through are you familiar johnny with the work of victor frankl so did you explore his stuff in this no because i'm having some parallels with it that that intrigued me so viktor frankl was a a psychotherapist that he was captured as a prisoner in auschwitz yeah and the stats of auschwitz is that only one in every 28 people that went in there would ever um survive it and he was one of them and when he was finally released he wrote a book about the experience called man's search for meaning where he asked the question of why why did i survive and okay 20 28 other people wouldn't and the premise that he came to was this idea of choice about constantly recognizing how powerful choice was and lots of people he describes it as they were almost overwhelmed by the horror of the holocaust quite understandably whereas he chose to interpret it in a way and said um that he was a caregiver so he said i'm now going to play the role of being the caregiver and the person that encourages others and gives them hope that there's a better future for them yeah and he felt that that the understanding the power of choice was central in terms of his survival not just physically but mentally yeah and um i think i think what you're talking about is going back to combining the two is that when the now becomes a physical situation then yes past exists so the physical the material side of this world for me yeah where i park my car i'm hoping that's where i'm gonna find it when i finish it's the same deal but it's physical but when who i am becomes physical i fall into the same laws and that choice goes because how can i have choice you know if i'm going to try and work through the physical because the physical is what it seems now obviously actually you can go a lot deeper into that physical side it's not actually what it seems but on the surface it's cause and effect so when you invest in the situation physical situation determines my inner state yeah you fall into that stage whereas so the difference is for me is where choice comes from is beyond old ideas because as soon as you decide this is as soon as i decided this is who i am that decided for me immediately this is how i see things that decided immediately for me this is how i'm going to feel about things that happened to and around me which decided this is what i'm going to do about it which decides what i create that decision of how i see myself immediately translates to what i can create in the world which is why when people start to create different things it always relates to a shift of how they see themselves so when people say things of like mostly when you you know when it goes through difficult times for me it was a mental health thing and you know and yeah there's still loads and loads of interesting challenges for me but with those challenges always affects at the level of how i see myself and when there's a shift there there's a shift everywhere but what tends to be the case is that when you're looking at when when i find when i was younger looking at i want to change what i create i went back as far as how i feel and then when i got older i tried to get back to how i see things but i never went back to exploring how i see myself and as a result you just end up creating more and more problems it's like trying to feel differently than how you see things no chance trying to see things differently to how you start to see yourself won't work but most people talk about if you keep doing the same thing you'll keep getting the same thing it's like if you keep seeing yourself the same way the whole thing's done so there has to be a desire to look inwards honestly at some of the feels like a very brave thing to do though it kind of yeah it panics me a little bit when i think about doing it you know yeah but i think because because the idea being is that if all i've been through has become my worth and my value then letting that go is of course you're letting go of everything but actually my experience is is you just ask how do you feel at your very best what if and the answer to that is is i feel liberated and when you're at your very best are you thinking about who i am and how i'm a great person no you're just free of those thoughts so in a way every moment you get where you you're outside of thought you're engaged what about if you feel free when you're not at work but you have to do your job to pay your bills or you feel free when you're not with your wife and children and that scares the living daylights out of you because you want to be with your wife and children yeah that will create difficult conversations for people but yeah i agree but any line that's been drawn between any line that divides you know this from this is a definition right because there is no line anywhere else you look at that well the physical line of the body investigate it explore it deeply there's no line there there's just it's just one field you know even from a perspective of a tree you can't draw a line around a tree and go that's where the tree stops the tree involves the soil you the tree doesn't just stop the soil is constantly exchanging from the tree yeah it's everything is everything is is one everything is connected so every time we draw a line between us and someone else it's our line and every time we draw a line between work and home that's our line now you could say oh well i'm at work i'm at this office but it's kind of like right but when you're with when you're at home what is it it's it's me and this moment what are you doing at the office it's me and this moment those lines are our choice you mentioned albeit really difficult ones and i spoke to a i had a chat with a triathlete who was saying to me you know i made an analogy that about how when i was younger i'd be like oh you know playing a world cup final that's important and now you know the idea about doing the washing up would have been like don't you dare and now i'm like i love doing the washing up and he couldn't believe it was like this rubbish i said well what is it you love about what did define being a triathlete to me and he was saying about doing the run and then the swim and then the cycle whatever i said okay right now break that down for me what are you doing well i'm i'm moving my body to get to a goal i said right what are you doing when you're doing the washing up moving my body to get to a goal so why is one good and one's bad because of outside opinions and influences i suppose because of old ideas that i've decided that this is something i like doing because i plug into this because this is what i enjoy doing so all those it's a really tricky one and there's obviously going to be likes and dislikes but whether or not you fully engage comes down to how you are on the inside does that make lifting a world cup more important than doing the washing up no no no that's my decision if i if i choose to be a world cup winner because i've lifted a world cup that's going to be my next limit because when i'm a world cup winner or i'm a rugby player that won the world cup now i'm a guy that's walking around being the rugby rugby the winner and what happens when england win it again i'm like i'm a less important guy who'd want to woke up just the same as other guys and now next time england are playing i'm like i hope they don't win it but i hope they do really well because i work the guys but i hope they don't win it it's like no it doesn't work that way if i'm a rugby player when i finish playing rugby i'm a less of a person but if i'm a nobody so this unveiling of the or this unraveling of these old ideas to to allow the choice for anyone just means i'm going back from a someone to a no one and when i'm nothing on the inside i can be anything on the outside and everything when i'm a someone on the inside i can only be so at this moment in time then johnny who are you that's the biggest question life has if i had an answer for that i'd that would be my next problem i have no idea i see myself as in every situation as undecided potential so can i ask you a question then that if we were running a parallel world this might be a difficult one to answer i'd like to start with already i like the first word yeah yeah but if you were to have adopted this way of thinking yeah halfway through your career how do you think it would have been different to be honest for me the i still involve myself when i'm coaching with the guys now i constantly put myself in positions where i'd be like yeah so uh watch this and i'll put myself on a pedestal to be like right hold on i've just been and i've got guys watching and i'm telling them about this and now i'm going to do it so i put myself through the same situation constantly testing that moment out we went to a fair um some sort of park the other day they had a little game thing where you had to shoot basketball straw hoop to win a prize now our little one was like oh my god look at those and my wife said oh daddy plays basketball most nights outside in the driveway he's been practicing for this he'll get you one of those and i'm kind of like this is brilliant because i can sense that old part of me the tiny bits that i you know that are still cogs are still trying to turn in that direction they're going oh yeah like bloody hell i better start thinking about this and and like yeah i just i'm going to need a bit of time i'm just going to understand and i'm sorry and this part of me that's now is saying no no no i'm going to sit here and just i'm going to absorb this and i'm saying because because it was busy so we said we'll go over there to that play park and then we'll come back and do it and so what would have happened start of careers i would have gone over or middle of correll i've gone over to that play park and i'd have been absent i would have been completely absent walking around being like seeing what's going on but being not there at all yeah being lost in thought like you're talking about with that because i've decided that there's consequences to what's about to happen that i can't respond to i can't deal with now everything in my life has told me that everything that happens to me in the now i'm perfectly equipped for everything that happens to me in my mind i'm ill-equipped for and it scares the hell out of me so i choose now rather than my mind right so i look at the play button i'm like i'm looking for him like this is fun i want to get involved and soon enough what you've what i find is that by moving on you make sense of everything that's happened what most people and what i did forever is you try to make sense of what's happened so you can move on yeah what i did was choose i just want to love this moment as all as me and soon enough i'm then um i spoke to my brother um because uh we were looking for a shop in the in the park and i wanted to we were looking for something i said where's that shop and he's like i said oh by the way just about to do this basketball thing because he had to go to the the couple weeks before and i was like any tips for me and i can tell the part of me is like i'm loving it i'm like they're like and they're telling me this is like why he said the ring is like bent this way um so he's saying you need to put some arc on it so it drops in don't show flat and i'm like yeah i'm cool and but i'm not like oh but what if i miss i'm sat there and i'm going i'm excited now the consequence for me is is huge or potentially huge because i don't want to you know my old values i've can't let anyone down and wasted opportunity i'll never be able to get over this even though it's a tiny thing but it doesn't matter because it's exploring it not trying to control it so now my um yeah we we head back over and it's now much empty and i'm sort of like i'm like yeah walk over and there's suddenly i'm looking forward now the whole thing about when you mentioned about some of these understandings is that when you return when i've returned myself to more unknown i get a different relationship with the unknown if that makes sense so the unknown doesn't terrify me like i used to the uncontrollables it becomes part of me because now i'm unknown so i find myself connected to the unknown so i'm walking over that and i'm excited by the unknown it's another definition of confidence for me not self-belief just excitement for the unknown it's a different version of confidence so i'm walking over and i'm excited about what's happening i'm excited that i don't know what the ball is going to do i'm looking at the balls the guy has given me and there's no grip on whatever and i'm excited that i've never seen this mega basketball in my life they've got ridiculous colors and i'm looking at thinking and i'm excited about the interaction i'm having with the guy beforehand we're having a bit of yeah yeah a bit of chat about all this this this and i'm excited about looking around like all the things that you know my child could choose from if i get it all the things we never see by the way as i don't yes yeah isn't it you just go oh yeah yeah so it's a childlike state again and so i'm i'm looking and and the technique as anything was kicking or anything you mentioned this about the the work ethic of suffering stress and sacrifice in a thou ten thousand hours and all that it's not it's about feel it's about a deeper intuitive understanding and connection of the body and a oneness with what it is you're trying to achieve so the message through the body is felt clearly in the ball and in the goal so opening up that feel and intuition is done through practice but it's destroyed by over practice because that's the mind idea so actually you you explore life in order to find that intuition you don't explore rugby hoping you'll find life you explore life and you'll find skills so i'm walking in there and i'm picking up the ball and i'm like i love the way this feels in the hand and i'm kind of like giving it the old like the old golfer does his practice things i'm like there it is and so i've got the who in front of me the first time i'm kind of like and i could feel yeah feel not i'm just i'm like shape and i can feel it's a bit index finger overweighted so i'm slightly left and it's off the edge of the ring and i'm kind of like okay next one i'm like that's clean but straight off the back of the ring straight back at me and that no sense of shit's my last one it's just next you know it's a brand new journey one shot one goal there's no it's my last no it's just pick it up and it's just like and it actually as soon as i threw it the guy in the store goes so that's in i was like geez he's short and it hit the back hit the front hit the back moved up and i'm like oh just drop straight in now palm is kind of like going that would have been survival mid-career i'd have looked at that and gone thank god for that as it is i'm kind of like yes i'm like wow i did it but that doesn't last i'm not walking around being like look at me i'm the guy that got the thing i'm now like should we go find that shop because i'm interested in what i'm getting next now this is what i mean is that you never live a consequence in the now so if you stay in the now there's no consequence but everything you're trying to build it's important to have goals and everything so there's a difference between what you're trying to build and who you are if you separate the two who you are can remain so the experience of sport is just in the zone in the now total engagement but the journey might be material you build a house right so you put that thing in the in the you put your beef in the oven or whatever but right now it's a full engagement but there's a knowing that okay i need to be away by this time so there's a clarity of being like i'm fully engaged now i'm fully engaged in checking my watch and i'm fully engaged in this not i'm half absent here and i'm half absent here and i'm half absent here and i go home and i'm half absent thinking oh god did i do a good interview should i have done so you can still have desires and wants and outside influences and things going on in your life and it's still okay to be like yeah i want to be really successful at that point that's the point of don't let that dominate you but that that for me the point of living is to explore that creative capacity the inherent role we have as a creative force on this planet and that's the freedom of choice that comes with being having self-awareness is that we have an ability to to connect to that role as a creator in this so creating is the goals but what i've found was that when i when i sort of started to dissolve a bit of that self-importance i started to include other people in my goals and i started to include all my or much more of my being in my goals in my performance and as a result things tended to work out so my goals were less selfish objectives and more collective visions because they involved the best of everyone because they were more still hugely directed but open in their in their kind of so would you say i want you have a drinks brand yeah yeah would you still say i want my drinks brand to be the number one drinks brand in the world or do you say i want to really enjoy the journey of creating the greatest drink in my opinion and then we'll see where it goes what's the what's the process for achievement with the mindset you have but the the the concept at the beginning throughout and it will be fair is is to like you were talking a little bit was the choice certainly not in any way on the same level as victor frankl which is just but it's but it's a thing of being trying to provide some kind of transformational service or opportunity towards health towards my passion which is mental and physical health and emotional well-being so on that it was like this is what i'm trying to affect now ideally if it's successful from a commercial standpoint we can reinvest and grow it and increase that impact but that impact is directly related to my exploration of of my passion but because i've got rid of the i've not got rid of it because i'm sort of more involved in the lesson of self-importance and more in the kind of i'm exploring those boundaries and and trying to transcend them or working to sort of transcend them i find that my passion now involves other people so whereas i started my career saying i want to be the best in the world now if you ask me who the best in the world is right now i'd be like i can't be bothered talking about that i mean best in the world how on earth do you define how do you compare two people you just unless you make an assumption that let's say that they all started on exactly the same place and they're exactly the same being now we can do it yeah 20 years ago would you have discussed that at great lengths who's the best in the world and where do i sit in there i'd have done it with myself yeah i'd have been like i think yeah the papers are saying that now so i've pretty much done it like it's yeah the fact that people then say to me now what about yourself and and uh carter and and these guys and yeah would i'm like you've just left off about 30 other people plus another 50 who i can think of who i would say are the most immensely inspiring people and would probably be some of the greatest i'd ever seen and yet to name just three it's like you don't get it there's guys that you'd have never heard of who i've played alongside and gone i mean it's immense i would i would you know i'd go to them straight away does it matter anyway of course it doesn't which is the point of saying at the beginning i want to be the best what it did was just that conclusion that idea took over my intellect so my mind is now every time i see something in the paper about so-and-so is that a good game i'm like oh i've got to read that but i don't want to read it and now i'm stressed about that and then before the next game i'm like oh if he gets into the team and i better play well today though i don't keep my get you're like well that one conclusion is deciding how i think now what i said about before is that that conclusion is now adding to my pressure and now you say right so i'm going to change it i'm going to be the best i can be but i mentioned before about if you know what your potential is it's your next limit so how do i know what my best is it's like well i don't so now i've gone right i've got to go one step further which is i want to be all i can be yeah and if i'm going to do that i've got to stop looking at rugby i've got to stop looking at something bigger than you yeah and and that's the point of being like well because within that everything else exists but if you want to be the best rugby player what people might find as i did is i felt like i you know got there or whatever and what it meant to the rest of my world was i was deeply unhappy hugely unsatisfied um i was treating people around me like god knows what um i was you know physically stressed in all kinds of physical state hence the 14 injuries in a row and even when i got into the first time all i could think of was i've got to get back to where i was total expectation stress no room for beginning again no freedom no liberation no healing and so i end up with another injury oh it's even worse now each game from a big comeback and this is going to be the one i've got to get back to where i was trying to control instead of explore what i could be i was trying to say i've got to get back to where i was and so when you say what was the one of the biggest moments of realization was that kind of like jesus i got 14 messages from the world over and over again be like just just be aware of that no still not got it just be aware of that no no i have another one and this one's your knee this is an interesting one because you'll do the same knee 30 minutes after you've come back and this one's going to send you on the lions tour 2005 when you're so stressing all over the place and trying to prove yourself and it's a team that doesn't work and now you've got absolutely hammered abroad and and you're kind of thinking oh you thought that'd be the last time you had an experience like that after the tour of hell in 97 didn't you here it is again no not listening okay let's have another one another year out and you're kind of like listen to life involves physical mental emotional health and wherever that goes after that and then you start exploring what you can do with your but if you try and explore what you can do with the world without addressing those you end up working the two against each other and it becomes a journey of smaller and smaller i love what you're saying i think it's i think it's really profound and i think anything that's that's profound and forces you to think is is well worth investigating and i think i lied to that your credibility through your past life gives you a platform to really make a difference and shift the dial in this not not just in sport but in in society in general but if we accept that the german philosopher after shopping how we spoke about three stages of change first people will laugh at you yeah then they'll oppose you and tell you why it's ridiculous and then finally they'll come to accept it as common sense yeah where do you think you are on that journey to get other people to to engage with this this alternative way of thinking um i think it's about where i am i think it's i think it's a society yeah it's a state of society in general and that in that there's you mentioned i think at the very beginning that there's been thousands of people have walked this planet millions billions trillions of of god knows how many and everyone has had the same aim of of you know all so many of them have had the same aim of transforming the world into something and they've all come with the their beliefs of good and bad and right wrong and this is where we are and it's not to say that they've been wrong at all it's just to be the fact that it's it's time to keep and know more than ever now to keep looking back inside and questioning and looking at yourself because it's so easy to to go to the outside and say this is why but as long as for me for example for my situation if i need certain things to be a certain way i'm held hostage by them and that means that whoever's in that situation i will then say blame them for being like oh you're controlling me in that respect you know whatever it has been you know with regard to you know it could have been around rugby but most it was myself to myself so you mentioned those three stages i'd have been like i would have have those three stages i went back to my 22 year old self now and sort of gave him this i'd get laughter definitely yeah yeah and then and then probably a bit later on 24 ish after the world cup i would have such a strong idea that i'd come back at me definitely i'd be saying are you a joke yeah that's weakness that's just giving in and all that kind of thing and then 28 i'd be like please please let me have this because that was yeah that was one of my major mental health sort of points and and it's it's really a case of saying that there's no for me anyway there's no right wrong people everyone is where they're supposed to be in terms of that stage and and to think that i have the answer i don't i'm just exploring my own perspective and my own thing and and trying to share anything that that that might allow others to explore theirs but the to think that i know anything about anyone else or what's right and wrong i've thought i have in the past and i've looked at what i've done and i've looked at the environments i've created i read i wrote a book in 2004 just after the world cup um i would be surprised if there wasn't sort of a spike in mental health cases after i wrote it just because it was so dogmatic you know you were mentioning about suffering i was mentioning about suffering stressing that's all the message is to all these kids with passion for rabbit i pretty much sort of eradicated the idea that passion had anything to do with performance and just told them it was all about this and this and this and this and this and some people came back at the time were like you know i really love it i'm sort of looking back now i'm thinking i hope they work your relationship like with regret do you have that no that book no no no no because of the same reason is that if i put myself back into that same body and just said right one condition you have to see yourself the way you saw yourself then it's done yeah i would see things the way i saw them you'd do it again i would feel the way i feel i'd do what i did i'll create what i created and therefore that there's nothing to do but accept it but also to realize by accepting it i am now no longer attached to it i'm not the result of it and if i'm not the result of it how can i be regretful it's a bit like i said this to someone about watching a a sort of post-match video analysis who used to sit in the in the meeting room like this and everyone's looking over the mistakes they've made and going it's coming up on the video an hour oh my god this is my one this is my one when i throw the interception or i drop the ball or i miss that tackle the coach is going to kill me oh my god and what are the other guys thinking oh no this is so embarrassing whatever but the reason that's there is because everyone's attached to who they were then is part of who they are now as at the deepest level and therefore you have to take on the feelings you have to feel humiliated but you can't see it objectively but when you have that deep acceptance of okay that was me of them who did that and that me of them because that's how they saw themselves what i can say is they were living they were giving it their all that's what you can say about how we live in every moment according to how you see yourselves you're giving it your all so i can look at that and say that was that version of me giving its all it's got nothing to do with how this version of me wants to be and so therefore i can look at it objectively so i'm looking at it as if it was you on the video doing it but i'm watching me and i'm watching me drop a pass and i'm thinking okay yeah i probably would have done that and someone tries to say oh sorry i'm lucky about that i'm like what do you mean i'm fresh i'm brand new so what's left of the jolly wilkinson that won the world cup memory the same memories but just not in a given order i've got the beautiful memories but i can see them how i want to see them but if you went back to me at 25 and said what's left of your memories now but this is my memories that's my path of life that's how it is whereas now i can draw any memory and it represents something completely different according to how i need it now yeah yeah so if you if we were going to talk about um yeah like a moment of you know like the kick kick in the drop going and yeah like that moment of when it needs to happen how do you perform a technique now when i was 25 and i didn't have control of that i'd just be like um well i just put the ball here and kicked it when i was 28 i look at it slightly differently but now i look at i can explore it again as if it's brand new and i get new insights about it now i'm looking at thinking do you know what's amazing because of this and i think because of this and so my own memory has become an exploration for me rather than something that's telling me how i need to live my life it's become part of my are you able now to enjoy things that at the time were painful as in are you able to watch a period in your career where you knew you were struggling with mental health and you weren't happy i'm fascinated by it and you can now watch that and you can fascinate about it yeah there's games where there's games where um i was out in that field and i was doing well just to leave the hotel room because of the mental state i was in over those games there where i phoned up um i phoned up family and i found out blackie a big part of my my my life and and i was trying to find reasons to not play i was trying to think about you know whether i mentioned injury or whether it's okay to say that mentally i'm just i'm gone you know and this is me after two world cups 2003 and seven where we've got to the final and won them or whatever i am i'm doing well just to leave the hotel room and i look at it and i'm fascinated by it not because of like this is a great story to tell people that paint me in a certain light it's nice because i'm looking at it being like i'm fascinated by by how things can how we can see things certain ways and how we can see them differently and how that choice as you mentioned is there and how you know and i'm fascinated by becoming responsible for that choice and therefore i love exploring those moments and i look back at them now and i'm i look at everything fondly to know that like i said at that time i was doing my best i was given my all because it's impossible not to in life whether i decide to be late you know lazy and sit down and just apparently lazy and sit down and do this it's the best i can do because it's it's how i see myself will govern that decision but that's also not just the past that's now it's happening now what i'm doing now is i know it's the best i can do and i might go and say after this oh you know if you'd asked me that again i might have said this it's irrelevant because that's the best that me can do but this is the this isn't me now so just fully embrace this me of now johnny that description of struggling to leave your hotel room like i i find it quite moving because the pain that you're obviously in and the struggle that you were the that you were facing is is quite profoundly sad if i was working as a coach or working within an environment whether this is the office whether it's a sports team whether it's in a classroom sort of signs should we be looking out for that somebody is is engaged in that struggle are there any is there any common traits that is worth us exploring i think i think it's it's difficult because often people look at players and say that's just how and they are just let them get on with it but i think the thing the big question is are you okay with feeling like this as an inspiration you know and i think but that can only come from a position of someone who's exploring because if a coach is feeling a little bit the same way about the result needs to go a certain way then there's no you know you can't transmit a certain message and be the opposite of that message it becomes even more confusing and damaging but i think the question is are you okay with it and and exploring that with someone to be like is this how you want your life to be because that's what you work with people on how do you want your life to be you know you start there not with how do you want your life to turn out you start with how do you want your experience of life to be and then you say let's work on that and it always comes back to well when you're at your very best tell me how you feel and it'll be the same answer as how do you want your life to be i want to feel inspired i want to feel connected i want to feel fully engaged i want to feel effortless i want to feel just i want to feel like anything's possible how are you feeling right now i'm feeling absolutely fearful stress you're kind of like right is that how are you happy with this or because we're sort of saying that you know it can be maybe it doesn't have to be this way yeah but you know there'll be a fight with that because it's understood that actually by feeling this way the game seems to go okay and therefore i think well actually if i suffer a bit more it might go even better next time before you know it you're suffering so badly and then all it takes is you know you to realize that this isn't helping my performance to be like are you ready to explore a different way and it's jesus challenging involves a bit of vulnerability definitely if you ask me to sit in a change room and just sit there and be go on the mindset of if someone says to you how's this going to turn out don't go with the necessarily the idea of it's fine we're going to do this we're going to do that we're going to kill it's going to be great go with the mindset of like who knows don't know let's see you ready yeah definitely ready let's go and take it on but we're so used to saying they need reassurance so let's give them the reassurance it's going to be fine but what we're doing is covering up the opportunity to explore all it can be and we're trying to tell them what it what it should be or what it must be or what it will be instead of no you go explore all it can be but just to understand that ongoing support of realizing that no matter what happens your worth and value cannot be touched by it your worth and value as a as a player in terms of the contract okay these things are moved but but we understand each other that your worth as a as a being an individual can never be touched and will always be saying that's how i treat you and that's how we treat each other that if i have to drop you from the squad you will feel in the way that i that we have that conversation that there couldn't be a greater respect for you and that nothing changes that that always did it for me in terms of a squad it was it was knowing that that team is there and that support is there no matter what and yet because of the influence of the media and this hierarchical thing about who's better than this who should be doing this that sometimes feels like it's taken away and you feel a bit like my importance my actual self-worth my value is defined by these games which i can't fully control and then yeah that's a tough place to be so as a father then if your daughter chose an aptitude for a certain sport and she goes into it and she has some of that drive for perfection and and all those other environmental aspects that you experienced as a child when she went into it given what you know now how would that influence you as a parent the thing is is i don't know anything and i wouldn't know anything about her yeah i'm not talking about my endorse too much but about anyone i don't own anyone they're not mine i don't know them and therefore that's what the unconditional nature of how i treat them is that i haven't got expectations or i don't know that you should be able to do this it's just like everything you do is is where you're supposed to be and i'm here to to try to be a constant opportunity to explore but you obviously know things that your daughter for example wouldn't know so you would pass that on yeah but those things i would pass on things with regard to physical and mechanical skills but i can't give it anything to do with who you are how you should see things that's a choice now if i started reaching into that i'm i'm trying to shape someone now if i'm going to shape someone i must know exactly the most perfect shape for it to be but i don't because i'm exploring my own life so i don't i don't touch that but i go into skills and things to be like look here's something to explore with my skills i've done a lot of things mechanically this seems to be work with me very much in the cause and effect route how does it feel for you it's never a case of right and wrong it's just like you know do that with the guys to be like look i try this and everything's life based but like be like here's a representation of it physically standing up bigger and taller aligned in the spine looseness in the limbs all these things that represent something being grounded it's all a life-based feel but it's done through skills and to be like if it's working great if people prefer to be more yeah it's kind of like well let's go from there and let's explore that there is no right or wrong i think people for me anyway tends to be this thing about that disappointment and and anger are wrong it's like no it's what is but when you explore them they're possibilities but when you react to them they become damaging and with that answer in mind my final question was going to be for people who have listened to this podcast feel maybe a bit like me that this is a journey that they would like to know more about how what would be your piece of advice to begin the journey that you've been on um where did you begin it what what's the one thing people can take away from this conversation it's a it's a good question um but it's also a sort of it's a tricky one because in some ways it flies in the face of everything we've a little bit mentioned but it's also it's also that if without knowing or getting to know someone through what they say and spending time with people it's one of those where it's it's almost more dangerous but for me it was it was just asking the big question of how am i at my best and then hearing that and being like doesn't it feel amazing and it's like what's stopping me from being like that all the time and a clever or clever sort of tool that i use would be like if you imagine if you imagine i call it like the super version of you i don't mean that as in it's better i just mean like the super version of you doing what you want to do or you're about to do and imagine that super version of you doing it in just the most however you want them to do it i use beautiful graceful flowing just connected just light area all those kind of things and i imagine it and then i ask a simple question of what is it that they have that i don't and the answer is nothing the bigger question is what is it that i have that they don't what is it that i'm holding on to that they're not and letting go is something i can do immediately but we create this idea that the super version of you has done the ten thousand hours the super version of you isn't about getting all the ticks it's about the graceful beauty the flow the elegance the the connectedness and that comes down to what we have and they don't not the other way around and so just be it but don't try and compare yourself to it be your version of it right now and you'll realize that your version is way better than you could ever imagine wonderful answer really incredible conversation um we always we finish with these yeah regardless of who the guest is um the three non-negotiable behaviors that people around you must buy into um impossible impossible to answer no such thing as a yeah as a non-negotiable um yeah fun is openness one well the thing is though if if this is a really because one of the things that we would speak about is creating the environment internal environment for potential to blossom and you sort of say well what is that internal environment aliveness openness and you're sort of like right but if you know what aliveness and openness is it's not aliveness or openness it's conforming to an idea so you just have to go on the basis of how do you become alive is to choose now and choose unknown choose choose to say what do i really know about anything in life and realize that once i just once i realize i know nothing everything becomes a possibility and that that i think is but but like that's in a way that's what i mean is about anyone else how can i comment on anyone else i can't even comment on myself no i'm worried though that what i think i need to be i'm actually just being controlled by outside forces rather than the right word being open what i think is open is actually just my opinion but you just said it there you said well i need to be if you just said what i want to be it'd be a different question need and want are the difference between external influence and internal and if it's what you want then it's for you if it's what you need then it's for the basis of pleasing something else what advice would you give a teenage johnny starting out um just going back to passion there's nothing more powerful than passion excitement and a willingness to learn and that comes in the same basis of curiosity but those things would be the things that that i would i would constantly probe at i would challenge constantly to be like right so where's the opportunity in this and move away from the dead end of i've worked this out and moved back to the space of i can use that to see what's possible um that's what i do just just ignite or continue to keep that passion burning because that's yeah when i when i called that day with rugby when i was about to one of the things i remember saying uh to someone was that the passion has been replaced by pressure and here this is at the end of my career when i sort of evolved towards more opportunity and even still i called it that as if there was some kind of as if it was the the game's fault for holding up banners with my name at enabled games or writing in the paper that i was going to do this or if it was the fact that i had two finals in the end season and couldn't bear it's like but it was all mine it was my pressure covering up my passion and so i look at that thing i gave up the game on the basis of you know of my own doing um and i'd say keep that passion alive and anything's possible are you happy yeah yeah i i i think you'd have to redefine happiness that's to be like how do you define it i think i think it's it's it's a sense of of it's a really good question i've never even gone to that because that's normally the base level but for me it's like for talking about it now am i happy to get away from the definition of am i walking around yeah kind of like people expect to see you okay are you happy in your definition of happiness even maybe if you don't know what that is maybe that's hard to answer am i grateful to be alive yeah yeah incredibly brilliant and what's your one golden rule for a high performance life explore that's it versus control as soon as you're on controlling it's a decision that i know how things should be and then with that is the downhill sort of or the the uh ever reducing cycle of pressure expectation as soon as you let go of that understanding of or that self-importance of i know how things are they need to be you're in a space of exploring um that doesn't mean you know that you've stopped training doing everything it means the opposite just you explore your training you explore your rest you explore your your own body you explore your own being you explore everything and if you're exploring you're going to find something new when you find something new you're growing um which is the answer to for me like you said before is is that if you if you spend this life growing and exploring and finding out new things and whatever by the end it seems like a reasonable journey and if you're exploring what's on the inside it's a damn good journey thank you very much pleasure

Channel: The High Performance Podcast

Views: 97,840

Rating: 4.9140034 out of 5

Keywords: Podcast, The High Performance Podcast, Jake Humphrey, Damian Hughes, Liquid thinker, high performance habits, high performance podcast, high performance, jonny, jonny wilkinson, jonny wilkinson drop goal 2003, rugby, jonny wilkinson interview, jonny wilkinson high performance, premiership rugby, mental health awareness, mental health, jason robinson, beauden barrett, rugby league, world rugby, extended highlights, england rugby, rugby reaction, owen farrell, rugby world cup

Id: O80qs9OEadw

Length: 82min 5sec (4925 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 26 2020