How to Stay MOTIVATED When You Keep LOSING - w/ Gold Medal Olympian Ben Hunt-Davis OBE

Sam - Mic: [00:00:00] have you ever chased a dream for years? Sacrificing weekends, relationships, even your sanity,

only to keep failing at the final hurdle time after time?

Well, that might lead you to wonder if relentless effort isn't enough to make it, and perhaps there's something more crucial that you're missing. Well, for Olympic gold medalist, Ben Hunt Davis.

He didn't turn his history of repeated failures around by trading harder. He'd been doing that his entire career and kept losing. Eventually he won a gold medal in the rowing Olympics because he and his crew started asking a single question before every single decision they made.

They became completely focused on whether or not what they did would make the boat go faster.

And sure we might not be training for an Olympic race, . But life does have a similar reliable nature to not do what you want it to.

But there are certainly mindsets and habits that we can build into our routines that do take us closer to our goals, despite the curve balls that life will throw at us. And this conversation with Ben might give you [00:01:00] a few ideas.

So hello and welcome to the Growth Mindset Psychology Podcast where we explore the science of self-improvement whilst also asking what really is a life well lived, you know, because why chase things if you might not even want them , and how do you make sure that the sacrifices you are making align with the things you truly want?

And these are some topics that certainly bring true . For a crazy Olympian who spends 10 years repeatedly failing at the thing that they're trying to do.

So who is Ben anyway? You might not have heard of Sir Ben Hunt Davis, but he won a gold medal back in the Sydney Olympics for Great Britain, which was a little while ago.

Now, he trained in a time when there was no social media and being an Olympic athlete wasn't even a paid career. So to dedicate yourself to it and keep losing, it's not exactly an easy thing to do, and he has lots to teach us about the point of what it is that we work on and the existential questions that we probably all find ourselves asking.

Now before we get into it. Just a family friendly warning that we normally are [00:02:00] a swear word free show, but in this episode, we do use the alternative for the word bull crap, as it is a specific title of a framework that Ben uses.

So you have been warned and on that, if you are interested to learn, what does Olympic grit really teach us about independence, sacrifice, and the way we show up for others. Well stay tuned.

How did he get to the olypmics?

Sam: So how did you go from school too, becoming a potential Olympic athlete? You. Did you get that drafted whilst you were doing your rowing?

Ben: the way rowing selection works is there are certain dates, weather trials, and anyone could turn off trials. And if you fast enough, you get through to the next set. And if you do well enough that you get through to the next set and you keep going until you get selected. So at school I wrote simply because I couldn't catch a cricket ball or hit one.

So I wrote, cause I just hated ball sports cause I was rubbish the first year rowing, I didn't make the school boat the second year I made the school both for my age group when I was 15 cause there were only eight of us in the year. So that was kind of lucky. . The next year I started doing well and just, I loved it, absolutely loved it.

at school [00:03:00] I wrote simply because I couldn't catch a cricket ball or hit one.

So I wrote, cause I just hated ball sports cause I was rubbish And so when I was kind of lower sixth I went off to the first set of national team trials, did well and kept going. And actually that year I missed out. On the team going to the junior world championships by one place, a mental kind of European B-team event, at school I wrote simply because I couldn't catch a cricket ball or hit one.

So I wrote, cause I just hated ball sports cause I was rubbish and I was gutted. I'd missed out on going to the world champs.

So the next year my sole goal was to be a junior champion. I don't really care about anything else. I just want a pigeon watch happy. Then wholly, I'll train my ass off to be a junior world champion and I. Okay. Fourth and final was absolutely gutted, so it couldn't be genius anymore size. I was pissed off and dissatisfied.

The next thing was the under 20 threes so I trained my ass off to go to the under 20 threes and, and we lost there and I was, that was gutted. And [00:04:00] the next year was, well, I've got to dance 20 threes or possibly get into the kind of proper national team. And as it was, I did well enough in trolls and ended up getting to the Olympics.

And I came last in the fall and I was gutted. And the next year I went to the world championships and I didn't fifth and final. I think it was gutted the next year. I didn't make the final and was gone, and I just kept being really pissed off. So I had to keep going

Work and being an olympian

Sam: did you have a job? Was that then developed or were you like spending like your whole day training?

Ben: So after school I went to Oxford, Brookes polys. It wasn't those days and I rode for them for a bit, but it wasn't set up the way it was now. I wrote from the six months and rode there for the next, for the second half of the year.

And so supposedly I was studying. . I didn't really do my studying. Where's your degree? I started civil engineering.

Sam: I started that as well. How far did you go? I did a month biology. They're talking so much about concrete and I'd had a gap PM for go and had to do like differential equations. Biology is pretty fun and stuff.

Ben: I [00:05:00] started a different degree. I started time planning cause I failed my first year civil engineering and people told me to, planning was easy at about six weeks in, they wanted me to hand some work in which clearly I hadn't done on.

At that point, the head coach was saying, right, you've got a chance again to the Olympics. Do you want to study or do you want to row? So that was perfect. Get on clothes and I left university and just rode full time for a number of years. And I did a whole lot of work on the side. I worked in a bingo hall.

I coach rowing, I did various bits of laboring, whatever I could to pay the bills so I could train full time.

Sam: What was it like back then? Cause I know now if you get, there's like different grades of what status you are, you get like a different wage to be like, just to train, to be in an empty kind of thing.

Did you kind of have that?

Ben: No. So when we started there was nothing. So when I went to the Barcelona Olympics. We didn't have to pay to go to the Olympics, but for every single regatta for wheelchair and it will catch up ships and state and acquitted to go to. And so the club paid half of that and also gave me some extra money so I could get to the club.

and so by the end of the year, you're in debt. And then I think, was [00:06:00] 93 this would pull, started up the foundation of sport. Not that I think gave me a hundred quid a week. And so five grand a year. I mean, that pays for your regresses and training camps and that's it. So then you're running in debt after that.

so I'm, and I tried to, I've kind of worked whatever I could

those days, most people rode for a kind of limited amount of time because you got to get on with life and there's no money in it. in 97 John major started the national lottery with the aim that a lot of the money went to sport and then it changed.

it was tough.

Training regime

Sam: What was like your training regime

Ben: then? generally we did kind of a two and a half day cycle. So there's one or two would be full day. So you do three, possibly four sessions. Day three would be a half day where you do probably two.

Sometimes three sessions and you do turn off day cycle training seven days a week. We `got three weeks off after a while, championships and, and then maybe I'll have another five or six days off in the year. So [00:07:00] we were doing between 15 and 21 training sessions a week. Wow.

Sam: And how long did the training

Ben: session varied from two hours to an hour, probably .

Sam: Basically your whole day.

Ben: Yeah.

Sam: And then eating in between and stuff. How much would you eat today?

Ben: So I ate about 7,000 calories a day. first breakfast, ate Weetabix second breakfast, tolerate a toast with maybe some eggs or something, a lunch, maybe half kilo bag of pastor with some sauce or some baked potatoes or rice or something.

Equivalent tea would be another. Half loaf of bread or something, and then dinner would be another half kilo bag of pasta or equipment with some badge and

Sam: stuff. How much time did you spend cooking?

Ben: Not that much time cooking, but a lot of time eating really slowly. So lunch and dinner were both sent me an hour to eat up a 500 grams faster.

Sam: Can eat quite quickly if I choose to refer not to. It's not very fun, but slow one, the Bristol burrito eating championship back in the day. [00:08:00] Thanks. It's not quite an Olympic medal, but you know, it's something we all got our own claims to fame. Yeah. I did a cycle for length of Britain, which was about 7,000 calories a day.

And yeah, it was pretty interesting sort of experience realizing how much you needed to eat, but never like live with it for more than like a few weeks. But like, how did you. I just too. When you weren't training, say when you say you had like three weeks off, did you sort of change your diet much?

Ben: No. I'm sure it's a bit less, but I'm actually a scrawny get, so I'm lucky I don't, we're struggling to maintain weight while training, so during the three weeks off, I may kind of, it depends what I was doing, but I, I wouldn't be rigid about having five meals a day and eating 7,000 calories, but I think I still had a pretty healthy appetite.

Sam: Wow. That's crazy. And yes. He didn't drink much cause it's not like it was such a, I I back then , like these days everyone's like super, super strict on things, but did you know exactly what you're getting with your specific macros? And like,

Ben: so it w [00:09:00] so it wasn't that scientific. We worked with a dietician who.

You looked at what we were eating, sending in a bit more of this, less of that, but it's totally different from what it's like now in terms of drinking. , yeah, because you was a beer is fine. Five days is not fine as spirits person, not fine. frankly, I didn't drink very much. I mean, there were nights where I went out and, and it went on a bender, but most evenings I just didn't drink anything.

I just saved it on the odd occasion. But you know, there weren't, there weren't many of those nights cause I, cause what I really wanted to do was trying to hold the next day. That's just what I wanted to do. So when I left school, I lost contact with most of my mates because they wanted to get as pissed as I could, as often as they could.

And I want to train.

Dealing with hangovers

Ben: And the two things, frankly, it's all that compatible.

Sam: one of my favorite things to do is if I am hungry, very is to go and like train until like my brain feels vague normally and

Ben: it's best hangover cure.

Sam: but it's, it's not the same cause you still spend the rest of their being tired.

He didn't sleep very well. And you're a bit like out of it. I kind of definitely relate, sort of, kind of stopped drinking pretty much just cause I kind of [00:10:00] wanted to have access to my brain the next day and do useful stuff.

But yeah. So you would say you lost like a lot of your friends than doing that. Was that, did you actively notice that and feel bad but sort of carried on? Or was it just like, Oh, it just happened to happen then they didn't feel like a sacrifice. Is that too? It was more just like, Oh, that's just what you're doing.

Making sacrifices?

Ben: Oh, I'm not sure how many sacrifices I made because I just did what I wanted to do. and there are people quite often I'll say, you know, what did you give up? Or how many sacrifices, and I'm just not sure I made money cause I think a sacrifice is where you give up doing what you want to do to do something else.

And actually what I wanted to do. Let's train hard, so we'll also have weddings. I didn't go to, there were lots of, there were loads of things I didn't do. It was always my choice. No one was making me do this.

no one's paying me to be there if I didn't turn up. I was letting the other guys down, but, but no one had any sway over me at all. If I didn't turn up, it meant I wasn't going to get selected and all the rest of it, but it was totally my choice. And so, [00:11:00] yeah, leaving school, it was my choice whether I, what I did in an evening before I went training the next day, and genuinely my head was on training the next day rather than, , you know, people would ring up and go, Oh, you know, we're going out here.

Do you want to come? And my answer was generally, no. cause I was just doing what I want to do and I had a different set of mates.

Sam: Yes. I already get affirmation says, I guess it's kind of. How I thought about some of these things.

It's not like I felt like I was sacrificing things at the time. It's more like I just so focused on doing the things I wanted to be doing and then realize like basically, all right, haven't been even spending any time with friends and things,

Ben: I think keep fair. Often people get hung up on, you know, sacrifices and I just don't buy it. Well, it, I mean, we make choices. I'm kind of a sacrifice. Makes it sound as though someone's making you do something, which I just, well, that means, right?

Working with your peak

Sam: Let's say you hit your Olympics and the peak between

30 and 40 as humans, do you think a lot more people would have the potential but because of it's at like 20 to 30 this slaves, people never actually realized that they would [00:12:00] have, the option cause they sort of a lost in getting drunk and things.

Ben: That's quite a good question cause I think that if you're a female gymnast. Your peak is 1620 or something. . If you're a female swimmer, it's kind of similar. , I think I was lucky in that as a rower. I didn't have to take it seriously until I was 16 there. Rosie start at 20 and become a leopard champions.

Well, you're a whole lot more mature than you are as a teenager. And I think probably the younger you have to go through everything, probably the harder it is. . Maybe you get more parent parental support, and I think there are lots of people who have got a whole lot of natural, physical ability, but at whatever age, and I want it in and I'm hungry.

And that's the critical part.

Sam: never quite like realize quite how much you can kind of do anything. So if I put my selfish intestines with white tie, why am I like natural physical ability was, and I actually had 10 years to sort of put into it.

Like I feel like we'd be able to like focus and sort of become like a champion of something, but I'm 30 so, Oh, it doesn't matter. So it's not really a challenge anymore. [00:13:00] But it took me almost 30 years as we've worked out that if you put focus into something, you'll get there. But do you think like at 20 years maybe haven't realized that or

Ben: so I think at 20 I was willing to work hard.

I was very, very happy to train my ass off. Uh, being done at training center Atlanta club in Henley, was it great environment where it was easy to work hard? And I thought then that working hard was the answer. If I worked hard enough, it would be all right rather than if I learned fast. And the change that happened in the last two years, my writing career was, it was learning, but where we were just ruthless about making sure we were `learning from every session rather than just working hard.

And i wish I have started learning earlier in my rowing career

10,000 hour rule

Sam: Yeah. Cause there's like the 10,000 hour rule isn't quite 10,000 narrow.

It's definitely like 10,000 hours of deliberate practice rule way. You always think about what's the hardest thing you can be doing and

Ben: He doesn't say it's just 10,000 hours as a purposeful practice. .

, and I think so often if [00:14:00] we work harder, what we're doing and whatever job we're doing, we'll get better. Which isn't necessarily the case. We just reinforced the habits we pill .

And actually hopelessly thinking this week, what am I going to improve on reviewing and going?

Did that work? Did that not

What are the things Ben picked up on growing as a rower

Sam: So. As a row then what was the things that you are missing by just regularly rowing compared to when you then change your mindset? You're trying to learn what were like the things that you picked up on

Ben: the first seven years. basically, we did exactly what the coach told us to do and the coach guy called young Grobler who was coach Cruz to win Olympic gold medals in 72 80.

88 92 96 2000 2004 2008 2012 2016 he's quite good. , and his program clearly works. it's incredible you and run an incredibly successful program. It just didn't work for us. We weren't good enough physically to get it to work for us. when we moved to training center to set our own base, probably.

75 80% of the training that we did was open program, maybe [00:15:00] more, but we approached it pretty differently before every session. We'd get together and go, specifically, what are we trying to achieve this session? And in order to achieve that, what are the changes we need to make. As when we talk about rhythm, let's be really, really clear.

Specifically what do we mean and which bit of it we try to change, and we'd have proper detailed conversations getting granular about the ingredients that go into whatever it was we were working on, so we could then have a chance to improve rather than beforehand going, right, it's 20 K we'll do 20 kilometers, 18 strokes a minute, Off you go. That's just a physical session. It's got nothing to do with improving writing technique. what we needed to do was, We needed to be physically as good as we could be, but technically we wanted to be the best in oils and we want it to be the most resilient group and we want to be the best team.

Losing before becoming the best

Sam: did it take losing a few times to work out that you just physically would have, are going to be able to be the best

Ben: We losing a lot of times. .

I lost a lot and it took a bit of time to work out, but actually just running harder wasn't, gonna work out. Generally we learn stuff when we're ready to learn it. Would I have been open minded to learn it [00:16:00] two years earlier, four years earlier? don't know. Maybe the opportunity wasn't there. Maybe people weren't talking to me about it. Maybe it was all right there in front of me, but I chose just to work harder.

Sam reading Frank Dick's bookContinuous growth = common sense

Ben: All the stuff about growth mindset about continuous improvement, right? The theory behind is all really, really simple common sense but common sense isn't common practice and it's actually really hard to do. Reviewing every single thing, every single session you do, meeting you, come at all.

what worked? What didn't, what do I do better tomorrow? it's actually quite hard to do. so I think the first thing to do is always to go, okay, so what works? What was I really good at? What did I do really well? Because. Firstly, you need to know what you're good at so you can repeat it.

Shine a light on the positives

Ben: If always you're coming out going on what didn't work so well, then you're not kind of shining a light on the stuff that you need to keep repeating. You're just looking at the stuff that's not so good. So, for us it was really important to start with what was good, what worked well? What did I do well?

What do we do well? Whatever the question is to highlight. Actually what you are good at to make sure you can keep repeating it. also then builds belief. . Cause you've got this whole lot of stuff that actually we [00:17:00] already get out. And then you're going to pick holes in the stuff you're not say good at.

And then what do we do differently next time? so let's actually just continue to develop the strengths. Or it might be let's work on the weaknessesand who knows? It gives you a lot of choices.

Sam: . I think being aware of both is really important and presumably with most of us in all roles of whatever we do, whether it be in sport or work, presumably we do most of it pretty well. Cause if not, we wouldn't be doing it. . So if we were just to focus on getting better at the things we're good at, it would make a reasonable impact.

Ben: I think you've also got to be aware of the bits of your rubbish, so you should have a choice of, you know, which end of the spectrum do you work on?

Will it make the boat go faster?

Sam: That's, very logical ed. Yes. No, the most common practice with, or will it make the boat go faster?

which is what led to the title of your book,

Ben: The whole time we were asking ourselves in the crew, you know what you're going to do? Is it going to make the boat your foster doing this? Will it make the boat your faults are doing that? Because we couldn't control winning.

All we could do was control boat speed. So therefore, boat speed was the most important thing. So [00:18:00] therefore we had to do stuff that we made about your foster.

Sam: Yeah. He's in steps into working for with anything like that, an instrument, business relationships and stuff.

Ben: The thinking should apply.

Have you ever applied your philosophy to your relationships

Sam: have you ever applied it to your relationships and things, or does it come across a bit calculated when you're like, Oh, this day didn't go so well? Like that's assessed. What worked well, what didn't work?

Ben: Doing it. The formal way with my wife doesn't work,

I don't necessarily do it in such a formalized way at home, but I absolutely do. . Cause there are conversations. We have the work and there conversations we don't and when they don't, I want to try and do it. But the next time if we've had a great evening as a family sitting around the dinner table and.

No, I want to try and make sure.

Sam: you can be creative.

Ben: We recreate it. Yeah,

I've got to try and approach that situation differently getting the evening going, what a great day we had how do we manage to make it work so well? How do we manage to advise my daughter actually, so she listened. how do we do that again?

Cause it's quite hard to do

Sam: it seems a bit wrong to be like analytical about things, but it's actually really good [00:19:00] relationships. .

Ben: Why wouldn't you?

Cause

Sam: either there are certain things I know that. Will piss my daughters off in closing down, and if I'm not aware of what those things are, then I'll continue to piss them off in clothes and down and have a shit relationship.

Ben: Whereas if I actually want to, yeah. Big, good husband and a good father, why wouldn't I want to try and learn from my mistakes and learn from what you know, the few little bits that I do reasonably well. I think it kind of should apply to

Sam: life everywhere . . Yeah. Cool. I've, , definitely enjoyed this sort of discussion area.

You then eventually wants to win the gold. Having done this, how did that feel?

Ben: Okay, good.

Sam: .

Did Ben feel that they deserved to win?

Sam: Did you feel like you completely deserved it?.

Ben: Do we deserve it? It's an interesting question. So it depends what you mean by deserve. so we had trained as hard or harder than anyone else.

We had put in the hours the same as anyone else. Why should somebody else deserve over us? sitting there from a space of going, we deserve it. You know, I've done nothing and I deserve to win is utter rubbish. But sitting on the start line. Everybody was sitting there up for [00:20:00] it. We had five crews alongside, one on one side and foreign.

The other side, we'd done as much cool more. He knows there's anyone. Why did we deserve it? And it was incredible. I was in the national team nine years, and the very first race I won was 15 weeks before the Olympic final, which means I lost. Everything else I did and , to finally get it right.

And the last two years were different. The last two years, which came second, everything we did the year of the Sydney Olympics, we came second in the first race and we won the next three in losing heats and stuff along the way. But we won the race of the finals,

Henley Royal regatta, 13 weeks, 12 weeks for how long we lost, but we won. the two big reactions leading up to the next. So sitting there. Yeah. We weren't confident. and yeah, we had deserved it as much as anyone else. The world championships here before we came second, we wrote a pretty good race.

We had a plan of how to beat the Americans and as it was at the end where we thought we are change gear and pissed off and beat them, they changed gear and pissed off and beat us and they was mad at us for the year of the [00:21:00] Sydney Olympics the first week after we messed up in their final and we came second behind the creations and that was kind of fair enough.

Vienna, we rode actually not that well, but we'd be everybody loosen. We with a reserve on board. We wrote pretty down with them. We beat everybody in the heat of the Olympics. We lost to the Aussies. We rode really badly and we lost to them. I think they would say if you wrote the race a hundred times, they would win at 80% of the time or something.

And we would say the same thing. They'd beaten us twice a year. We'd beat them twice a year, and then it was all on the line and the end of the final. We knew that when we rode well, we were really, really fast. And on that day we wrote really, really well. Um, we laid down every single drop of passion, aggression, and energy, the techniques that we'd worked so hard on.

Well, we put together for us a perfect race.

Sam: Nice. I was thinking

Ben: it was good that the office,

What if Ben and his team did not win

Sam: what do you think would have happened in the rest of your life? If you hadn't won because you technically still have all the same lessons from like, will it make the [00:22:00] boat go faster? But you think you'd have been able to like write that book.

I came away from the Olympics being in a national team for nine years and having, won the Olympics and I then started trying to work out what the hell to do next. I thought, Oh, maybe some sort of corporate training. I didn't even really know what it was, but maybe that would be interesting.

Ben: And I called all sorts of people and when I said I've come back from the Olympics and I won, everyone was happy to talk to me. I eventually found somebody who was happy to talk to me and then actually give me a job if I had come back and said, Oh, I came seventh again. Not many people would have spoken to me.

And yeah, I do a lot of speeches these days. And for me to stand up and tell a great story about how we came seventh, not many people would want to listen to. People want to hear from somebody who's one rather than a Alyssa. also if I have lost. Again, I wonder whether I'd be quite better.

Having put nine 10. 11 depending on how you can to use my life into it. If I hadn't just lost everything, well I think I might be, I might be quite bitter about stuff.

Sam: `` It's a bit of a danger because if you want to be really [00:23:00] inspiring to like, maybe I have kids and make them sort of follow that James does the Olympics, but also.

You could waste 10 years of someone's life if they only ever come like fourth and fifth or something, and they never really have anything to write home about. And then can I just focus on stuff? Maybe they could have had a great career doing something else that they've missed out on. Yeah. Yeah.

Ben: It's a massive risk and you've got to put yourself out there to have a go and who knows.

How will you do it? And also, it depends on what expectations. If you come back from the Olympics having come 27th in the marathon, go to personal best, you should be delighted. All right. Expectations were that we could be fast enough to win and therefore that became all consuming. And the result was about winning for some people in a really high expectations.

About. Competing and coming in with a kit and that's fine. We all can be at all different levels, but there's a massive risk involved to all this stuff. If you want to achieve whatever your dream is and you've got to put yourself out there and I don't know how balanced I would be if I had of just put my heart and soul into everything and lost everything I ever did.

I mean, not be that balanced or [00:24:00] happy. So thank God I did.

What was next for Ben after rowing

Sam: what point of stays in your life where you then had you met, like your wife already started having

Ben: children?

we got engaged 1518 months before the Olympics and we planned to get married through exhausted, so I had quite a big month.

Sam: I remember looking at me like, Oh, that sounds like a really nice year.

Ben: Yeah, it was a, so I came back to the Olympics, had a wheat small. Why soft talents? We got married in Italy, came back from the Olympics, had a week in England.

I went out to whistle leaf, is that right? I think a week in England. And then I think I went out to Italy for a week and then got married. So three weeks after the fine, I think. I think that's right so we can Australia after racing for the rest of them because we can England . Going out, having fun and seeing friends, family you can pass than a week in Italy.

Vaguely trying to help preparations is, and my mother in law had done it all. Then we got married, then we went backpacking for three months. I think it's fine. Packing around India and Nepal. Tibet came back. My wife was pregnant. I had no job. We were living with my dad and it was time to kind of grow up and get on with life.

Sam: Yes. And it's funny cause you think [00:25:00] like so then the gold metal is probably the name, what they're doing with their life.

Ben: I had no plan past my wedding day. I thought that I'd stopped competing after Sydney, and as soon as I crossed the line, I knew that was it. But what came next? I had no idea. And at that point, I was 28 I'd never had a job.

I had no qualifications. I dropped out of two university courses. If I hadn't lost then I really did. We'd have nothing going for me. Having one, I had something going for me and to kind of get on with it. And I. Came back and worked pretty hard on getting a job and it took five months to find a job and, and then I got on with the next thing.

Ben wanted to be credibly good at doing his job

Sam: it's pretty important. Like if you want to do something sort of like public speaking and stuff, they say you should always have a story to tell. That's obviously winning an Olympic medal is pretty good story, but do you think you maybe could have worked out a different story if you had one of these catching?

Ben: So I didn't want, so tell a story. I didn't want to do speeches. I joined a training company. Cool, excellent group. [00:26:00] And we call ourselves performance coaches. we ran these training courses, these mindset behavior change training courses. And then there were a few people who did speeches who weren't sports people.

They just did speeches about mindset. And they were really good at that. But I didn't want to do that. I wanted to be a, what we call ourselves coach. which was effectively running training sessions And there was some groups I spent probably. eight days where those, but over a number of months and by the time I'd finished the six or eight days with them, they would think that I was enthusiastic row, but they wouldn't know anything about the fact that I'd been to the Olympics or not because I just didn't want to talk about it.

I wanted to be good at the job for being good at the job rather than what I'd done before. All the other coaches I worked with, there were 15 or service in the company. None of them are sports people. They'll look, come from different business backgrounds and they would just really, really credible and good because they were good and I wanted to be credibly good at doing my job because I was credible and good, not because I had history.

Remind me.

Sam: makes sense to that. Not have the easy option to kind of [00:27:00] go with like your whole base to then be able to work on that and get back to like your original, like what worked with them, what kind of thing is. It would've worked if you'd said like, I'm an NPM, but then you'd never have got that far.

She's even two weeks and the other aspects you're going about to like everyone, everything

Ben: we, we had these, these training calls. Knowing the content was obviously really important. Being able to kind of challenge and coach and facilitate was important. Being able to, entertain and engage people was really important.

That kind of presentation style. There were loads of bits that I, just wanted to be. It was a great environment for me actually, because I was quite competitive and I went into this place and I want to say 15 or so other coaches and they were all really good and I was rubbish. It was very clear. I knew nothing and my competitive instinct came out, but rather than trying to beat people, it was about any of that.

You can't compete against people in terms of running courses. But I wanted some self-respect to going, you know, I want to be as good as these people.

Biggest lessons as a coach?

Sam: Oh, so what? Yup. Like [00:28:00] biggest lessons as a coach. Then how to like facilitate things, how to, Catch people and deal with the things that I asked them.

Difficult questions. Kind of get the most out of someone. Like how did you learn that skill?

Ben: Slowly, I think I've, I read or listened to quite a lot of stuff. `I've, you know, a few courses I've learned a lot from watching other facilitators. I think that. Being willing to ask. The difficult question is really important, and there have been some situations where I have asked a question being quite sure that it would leads to me not being engaged with that client again.

But I think you've got to be honest and you've got to say what you think and you've got to ask the right questions. I think straightforwardness and honesty are pretty important and yeah, but job of a coach of acilitate was to make people aware of. What's happening, either what they're doing, all the other stuff that's going on around them.

And sometimes that means people learn stuff they don't, they didn't think they wanted to hear, but if you got [00:29:00] more information, you can make better decisions. So having an ability to ask a questions and the courage to ask them sometimes I think is quite important.

Sam: That's funny that a lot about that, like doing the podcast and it's been quite useful.

Sometimes I get people that I maybe don't want to interview that much, but because I'm not so bothered, I'll be a bit more ballsy just asking difficult questions that ends up making it like a really good interview, even though I wasn't expecting anything. Whereas if it's someone I know really well and is famous, I'm a bit like, ah, you know, harder to be like really cool about it.

Future of coaching

Sam: Okay, so where do you see the field of. Coaching in general going and like in five years time. Do you think that's going to be a bit of a shift in the way people do it and like what businesses are focusing on to get the most,

Ben: so I think 20 years ago no one was coached in a business environment. 15 years ago.

It started to grow. 10 years ago it was going absolutely berserk. I think that now if companies are paying for coaching, they want us to be far, far more business focused. And they've gotta be very, very clear business outcomes. I think businesses have been through phases of trying to teach staff internally to bit to [00:30:00] coach individuals better, and I'm not sure how successful that's been.

I think being a, as a manager or a leader, having a certain coaching capability is good. I think there's a huge move to learning, being more computer-based. They're all things you can learn digitally. And when it comes to people skills, it's gotta to be human interaction. So I think coaching and kind of learning and development, I think more of it will become digital, but there is still a massive need four.

Human interaction, but it's gotta be more closely tied into businesses and they've got to know they're getting good return on investment. Are you

Sam: guys working to deliver more digital stuff and to do them more like specific outcomes from your face to face

Ben: work? So digital, we're going to look at, and Second half of 2020 , we've looked at a couple of times and we're gonna have another look.

and we are really outcome led. And we will continue to be so, and we will work to measure it even more effectively. [00:31:00] I think that teaching somebody some leadership skills, it's totally pointless unless they have the opportunity. To actually do something with it. I think people are so busy at the moment, the skills for the sake of it, no one uses.

So actually it's gotta be tied into your specific situation. So the application of learning is, I think is critical. Yeah. That knowledge for the sake of it

Sam: is lovely. People ask you that, what's the best book to read? And you're like, roles and what are you doing right now? Because if you read the right book at the right time, it's like insane.

If you read like a book just for knowledge and it's, our practice is

Ben: pointless, you don't, don't hear with it. Knowledge for the sake of it. In some situations might be useful, but in terms of a corporate development, I think knowledge has got to be specific. It's got to be totally applicable. So we spent huge amounts of time with people working on how are you gonna apply it?

That was kind of the understand practice apply bit. Yes. You want to learn about bullshit filters or bounce back ability. Now I can teach you all areas that you need to know in five minutes. but that doesn't mean you can [00:32:00] do bullshit filters. And it doesn't mean you can do resilience. It means you might have some knowledge about it.

And actually the only thing that matters is being able to do it. So all our theory is really simple theory. To try and give people a maximum opportunity to apply it.

Bullshit filters

Sam: Can you explain what they are?

Ben: Bullshit filters. So focus is really important, but there are so many things that distract us. People telling us how we can do, we shouldn't do this.

You should do that. Yeah. There's so many different distractions. And when I was rowing, we came up with this thing, bullshit filters about kind of these imaginary or defenders, you can Mark them up to maximum deflection and the bullshit just wouldn't get through. So when people that were telling us that we couldn't do it, that we weren't good enough at that we weren't strong enough, we couldn't do this.

It was bullshit. It just wouldn't get through. We wouldn't listen effectively. We'd be going, LA, LA, LA, LA. I'm not listening to you, because it wasn't, if the goal was about boat speed, people telling us we couldn't do it wasn't going to help us achieve that. Therefore we didn't wanna listen to them.

Sam: So is it like having a really good mission statement would be a bullshit filter if you always go back to your [00:33:00] mission statement going, Hey, is this going to make the company get to this?

And if you're like, Oh no, then it's a distraction

Ben: than a distraction, therefore I'm not going to engage with it. I'm not going to listen to you telling me that I can't do it. If you're going, you know, I think you need to work on this or this or this, or you've got these weaknesses now that's helpful information that'll help me achieve that.

but if you're just telling me I'm rubbish, that's just not helpful. So that's bullshit. Filters

Sam: stuff

Ben: invariably will get wrong at various times. How do you make sure you get back on it as soon as you possibly can and it's not forming? Because if your deflated, demotivated, pissed off, frustrated, feeling lethargic and flat, you're not going to be performing very well.

So your results aren't going to be very good and you're unlikely to achieve a goal. So when stuff goes wrong, how do you learn from it? Pick yourself up, dust yourself off so that you can get back on to performing well to give you a chance to getting results. And depending on how bad the setback is, will probably take different amounts of time to recover from it so you can be firing on all cylinders again.

Ad break 2

[00:34:00]

Sam: Is there anything that I should have asked you that I haven't asked you about?

Ben: I don't think so, no.

Sam: and then on the subject has the, when I was asking you what's the most difficult thing to ask you, what do you think might be the most difficult thing to ask me? If you were coaching me.

Ben: I have no idea, Sam. I'm afraid. I just don't know enough about you. I don't know what you're trying to achieve. Having had a five minute conversation beforehand, I'm afraid I'm not a good enough coach to be able to know exactly what the right question is cause I just don't know you well enough.

What would help the interview?

Sam: Okay. how do you think I could have improved

Ben: this entity?

So I've done a few podcasts before. This is an observation rather than, this is what you should do, cause I don't know the answer. A lot of people come with a more structured approach. Whereas you've come with a pretty open approach. You've made loads and loads of notes as we've gone through, which you've kind of referred to, and that's kind of led to the next question going on.

So the people I've done podcasts with before haven't made notes in the way you have done. So I'd say that's kind of really good [00:35:00] thing. The. Possibly knowing more if you know more to start with, then does that shape her? And

Sam: she goes, my issues, and I find sometimes with my guests, especially when it's someone who is kind of famous, I'm less likely to ask difficult questions if I know them really well kind of thing.

Right. I'm not sure. What if I had sort of read your book, I was like, wow, I'm going to be banned. This is amazing. I might have been a bit scared to like be me. Whereas if I just like, I meet this guy, I don't really know who he is,

Ben: maybe on the other hand, if you had. Read something, then maybe you'd know which different questions.

So then the bit about being worried about asking the difficult questions. I would say that, you know, maybe that's something you should think about cause why should you possibly, people are worried.

I don't know what the worst that can happen but probably not that bad. You know, people approach things in different ways, so, and I don't know what works for you.

I guess I would say preparation. Is that something that would help? I don't know. That's for you to figure out. it's a bit about kind of asking difficult questions about what, what's to stop you asking different questions because the person, the other end can always just say, no, I'm not going to all [00:36:00] answer something completely different, but unless you actually, I have the courage to ask it, you'll ever, you just haven't got a chance to get into the answer.

Sam: I guess I tried to find the right balance. Interesting. And like what kind of point in the interview you hearing and stuff, it's like, I'm not sure what, what's really appropriate

what do you think was the biggest thing you've put wrong in life?

Ben: I'll trace it a few people really badly. I think I've been a bit of a Boston to a couple of people and I really regret that. Do you think there's

Sam: anything you can do to like fix that now?

Ben: Well, I haven't had the courage to anyway.

Sam: Yeah. Let's put it like that. If I said like your number one goal for the next few weeks is to fix that, what do you think you would do

Ben: on a figuring out how to get ahold of them, I guess, and still I feel bad about some relationships I've had and just don't do anything about it.

Do you think

Sam: there's lessons you've taken away from that which you've helped you now that you changed the way

Ben: you are? Yeah, I think so. .

Sam: Can you give an example of how you show up in life now

Ben: because of this? I try very hard to treat people well. I'll try very hard to, and as a business owner [00:37:00] when we have to make difficult decisions about people and we try very hard to do the right thing and to treat people really well.

In fact, at any point, we work really hard to treat the people who work with us decently, properly, fairly openly. I think it's really important.

Sam: ` . You seem that you came across like that. I was a bit surprised when you said that you treated people badly. It was not all the things I thought you said

Ben: got wrong.

Well, that's what I regret most is I think it's really important. Aspire to grow what I grew up most.

Sam: It makes no sense. What's your earliest memory ever from childhood?

Ben: Oh, this memory from childhood is Hassell lived in Hong Kong. Both memories from a kind of first time I went to Hong Kong where I must've been three or four or something.

I've got kind of vague bits of memory about a swimming pool, about the house. I was in the kind of the vague bits of memory.

Sam: What's the kindest thing someone has ever done for you? We

Ben: had a team of volunteers, riders. You all gave up huge amounts of time and energy. To hell. I mean, there've been [00:38:00] people who have been incredibly kind before the Olympics.

We needed to, three months, four months, but we needed to raise some money to buy a new boat, right? To a whole lot of complete strangers who a number of coughed up all the money. And, and since then, I've had, there are people I've asked for help and they've given it all people who have just said, you know, can I do this for you?

Or, you know, who give time and energy? So I think people have been incredibly con.

Let's push it

Take Homes

Sam - Mic: Thanks a lot for Ben coming on the show to talk about his life as an athlete and coach. Some really fascinating ideas from the frameworks he came up with to help others and it's still ringing in me just the level of risk that athletes put up with to potentially walk away with essentially nothing.

My main three lessons from the interview was,

the first one is that learning does beat hard work alone. After years of intense training with pretty limited success, Ben realized that working harder wasn't enough, and it's really about learning faster.

Deliberately reflecting on every session to understand what worked and what didn't really accelerates improvement. Far [00:39:00] better than simply grinding longer or harder. As well as really focusing on what is working and making sure you are doubling down on it 'cause it's so easy to overlook what's working and obsess about what isn't

next.

When considering the amount of failure that he went through. Building resilience through the whole bounce back ability idea is super key. , Of course, life setbacks are inevitable,

what holds us back from success is the ability to just quickly recover and maintain our performance. Ben really highlighted the importance of his bounce back ability to manage all the frustrations and using failure that kept coming at him as a learning tool, and when you can keep that, you can sustain motivation and consistently work towards success.

Then lastly, you don't need to be robotic about self-improvement around all aspects of your life. But you can, you know, gently incorporate self-improvement ideas in other parts. practicing some more intentional improvement in your relationships and life. The same reflective mindset that Ben used in his rowing, he does apply to his personal life.

So being aware, asking difficult [00:40:00] questions, and perhaps most importantly, recognizing what is going right in a family or personal relationships , and doing more of that, like consciously recreating positive habits that improve your relationships and your overall life satisfaction because growth is really holistic and touches all areas of your life, and you don't necessarily want to be a.

Task master about how you approach growth in those areas, but you do want to think about it. Alright, on that, if you haven't subscribed to my new podcast yet, how to Change the World, all about the history of innovation, well, you can potentially win some free coaching with me by sending me a screenshot of you listening to it, and it's as simple as that.

You can find the new show on any podcast app and links are in the show notes. Otherwise, I hope that you've learned a new way of looking at the world and are enjoying your summer. Life is short, so don't put off relaxing or grounding yourself in enjoying your life. It's always easy to hold things back until some future goal.

I think even Ben enjoyed the process of training and didn't feel like he was making the giant sacrifice that people might expect of [00:41:00] the athlete to get to his gold. So, you know, keep it real and I'll catch you next week.

Thank you so much for listening. Go you. Your consistency to reach the end of an episode is legendary, my hero. If you have any ideas or feedback for the show, I'm always interested to hear from you. You're the best studies show. We need time for information to sink in, so I'm going to give you a five second pause, silence to reflect on one idea from the show before you jump back into your busy life.

Ready and go.