They’re a little unexpected, but not at all unwelcome. I’m not worried by them. I’ve learned that tears are my release. They are my body coming to terms with something.

As they come, I acknowledge that this is my reaction to the 2-day-old realisation that an Olympic story I’ve been telling myself for 22 years - and one that I’ve told publicly hundreds of times to tens of thousands of people in workshops, speeches, articles, and podcasts - isn't entirely true.

The ending hasn’t changed, but the events throughout the story have. And that significantly changes the meaning.

The tears mean that, after more than two decades, I’m realising that it wasn’t all my fault that we didn’t win an Olympic medal.

As absurd as that may sound, bear with me.

Let me share the original story first, then tell you how what happened a week ago changed so much.

The story

Here’s the story that I’ve told privately to myself and publicly for 22 years.

--

Picture this:

It’s 2004, the Athens Olympics.

It’s been 11 years since I first wrote down that I wanted to play for Australia. It’s been a roller coaster to this point.

An insanely intense year at the Australian Institute of Sport straight out of high school. Missed selection on the Sydney Olympic team. Made the 2001 World Championship team. Made the 2003 World Championship team.

I’ve survived injuries and the curveballs of life, and now, here I am, playing on the Australian Water Polo team in Athens.

It’s my dream come true.

It’s game 3, and we’re playing Greece.

It's a medal critical game. The winner stays in medal contention; the loser is knocked out.

The indoor stadium is packed.

I’m in the middle of the pool, and up on my right are 6,000 Greeks going berserk for their home team. It's a raging sea of Hellenic blue and white. The sound is deafening.

In the crowd are islands of green and gold. Australian supporters are decked head-to-toe in wigs, face paint, and t-shirts. My family are there: mum, dad, my three sisters, and brother. Friends have flown from Australia to watch.

We’re 30 secs from halftime and leading by a goal.

The Greeks miss a shot down our end, and I start sprinting up the pool.

My goalkeeper launches the ball down the field.

It sails over my head and lands on the water in front of me.

There’s me. The ball. And the Greek goalkeeper, ten metres away.

I'm exhausted from already playing half of the most intense game of my life. At the same time I'm absolutely jacked on the adrenaline and excitement of the moment—what it means to me, my team, and my country.

My mind kicks into overdrive.

Get me out of here.

I miss these shots in training.

I miss these shots in games.

I wish someone else was taking this shot.

I try to turn it around.

Come on mate.

This is your turn.

You’ve trained for 11 yrs for this.

It’s the Olympics.

Your family’s in the stand.

You can do it! Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!

I sprint in.

I pick up the ball.

I baulk once.

I shoot…

The Greek goalkeeper saves it.

I sink to the bottom of the pool, mortified I've missed this shot. I can't believe it. I'm supposed to score these.

As I come back to the surface, I look to my left and see my teammate, Deano. He's four metres away. He's been screaming at me all the way up to the pool, but I hadn't heard him.

To make matters worse, I watch the Greek goalie throw the ball the full length of the pool to one of his players.

They pick up.

They shoot.

They score.

Instead of being two goals up, we’re even.

Momentum lost. Gone.

I still can’t believe I missed the shot.

The game plays on. We lose.

We’re out of the medals.

We finish the Olympics in 9th position.

Did it all boil down to that one shot?

No, of course not. There were many moments in many games.

But some days it still feels like it.

--

That’s how I’ve told this story. For 22 years.

But then something happened.

The shift

6 months ago a client asked if I had any video footage of the shot from the Athens games to share in my workshop. I didn’t.

In the back of my mind I knew my grandmother had recorded the TV footage of the games back then and given me the VCRs. I’d never been able to bring myself to watch them.

Then 2 months ago, another client asked if I had footage. This time I decided to dig.

After a few weeks, I finally tracked down digitised recordings and saved them in my work files.

I had a quick look.

The Greek game was at the top of the folder. I pressed play. I noticed my adrenalin kicking in as I watched and listened to the commentary.

I watched the first minute. Then I stopped. I figured I’d come back to it later. When I had more time.

Weeks went by and the videos stayed in my files unwatched. I knew they were there, but I kept avoiding them.

Then on a cold winter’s morning, a week ago, everything changed.

My in-laws were staying at our place with their daughters. I mentioned to my brother-in-law that I’d sourced copies of the games.

“Let’s watch them with the girls this morning, mate! That’d be awesome!” he said.

I felt self-conscious and knew I was going to have to watch this shot again if I said yes.

But maybe it was time to watch this game that I’d avoided for 22 years.

So we did.

It turns out the video of the shot played quite differently to my mind’s story.

The differences

The game kicked off. The moment of the shot arrived.

We were even and 20 seconds from halftime.

Instead of the Greeks missing a shot, there was a turnover.

Yes, I sprinted.

It wasn’t my goalie who had passed me the ball. It was my teammate Deano passing from halfway. He was nowhere near me.

When the ball landed, I was 5 m from the Greek goal with a tough angle for a right-hander.

There was no one I could have possibly passed the ball to.

There was a Greek player about to leap on my shoulder.

I didn’t have time to baulk.

It was always going to be a low-percentage shot but one worth taking.

It was the right decision to take the shot at that stage of the game.

The Greek goalie did save it.

He did pass it up the field where their player was waiting.

Our goalie was excluded.

They scored as the game clock for the second quarter hit 00.00.

(I wish I could show you the video but copyright is tough these days.)

The realisation

While it didn’t change the fact that I hadn’t scored and the Greeks had, being able to watch the game situation made me realise that it was different enough from the story to the one I’d been telling myself for 22 years.

That changed my perspective.

I hadn’t missed an easy pass to my teammate after all.

I hadn’t made a terrible decision.

Which meant that it wasn’t solely my fault that we lost the game to Greece.

And therefore, it wasn’t solely my fault that we missed out on the quarterfinals.

And therefore, it wasn’t solely my fault that we didn’t win a medal in Athens.

The absurd

This kind of reasoning may seem absurd to an outsider looking in.

Honestly? It staggers me too.

That a single moment, that 22 years later turned out not even to be true, would cause me to think that it was entirely my fault that we didn’t win a medal in Athens.

That, in some real way, I’d been blaming myself for 22 years.

Intellectually I knew it wasn’t solely my fault, but my body appears to have been hanging onto that old story this whole time.

To make matters even more surreal, as I watched the game again, in the first quarter I actually scored a goal.

A good one.

I couldn’t believe it.

I had to rewind the video to double-check it was actually me.

It was. And I still have zero recollection of scoring that goal.

Coming to terms

As I watched my 23-year-old self playing the game and taking those shots, I felt an appreciation for the effort I’d put in.

I saw my family in the stands sharing the moments with me and felt incredibly grateful they were there. To witness the lot.

I felt pride as I saw all the moments of the game as my teammates gave their all too. With both mistakes and outstanding moments.

I recognised that we always had, and would always have, a shared responsibility for the outcome.

And I saw the Greeks playing their hearts out too in front of their home crowd.

It was an incredible game of water polo.

The elation and the disappointment. The highs and the lows.

As I watched, I acknowledged that, even with the huge aspiration on both sides, one team must win and one must lose. This is the brutal reality of sport.

As the days have unfolded since watching it back, the tears have come and gone again on occasion. And in doing so I’ve felt like I’ve brought that 23-year-old, hugely disappointed me, back home from Athens.

To accept some responsibility, sure.

But to temper that edge of self-blame.

The lessons

I write to help me process.

To try to integrate this new perspective and understand what it means.

When I used to tell the original story - with full conviction that it was the truth - the lessons were all about how we deal with stress and pressure.

The thoughts, the feelings, the sensations.

It was my launchpad into how the toolkit from psychological flexibility can help us learn to work with them. Help us learn to take the best possible action when it truly matters. Help us learn how we can perform when the stakes feel the highest.

The updated story hasn’t changed any of those lessons. They still apply.

And actually I realise now that the same toolkit used in present-day moments is just as useful when applied to the painful, difficult memories that we cannot delete.

And a final lesson feels deeper and more human.

That our minds are storytellers, not historians.

That our mind’s stories are not always kind.

And that our mind’s stories are not always useful.

I’ve been fortunate on this occasion. There aren’t many moments of a life where we can compare our mind’s stories with actual footage to draw lessons.

Either bad or good, I should note.

But perhaps there’s something in your life, one of your stories you’ve been telling yourself for a long time that hasn’t been helpful. A moment of regret. A moment where you wished something had turned out differently.

I hope in acknowledging that pain, we can still realise that we have a path to move forward.

That perhaps, regardless of whether they are good or bad, we need to keep honing our skills for recognising our mind’s stories and accepting them for what they are.

Not the truth. Not wholly right. Not wholly wrong.

They’re stories.

Just stories.

Hi there,

I hope you’re having a good week.

I wanted to share this professional recording of my keynote for the Australian Professional Builders Summit titled: Reinventing Leadership.

It focusses on the power of psychological flexibility and how we can take the science and quickly build a personalised, evidence-based toolkit for ourselves.

Because when we can apply these tools we can better manage stress and pressure, navigate change, lead ourselves and others, deliver when it truly matters and, most importantly, still be the person that we want to be in the process.

Hope you enjoy it.

With love,

Toby

I’d been decaf for 2 years, so the caffeine hit me immediately.

5 shots of coffee in 5 minutes and my heart was pounding, my mind racing. I felt like I was about to take off.

I headed to the park where I’d marked out a 14 metre-wide stage with two sticks on the grass.

I practiced my speech out loud for the hundredth time.

A neighbour stuck his head out his window to stare at me, to make sure that this guy talking to himself was ok.

A grandmother walking a pram past said to me: “I’ve seen a lot of things in my time, but I’ve never seen this.”

She had a point.

I was trying to replicate what it might feel like to speak at the Brisbane Grammar School Speech Day in two days’ time.

8 months earlier, I’d been invited to speak about a lesson from my experience that might resonate with the boys.

The nerves kicked off straight away.

There were layers to this one.

I’m a former student.

There are 5 generations of my family tied up with the school.

There would be 1800 people - school boys (including my nephews), teachers and parents - in the QPAC Concert Hall and more watching online.

It would be the largest audience I’d ever spoken to from the biggest stage.

And I wanted to make this one count.

In the end I chose to run a short breath work activity and then to share a story from my journey to the Athens Olympics.

It’s a story from a time when I was overwhelmed by doubt, when self-belief had vanished and when I wondered if I would ever be good enough to make the Australian team.

Every time I tell it I’m reminded of how a tiny act kindness inspired me through to Athens.

And every time I tell it I’m reminded of my responsibility to take that and pay it forward.

Because that tiny act of kindness changed my life and I know that we can do the same for others.

This is the first time I’ve been professionally filmed telling this story - I hope you enjoy it.

If I boiled that down to a single lesson, it would be to continually ask myself and answer this question:

Who and what matters most to you and how do you align your daily actions with those things?

But that’s not how the review began.

I started the reflection process on the plane to Canberra using my own Year In Review template (you can download it here for free >>).

As I began to type, I was wishing I’d done more, regretting the activity or goals I’d missed, the practices I’d carefully diarised but hadn’t kept.

I was thinking about all the progress I could have made and still needed to make in the future to get from where I was and where “I want to be”. (I’ve included my reflection notes below.)

But by the end of the reflection I realised that, even with all of the work that is still to be done, I am content.

Did I hit every goal? Hell no.

Is there more to do? Absolutely.

But the myth of perfect (or done) is exactly that. And my context will certainly shift and change, so I’ll need to keep evolving.

While it sounds simple, it’s not easy to keep our actions aligned with what truly matters. But I feel like I’ve done a reasonable job of that this year through the ups and downs.

With my sense of contentment comes the feeling of having/being/doing “enough”.

There are a few things that spring to mind on those topics that I wanted to share.

An obituary

I love this obituary that Kurt Vonnegut wrote for The New Yorker in May of 2005 about Joseph Heller, author of Catch-22 and nominee for the Nobel Prize for Literature: True story, Word of Honor:

Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer now dead, and I were at a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island.

I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel to know that our host only yesterday may have made more money than your novel ‘Catch-22’ has earned in its entire history?”

And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.”

And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”

And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”

Continuing to ask myself different questions next year

• What if I flip the paradigm and focus on what I do have rather than what I don’t?
• What if the starting point for seeing someone is to recognise them as whole rather than needing to be fixed?
• If I fully trusted myself, how would I choose to act here?
• What won’t change? How can I double down on that?
• How can I create a feedback loop to help me monitor progress?

A quote

A fit body, a calm mind, a house full of love. These things cannot be bought - they must be earned.

Naval Ravikant

I would also add that, to me, all the truly important things in life are never-ending practices.

Stoicism

Memento mori is a concept in Stoicism to remind us that we may leave this life at any moment. The question then is are you ready?

I have a made a Stoic practice of reflecting on death. When I get on a plane, I ask myself a few questions:

If this tin can in the sky goes down:

• Do the people I love know I love them?
• Am I content with what I have done in the past?
• Am I happy in what I am doing in the present?

The same three questions can apply at any time. And today, the answer to all three questions is yes.

I feel incredibly fortunate.

And that feels like cause for contentment.

2025 Review Notes

He was away from home and as he walked back towards his hotel, my client knew he wasn’t going to be a part of these discussions ever again.

He would no longer be at the table steering and leading the decisions that impacted the business’ tens of thousands of clients and thousands of employees and their families.

The pressure would be less but, at the same time, the phone was going to start ringing less. Meeting invitations might slow down.

He noticed the feeling of loss and sadness.

He noticed the pain of the threat to his relevance.

It all made sense.

He’d dedicated 44 years of his life to this organisation. The decision to leave wasn’t an idea any more. It had become real.

At the same time, he reflected on his decision to move aside, to make way for fresh talent, for new ideas. To hand over the reigns to allow succession to happen.

He also reflected on the plans moving forward.

The travel he wanted to do and the activities he had begun to pick back up. But most importantly it was the people - his partner, children and grandchildren that he was going to be able to spend more time with and be present with.

It had been an intentional changing of the guard and while the discomfort and sense of loss were real, he also found peace at the heart of his decision.

To step back was the right thing to do.

So what to do now?

Well, that was simple - even if it didn’t feel easy. We’d planned for this last board meeting and the aftermath.

Now it was the time to go back to that plan and keep doing the reps in the last 6 months before the final transition date and beyond.

A year earlier we’d sat down for a coffee.

I’ve been 44 years in this business - from junior to board member.

I’ve been through mergers, acquisitions, crises and celebrations. I joined when we were a local business and now we are thousands nationally with relationships all over the world.

It’s been an incredible ride.

I’m planning to wind back in the next 18 months and I’m self-aware enough to know it might hurt.

I’ve watched friends and colleagues take this step and it hasn’t all been pretty.

After a flurry of golf games and a bit of time at the beach, I’ve watched them start wondering what to do. The phone stops ringing. They’ve felt isolated, alone, unwanted. They lose their sense of purpose. They start getting cranky about the way the business is being run, second guessing decisions. They become curmudgeonly.

I don’t want that to be me.

I have a bunch of people telling me what I could or should do and how I should do it. But I need to find my own path.

I want to leave well and hit “the date” feeling clear and excited about the next chapter.

Would you be able to help?

Succession

I have a particular soft spot for major transitions like succession.

I’ve been through numbers of my own as an Olympic athlete leaving sport and exiting from two companies I’ve founded.

They can be challenging periods.

For the person leaving, there’s the erosion of relevance, the uncertainty of what comes next, the loss of structure previously dictated by an organisation and the reinvention of identity after years of playing a role - often a high intensity, high stimulation one.

In many cases, especially for founders and business owners, it can feel like leaving their “baby”. There is a loss of purpose and it needs to be replaced.

Also for the organisation, there’s a change in relationship with the leaver - from leader to advisor and mentor - to create a space for constructive, continuing contribution and at the same time allowing the room for successors to forge their own path.

In succession settings, we’re dealing with a person who is in many ways at the height of their powers - finances, networks, experience - and are about to get more rich in time and the freedom of how they spend it.

Rather than “putting people out to pasture” how can we maximise their ongoing meaningful contributions?

They are far too valuable to squander.

3 techniques for dealing with the doubts and fears

It is both normal and certain that fears and doubts will show up through these periods as well as exhilaration and excitement about the prospect of freedom and what it might represent.

With my client we explored the situations that might feel difficult in the lead up to “the date”.

Some simple examples were:

• The last board meeting
• Choosing to pick up a book or a guitar in the evening rather than working.
• Not going into the office each morning.

There were many more. In these periods, the tools and mindset techniques of psychological flexibility are incredibly helpful.

Technique #1 - Writing down the fears

By answering the following questions we clarified and defined the specific fears and doubts that were showing up around the transition:

• What are the tough or unhelpful thoughts, feelings, sensations?
• Where do you feel them in or around your body?
• Do they have a size, shape, colour, texture, weight, temperature?

When you write down the answers to these questions, you’re practicing an evidence-based technique that the science calls de-fusion.

Rather than trying to change your thoughts, feelings and sensations, by writing them down, you create some space between you and these internal experiences in order to handle them in a different way.

Technique #2 - Naming the challenge

A second technique is Labelling. You do that by answering a simple question.

• Can you give that whole internal experience a name?

This technique is again not to change the experience, but to help you recognise it showing up and still make values aligned choices.

Rather than fighting the internal experiences, these two techniques help you handle the tough or unhelpful thoughts, feelings and sensations in a different way by creating space and by coming to accept them as the price of entry to the change.

This is critical in succession so you don’t get hooked into unproductive behaviours and patterns that can erode relationships, waste time and money and undermine the very legacy you would like to leave.

Technique #3 - Creating mindfulness rituals

We also immediately began to practice Dr Andrew Weill’s 4-7-8 breath.

Breathe in for a 4 count, hold that breath for 7 and breathe out for 8.

This is a tool to get present.

Not necessarily to feel better, but to recognise that you still have a choice of response even when these difficult or unhelpful thoughts and feelings show up.

And mindfulness doesn’t need to take more time - you can find these opportunities in the everyday.

This client was a coffee lover, so we developed rituals for mindfulness that he could begin to practice with his morning coffee by noticing the taste and smell of the coffee and the temperature and texture of the cup.

By practicing these 3 techniques, he was able to recognise the internal experiences, come back to the present and then make values-aligned choices.

Developing the plan

Then we moved into planning.

We had 18 months to begin to develop and practice a plan prior to the day of transition.

We explored options through questions like these:

• What are your values?
• What is your purpose?
• What energises you?
• Who is important to you?
• What is important to you?
• What practices would you like to have for the rest of your life?
• How could we begin those now?
• What have you loved doing in the past?
• How could we do more of that moving forward?

Out came answers like live music, guitar, yoga, meditation, travel, swimming, cooking with his partner and family.

While occasionally there is a desire to do something new, nearly always it’s simpler to start with what has already brought satisfaction and fulfilment in the past.

Action into uncertainty

Having clarified possible directions, we began the work of re-engineering how he managed his time and priorities to bring these activities online.

Working within the context of a very full diary and substantial existing work commitments, piece by piece we experimented with small changes to daily, weekly and monthly routines. We wanted to begin the practices right now that would support him through the transition and beyond.

He identified boards of community organisations that he felt aligned with and began to develop those opportunities to “keep a hand in the game” once he left.

His fitness program was to continue.

He started play his guitar and attend live music concerts which he loved.

Rather than going “cold-turkey”, he negotiated a plan with the business to initially wind back work to 3 days per week.

Inevitably there were set backs and interruptions.

While this was frustrating at times, it wasn’t about perfect reps. It was about getting the important pieces in place and then building consistency over time.

Intentional recovery

After these kinds of high intensity, high stimulation careers, I’ve noticed that clients need to take an intentional break to create the space that can nourish them once they finally leave.

So we designed a plan that combined travel, music, family, sport - all the areas he loved - into a single itinerary for him to explore and intentionally recharge over the 6 months after “the date”.

Support and accountability

The final piece of the puzzle over the 18 months was the support and accountability throughout. This was to make sure the plan developed and that he stayed on track.

This wasn’t about intention, this was about actually making and sustaining the changes he needed and wanted.

Beyond the date

When finally “the day” arrived, he was looking forward to it and to what was coming next.

He had new structures and routines in place and knew how he wanted to develop those even further.

He had a plan for intentional, fulfilling recovery on the back of what had been an extraordinary career.

He knew exactly how he would continue to serve his family, the business he was leaving and the community around him.

He knew how he would use his power and energy in new and meaningful ways.

And he was excited by the prospect of the road ahead.

A couple of months later, I bumped into him at the pool. It was a Monday lunchtime - part of his new routine.

Even though there was still the reflex to jump back into work, he'd been able to check himself. He’d been able to remind himself that the changed had happened.

And he was thoroughly enjoying the new chapter.

It was awesome to see.

To me, the power of successfully navigating these intense transition periods is that we all benefit from the deep experience, resources and ongoing contribution of people who still have much left to give.

That’s why I love this work.

--

If you'd like to take stock of where you're at, you might like to try my free Quality of Life Assessment >>

It was a 9 figure deal.

The most important deal of the founder’s career because it was the first to get to this stage in their new business.

Up until this point, cash had only been going in one direction - out.

They needed this to land for the business, for their family, for themselves.

And the terms of the deal were getting squeezed. Hard.

What was said in this conversation mattered. And how it was said mattered.

It was game time.

Starting out

We’d caught up 11 months earlier.

I’m going to quit my corporate role in 3 months and start my own business.

I have an opportunity and now is the time.

Can you help?

Our coffee arrived as we dug into it further.

The results were clear.

I need to finish my current role strong, leave graciously and retain the relationships because that’s who I am and the world is far too small to burn bridges.

I need to start the new business before I finish the job so I can hit the ground running.

I need to juggle the workload through the transition out.

And then I need to make this business work - I reckon I have 12 months runway.

I asked why they were starting the journey.

I’ve always loved creating things and this business would be a way to do that - the business itself and what we’d be doing with our clients. And I want to have control of my time to spend with my family and friends in the day to day and the adventures we love doing together.

But it wasn’t all roses. There was real challenge along the path ahead.

There was a family to feed, school fees to pay. And while they had a plan, they’d never run their own business before. Didn’t have a website, email address or even a name for the new company yet.

I asked about their energy to do all of this.

I’ve begun some good habits like intermittent fasting and regular gym. I’d love your help to maintain and build on those.

I asked what they thought might get in the way.

The main roadblock wasn’t a lack of information. They had decades of their own skills and experienced advisors already involved.

The main problem I could help with was the fear and focus.

The fear of failing, fear of not being good enough, fear of not providing, imposter syndrome, anxiety.

The fear was translating into distraction, procrastination, chasing shiny objects rather than doing the reps they knew were required.

And so the work began.

Dealing with fear

Using the tools of psychological flexibility we began to develop the mental skills and tools to help them work in the uncertainty of any start up business.

It didn’t take long for them to realise that the fear wasn’t going away. In fact it was the price of entry to pursuing the vision they held.

We started immediately with two techniques.

Technique #1: Create space

The science of psychological flexibility calls this de-fusion. It’s about unhooking from the unhelpful thoughts and feelings that hold us back or pull us away from what truly matters to us.

To do this, we defined their fear response by answering these questions:

What are the tough or unhelpful:

• thoughts?
• feelings?
• sensations?

Where do you feel them?

Do they have a size, shape, colour, texture, weight, temperature?

The fear, the imposter, the lack of clarity was showing up as a black ball in the stomach and hijacking them. They felt overwhelmed by it.

By writing down the answers to these questions, they were able to begin to create a little space between themselves the experience.

Then they could shift their attention to the work that mattered most.

Technique #2: Naming

We layered on an additional technique to help handle the fear response by asking a further question:

Can you give this whole experience a name?

Not to make it go away, but to be able to recognise it showing up. To make room for it.

We began to practice these two techniques so that the founder could recognise when the fear showed up and still make choices and take prioritised action they were proud of. The choices wouldn’t guarantee success, but they would at the very least be the antidote to regret.

We continued to practice these two techniques in order to turn them into skill and then skill into mastery.

We clarified direction by uncovering and connecting to their purpose and values. We defined long, medium and short term goals across work, relationships and health to help them maintain and grow through this period.

We used those goals to align and prioritise daily and weekly actions as they worked through the business plan, processed feedback and made the course corrections every new business demands.

We developed and personalised their calendar and workflow systems to support the habits and action and provide the structure that vanishes when people leave large organisations.

Of course it wasn’t all smooth sailing.

There were failed pitches, collapsed deals, rejections.

There were family health scares. An injury that required an operation and rehab.

There was the struggle to be present at home with family and when out with friends as the business progressed.

While uncomfortable, these challenges had been useful to test and refine these two techniques and others over the 11 months.

And now here we were 30 mins from a critical performance moment.

As the saying goes, we don’t rise to the occasion, we fall to the level of our training.

It was time to bring everything we’d practiced into play.

Negotiating in the presence of fear

When I jumped on the call, we took a mindful breath to start our conversation as we always did at the start of our coaching sessions.

Breathe in for 4, hold for 7, out for 8.

We checked in on how the fear was showing up. It was totally normal. This was expected. We acknowledged it.

We used the Choice Point model for decision making and unpacked their action plan for the call:

• What’s your agenda for this call?
• What’s your objective?
• What’s your opening line?
• Who’s important?
• What’s important?
• What do you need from this conversation?
• Why does that matter to you and the other party?
• How can this be framed as a towards move for you both - ie towards what you both want and need to make this a success?
• Are you prepared to walk away from this if you don’t get the terms?
• What are next steps?
• How can you approach this in a values based way?
• How will you get present before and during the call?

25 mins later we were done. The fear was present. The specifics of the plan were clear. It was up to them to execute.

And they did.

The first deal in their first business was the most important of their career at a critical point when it felt like everything was at stake.

Did it feel comfortable? Hell no. But that’s performance.

Performance is working with discomfort and still taking the action and making the choices that move us towards what matters because it’s too important not to.

The techniques are teachable, learnable and with practice become skills and then mastery.

I especially love the fact that they are meta-skills.

The same techniques can be applied in negotiating in high stakes deals, parenting, relationships, food and drink choices, changing exercise habits, starting businesses, exiting businesses… the list goes on.

And practice in one area helps all areas.

This is why I love what I do.

My mind told me I deserved it, I’d earned it, it would be a great way to cap off the day and that maybe I should get a second bar too, just to really celebrate.

My mind also told me that I didn’t need it, that I was weak for wanting it, that it was disgusting to want it so much, that this was exactly the behaviour I’d been trying to stop for months.

The battle for control was on…

It had been a long, beautiful sunny day.

My daughters and I had woken at 5:45am to jump in the car to the Gold Coast so they could try their first ever water polo tournament.

It had been hectic but they’d enjoyed the day and loved playing with their friends and cousins. I’d managed to squeeze in a swim with a couple of the mates in the middle of it all and then it finally wrapped up with presentations at 2:30pm.

My sister took my girls home. I was heading off in my own car to catch up with a friend who’d flown in from Sydney.

I was tired and happy.

I pulled into a petrol station to fill my tank.

I walked inside to pay and that was when I spotted a twin-share KitKat sitting just below the cash register.

Full body cravings kicked in. There was no way I was going to share this thing. My mind went into overdrive.

As I got close to the counter, I reached out and picked up the KitKat.

Then I tried something I’d never tried before.

I acknowledged what my mind was telling me.

I acknowledged the emotions of craving, disgust, frustration, desire.

I acknowledged the physiological experience of my whole body wanting to pick up the bar and eat it.

I connected to my body and tried moving my hands. I twisted the bar to the right. I twisted it to the left. I realised I still had control of my limbs.

I engaged in the world around me. I actually looked at the detail of the grey cigarette cabinet behind the counter. I looked at the woman serving me and noticed her earrings. I noticed the sound of the traffic outside.

Then I put the bar back down.

I paid for the fuel.

I walked out.

I got in my car.

I drove away.

All while still experiencing the thoughts, feelings and sensations of craving.

Dropping Anchor

While this KitKat example may appear trivial, the crux of all behaviour change lies in the tiny choices we make each day.

I’d been trying to reduce my sugar intake for over a year. It’d been hard going. Nothing had really stuck.

The key insight was not me knowing more about how to “quit sugar”.

A lack of information or knowledge is very rarely the obstacle.

Instead, it is our thoughts, feelings and sensations that hook us and pull us away from the action we already know we need to take.

The key insight was about how I handle the experience of craving.

The technique I used is called Dropping Anchor. I’d learned it a week earlier from Dr Russ Harris, one of the world’s foremost experts in psychological flexibility.

The pattern is simple:

• A - Acknowledge your thoughts, feelings and sensations. What is your mind telling you? How do you feel? What do you feel in your body? Where do you feel it?
• C - Connect to your body. Move your hands, legs, arms, stretch a little. Notice that even with these thoughts, feelings, sensations present in your body, you still have control over your limbs.
• E - Engage in the world around you. What can you see, hear, smell, touch, taste?

The purpose of this exercise is not to make the craving go away, but to make room for it. To expand your awareness of the craving and your body and the world around it.

In fact, the title of this article is way off.

Rather than fighting the craving, it was acceptance of the craving.

Rather than feeling hooked by the craving, dropping anchor allowed me to gently unhook and make a different choice.

And of course this doesn’t just apply to dealing with sugar cravings.

I have a client currently using dropping anchor to help them stop drinking on week nights.

Dropping anchor is a meta skill of psychological flexibility that applies wherever and whenever you find the challenging internal experiences that are holding you back in your health, work and relationships.

And other tools in the toolkit of psychological flexibility have helped my clients lead organisations, deal with performance anxiety at work, difficult conversations, breaking through a 17 year phobia of running, negotiating $1B+ deals, navigating domestic violence and many, many more instances.

The question is would you be willing, in the midst of your next challenge, to give it a go?

If you'd like a quick way to identify challenges where Dropping Anchor might be useful, I'd encourage to grab this free 3 min assessment >>

I’ve really enjoyed being interviewed on podcasts, and this one with Richard Thompson was no exception.

As well as being an entrepreneur, lawyer, and father of 4 boys, he’s also a 2 x ultra triathlon champion, so we covered quite a bit of territory in this interview.

Below is what Richard wrote about the episode. I hope you enjoy it.

With love,

Toby

Forget goals, THIS practice will change your life >>

It’s not about pushing harder.

It’s not about perfect reps.

It’s about psychological flexibility - the courage to sit with discomfort, let go of control, and still do what matters.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why goals alone aren’t enough - and why practice-setting might matter more
• The three pillars of psychological flexibility: open up, be present, do what matters
• What elite sport taught Toby about stress - and what life taught him when sport ended
• How to hold onto values when everything else feels out of control

This isn’t just a conversation about mindset.

It’s a reminder that being human is messy - and that sometimes, our strength lives in the surrender.

Toby, thank you. For your depth, your clarity - and your beautiful reminder that some of life’s hardest chapters can become our most valuable work.

You can listen/watch on Spotify; Apple Podcasts; YouTube.

Performance Coaching Testimonials

In the next 2 weeks I’ll be wrapping up my coaching program with Toby Jenkins.

As I reflect on the experience its hard to summarise all the learnings and ‘ah ha’ moments I’ve had during this time.

The one standout though has been how empowered I’ve felt investing in myself to get the help to change my mindset and habits in dealing with the inevitable pressures of not just the NFP sector, leadership but general work.

After stepping into a role I had been working towards for 10 years, 12 months in I felt ‘work’ had both hands on the steering wheel of life than ever before and few boundaries.

I now have tangible tools i can call on to grow as a leader and person, work in a sustainable way, without compromising my purpose and values.

This has been something I’ve struggled with for years and I will always need to work at this. I needed to do something I’ve never done before which was invest in myself to actually make the change. Because the pressure won’t change but how I handle it can.

I can’t recommend investing in yourself … And Toby Jenkins more! Thanks Toby for your time, keeping me accountable, listening and always challenging me.

Thanks to David Curd and MS Queensland for supporting me to have this experience.

If you are interested in hearing what I learnt please let me know or better yet reach out to Toby!

#leadership #coaching #change #mindset #sustainable #leader

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7044835348106936320/

Victoria Andrews CFRE - Executive General Manager Supporter Impact, Customer & Strategy Executive General Manager Supporter Impact, Customer & Strategy

I have worked with Toby for 12 months now. Toby is someone who is deeply connected to his work and really lives and breathes this stuff. I came to Toby during a period in my life when I was going through multiple major life transitions. Not only did I love the different insights and genuine interest during our in-person sessions but the support that he provided between sessions. Toby also has a network of really interesting people and I enjoyed his proactivity in connecting me with other people as well.

Mark Korduba - Founder, Positive Moods & Telepsychiatry

For more coaching testimonials please visit the Coaching page >>

Speaking & Workshop Testimonials

I've had the fortune of being exposed to various leadership coaches. I found Toby's messaging to be incredibly powerful and differentiated in recognising the nature of the human struggle, how to accept it, and work with not against it. His teachings have stuck with me and I've found myself repeatedly returning to his guidance as I move forward as a leader of a team, and of a family.

Zoe Hayes- Head of Consumer Apps & Sport Partnerships B2C Marketing, AUNZ at Google

Dear Toby

Thank you for agreeing to join our executive team last Thursday to run a workshop on Wellbeing and Psychological Flexibility.

The session was hugely beneficial for our group as we navigate uncertain times and a series of new challenges/obstacles related to the current high inflation/interest rate environment.

Your ability to capture the imagination of the team in a short period of time was exceptional and it certainly left everyone asking, ‘when is the next session’.

Of particular benefit was your raw approach to the concept of negative thoughts, which we all experience and the fact these thoughts are natural and we all have them countless times per day.

We found your content relatable, easy to follow and engaging.

I hope we can have many more of these workshops in the coming years.

Kind regards,

Chris

Chris Butters - Managing Director – Brisbane & State Director – QLD, CBRE

I engaged Toby to run the Momentum workshop with a group of leaders as part of our leadership series. Toby is an engaging presenter who can connect with a varied audience. His humility and willingness to openly share his own journey of reflection, learning and growth resonated with many of our leaders. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive and I would highly recommend Toby for future leadership events.

Taresa Rosten - HR Executive, Health Services Queensland

For many years now, I have had the pleasure of working with Toby Jenkins and leveraging his expertise in working with my corporate clients as well as with my EMBA student groups at QUT. Toby blends his personal experiences as an elite athlete with years of expertise as an Executive Coach and KeyNote speaker. He creates an environment that invites everyone in to reflect, focus and build an agenda for personal change and growth. He has a remarkable capacity to build relationships quickly with any team or group; yet at the same time pushing them to challenge their thinking in reinventing and reimagining their future. His energy and his enthusiasm are contagious; and I confidently refer him to any of my clients seeking support in reshaping their future careers.

Dr Catherine See - Managing Director- Gravitas Consulting, Corporate Educator - Queensland University of Technology, Graduate School of Business

Toby joined the Australian Men’s Water Polo Squad during our World Championships preparation camp at the Australian Institute of Sport, Canberra. Toby led the squad through a process to develop clear goals, realistic objectives, and a reflective framework to foster accountability.

Toby’s knowledge of the conditions which enable or threaten athlete performance provided staff and athletes with ideas to enhance expectations and wellbeing.

Toby’s personal stories and actionable strategies provided players with tools to help them grow as athletes and people. Toby’s work will have a lasting impact on the Australian Men’s Water Polo Squad.

Tim Hamill - Head Coach, Australian National Men’s Water Polo Team

Toby’s coaching style is truly unique, bringing warmth and authenticity. He creates an open and positive environment, where every voice is valued and encouraged to contribute. I highly recommend Toby for any leader or team in the midst of transformation, seeking to reinvent their professional trajectory, or aspiring to cultivate a new mindset. Our entire team emerged from the experience invigorated and inspired. Thank you, Toby.

Mikaeli Costello - Chief Community Engagement Officer, University of Queensland

Thanks again for your contribution to ADAPTOVATE Australia’s offsite. Your session was very well received and the anecdotal feedback from our team was extremely positive, with several of our team committing to trying your techniques & frameworks, both personally and professionally.

David Gumley - MD Adaptovate, Australia/NZ

Having Toby speak to my QLD Leadership Team on decision-making and mindset was an inspiring experience. His ability to break down complex ideas and challenges into relatable, actionable steps was empowering. Toby challenged the team to rethink our approach to decisions, focusing on mindfulness, clarity, and confidence. He was engaging with contagious enthusiasm, leaving my team equipped with practical tools to make better choices. Highly recommend!

Greg Crocombe - State GM QLD, Westpac & St George

A huge shout-out to Toby Jenkins OLY for putting on an outstanding workshop yesterday on High Performance Decision Making.

Over the years I have done a LOT of workshops. Most I have taken a few things away that help in big ways - mostly as I reflect on my growth challenges and think about the adjustments I need to make to be a better version of myself.

From start to finish, Toby’s 2 hr session was on another level. From the best ‘acknowledgement to country’ gesture I have ever seen (and participated in) to the simple but effective ice breakers, the flow and progression of how we were introduced to the material and the practical exercises of the main session itself, I left with so many take aways I felt like I had just finished a 1 week course.

I loved the acknowledgement of the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ voices and the practical reality of what trying to make better decisions in high pressure situations really means. I also loved that this was all weighed on our individual values first, so what we took away meant something to each of us, and not a generic template that addresses just the symptoms of the challenging situations we face.

Toby was such a easy, genuine facilitator, I felt like I stepped out of my comfort zone without feeling like I was unsafe and felt like I was stretching my perspectives without creating the uncomfortable tension so many others think is necessary to make ‘progress’.

24 hours on, my commitments are already making a difference in key areas I already decided for myself.

Do yourself a favour - follow Toby and sign up to his weekly newsletter. It’s short and such a great read to drive an open mind at the start of the week. If you ever find yourself lucky enough to be in one of sessions, know that I am very jealous of you.

Arjuna Kumarasuriyar - Head of APAC Development, Oxford Nanopore Technologies

Toby was a standout speaker at our recent event, the APB Summit. He delivered far more than we expected and left a lasting impression on our entire audience of 150+ business owners.

When searching for speakers, we were looking for someone who brought professionalism, presence, and a powerful message. We also needed someone who would show up fully prepared, stick to the brief, and connect meaningfully with residential builders in the room. Toby did all that and more.

Working with him behind the scenes was effortless. His communication was clear, he asked the right questions during preparation, and took the time to understand our audience and what mattered most to them. His professionalism and attention to detail gave us complete confidence heading into the event.

On stage, Toby held the room from start to finish. His presentation wasn’t just well-structured and practical, it struck an emotional chord. He shared stories that resonated deeply and helped our audience reflect on both their business and their personal lives. One attendee summed it up best by saying, “This spoke to me on a personal and business level about my fears and how they’ve been holding me back.”

Our post-event feedback confirmed what we felt in the room. Toby received an outstanding 4.8 out of 5 star rating from attendees, and just 1.9 out of 5 for self-promotion, proving he focused solely on delivering value, not selling anything. That’s exactly the kind of speaker we want on our stage.

I would highly recommend Toby to any event organiser looking for someone who can inspire a room, share real substance, and elevate the experience for everyone in attendance. He won’t let you down.

Will Blunt - Head of Marketing at the Association of Professional Builders, Organiser of the APB Summit

We engaged Toby to bring cross-enterprise teams together, focused on the delivery of a common goal. Toby's very easy to follow and authentic storytelling from his own lived experiences and research, provided the teams with practical strategies to stay focused and resilient under pressure and making clear decisions when it matters most.

He was also a great facilitator, leaving the teams with a great energy and vibe after the session. We look forward to working with Toby again in the future.

Stephen McKay - Chief Commercial Officer, Australian Retirement Trust

Toby blends personal experiences, scientific evidence and personalised delivery in a way that everyone is immediately captivated and impacted for a long-time. His ability to break down mindset and psychological flexibility into operational concepts enables a sharp focus, immediate reflections and tangible actions. We had the pleasure to welcome Toby to The Executive Syndicate of the CEO Institute in Brisbane, and benefitted tremendously from his willingness to share, give and guide.

Michael Rosemann - Director of the Centre for Future Enterprise and a Professor for Innovation Systems at the Business School, Queensland University of Technology (QUT)

Our team were looking for a way to strengthen our connections so we could perform at a higher level. Toby's workshop at our retreat was the key to unlocking our unity and created a framework and pathway to break down communication barriers in our team. We have had the most successful retreat to date with our team contributing more than ever to our vision and strategy.

Daniel Ryan - Director, Bodytrack Exercise Physiology

We recently had the pleasure of welcoming Toby Jenkins to speak at our company conference on resilience, mindset and reflection.

Toby’s presentation was engaging, authentic and thought-provoking.

He spoke about how our mindset can shape a very different story from reality, reminding us that we often focus on what went wrong rather than what we achieved.

What stood out most was Toby’s ability to connect with our team. His story, energy and perspective resonated strongly, and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. His message has continued to start meaningful conversations about resilience, mindset and how we approach challenges both personally and professionally.

Thank you, Toby, for sharing your story with us. It was a powerful reminder to step back and view our own story through a different lens.

Viola Hiratos - Troocoo

"When I told the team we have a guest speaker for our offsite talking about "psychological flexibility", there was scepticism. 3 hours later - the team were fully engaged and working through challenges they face at work and at home. Toby ran a fantastic workshop that was delivered authentically. Each session was tailored to the individual and 2 weeks later, I'm still using the simple tools Toby shared. Would recommend!"

Blake Henricks - Managing Director, Firetrail Investments

We were fortunate to have Toby present at our Blue Tree team conference and spend the day working with our team. His session wasn’t about eliminating stress, but understanding that stress is a normal part of life and learning practical ways to manage it both at work and at home.

Toby challenged our thinking, gave us useful tools we could apply immediately, and created an environment where people felt comfortable being open and honest. The feedback from our team was overwhelmingly positive, and many of the lessons continue to be discussed and applied months later.

I would highly recommend Toby to any business looking to improve the wellbeing, resilience and performance of their team.

Matt Scherhag MFinPlan, AFP® -Owner and Principal Advisor, Blue Tree Financial Planning

Toby ran a fantastic session for our team during our Thailand trip, giving us the chance to step away from our usual work routines and reflect on our values, purpose and how we work together. He created a relaxed, welcoming environment that encouraged honest conversations and meaningful connection across the team. His session added real value to the trip, and we’re grateful he was part of it.

Justine Long - General Manager, Blue Tree Financial Planning

Toby has a contagious energy and enthusiasm for mindset, performance and resilience. His presentation immediately captivated our team and provided invaluable insights into mindset, overcoming negative thought patterns, and practical strategies to build energy and unlock potential. We look forward to the opportunity to work with Toby again.

Kate Chaundy - Senior Client Relationship Manager, Mallesons

Facilitation Testimonials

To whom it may concern,

Habitat Development Group is a leading Queensland based property development and construction business. In 2019 we were ranked in the Top 16 Builders of apartments in the country by the HIA (Housing Industry Association).

We are vertically integrated and manage all aspects of the development process in-house from site acquisition, development, construction to ongoing property and facilities management. We have several different divisions in our business that are required to work cooperatively to achieve the overall business strategy. For this reason, a unified culture that works seamlessly to implement the overall business strategy is incredibly important to us.

As part of our commitment to this unified and cooperative culture, we hold biannual meetings every 6 months with our senior management team. This involves the leaders of each division in the business working with Toby and myself for 1-2 days. Toby and I will work very closely in the weeks leading up to the biannual where he will tailor the agenda according to the brief I establish and what I think we need to work on as a team and business.

On the actual day/s of the biannual, Toby will facilitate these biannual meetings and play the role of Chairperson which frees up the rest of us to be present and engage fully in the process.

These sessions have been incredibly powerful for our business over the years and we always get great takeaway value. One of the more powerful sessions we did involved developing a greater awareness and appreciation of each other's personal strengths and weaknesses. As a senior management team, we are a much more effective and collaborative team as a result of them. The sessions are always handled very professionally and in a timely manner. And Toby always brings lots of energy and enthusiasm so we stay on point throughout the day/s.

I would highly recommend Toby to any organisation interested in the pursuit of high performance in their teams.

Sincerely,

Cleighton Clark- Managing Director, Habitat Development Group

To whom it may concern,

Sofi Trading Pty Ltd (trading as Sofi Spritz) is an award winning, venture-backed, high growth Australian beverage company. A few years ago we decided to formalise our annual strategic offsites.

I consider these to be critical investments in my team and business so I engaged Toby to help. With his guidance, we structured the agendas and clarified outcomes. We then engaged my internal team, key investors and advisors to gather important data and suggestions prior to the day.

To me, working with Toby to facilitate our offsites has improved our outcomes from these days for a number of reasons:

• He really helped create a clear flow of both reflection and strategic planning.
• The engagement prior to the days with key stakeholders gave them time to think and really consider our strategic challenges and opportunities. They came much better prepared and with better thought-out ideas.
• Toby’s guidance and coaching throughout the days was engaging, kept the team fresh and freed me up to fully engage in the discussion.
• A number of the exercises Toby suggested and then ran also helped us to get to know each other better individually and as a team. His passion for performance is definitely infectious!

I’ve had Toby come back for all of our offsites over the last few years. There’s no doubt that he adds enormous value to the days.

If you’d like to talk more, please contact me on 0429 048 836.

Tom Maclean - Founder and Managing Director, Sofi Spritz

Toby Jenkins was an absolute pleasure to work with as MC for our charity lunch. In the lead-up to the event he was organised, professional and thorough in his preparation, taking the time to research and connect with our panel speakers beforehand. On the day, Toby brought warmth, passion and professionalism, expertly facilitating the panel and ensuring the event ran seamlessly. Our charity lunch was a huge success, and Toby’s leadership and organisation played a major role in making the day so memorable.

Karen Brown - Director, Batch Tested

For more information, please visit my speaking page >>

I was interviewed by Tate Z.for The How Story podcast recently in Sydney.

Here’s the description:

Toby Jenkins made it to the Olympics. He built a successful business and now coaches high performers.

But the real story? It took him nearly 20 years to let himself feel proud of it.

In this episode, Toby shares the moments most people never see — the quiet doubts, the small acts of kindness that changed everything, and what it means to show up even when it’s hard.

If you’ve ever questioned whether you're really "enough" — this one’s for you.

You can watch the episode on YouTube or listen on Apple or Spotify.

I hope you enjoy it.

With love,

Toby

I was recently interviewed on the Lead with Courage podcast with Cherie Canning (Spotify and Apple) and wanted to share it with you.

It was an awesome conversation and we covered a fair bit of ground:

• What courage means to me.
• The intersection of privilege, guilt, and responsibility and how my experience at the CEO Sleepout to end homelessness highlighted this.
• My mindset shift in the lead up to Athens Olympics thanks to Michael Johnson (4 x Olympic gold medal sprinter).
• The importance of framing behaviour not as positive and negative but as towards and away.
• The best question to ask instead of saying no.
• Why it’s important to distinguish between who we are and what we do.
• Why I chose to set practices rather than goals in 2024 and what that looked like.
• My favourite Top Gun quote.
• And much more.

You can listen to it here: Spotify; Apple; and more.

Enjoy!

With love,

Toby

A client I worked with faced a critical choice: Where to focus first?

We’d been for a bush walk discussing the challenges and opportunities they were dealing with across relationships, health, work and more.

There were many moving parts that weren’t going away any time soon.

As we sat down with coffee, I pulled out the Valued Living Questionnaire.

The Valued Living Questionnaire

The Valued Living Questionnaire is a simple, evidence-based tool from the psychological flexibility toolkit. Developed by Professor Kelly G. Wilson in 2002, it has an uncanny knack for cutting through the Gordian knot of our minds’ noise and life’s complexity.

In the midst of my own crucible in 2016 - newborn baby, shoulder operation, work challenges, father-in-law with leukemia plus my own dad’s death - this was the tool that helped me transform insane frustration to clarity in 3 mins.

Here it is below or you can download the full worksheet and instructions here >>.

10 is the highest importance. On a scale of 1-10 how satisfied are you with your actions in this domain? |

10 is the highest satisfaction.

| Family Relationships (other than intimate or parenting) | | |

| Intimate relationships | | |

| Parenting | | |

| Friends/social life | | |

| Work | | |

| Finances | | |

| Education/training | | |

| Recreation/fun | | |

| Spirituality | | |

| Citizenship/ Community Life | | |

| Physical self care (diet, exercise, sleep etc) | | |

| Environmental Issues | | |

When I used the Valued Living Questionnaire in the depths of my challenges in 2016, it changed the direction of my enquiry from external to internal.

It asked me questions to help me find my own answers.

The challenge of that period made sense.

The good of that period made sense.

But it was the surprise of seeing my specific scores for the Work category that sparked a shift.

I’d scored Work 9/10 in importance and 2/10 in satisfaction.

In hindsight, that 3 minute exercise provided me with the insight that began the 18 month process of resigning from the company I’d founded 13 years earlier. It gave me to clarity to head down this path of exploring the application of psychological flexibility for resilience, performance and fulfilment.

Applying the Valued Living Questionnaire

I’ve used this tool many times in the last 9 years both in one-on-one and group settings.

If you can be brutally honest with yourself, it’s the fastest way I’ve found to take stock of where you are and where you need to focus.

We can interpret the results of it in a few ways:

1. People who feel as though they are thriving often report high degrees of satisfaction in high importance categories.
2. The opposite is also true. People with low scores for high importance categories can feel “stuck”.
3. As a quick audit: Take your highest importance categories and compare them to your diary and how you’re spending your time. What does this tell you about your current priority and time management? Where are the gaps?
4. Insight: Like my experience, were there any surprises for you when you completed the scoring?
5. Focus: If you could only focus on one of these areas, which would you choose?
6. Action: What single specific action might you take to improve this domain’s satisfaction score by just 1 or 2 points in the next 24-48 hours? (What, Who, Where, When…)
7. Energy and fulfilment: How might you combine your high importance domains into a single activity? This is a key to designing activities to energise and nourish.

Back at the cafe, the client went through the exercise.

“Even though, based on these scores, it seems like I should be focussed on my parenting and my marriage, I think work is where I need to focus right now.

If I can learn to work with the imposter syndrome at work and manage my anxiety, then I’ll be more present at home with my family and improve my productivity at work.

Also, I need to dramatically improve my productivity at work. If I can do that, I’ll be able to work within work hours, have more time for my family and benefit financially.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Yes. My workflow process is a Datsun. It needs to become a Ferrari.”

And so our work began.

2 months later:

• Their workflow process was dialled in and improving all the time. Through systemised prioritisation, they were triaging issues faster, proactively getting feedback sooner and speeding up the learning loop while maintaining quality.
• Productivity was measured by very specific units of output. Each week a personalised productivity ranking of the whole company was shared via email. The client's ranking and unit output were trending up.
• Using the full suite of tools of psychological flexibility they were better managing their imposter syndrome and anxiety.
• They were home on time and not working after the children went to bed.

For them, this wasn’t just about productivity for productivity’s sake. They were deeply connected to the impact it would have on everything they cared about.

Over the coming months as their context shifted, we revisited the Valued Living Questionnaire numbers of times to reset focus on the area most in need of attention.

12 months later they had:

• Doubled their productivity units and tripled their productivity bonus.
• Been offered and taken up a leadership position in their office. After 6 months in that role, they’d increased productivity of output units for the whole office by 5 times.
• Had multiple, multi-week family holidays.
• Navigated health challenges with their children and partner.
• Played a masters tournament of their favourite childhood sport.
• Successfully completed a new professional credential.
• Completed 8 months of strength training and were the strongest they’d been in a 10 years.

It’s clearly not all due to a 3 min exercise. There was a ton of compounding effort put in to bring these results to life.

But the insight the Valued Living Questionnaire delivers is a critical starting point.

Ambiguity Is The Enemy

As I’ve learnt, when it comes to making change, ambiguity is the enemy.

The Valued Living Questionnaire is a fast, powerful tool.

Why? Because it enables us to get specific about the challenges we’re experiencing and then specific about the action we need to take.

So go through the exercise for yourself.

What area needs your focus right now?

What committed action can you take to make progress in the next 24 hours? And beyond?

Then, if you want some accountability, let me know how you went.

I’d love to hear.

I hope you’re having a good week.

I debated whether I’d send this email today.

Everyone here in Brisbane and broader South-East Queensland has a fair bit on their plate. We have cyclone Alfred about the hit tomorrow and the anticipation/tension in the streets, shops and in conversation is palpable. If you’re here in the area too, I hope you’re as prepared as you can be and staying safe.

In the end I decided that sharing this Psychological Flexibility Testmight be useful.

What is Psychological Flexibility and why does it matter?

Psychological flexibility refers to an individual’s ability to cope with, accept, and adjust to difficult situations.

This is a critical mindset attribute in our health, work and relationships for both high-stakes decision making and day-to-day life.

And in the context of this cyclone, maybe that’s exactly what we need.

What is it?

It’s 15 questions that take about 3 mins to complete. It will deliver you instant results and recommendations for development.

I created this tool (adapted from the work of Hsu, Ti; Hoffman, Lesa; Thomas, Emily B. K.) to help you test your psychological flexibility.

Why complete this test?

This evidence-based tool will help you to better understand your mindset strengths as well as identify opportunities to improve.

You'll also be able to access relevant information and exercises to develop psychological flexibility for yourself. Some of the exercises take only a minute or two of your time and can have an immediate impact.

Finally, psychological flexibility teaches that there is never a perfect time to do anything, just the opportunity in front of us to take a step towards what matters.

In that spirit, I’m hoping this might be a very quick and helpful tool that might make a difference - today, tomorrow or in the future.

Feedback

I’d love to hear your feedback. You can hit reply to the results email generated by the test.

Much love to you and yours.

Toby

I hope you’re having a great week.

I’ve recently updated all of the worksheets and templates that I use in my 1:1 coaching and my training workshops. It’s been fun to bring them into line with my latest thinking.

You can access them here or I’ve included links below. I’d love to hear your feedback.

And please feel free to share them with a friend or colleague who might be interested.

9 Performance Tools & Templates

These are the tools I use for myself and that have worked for Olympians, top execs, founders, investors, business owners, elite military, pro athletes, doctors, teachers, parents and more.

Tool 1: 5 Reflection Frameworks Template

I love the quote from American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer, John Dewey:

“We don’t learn from experience, we learn from reflection on experience.”

This template contains frameworks that have helped me draw lessons in all sorts of settings. Having structure to reflect feels less daunting than a blank page.

Access as Google Doc or download as PDF or Word

Tool 2: Choice Point

Adapted from the Choice Point model developed by Ciarrochi, Bailey, and Harris, 2013, this is my go-to tool for helping people navigate challenging decisions, create lasting behaviour change and plan for high stakes moments - here's a worked example of where this tool helped a client break a 17 year fear of running in 30 minutes.

Access as Google Doc or download as PDF or Word

Tool 3: Valued Living Questionnaire

This is the tool I use when I need to bring fast clarity to a generalised sense of frustration or when I'm feeling "stuck". This is an adaptation of Kelly Wilson's work.

The questionnaire asks you to reflect on 13 important areas of life and assess your current levels of satisfaction. It then helps you design action to solve challenges or build fulfilment based on what is most important to you.

Access as Google Doc or download as PDF or Word

Tool 4: Reinvention Activity Resource

This is an activity that allows you to unpack the science of psychological flexibility (validated by the World Health Organisation in clinical trials in 2021).

By answering the questions, you'll create a personalised, evidence-based practice that can help you build resilience, lead yourself and others and deliver in performance moments.  If you've been in one of my workshops, these are the questions we followed.

Access as Google Slides or download as PDF or PPT

Tool 5: Ideal Job Description Template

In the face of a major change in career or the prospect of one - whether that’s applying for a big new role, leaving an organisation, finishing a professional sport or exiting from a company you started - a typical question is: What now?

A common answer is: Polish your resume.

But this seems to lead to further confusion in what can be challenging circumstances. Where to start? What to write? Who should I talk to? Conversations can feel "needy", and often it can be hard for people to help. But there’s a step that needs to come before. That’s writing your own Ideal Job Description. Use this activity to get clarity and unpack your internal criteria set for what might come next.

Access as Google Doc or download as PDF or Word

Tool 6: Year Planner Template

I created this template to help me plan in 2025. It enabled me to plan everything from my infinite game of purpose, values and suffering back to the daily practices that would make it come to life.

Access as Google Doc or download as PDF or Word

Tool 7: Year In Review Template

This is a practice I’ve developed to help me crystallise the lessons learned at the end of a year while the fatigue and “rawness”  is with me.  It also helps me gain a sense of closure on the year that has been.

Access as Google Doc or download as PDF or Word

Tool 8: Forgiveness Letter Template

This template was born from an article I wrote about my own experience of forgiveness. It guides you through a process to find forgiveness for yourself and others.

Access as Google Doc or download as PDF or Word

Tool 9: Food & Mood Journal Template

This is the journal that I used to better understand my eating habits and the impact it was having on my mood and health particularly my sugar cravings.

Access as a Google Sheet or download as XLS

Much love to you and yours.

Toby

2024 felt consistent. I loved it.

On the back of my renewed understanding of the power of compounding in 2023, I changed my approach to 2024.

I chose to multiply practices x coaching.

I prioritised practice setting over goal setting and it felt like a great fit for me. I figured out my practices and found coaches where I could. I applied it to strength, speaking, business, coaching, nutrition, prioritisation, finances, meditation and more. The effort I put in compounded over the year and I was stoked with the results.

Fast forward a year and my key realisation from 2024 was interconnectedness.

So this year I wanted to find a way to double down on both of these insights.

How could I combine compounding and interconnectedness?

It’s been a frustrating process. I felt like I had most of the pieces of my plan but couldn’t pull it together - even after weeks of thinking about it.

But I finally cracked a framework that enables me to connect all of the pieces and harness compounding at the same time.

Here’s the framework:

Infinite Game

• Purpose
• Values
• Suffering

These three will drive the interconnectedness of everything I’m doing.

Then to get more specific I’ve used the categories from the Valued Living Questionnaire (free access when you subscribe to The Monday 3).

Categories:

• Family
• Intimate relationships
• Parenting
• Friends
• Work
• Finances
• Education/learning
• Citizenship/community life
• Recreation/fun
• Spirituality
• Physical self-care
• Environmental Issues

For each of these, I’ve considered:

1. Long Game - what is your intention over the long term?
2. Practices - that will support the long game and help you to hit goals at the same time
3. Goals - specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and time bound milestones (eg run a marathon, find a running coach).
4. Assessment - Where are you now?
5. Plan - How will you create a progressive plan to follow?
6. Toolkit - What tools do you need to make this happen and monitor progress?
7. Systems & Structure - How can you create a system and structure to support the change?
8. Support & Accountability - Who or what could help support you and hold you accountable?

These considerations will drive the compounding.

I’ve shared my own 2025 plan as a worked example.

Is it perfectly articulated? No. Some areas of life just don't lend themselves to some of these considerations. So there are still some gaps and I've had to amend it to fit this format. [You can access my free Year Planner worksheet template when you subscribe to my free newsletter >>]

But it feels like a great starting point. And it's way more important to get this out into the world than to wait for the perfect plan. No doubt it will evolve over the year ahead and as plans crystallise.

Do you find this useful? How do you plan for your year?

I'd love to hear from you.

My 2025 Plan

My Infinite Game

Purpose: To change the world’s relationship to suffering

Values: Love, Gratitude, Humility, Exploration, Contribution

Suffering: Imposter, Anger - I've named them Toby because they are a part of who I am.

Practices & Goals for 2025 and beyond

| Category | Long game | 2025 Practices | 2025 Goals | Assessment, Plan, Toolkit, System, Structure, Support and accountability | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Family Relationships (other than marriage or parenting) | Loving, connected, real relationships with my family members | Tuesdays 5pm at Mum’s |

Call on my way to/from work

Sibling dinners locked in quarterly

Couple 1:1 dinners with siblings NA | Diary |

| Intimate Relationship | Loving, connected, real relationship with Luce |

Holding hands Daily: Coffee Special Time (morning coffee) |

Weekly: Date night/exercise, babysitter locked in

6 monthly: Weekend away together Byron, Noosa weekends | Diary |

| Parenting | Loving, connected, real relationships with my daughters | 1:1 time with each child monthly - walks and meals. |

Family adventures quarterly:

Biannual: Friday out of school w each kid each semester

Annual: Age kilometre walks to celebrate their birthdays.

Ongoing: Use questions/coaching approach to help them find their own solutions - dial up exploration as a value. Jan: Sydney, South Straddie |

Apr: Blues and Roots Festival, Agnes Waters

June:TBD

Sept/Oct:TBD

Dec:TBD

Ideas: Perth, Seal Rocks, Caloundra, Sydney, Great Ocean Road, Uluru, get kids’ input Diary |

| Friends/social life | Loving, connected, real relationships with my friends | |

Weekly: Walk w a mate

Quarterly: Must Catch Up Dinner

Annual: Birthday Surf Camp, Dads and kids weekend

Ad hoc: Friend weekends at South Straddie

| Diary |

| Work | 100M+ people impacted | Continue: Track leading indicators and impact metricsContent: Short form (~daily) The Monday 3 (weekly) Articles (fortnightly) Podcast guesting (ad hoc)Coaching: 1:1 clients (fortnightly - max 15) Leadership teams (Fortnightly - max 3)Coaching reflection for each sessionSpeaking: Local, US, EuropeAdvisory: Startup | Complete book v1 |

Run my own workshops in person - whole day and retreat style

FY24/25: $X

FY25/26: $Y

Double email subscribers Hubspot |

BD Spreadsheet

Coaching Diary

Fathom AI

| Finances | Financially free and giving back | Financial coaching |

Help my daughters develop their money habits - saving/investing, spending, giving, entrepreneurship Investments made for girls |

School fees savings = $X Budget, Diary, Automated allocations |

| Education/learning | Never stop learning | AI - practice by doing/using different tools etc |

Coaches/Guides in multiple categories: Strength and Conditioning, Nutrition, Speaking, Coaching, Finance, Business, Prioritisation, Meditation Find and complete a new coaching training course and certification | Diary |

| Recreation/fun | Explore life, laugh often, cry as needed and enjoy as many moments as possible | Live music and events |

Adventures on my own and with family and friends.

Surfing: 2 x surf camps, fortnightly Family adventures per above | Diary |

| Spirituality | To be whole and in the moment | Twice daily meditation | Meditation retreat again - learn another advanced TM technique |

Breathwork course TM App |

Diary

| Citizenship/ Community Life | Contribute more to humanity’s pool than I have taken away | |

President of the primary school swimming club

Contribution of speaking engagements to non-profit causes

| Diary |

| Physical self care (diet, exercise, sleep) | To be strong, fit, mobile and energetic | Daily mobility routine |

Gym x 3 weekly

Cold and breathwork weekly

Aerobic: Bike, Swim, Walk, Ruck

Nutrition: Food and mood journal x coaching My relationship with sugar has changed. | |

Food and mood journal

Whoop

VO2 Max

Coach Rx

| Environmental Issues | Help make this planet better for future generations | |

Speak to environmental groups about personal resilience

Continue to donate a % of revenue through Stripe’s Climate program

| |

It changed my approach to 2024.

Rather than setting goals, I set practices, consciously choosing the ones I want to continue for the rest of my life.

Then I found coaches this year to help me accelerate progress.

It became a new equation: practice x coach.

Over the course of this year I engaged coaches in areas I wanted to work on.

Here they are:

1. Strength and conditioning - Dan Young
2. Personal and professional financial management - Sloan Wilkins
3. Nutrition - Richy Adams
4. Coaching (about coaching!) - Peter Barr
5. Business - Billy Murphy
6. Prioritization - Ferzeen Anis
7. Meditation - Wendy Rosenfeldt
8. Speaking - Kevin Ryan + my AI coach Yoodli
9. Surfing - Shayne Sutherland
10. Swimming - Pete Rosengren
11. Bonus: Parenting - If coaching is a process of observing behaviour and providing feedback, I’ve also come to realise that my parenting coaches live with me - my three girls. When it comes to feedback, they are the least filtered and provide the most real-time feedback of them all!

Does all of that seem like overkill? Perhaps. 🙂

Even my mum commented this year: “Toby, you’re an extremist!”

But my reflections say the approach has worked for me.

2024 has felt like an incredibly consistent year.

And I’m finishing it with a deeply satisfying sense of contentment with both the progress made and what’s still to come.

So a huge thank you to my coaches this year for your assessments, planning, toolkits, systems, structures, support and accountability. It’s been great to work with people I admire and who have walked the path ahead to help me accelerate my own development.

You’ve helped me make progress I would barely have believed possible. Best of all it’s been in a manner that still feels sustainable and has me looking forward to more.

I’ll be doing more of it next year for sure.

But… if I could only choose one word to sum up the lessons of 2024, it would be interconnectedness.

Interconnectedness

Perhaps its been a function of tapping the collective brains of my coaches, but interconnectedness sits at the heart of my lessons for 2024.

Seeing everything as part of a greater system. Eroding the misconceptions like mind and body being separate things and realising the interplay and influence in all directions. Recognising that we are all connected and interdependent.

A bit like realising the power of compounding last year, clearly interconnectedness isn’t a new idea. It’s just feels as though it’s landed in a new way for me this year.

While every area has had its own work to be done in different ways, I’ve noticed just how big an impact one part can have on the whole.

It started to surface as I used a food and mood journal for the very first time about 4 months ago.

It was supposed to be just a quick reflection on a few days of the food I was eating and how it made me feel.

I haven’t stopped keeping it.

It has since expanded in scope to include exercise, meditation, pain, supplementation etc (free template here). I now have over 1200 lines of my own observations and notes. I’ve kept a tab open at work and fill it out through the day.

All useful? No of course not.

But patterns have definitely emerged simply by putting it all down and looking at it. Along with the coaching it’s helped me make change - especially in reducing processed foods and sugar.

The effect that observation has on behaviour is called the Hawthorne Effect in psychology. The Hawthorne Experiment showed that behaviour changed simply from the fact that the participants in the experiment knew they were being observed.

Observing myself and my behaviours through the journal has been a helpful practice.

Beyond the food and mood journal, I’ve also noticed a bunch of examples:

• Feeling stronger and in less pain from gym work, helps me be more present and connected as a husband, dad, friend and coach.
• Swim training on Tuesday mornings with my girls gave me energy for the entire day.
• Seeing my clients have some huge wins has brought me satisfaction and fulfilment.
• Writing The Monday 3 each week held me accountable for the progress I wanted to be making for myself.
• Doing work that fills my cup gives me energy to share.
• Embracing my own discomfort has helped me help my clients and audiences work with theirs.
• Meditation in the middle of my day, rather than being a distraction or trade off, has helped the afternoons feel more productive, focussed and energised.
• A challenging conversation in one part of my life, helps all parts.

Rather than a set of limited tradeoffs, this year has felt more aligned than any previous. Will that always be the way? I hope it will, but it may well not, so I’m trying to fully appreciate it for now.

I mentioned this saying in The Monday 3 newsletter last week:

How we do anything is how we do everything.

As 2024 has played out, it feels more and more like every moment becomes an opportunity to practice aligning my behaviours and choices around values and purpose.

Because if I accept the fact that everything that is important to me is a never ending practice - relationships, health, work, financial management etc - then the choice that matters is the one I make right now.

So here is

My 2024 Annual Review Process

I set aside a few hours and used a 2 part process for my review:

1. I used Kelly Wilson’s Valued Living Questionnaire as the framework for my 2024 reflection (free template here).
2. Once I’d completed that, I reviewed my diary week by week to see what else might emerge.
3. I intentionally didn’t set out to start planning. I’m going to let these reflections simmer over the break and then come back to planning in the new year.

Here are my notes.

2024 Annual Review Notes

A Quick Stock Take

10 is the highest importance. On a scale of 1-10 how satisfied are you with your actions in this domain? |

10 is the highest satisfaction.

| Family Relationships (other than intimate or parenting) | 10 | 8 |

| Intimate relationships | 10 | 10 |

| Parenting | 10 | 9 |

| Friends/social life | 7 | 7 |

| Work | 9 | 7 |

| Finances | 9 | 7 |

| Education/training | 7 | 5 |

| Recreation/fun | 7 | 5 |

| Spirituality | 10 | 8 |

| Citizenship/ Community Life | 7 | 8 |

| Physical self care (diet, exercise, sleep etc) | 10 | 7 |

| Environmental Issues | 10 | 5 |

Detailed Reflection Notes

Family Relationships (other than intimate or parenting)

What worked well?

• Tuesday afternoons at Mum’s with my sisters, nieces and nephews
• Taking the cousins to Minjerribah (South Straddie)
• Sibling dinners/catch ups when we could
• Having Luce’s mum living with us was awesome.
• Having siblings and in laws around for Sat mornings and regular dinners.
• Sydney road trips
• Switzerland trip

What could be improved?

• Surf Sundays really didn’t happen - this was going to be a fortnightly catch up with my brother to go for a surf or just hang.
• Sibling dinners were in the calendar but needed a bit more planning to make sure they happened.

What would I do differently?

• I’d love to make Surf Sundays work - maybe reducing the frequency but dialling up the commitment?

Intimate relationships

What worked well?

• Financial coaching definitely helped I think to keep us aligned around that
• Walk and talks were good rather than always going out for dinner.
• Coffee special time - our morning ritual
• Switzerland holiday at the beginning of the year

What could be improved?

• Date nights. We need to enforce these.

What would I do differently?

• Dates - we need to lock them in and not miss them.

Parenting

What worked well?

• The 1:1s with the girls started out well but dropped off
• Swimming with the girls on a Tuesday morning while they trained.
• Good teachers for them really helped.
• Getting along to activities and school engagements

What could be improved?

• Getting more 1:1 time with the girls
• Do more drop offs
• Try to have more fun in the moments - ridiculous songs etc

What would I do differently?

• Reboot the 1:1 time.

Friends/social life

What worked well?

• Yamba surf weekend.
• Straddie weekends w friends
• Combining friends and fitness - swimming, walks etc.

What could be improved?

• Didn’t do the dads and kids weekend
• Make more use of Straddie

What would I do differently?

• Do more active stuff with mates rather than coffees/meals etc
• Book in the dads and kids weekend
• More time with families at Straddie through the year.

Work

What worked well?

• Getting the content rhythm - Monday 3, ~daily socials w help.
• Revenue growth
• More podcast guesting
• More speaking and getting better at it.
• More posting on socials from speaking gigs etc.
• 3 weeks off at Xmas.
• Making an annual cadence with clients (1:1 and group) for reflection, planning,
• Financial practices
• More than doubled emails in my list
• Maintained 50%+ open rates
• Refinement of target client
• Refinement of the programs

What could be improved?

• Tighten # of clients

• Disappointing not to have the V1 of the book done.

• Explore different modalities and structure for the 1:1 program

• Blocking time for writing

What would I do differently?

• Global tour was interesting and intense. I’ll need to consider the tradeoffs if I was to do that again.
• Complete the book
• Dial up networking

Finances

What worked well?

• Coaching
• Way better with financial management and forecasting

What could be improved?

• Investing
• Refining the system as the context changes

What would I do differently?

• Keep going w Sloan to maintain the consistency and systems.

Education/training

What worked well?

• Coaching w Peter

What could be improved?

• Look at additional formal qualifications to continue to develop my own skills

What would I do differently?

• Book a new coaching course

Recreation/fun

What worked well?

• Skiing - absolutely fell in love with it (even after this start)
• Yamba surf camps
• Caloundra for the family holiday, weekends away in Tugun, Palm Beach, South Straddie

What could be improved?

• Not enough surfing
• Live music and theatre
• need to make a conscious effort to have a few more laughs and find those opportunities in the moments that feel more pressured - parenting particularly.

What would I do differently?

• Hold true to the surfing schedule.
• Try to find slots in the week for mid week surfs?
• Bring more board games into the mix
• Live music - good to have some locked in!

Spirituality

What worked well?

• Meditation retreat - new night meditation technique
• Daily practice much stronger - up to approx 10 sessions per week.
• Breathwork
• Renaming my tough stuff to “Toby”
• Loved Ursula K Le Guin’s version of the Tao Te Ching.
• Practicing to make every moment an expression of me.

What could be improved?

• Experiences to deep dive into this eg holotropic breathwork

What would I do differently?

• Book the experiences

Citizenship/ Community Life

What worked well?

• Being president of the Ashgrove Aces Swimming club has been awesome.
• Helping out for the school leadership interviews
• CEO Sleep Out
• Getting back more involved w the Olympic movement

What could be improved?

• Pretty happy with improvement in this area this year.

What would I do differently?

• Not much - want to do more of the same.

Physical self care(diet, exercise, sleep etc)

What worked well?

• Coaches
• Gym consistency - stoked with the strength progress here.
• Nutrition consistency and improvement
• Breathwork and cold tubs on Thursdays for a reset
• Walk and Talks w clients
• Food and mood journal - observation/awareness being the first point of change

What could be improved?

• Sleep.

What would I do differently?

• Get to bed earlier - lights off at 9
• Buy a whoop for further tracking?

Environmental Issues

What worked well?

• Spending time on South Stradbroke
• Donating to Stripe Climate program
• Containers For Change with the girls

What could be improved?

• Killed the worm farm - not so good.

What would I do differently?

• Reboot the worm farm/compost
• Donate services to companies/orgs working on env issues

And I need your help.

For this book to have the impact I want, I’m releasing each chapter as I write it for feedback.

So please, as I share these, let me know:

What do you love? What do you hate? Is there something missing? Is there something to be removed? Do you have any questions? Does this need more examples?

Here are the previous chapters:

1. Start Here
2. Mindset Lessons From My Toughest Olympic Moment
3. My 2016 Crucible And Why Psychological Flexibility Matters
4. Contemplating Death: The Unexpected Path To Personal Commitment
5. Open Up: Two Proven Methods To Manage Stress In Work, Health and Relationships
6. Be Present: 3 Mindfulness Techniques I Wish I’d Known That Don’t Take More Time

Thank you in advance! Let’s jump into Chapter 7.

Imagine this.

I smash glass on the floor in front of you.

I ask you: “Would you be willing to walk over the glass in bare feet?”

Clearly the response would be: “No thanks.”

So let me change just one condition – same smashed glass, same bare feet.

Bring to mind the person or people most important to you in the world. They are on the other side of the glass. They’re in distress and need your help.

Then I ask: “Would you now be willing to walk over the glass in bare feet?”

Typically there is the opposite response.

When I run this exercise in a room full of people, the head shakes turn to nods in an instant.

Why would we change our response so dramatically, so quickly? What does that change show?

It shows us a couple of things:

1. That humans are terrible at suffering pointless pain.
2. But, when we are clear about the importance of what it is on the other side of the glass, humanity is extraordinary. We won’t just endure pain, we will embrace it in service of what truly matters to us.
3. And, in that moment, we need to recognise that the pain itself doesn’t change - the fear, the glass, our bare feet, the implications for our health and lives ahead. None of that has changed. What has changed is our relationship to the pain. While it doesn’t make it any more comfortable or diminish the pain itself, we are now willing to accept it in service of what truly matters to us.

The broken glass is a great metaphor for the tough or unhelpful thoughts, feelings and physiological sensations that show up for all of us. They are universal. They are part of the human condition and they’re not going away.

We find them in challenging situations like stay/leave decisions, sitting in the void of transitions, asking a “dumb question”, challenging a boss, holding someone to account, speaking up, stepping in, the boredom of a repetitive task, getting up in the cold to go for a walk…

There are so many instances in our day to day lives where these internal experiences get in the way of us doing what we know we need to do.

Very rarely do we lack information about what to do in these situations or even how to approach them. Nearly always we need to connect to the importance of why we would attempt them in the first place.

So let’s begin the work to create that clarity for you.

Reinvention Note

We’ve been building your Reinvention Note as we go.

In the past three chapters, we’ve:

1. Contemplated death and made a commitment to ourselves.
2. Learned how we can begin to Open Up, to be willing to experience difficult thoughts and feelings by using the two evidence-based practices of De-fusion and Acceptance.
3. Crafted a mindfulness practice that you can begin to implement immediately to help you Be Present.

There’s only one more pillar of the Triflex to go.

Let’s personalise this pillar for you: Do What Matters.

Do What Matters

Write a new header in your note: Do What Matters.

In this final part of your Reinvention Note we’re going to answer 6 questions. We’re not aiming for perfection. Instead we’ll get to a first version as quickly as possible.

Set a timer of 30 seconds for each answer.

(From taking thousands of people through these questions, experience shows that our intuition is strong. Often whatever shows up in the first 30 seconds is 80-90% of the way there. Additional time just leads to word-smithing, perfectionism and self judgement, all of which get in the way of the most important part by far: starting.)

6 Questions

1. What are your values?
2. Who is important to you? It can be specific people or groups of people. An important follow on question: Did you put your own name on the list? From my experience with this exercise, only 1 in 20 people include themselves on this list. This is an exercise in self awareness. Without you, there is no relationship to anyone or anything else. We must be able to manage our own priorities, our own time, our own energy in order to serve those we care most about. Please make sure your name is on the list.
3. What is important to you? This can be broad or specific. They might be goals, concepts, aspirations. Up to you.
4. What is your purpose? This is often a tricky question for people. **For now, just take a guess. Write down whatever first springs to mind. Even if it feels cliche or weak. Later on, you can find a deeper dive into finding your Purpose here.
5. What would you willingly do for free?
6. What energises you?

Now that you have these answers in your note, reflect for a moment on your answers.

It’s less about having perfect “answers” for these questions and more about understanding the themes that emerge. Your initial responses can help you uncover the core of what truly matters to you.

Because from here, you have the power, the freedom and the responsibility to take these responses from this very first version to refine them into something you feel deeply connected to. That you would be willing to embrace the “broken glass” for.

Because We Care

Do What Matters is not about intentions.

It is about getting clear on what is most important - values, purpose, people, goals - so we can take committed action that will lead us towards those things.

Because we typically don’t experience tough emotions and thoughts while we’re washing the dishes.

These don’t show up because we are weak, broken, inadequate or something is missing.

No.

It is because we care.

In fact, the more we care, the more likely the tough stuff is to show up.

It’s why the exam feels harder than the exercises.

It’s why practice feels easier than the performance.

It’s why the most difficult conversations can be with the people we care about the most.

It’s why parenting can feel like the best and hardest job in the world.

It’s why the day I landed in the Olympic Village I thought I had a stomach infection. And it’s why the day I left the village it stopped.

Towards and Away

So when it comes to doing what matters, there is an urgent need to reframe the language we use to talk about our behaviour.

As a society we are currently obsessed with Positive and Negative.

The reframe I would love us to adopt is Towards and Away.

Because the challenge with using Positive and Negative as descriptors is that so often a behaviour that moves us towards purpose, values, the people, the health, the work, the relationships, the goals and things most important to us does not feel positive. Especially in the beginning.

If we are constantly waiting to feel good, feel comfortable, feel confident, feel competent, we would never start anything.

We need to get clear on what we are moving towards and be willing to accept the discomfort of those behaviours as the price of entry to doing what matters.

The beauty of this is that every single one of us has past experience of sitting with the discomfort of making towards moves.

As children we learned to read, write, ride bikes, climb trees, crawl, walk, run. We are extraordinary. And we can bring that to life again by defining what matters and the doing it.

Often we have deep experience in sitting in the discomfort of doing what matters in one part of our life whether that’s at work, in our relationships, in our health.

The opportunity is translate that competence in working with discomfort, to the area in our lives that needs the focus now.

We’ve done what matters before. We can do what matters again.

You, me, humanity? We can be truly extraordinary.

And I need your help.

For this book to have the impact I want, I’m releasing each chapter as I write it for feedback.

So please, as I share these, let me know:

What do you love? What do you hate? Is there something missing? Is there something to be removed? Do you have any questions? Does this need more examples?

Here are the previous chapters:

1. Start Here
2. Mindset Lessons From My Toughest Olympic Moment
3. My 2016 Crucible And Why Psychological Flexibility Matters
4. Contemplating Death: The Unexpected Path To Personal Commitment
5. Open Up: Two Proven Methods To Manage Stress In Work, Health and Relationships

Thank you in advance! Let’s jump into Chapter 6.

In order to develop psychological flexibility we have:

1. Contemplated death and made a commitment to ourselves.
2. We then learned how we can begin to Open Up, to be willing to experience difficult thoughts and feelings by using the two evidence-based practices of De-fusion and Acceptance.

Let’s continue to personalise the toolkit of psychological flexibility for you.

Here’s the ACT Triflex again.

It’s time to go to the top of the triangle: Be Present.

Be Present

This pillar is about developing our ability to be present, in the moment and to observe our thoughts as thoughts and feelings as feelings. Not necessarily to feel good, but to recognise that even when we have such little control of the world around us and inside us, we still have a choice of what we do and how we want to act.

Mindfulness is a critical part of this pillar.

Mindfulness is often misconstrued as sitting in a corner, with a cushion and a candle saying Om to the universe.

Instead, I’ve come to see mindfulness, particularly in situations of stress and pressure, as the scalpel that sits between our reaction (which we can’t control) and our response (which we can choose).

I like the definition of mindfulness from Jon Kabat-Zinn (author and founder of the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts):

“Mindfulness is paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.”

Why is it important?

By connecting to the present moment, we can focus on doing what matters (task-focussed attention). We can align our choices, decisions and behaviours with the people most important to us, our deepest values, our sense of purpose, our goals, our hopes, our aspirations.

Cutting edge science continues to validate the beneficial effects of millennia old mindfulness practices on attention, memory, executive function, and cognitive flexibility – all great things for both wellbeing and performance.

How to practice mindfulness

What does that definition of mindfulness actually mean in practice?

In simple terms there are three parts to a mindfulness practice:

1. Focus: We focus on something (eg breath or sound).
2. Drift: We inevitably drift away from that focus as our thoughts, feelings or sensations distract us or pull us away.
3. Come back: We notice we’ve drifted and come back to our focus.

Focus. Drift. Come back. Repeat.

The beauty of mindfulness is that it can’t be done “wrong”.

It’s the inevitable drifting and coming back that are the reps in the mindfulness gym that, with practice, can lead to the benefits described earlier and even change the physical structures in our brains.

There are a tonne of apps out there (eg Headspace, Calm, Insight Timer) to help us practice mindfulness.

But the reality is that we don’t have to have an app. It’s less about doing mindfulness and more about being mindful. And that can be practiced in literally every moment of a day.

The present is always available to us through our senses: sight, smell, touch, taste and hearing.

It doesn’t take up more time. It doesn’t require a special place. It just takes a choice to engage more deeply with the present moment.

Here are some examples.

Daily mindfulness examples

Here are three common daily situations that I use to practice mindfulness.

Coffee

When I’m not being mindful, I’ll find myself at the bottom of a cup of coffee wondering where it went.

When I am mindful, I sit with my coffee and connect to it.

• How does it smell?
• How does it taste?
• What is the temperature of the cup on the palm of my hands?
• Can I see the steam rising?
• Can I hear the coffee being prepared?

Water

I do something similar with my first glass of water each morning.

I hold the glass with both hands, close my eyes and as I drink the water, I recite my values to myself in my mind: Love, Gratitude, Humility, Exploration, Contribution.

I’ll try to notice the temperature of the glass, the texture and temperature of the water in my mouth and down my throat.

Food

A very simple mindfulness practice for food is simply to stop and smell your food before eating. Or, just like coffee, you could apply the same set of sense questions to food too:

• What does it smell like?
• What does it taste like?
• What texture does it have?
• What does it look like?

In each of these examples, for just a couple of seconds, I’ve purposefully focussed my attention on a subject and in the present moment, tried to truly experience it non-judgementally.

That’s it.

So let’s personalise a practice for you.

Building a practice for yourself

Open your Reinvention Note in your phone. Create a new header: Be Present.

Now add these to your note.

Every day mindfulness

In helping people develop a mindfulness practice, my first question is:

• What is something you do everyday (or nearly everyday)?

Like the examples above, it could be your first glass of water, a shower or a coffee.

This becomes the anchor.

The next step is:

• How can you pay attention to this experience through your senses?

It might be through any or all of your senses sound, sensation, taste, smell, sight.

With these two questions you’ve built yourself a personalised mindfulness practice that slots perfectly into your existing patterns and habits.

Add this single, every day activity to your note under Be Present.

Breath

Another common tool for mindfulness is breath because it is always with us. One breath pattern I use and recommend for many people is Dr Andrew Weill’s 4-7-8 breath.

To do this breath, you breathe in for 4 counts, hold that breath for 7 counts and breathe out for 8 counts.

I’ll often repeat this three times, but even a single, conscious breath can be enough to ground ourselves and focus on the task at hand.

Add 4-7-8 to your note under the Be Present heading.

My favourite mindfulness tool

And finally, of all of the mindfulness tools I’ve explored, my favourite is a single question:

• What if this is the last time?

There is something about this question that demands we come back to the present and at the same time asks us Who we want to be in this moment? How do we want to act?

For this reason, I find it to be the most powerful of mindfulness tools.

Whether it’s with my family, friends, speaking to a group or coaching a client, at the gym, standing in the sun, it reminds us of the fragility of life and to appreciate this moment. Because we may not get another.

Add that question to your note: What if this is the last time?

A final word on mindfulness

Remember that we don’t need to do mindfulness, we need to be mindful.

We’ve covered 3 simple mindfulness techniques that you can incorporate into your day with very little extra time required:

1. The 4-7-8 breath
2. You’ve developed a practice that is personalised to your daily habits
3. The single question: What if this is the last time?

Mindfulness is something we want to practice daily so that when the pressure is on, we can use it as a tool to notice our reaction and choose our response.

Because as the Greek poet Archilochus said:

“We don’t rise to the level of our expectations; we fall to the level of our training.”

Now we’ve been through Be Present, it’s time to personalise the last pillar of the triflex for you: Do What Matters.

Let’s go.

What follows can be a period of frustration, confusion and ‘lostness’ as we try to find where we belong.

This was certainly the case for me.

When Ali Flynn, founder and host of the Challenges That Change Us podcast, reached out, I was glad to be able to share some of my journey and the lessons along the way.

Below are the link and notes Ali has made about the episode.

You can listen here or on Apple.

I hope you find it useful.

Challenges That Change Us #123: {Toby Jenkins} The mindset shift needed after achieving Olympic glory

In this episode Toby shares:

• The moment of frustration and stress that made him realise he was struggling
• The science of psychological flexibility and how it helped him realise what was wrong
• His life in sports and how it influenced his later struggles
• What led to him resigning from his own marketing company
• Why he felt like he no longer belonged in his own company
• The career change he made after the life realisations
• Whether he thinks he could have made the realisations whilst achieving sports high performance
• Some of the things that he felt were no longer serving him
• The questions that helped him discover his values
• His approach to values now compared to how it was in the past
• The process he uses to 'reset'
• How he has learnt to embrace his negative feelings

You can find Ali and the podcast online

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/challengesthatchangeus
• Instagram: @challengesthatchangeus
• Website: www.Challengesthatchangeus.com

Have a great week ahead.

With love,

Toby

Author, Performance Coach and Speaker

PS: If this was forwarded to you, you can sign up for my newsletter The Monday 3 with bonus tools, articles and resources here >>