The Five Pillars Of Peak Performance

[00:00:00] 

Rob: So you’re all about peak performance. What does that mean?

Abigail: Basically in terms of just even what I described to you about my experience over the last couple of days, it’s, Knowing when you’ve got a lot on, knowing when to slow it down, when to speed up, when to, what elements you need to draw on to optimize performance. So it’s not about doing more and more.

Abigail: That’s one of the most important things I try and communicate. It’s about doing the best you can every day, even if that means taking a break and having a rest. I have three pillars that I look at. 

Abigail: Psychology, physiology, and productivity. 

Abigail: So psychology is the mindset of peak performance thinking We set up a vision, how we focus, what we do to get in the right mode to do our best work, and to be our best people, essentially.

Abigail: And then physiology, sleep, nutrition, exercise, movement, all that kind of stuff. Stress management goes into that as well. That’s the internal like human side of things, the mind and the body. 

Abigail: Then I have productivity as my third pillar, [00:01:00] which is getting things done basically, but getting the right things done.

Abigail: So how do you operate throughout your day? What’s your environment like? 

Abigail: And then also who are you surrounding yourself with? 

Abigail: So basically looking at every kind of component that impacts how we perform every day to achieve What I think of is a level of excellence, but I say everyone’s got their own version of peak performance.

Abigail: I’ve seen most of the time when people talk about peak performance, it’s always like a military or Olympic or it has to be some like crazy mountain climbing kind of story. And that’s great, but not everyone can do those things, or not everyone has the conditions, the circumstances to be able to do those things, or even want to do those things.

Abigail: So I say everyone has their own unique version of peak performance, and it’s about tapping into that. 

Rob: It sounds a silly question, but I’m going to ask it anyway. How do you know when you’re at peak performance? 

Rob: What you said there brings to mind immediately David Goggins. All those, crazy feats that he’s done. In his book he says you’ve got another 20 percent that you don’t think you have. 

Rob: So how do [00:02:00] you know when you’re at peak performance? 

Abigail: Yeah, it’s a good question. I think for me it’s feeling like you end each day thinking I’ve had a great day.

Abigail: I think you can stretch yourself and push yourself to the limit. I have no appetite, for example, to run a ultramarathon. And yes, if I put in the training, I could probably do it. But is it something that’s going to be important to me? Is it something that makes me feel good?

Abigail: I’m not sure it would. I don’t think even a marathon would make me feel good. So I think for me it’s really keeping it simple and thinking, is it ending your day? Thinking I’ve given it my best today. I’ve given it my best shot. I’ve done everything I could to tap into my full potential.

Abigail: I feel like I’ve had a great day. So owning your day, having control of your time feeling like you’ve got the good balance between looking after yourself physically, wellbeing, all that kind of stuff, but also Achieving results. 

Abigail: A lot of the time we tend to focus on one or the other, and it goes too far in one direction.

Abigail: The sustainable part’s key as well. You can push yourself to do something like, I don’t know, bodybuilding competition and you’re like, yes, [00:03:00] I’m at my peak physically, but is it sustainable? You can’t be in bodybuilding mode for an ongoing basis. You have to take a break from that and reset.

Abigail: Peak performances is that kind of sustainable element for me. 

Rob: I love that you said sustainable because I’ve just written down sustainable before you said it, because the way it comes to my mind is a lot of What we’re given in self help gurus productivity, tends to come with an American slant and there tends to be, Oh, you will be your best.

Rob: I wake up at five and I do all these things and I’m awesome. but you’re not actually living the normal life, I don’t want that. 

Abigail: That’s what puts people off the concept. 

Rob: You hear about running marathons and I’ve dragged myself to run a run of 5k at least once, twice a week.

Abigail: Brilliant. 

Rob: but I’ve dragged myself to do that because I think that’s the minimum effective dose. And you think about marathons and the amount of training. Aside from the marathon that I’m going to have to spend on, and that’s not a big enough priority in my life.

Rob: I don’t think I need [00:04:00] it for fitness, but the way I think about this is I think it’s like money. You’ve got a certain amount of capital. and if you’re spending your capital, then you’re not getting the interest. When you do something that’s sustainable, you haven’t diminished yourself.

Rob: You haven’t diminished your capital. And I think in productivity terms, that’s really important. 

Rob: I think your three pillars of the psychology, the physiology, and the productivity, and that comes to mind as, it seems very aligned with a kind of a Buddhist notion of right mind, right body, right thing.

Rob: It seems very much about balance. 

Abigail: Yeah, I think that’s spot on, the balance piece. 

Abigail: I love your analogy or the metaphor about the interest and the capital, because it’s so true. I found this one when I used to work in banking, you can push and push yourself and it’s fine, you can do it.

Abigail: And get the job done. And that’s what a lot of organizations, even they talk about, we’re a high performing organization or high performing teams and all this, but it’s not sustainable because it is taking from, as you say, the capital and, not recognizing that there are times when you need to do more on the other side.

Abigail: If you’re running an ultra [00:05:00] marathon or training for a marathon, for example, you might have to sacrifice other things in your life and you may or may not. So it’s about recognizing what you need when pulling the levers. Like for me, I haven’t had much sleep the last couple of days because of everything that I’ve had going on with travel and work and stuff.

Abigail: I know that I’m not going to go to the gym today because I know my body needs a rest. So I’m going to prioritize sleep for optimal performance as opposed to going and pushing a workout. And like you say, a lot of people say, Oh, you’ve got to get up at 5am every day. In summer when it was brighter and you know in the UK obviously fluctuates so when it was brighter in summer and I felt like I had the energy and I was like getting up at 5am I was getting things done that was great. When it’s the depths of winter I’m not going to force myself to get up when it’s pitch black unless I go to bed at nine o’clock or I need to be able to make sure that I’m doing things the right way because otherwise you burn the candles at both ends and then you end up going, this isn’t working for me, giving up or just crashing in some way.

Abigail: So [00:06:00] balance is the key, but recognizing it’s not about nine to five every day either. It’s about. What do you need to feel like? You’re in flow, you’re feeling like you’ve had a good day every day. It could be different. There’ll be days when you have loads of energy, there’ll be days when you think, I need a rest, I’m not feeling well, or I’m just tired or shattered after whatever you’ve had going on.

Abigail: Balancing those things out and being able to tune in to know what you need is the key to it all, I think. 

Rob: So you touched on your journey and how you came into this. I’m interested to learn now like your experience and how did you learn this? 

Abigail: Yeah, bit of a convoluted journey.

Abigail: So I started in my career in banking and had a great time. I was working in private equity and acquisitions and kinds of deal driven environments. It was very much peaks and troughs in terms of, lots of peaks in terms of the workload. And then you’d finish a deal and then go on to the next thing.

Abigail: There’d always be lots going on. It was really good, interesting work. When I was younger, it was great to be having that kind of environment where you have the energy to also do those hours [00:07:00] and do what it takes to get the job done. Then what I noticed is that there were times when you’d be working, you wouldn’t get outside, you wouldn’t have a lunch break because you were so busy, there’d be so many demands.

Abigail: You would pick bad food choices because you’re stressed and you need that sugar craving, for example. And so I got really interested in nutrition. I did my nutrition coaching qualification. I was living in Australia at the time, Sydney, like if you go to Bondi beach, you see everyone is looks after themselves.

Abigail: They work fitness and life is a lifestyle. And So I got really into that, working out more and did my personal training qualification because I like to learn how things work as well so I can optimize. Then over the years I love learning so I did my exec coaching NLP, all sorts of other qualifications that led me to what I do today.

Abigail: I was thinking I can’t be, training people 1-1, working in corporate doing all these different things. I combined it into what I see is peak performance. 

Abigail: It’s every element for how I can be at my best? How am I making sure I eat the [00:08:00] best food at lunchtime so I can power through the afternoon and not have a slump?

Abigail: How do I. choose what kind of workout I’m going to do based on how I’m feeling? 

Abigail: If you’re feeling stressed maybe might be good doing something like boxing to get the stress out. Or it might be good doing something like yoga to, to balance it out as opposed to adding more cortisol into the system.

Abigail: So lots of different, I really love it. And the good thing is that what I do helps me with my personal life. And so then when I read this stuff in my personal life and research and everything else, it helps me with my clients as well. So although people say it’s unhealthy to do, I think it’s the kind of work that is okay to do.

 When it intertwines with your life, because it is about basically sustainable performance. 

Rob: I think often people are searching for work life balance, the balance is individual., so some people love what they do and some people only ever want to work just because they have to and do the minimal.

Rob: And it’s about understanding what you need, as an individual rather than the actual [00:09:00] balance. 

Abigail: Yeah, definitely. 

Rob: Okay. So I can see a lot of passion and I can see that you were working at something that I guess. All that peaks and troughs, and the high stress and high demands, which comes back to something that I meant to say when you were, when we were talking about sustainability is that a lot of companies operate on a basis that isn’t sustainable.

Rob: It’s basically like they’re trying to milk the employee until they burn out. And I think that’s why we see so much so I’m guessing that the work that you were doing was a deficit. So it was diminishing your capital. And somewhere there become some need, but I’m just wondering what was the trigger point.

Rob: For 

Abigail: me to start my own business. Yeah. It’s interesting because always thought I was going to start my own business. I always wanted to have my own business years ago and but I guess that trigger point for me was 2013. I was working in Australia and I got a call from my brother that my dad had gone to hospital.

Abigail: This is, I think a trigger point for a lot of people. There’s like a catalyst when something happens to themselves or a loved one, but my [00:10:00] dad was 75 at the time. He never had any issues or problems and he was like perfectly healthy, a few months before I’d got married and he was dancing and everything.

Abigail: And my brother said he’d gone to hospital, but it was two in the morning in the UK. So I was like, Oh, I’m sure he’ll be fine. And then 30 minutes later, he rang and said he’s gone because he had, an aneurysm and it wasn’t detected. No one knew about it. And it’s literally within a few seconds, few minutes, you’re you know, the vessel bursts and then you just lose consciousness and that’s it.

Abigail: More than anything because it took me also 24 hours then to get back to the UK. I wouldn’t have been able to do anything anyway. But it made me realize a couple of things like life is short and it can go at any minute. So make the most of each minute. 

Abigail: Again by saying that I don’t mean do more or be super productive in each minute, but, even if you’re.

Abigail: Eating a cake or watching TV, watching Netflix. Enjoy it and fully immerse yourself in that moment rather than Trying to do a hundred things at once. So it made me realize that life’s really short and every minute counts, every second counts basically. It also made me think [00:11:00] if you want to do your own business one day, when are you going to do it?

Abigail: What’s stopping you and what are you waiting for? 

Abigail: Because I think for me, I don’t want to end with regrets. So I like to feel like I’m making the most of every day. And for me, again, this ties to peak performance, feeling that you end every day thinking I’ve given it my best shot.

 That’s really important to me. So yeah, the catalyst for me was that. I stayed in banking for another year. And then I left and then came back to the UK from Australia and was doing lots of study, as I said, and then everything came together.

Abigail: It was a slow kind of transition because I never thought I’d be doing what I do. I moved, I started a kind of online startup in totally different stuff at first.

Abigail: and then all of these interests that I have and things that I think are really important, I was like, actually, They’re all coming together. So it came into those three pillars in it and it evolved over time. Still evolving, but I think I’ve got my five Ps. The three Ps that I’ve mentioned, and then the other two are people and planning.

Abigail: That’s my model now, which I think works for me. 

Abigail: The five areas that I look [00:12:00] at for myself, but also for my clients and thinking about what areas do they need to spend more time on?

Abigail: Which areas are they doing particularly well? because, people, for example, it’s who do you hang out with? 

Abigail: Because that’s one of the biggest factors in terms of influencing everything. How you eat, like your mindset, the way you approach every day is so significant and I don’t think enough attention is paid to it.

Abigail: Or we think, That’s just the way it is. but to get to peak performance, we need to be more intentional about identifying the areas that we could really up level. 

Rob: You said you started a different online business. Do you mind sharing what that was? 

Abigail: Yeah, that was interesting.

Abigail: When I was in banking, I always thought I wanted to learn Spanish, wanted to learn another language. It was always hard to do it because the lessons were, I remember I’d sometimes go after work, an eight week class or something like that. And it’s such a rush and you’re really tired and it’s in the middle of the week.

Abigail: So I basically set up a marketplace for people who want to learn a language and people who can teach a skill. You didn’t have to be a language teacher. It could be, someone living in Sydney [00:13:00] who is Spanish and, you could meet them for coffee.

Abigail: You could find them on the platform and then, meet them for coffee and then. speak Spanish for an hour, that kind of concept. That was the intention. But what I learned was, I did do a business plan because I just left corporate. So I was like, big business plan, did a financial model, all my projections about how many teachers would be on the website in 10 years.

Abigail: Then I launched it. But I was thinking, ah, this is more a techie business, as opposed to just knowing about business. So the concept made sense, but there was so much technical stuff involved in terms of building a website paying people money to do things, which I didn’t have the skill for.

Abigail: Then not getting the results I wanted and being frustrated because it looked crap basically. I was like, I want it to look like this. And you end up with something that looks Not very good. so I learned a lot with that and I kept it going running for a few years because it didn’t cost me anything to have.

Abigail: Apart from running the website, it didn’t cost a lot. It wasn’t a big outlay. But I had tutors all over the world on there and it was like an Airbnb of, learning languages. but then I realized, there’s a lot more [00:14:00] involved. You’d have tutors going, Oh, I haven’t had any business from your website yet.

Abigail: You don’t pay to go on there. It’s like a free platform. If someone finds you, they find you put a video up, do this, do that. So I found like I was spending a lot of time, then which is money on things that I hadn’t factored in. And so kept it going for a few years. It was a nice way of bringing the world together.

Abigail: I called it language lane. So if you’re in a meeting place and everyone’s learning a language, but I decided I need to stop focusing on too many things. So I just closed it off. I have a lot of ideas all the time. So I always think that’s what I learned as well.

Abigail: Sometimes you’ve got too many ideas and some people, they’re like, Oh, I’ll have that business and I’ll start this at the same time. It actually just becomes a bit stressful. So I made a decision just to just close it off because it was starting to not be as fun when it became all about the tech and SEO and how do I grow it when I haven’t got the technical capability to make it look great and all this kind of stuff.

Abigail: That’s where that ended. But it was a great baptism into the entrepreneurial world, I [00:15:00] think. 

Rob: Yeah it sounds like an exciting idea. Behind the question was the idea that what I can see is you were doing something that was similar, that was inspired from your banking, but it still wasn’t you.

Rob: Whereas it feels like. When you talk about the five Ps and you talk about your processes, it seems that’s you and that’s what I think branding is about finding that thing that really is you, that you’re at the intersection of all of those things. 

Abigail: Yeah. The thing with that as well, Rob, is I think when you find the thing that’s you, it becomes less effort as well.

Abigail: Like you enjoy it, so it doesn’t become as much effort and sometimes, I have this thing about you have to work really hard to feel like you have your business and that’s not the reality sometimes. I think I find it hard to get out of that mindset sometimes. 

Rob: Yeah, it’s, we’ve programmed with all these things of work and what things should be.

Rob: Which comes back to getting into the flow state where everything just works. If you can create your energy state where you’re at your best in the context [00:16:00] that’s best for you, in the environment that’s best for you, where you’re valued most. The amount of actual work is so much easier.

Rob: This is interesting to me because it’s very similar to it’s basically where I started off. So I wanted a business, not particularly a gym, but I opened the gym. and then I realized okay, nutrition, people need nutrition. I studied in nutrition. and I started giving people exercise plans, nutrition plans, and I stopped completely because almost no one stuck to diet plans. So I went on a big journey of why? What does it take? What do they need? And I’m very much focused on the psychology part, so I have a appreciation for the physiology, but it’s the psychology that I love. 

Abigail: I think they go hand in hand, don’t they? Sometimes because, like you, I focus on the like behavioral change, the habits rather than here’s what exactly you need.

Abigail: This is exactly what you need to eat every day. one everyone’s different and in terms of diets and secondly, you’re right. They won’t, even I don’t stick to it. Like I, I literally last yesterday was in meetings when I was in Glasgow and I think I just ate biscuits all day because I didn’t [00:17:00] have access to other things.

Abigail: And then, the lunch sandwiches and things like that. And then a burger at the airport, cause I had a bad day. But the emotional eating, and then you’ve got to think, why does that happen? As opposed to. Just eat a carrot and you’ll be fine. 

Rob: It’s like any change with people is so difficult.

Rob: I think it all comes down to how difficult it is for individuals. Where I really started was I noticed that as a business, I had to basically get people to commit to a year. So you would sell the gym in yearly memberships. Statistically, most people give up after three months and I didn’t like that.. 

Rob: I didn’t feel it was the right thing to do. And yet. I was stuck between making it a business work or doing what I felt was right.

Rob: So that really started my journey and why is it three months? 

Rob: I realized it was because people had a problem and when they had the problem, they were motivated enough to fix it.

Rob: three months later, the same problem wasn’t bothering them in the same way, just because of life and so they give up. 

Rob: It’s really difficult to change [00:18:00] anyone because we find it difficult to change ourselves. So I’m guessing that is probably the biggest challenge you have.

Rob: Someone who’s living used to these unhealthy coping strategies, we don’t really exercise, I find it difficult enough to find time to work out and to do everything that I should do. I find it difficult enough to stick to the healthy eating. So how do you deal with that?

Abigail: Yeah, it’s a great question. I think the key thing is to break it down. So you have to, you can’t go, I’m going to tomorrow. Be perfect at everything, have to break it down. And that’s why I think, with the, for example, the five P’s that I have, it’s pinpointing which one maybe do I need to focus on for the next month or the, even the next year to get it into a good.

Abigail: Kind of to get it to a good standard before I go to the next thing. And I think people don’t tend to have patience to do that, or they don’t know what to do. What we want is, very simple things that make it effortless for people to make the change. So in terms of, for example, I don’t know, going to the gym, it might just be just instead, just, do something at home for 15 minutes that is [00:19:00] going to get you moving, go for a walk or something, just start the process of changing something. 

Abigail: A lot of people will have the view of oh, it doesn’t work like that, or I can’t do that. And I always think, even from my own experience, when I was in banking, I know that I had more control over things than I maybe exercise. So for example, if you’re working late, there were times where maybe I had said yes to too much work. Or I was being too pedantic about being perfect on the slide deck, or was being too detailed or I wasn’t maybe focused enough because I wasn’t eating properly.

Abigail: So I therefore wasn’t as good at being as focused when I was doing an Excel financial model or something else. So there are always things in our control, but we tend not to know what those things are. It’s about identifying the small kind of tweak we can make to make things change. And, even things like exercise, I’ve got people who I speak to, I work there Oh, I’ve got, kids and I don’t have time to go to the gym, but then I’ve got other friends and people who I know at my gym, for example, who, Got three kids full time [00:20:00] doctor in a hospital, and somehow managed to go to the gym more than I do, and super fit and strong.

Abigail: This one particular lady I always speak to, I’m always like, how do you manage to get to the gym all the time? She goes, This is what keeps me sane. So she knows that in order to perform her best with her family, with her kids, with her husband, with her colleagues, she has to go to the gym.

Abigail: So it’s not non negotiable. It’s what makes her do her job effectively. And so that’s the difference. Rather than thinking exercise, for example, is different to a separate thing to your work. It’s actually thinking in order to do my job properly, I have to go to the gym. So if you change the mindset around things, I think it changes our ability to do things or not.

Abigail: Like me today, for example I mentioned earlier, my husband’s not well, suddenly I have more time to get all this stuff done, make chicken soup, get all my other work done and get more organized because There’s a priority that comes up and I think we’re not always clear on what our priorities are or how they link together.

Rob: That clarity is so important.. It’s basically underpinning [00:21:00] everything you do. It’s doing the right things, as you said. Often the most important learning is unlearning is that we’ve been given all these rules and especially when it comes to food of things like breakfast is the most important meal and things like this, which are brought about by, marketing campaigns.

Rob: People often see organizations as bigger than them. They see everything as bigger than them. This is at the root of people pleasing and it’s why we feel that we need to conform. But actually I think the key shift from my perspective, and I don’t know how, if this fits with yours, is you have to think of yourself as the engine of it all. 

Rob: If you’re the thoroughbred, That’s going to run races. That’s the key asset. Then you have to treat yourself as that. That’s often a difficult shift for people to make because they feel they’re at service to others, as opposed to the one that needs to be sustained in order to serve others.

Abigail: Yeah. It’s the same with them. I think a lot of parents are like that. Put the kids first all the time [00:22:00] and don’t look after their own health or their own needs. And in order to be the best parent, you can be all the best colleague. You can be the best manager. You need to put yourself actually first to get everything Clear in your own head. Otherwise, you’re putting all that energy on to someone else. 

Abigail: I remember in Australia, I had an MD who I remember would block out his calendar and go for a walk every lunchtime or he would protect his lunch break. And that created a, Cascade effect to everyone else in the organization to also be okay with taking a lunch break, for example. Whereas if you have someone who’s constantly overriding their lunch, their role modeling and they’re putting those behaviors onto their team members, and you lose those boundaries.

Abigail: What’s really important is having those clear boundaries for yourself and knowing when you can and can’t do something. Going back to when I was in banking, I remember there was a time when I was working. It was Friday at 5pm, something needed to go to someone senior and It wasn’t supposed to come from me, it was supposed to come from someone [00:23:00] else.

Abigail: And I contacted that person, say this is needed like urgently. And that person was in the pub or something and said, Oh, can you just do it? I’m really sorry. I’m already out. I’ve gone. And I did it, but it made me think, this was when I was more junior. It made me think. that person had different boundaries to me.

Abigail: For me, the boundary would have been, if someone said, have you got time to do this? I would think, okay, I’m awake, physically I can skip the gym. I can skip breakfast or I can skip lunch. I can skip dinner. I can sit in the office all 24 hours. That’s needed as long as I physically can be there.

Abigail: Yes. I have time to do that. Whereas for someone else, their boundaries would be 6pm and then I’ve got to go to the gym. I’ve got to cook dinner. I’ve got to do this. I’ve got to do that. So they’ve already carved out and protected that time. And we all have different ideas of our boundaries or free time.

Abigail: That’s where I think we can take back some control when it comes to work, because I’ve seen different leaders do this as well. There’ll be some leaders who say yes to everything. And there’ll be some who say no I can’t travel on that date. Or I’m not going to travel I’ll send someone in my [00:24:00] place and it’s how much we become the yes people or how much we’re willing to go actually, for me to do my job really, I need to reduce some of this kind of accommodating everyone else. 

Rob: It comes to that back to that diminishment, doesn’t it? If you don’t go to the gym, then that’s a diminishment to your health. If you lose sleep, that’s diminishing. And eventually, eventually you just don’t have the same, Capital.

Rob: So that leads me to who do you work with and who do you work with best? 

Rob: All of us, whatever we do, sometimes people come in and it’s not the right fit for me, there’s some people who want to get things right, and there’s some people who want to be right. That’s the distinction. 

Rob: For you who does your process work for and who doesn’t? 

Abigail: Yeah, great question. Definitely a growth mindset. People who want to learn. The worst thing for me is if I speak to someone and they’re like, yes, but that won’t work because of this or yeah, but I have this issue. Or I have this circumstance or Oh, I do that already, but really they don’t, they might know about it, but they don’t.

Abigail: And I always say, even when it comes to nutrition and Rob, [00:25:00] you’ll know this, if you literally said you’re worried about your nutrition, literally just drink enough water so that your pee is a certain color. Have this many fruits and veg a day. Make sure you get your complex carbs in a day. Cut out the processed sugar and the, all the crap, pretty much, that person will have a massive success if they do those fundamental basic things. 

Abigail: But we tell people the basic things and they don’t do them because they were looking for the complex or the new idea or this exciting gimmick that’s come out. 

Abigail: One of my biggest challenges is going, actually, this is really simple stuff, but no one wants to do the simple stuff.

Abigail: People always looking for the kind of novelty way of doing things. So for me, it’s people who are open to breaking it down, having that growth mindset, adopting and taking on board, doing something differently, trying it out and then seeing how it works for them. And showing a passion that they want to, that they’re not limited.

Abigail: I think it’s having that view of, and I use this phrase from Back to the Future all the time. Because I remember when I was like seven years old, I watched this or maybe younger. And the phrase was, [00:26:00] if you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything. And I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie, but twice in the movie they use that phrase.

Abigail: I do believe that. We have a lot of limiting beliefs as people, as humans, so working with people who won’t let go of those limiting beliefs or try and adjust those limiting beliefs is difficult. So I like to work with people who have an open mindset and who are ready to take action and want to move forward.

Rob: I’ve noticed a lot, the yes part, particularly when back in the fitness days and really the speed of change, the speed of success. is really down, I noticed, to someone’s willingness to change their beliefs, to change their mindset. Obviously, back in the day, I would notice how many different types of diet. There’s always this new diet.

Rob: And I think that really comes about because, there’s a constraint that I’m not going to change this. I want to still eat what I want, but I want to be different. And so people have to come up with all these different magic pills. People want to believe in the fairy tale [00:27:00] of the magic pill.

Rob: And they’re constantly disappointed because, they just won’t change the fundamentals because most things comes down to fundamental pillars. And if you don’t change those fundamental pillars, then nothing’s going to change. But people go yeah, but I want the result, but to change the pillars. It’s crazy.

Abigail: There’s a lot what you’ve said is completely right. And I think there are two things. One, there are low hanging fruit that we can share with people to say, these are some quick wins. You can get those results by doing or get closer to where you want to be by doing these things quick wins like, not looking at your phone before bedtime, simple one. 

Abigail: The other thing is a lot of people don’t recognize that it does take effort to change at first and then it becomes a habit and they’re not willing to put in that effort, that might be required. What I’ve seen from most people who are top performers is they are not afraid of hard work.

Abigail: They all in fact say, They’re willing to work hard and they like working hard to get results. And I think there’s this mindset nowadays of you can’t work hard. It’s just gotta be work smart and that’s it. But I sometimes analyze people who are like in the public [00:28:00] eye, people who I think are really high performers, they all are willing to be consistent every day, put in the, put in that kind of continuous effort, create these good habits.

Abigail: And that leads to. the outcomes that ultimately become effortless for them over time. 

Rob: Part of the excitement and growth of AI is because people think it can take away the hard work and it comes back to what we were talking about the whole idea of branding as being clarifying what you’re about.

Rob: That’s a lot of hard work. It takes enormous amount of mining through yourself, through picking up on how people respond to you, what people like, what people don’t like in order to be able to do that, but people want overnight success without realizing that overnight success took about 10 years in the background.

Rob: I see it a lot. Both of my daughters struggled with maths, and the hours we spent sitting down and, Oh, why do I have to do this? This is a stupid, all of this thing. And it’s so much time in the complaining and the whole change curve. And then once you actually do it, once it’s [00:29:00] focused, it doesn’t take that much.

Abigail: And it’s the best feeling as well when you’ve done something, you put in the work and then you get the result. You feel good, compared to anything else, I think. 

Rob: I think often anxiety and struggling with mental health and feeling good about yourself is because there are these things, the way that you treat other people, even your habits people aren’t confronting, they’re coping with drinking, eating, whatever they’re doing.

Rob: They know it. And I often think, for me, like when you’re cleaning your teeth, you look in the mirror, that’s the time where all of that surfaces. If you’re doing the things that you know, you need to be doing or you’re not. And if you’re not doing them, there’s that cost that we don’t notice, but it’s an unconscious deficit, which is diminishing us.

Rob: It’s a burden that we carry and whatever we do takes work. That’s the cost of being a human, but the value of it is. In the peace of mind. For me, it’s not about success. It’s not about proving to people what you’ve done. It’s not about what you’ve achieved. It’s about at [00:30:00] the end of the night, do you feel, which is, comes back to what you’ve talked about your criteria is, do you feel you’ve done justice to the life, to the opportunity that you had in that day?

Abigail: Yeah, that’s exactly it. It’s a good question to ask at the end of the day, to just say, did I have a good day? What made it? Did I own my day today or did someone else own it or did something else own it? And then reflecting on it and just going, what can I do differently tomorrow to better myself?

Abigail: To take back a little bit more ownership and to think about what’s important to me and be more intentional about how I spend my time. Cause we’re so reactive nowadays, aren’t we? It’s like everyone’s always busy. And so we’re not always being even as productive as we could be in terms of spending time on the right things.

Abigail: We’re just doing stuff and even being intentional about who we spend our time with, like who we catch up with, who we socialize with those kinds of things and the quality of those relationships can have a huge difference, huge impact on what we can achieve as well. But we just don’t always [00:31:00] realize that, I think.

Rob: You’ve probably come across it, but there’s a long study. President Kennedy was one of the cohorts is it was his year when they left Harvard and they’ve studied them for 85 years or so, and they found that the key factor to happiness, health, wealth and wellbeing and length of life and enjoyment of life was the quality of your relationships.

Rob: I think often in the days of. 5, 000 Facebook friends and 20, LinkedIn connections, we’re spreading ourselves too thin on relationships that don’t matter, and not giving enough to the key ones. 

Abigail: Yeah, that’s completely right. And even sometimes you’ve got to think, sometimes the, Relationships, we’ve got all the people in our network.

Abigail: It can change over time in terms of what our needs are. And it’s not saying you just, get rid of your family and your kind of siblings, whatever else, but it’s thinking, who else can you add to your network to, to enrich in it and to move in the right direction. And if you’re not getting what you need from your network.

Abigail: Now there’s so much online in terms of, watching inspirational speakers or TED talks or [00:32:00] people who’ve got this certain mindset to help you to shift out of the rut, think differently. there’s, it doesn’t have to be like a physical network that you have. Sometimes it could be like a, like you LinkedIn group or Facebook group or some kind of community that helps you to keep momentum and go in the right direction.

Rob: Yeah, absolutely. We’re so lucky now, where we were constrained by the 150 people in the village that we, yeah, we lived in a few hundred years ago. 

Rob: Someone might be listening in and they might think this sounds like this is what I need.

Rob: What would it look like working with you? How does that work? Do you work with organizations? Do you work with individuals? And what’s the journey like? 

Abigail: Yeah, so I have two different kind of, angles. I work with companies where I do workshops or programs with teams, maybe exec coaching with an individual within an organization, but then I also have the kind of B2C side of things where I work with one to one executive coaching clients.

Abigail: So I have a peak performance coaching [00:33:00] program where we would explore one particular thing that they want to focus on, or we go through the pillars. and then I have different online programs like e classes, e learning, and keynotes as well for corporate. So talks and keynotes, webinars.

Abigail: So virtually. If it’s face to face depends where it is. but a lot of my work is virtual and in, in London and other parts of the UK. And sometimes I go overseas, but depends where it is. 

Rob: Okay, so it sounds like pretty much everyone with a growth mindset. 

Abigail: My kind of focus industry is banking.

Abigail: Just because I came from that industry, I tend to work with a lot of professionals and execs in banking and finance, but really anyone who works in a, I’d say like an office environment or what used to be the office environment, anyone who works in professional corporate just an office environment who is in a job where they think, yes, I need to level up in some way. I want to own my day. I want to get back control of my time. I want to get back control of my energy levels. Those kinds of [00:34:00] things are going to be really key. 

Rob: What’s the key outcome people are usually looking for? And is the outcome Afterwards, different from what they bought into.

Rob: So often people will buy in for one thing, but actually they’ll find it’s something else. Yeah, 

Abigail: often it is. I think a lot of the time when I run, training with people who work in certain industries, they often ask the question of what, how did, what did you do to start your own business?

Abigail: Or why did you get out of banking rather than asking about the topic that I’ve just been spending an hour training them on, but the outcome for people would vary. I think it’s really feeling like I’ve got more control back. I think that’s the number one thing and that’s control over how you operate in terms of managing your time, how you operate in terms of managing your energy your, your environment that you’re in.

Abigail: So how all of that will impact your performance levels, but it’s really getting back control rather than being reactive and letting your day run you essentially. So it’s about owning your day, owning your energy. Owning your balance, whatever that is to you and [00:35:00] being really clear on what your version of peak performance is. But for some people, we’ll do a coaching program and they’ll change their their idea of what they want.

Abigail: It could be like, I want to progress to the next level and I want to do my job really well. And then it could turn into, I’m going to go and do something completely different that suits what I need in my work and my life. It varies depending on, who the person is, but normally they will walk away, especially when I do webinars, some adjustments to their lifestyle.

Abigail: So fine tuning small things in terms of how they approach diets. If it’s about, if the topic’s about diet nutrition, incorporating movement into the day, thinking about how they can get more energy, there’ll be just different small nuances that they can change that make a big difference to the overall.

Rob: The analogy that comes to my head is it’s like you become the one driving the car,

Abigail: you can pimp up the car as well by adjusting all things so that it’s even better. 

Rob: Yeah. That’s why it was coming to mind, whether you want a sports car or a runabout or whatever.

Rob: And the horizon changes, the more energy [00:36:00] and the more personal capital in my words, that you would have the further out your horizon is and suddenly it changes. 

Abigail: Yeah. Love that. 

Rob: Okay. Thank you for, sharing with us a little bit more about the five Ps. No 

Abigail: worries. Thanks, Rob. It’s been really good having a chat with you on this. Thank you.