Transcript: Leading Yourself First | The Change Room (EP84)

 

Intro (with music): Welcome to The Culture of Things podcast with Brendan Rogers. This is a podcast where we talk all things, culture, leadership and teamwork across business and sport.

Voiceover: To all of our loyal listeners, The Culture of Things podcast will now also have specific episodes produced for Youtube. To ensure you don’t miss out on this exclusive Youtube content, head on over to Youtube, click the subscribe button and hit the notification bell. Now, let’s get into the episode…

Brendan: This is my conversation with Matt Elliott. Matt’s a former professional Rugby League player, head coach in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and of the USA National Team. He’s the owner and founder of The Change Room, a well-being business. He also authored a book by the same name. 

A core practice of leadership is the actions we choose to perform everyday to lead ourselves. A balanced approach across your physical, mental, emotional, community and spiritual actions contributes to leading yourself well.

Physical is what we do. Mental is what we think. Emotional is how we feel. Community is how we interact with people. Spiritual is how we maintain our inner self.

Matt shares details around these five action areas along with simple suggestions to help leaders take action. Without balance across these areas, it’s impossible to sustain high performance. Matt’s ‘pint glasses for arses’ story at the end of the interview reinforces his message of balance.

Check out my three key takeaways after the interview. We love feedback. Let us know what you liked or didn’t like and we’ll keep improving. This is The Culture of Things podcast. I’m Brendan Rogers. Sit back and enjoy my conversation with Matt.

Matt, why is it important to be able to lead yourself?

Matt: That's a great question, Brendan. I think the thing that we need to establish first is that if you can't lead yourself, how are you going to lead other people? As one of my great mentors, Wayne Dyer—God rest his soul—said, if you want to sell orange juice, you need oranges, you can't give away what you don't have.

I think that's one of the key things that we're experiencing in modern life. We tend to be experts in what we do, the places we go, the things that we enjoy, but how much expertise do we have in ourselves? Now I see you walking down the street, how are you going, mate? Why, what have you been up to?

How often do you ask yourself that question? How much expertise and self-awareness are we developing in ourselves so that we can then be in a position to inspire others or to help people in a direction that they want to go?

Brendan: You have spent a lot of time in change rooms around the world. You've got a business called The Change Room, you've written a book called The Change Room. Why did you start a business and write a book?

Matt: Again, I guess it's the metaphor that it brings. First of all, I've worked out my purpose in life, to help people find a better way. You can't get better without changing. You can't stay the same and get better. That was the first one.

The other metaphor about change rooms—as you say, Brendan, I spent a lot of time in them—is there a place of transformation. The really poor joke I always tell us is that a footy player can't walk down the aisle of Woolworths and dip their shoulders into someone in the fruit and veggie section. Equally, I love Pete O'Gara. He doesn't walk down the street going like that, does he?

They go into change rooms and there's a transformation between them being a normal person to being a performer. They don't just change their clothes, they change who they are. A lot of us need to do that. In life, we're going to encounter challenges, we're going to go through adversity, and they're little signals for us to change.

Unless we can find our change room to transform ourselves into who we want to be rather than who we are, then we get stuck. Being stuck has stuck emotionally, mentally, or physically. It has real consequences for us.

Brendan: When did you find your purpose? When did you settle on this purpose of yours?

Matt: My whole life's been a life by accident, Brendan. I wish I could say or sat out and intended to do this in a quite synchronistic way. My father was my footy coach, but I was born on Thursday and only introduced basketball and rugby league up there. My mum, at that time when we first moved to Townsville, was a matron at what was called a crippled children's home in those days. It's not the terminology that you could use now, definitely.

In doing that, I used to go there every afternoon because she'd finished at five and my school was close by. I worked out that helping people enjoy life is something that I was just born to do. I was brought up in a family that all did that. I became a youth worker in Sydney when I graduated from university, and then going into football, and then going into coaching that was all just slight manipulations of, again, trying to find a better way for people to exist.

I had to sit down not too distant past and go, what is it I really want to do? I worked out you're kind of been doing it your whole life, mate, so just sort of perfect it and narrow your focus just a tad.

Brendan: Mate, I have to ask in the rugby league context, are you a maroon or are you a blue?

Matt: That doesn't matter. I was born in Queensland. I'm a real Queenslander. I'm not just a Queenslander like people from Brisbane. I'm a North Queenslander. We're well away from the border. That made it fun. I have spent more of my life living in New South Wales, but my state of origin is Queensland.

Brendan: Glad to hear it, mate. We can continue it. How good was it being in New South Wales when we won those 10 in a row?

Matt: It was tough. I got four daughters and they're all born in New South Wales. It's been a lot of fun. Not so much fun when we haven't won a couple of times in recent years, but again, I'm walking around with a smile again.

Brendan: Absolutely, mate. As I say, be humble or be humbled, right?

Matt: Exactly. It's a balancing act, that one.

Brendan: It certainly is, mate. Back to the serious stuff. Again, that analogy around the change room and in that professional context is very clear. What do people need to do in order to want to step into that change room of life?

Matt: You're in it anyway. We're all living life, so why not find a better way of doing it? Whatever your philosophical approach, spiritual background is, or whatever it is, they all tend to align with the fact that we're here to enjoy this experience. We're not here just to survive. Hence, why would we have consciousness if we did?

I think that my belief in it is that there's an opportunity for us every day to be a little better in what we're doing. It doesn't mean that we're going to do that, but what in the life of significance is easy? It's just about finding opportunities and ways of, if you can't enjoy life, find a way to be a little bit better until you can enjoy it.

Brendan: Yeah, mate. That's a great point. In reading your book and finishing it, I never really considered that just everyone is there, actually. I guess more to the point, what stops people in your vast experience taking on that improvement challenge of bettering themselves, being deliberate about bettering themselves?

Matt: There are a few things that contribute to that, but I guess the easiest way is we've got a choice between health or convenience. It's easier to sit in the lounge and watch TV than it is to exercise. It's easier to go through Macca's drive thru than it is to cook a healthy home cooked meal. What we tend to do is we choose that convenience over health. In modern life, it's prevalent.

There was a time way, way, way back when we didn't have the opportunity to make that choice, but what we're seeing was a lot of the health issues that people are experiencing in modern life. I'm not saying that modern life's bad. I'm just saying that people are choosing convenience over health way too often, and there's a consequence to that. We all know that no one can avoid it. I think that's probably the biggest impact on the choices that we make.

There's also another thing called purpose, and we've already discussed that. We're so conditioned into, for you to achieve, you have to educate yourself to this level, you have to be this type of person. The more that we start to investigate that, the more we see that there are flaws in that approach to life.

Not completely flawed because learning is a great thing, but I guess the people that are the highest achievers on the planet tend to sit outside the normal realm of education, I'd say. [...] purpose-driven.

Brendan: Yeah. Again, I won't refrain from unpacking the purpose and purpose-driven too much. We have touched on it. I've actually done a very recent podcast, specifically around purpose, so people can go back and refer to Alex Lee's episode on that.

Let's move into the four foundations of life and what you'd say about leading yourself. Again, they're really entrenched in the book, a key part of the book, obviously. What are the four foundations of life that you refer to in the book, just a bit of an overview? We'd like to unpack those in a bit more detail.

Matt: The whole reason behind that first, Brendan, is to give people access to a high performance approach, which is a really trick way of saying human performance. Trust me, if something works for an athlete to make them better, it'll work for us, whether it be in their physical approach—that's foundation number one—their mental approach—what you think—your emotional approach—how you feel, or your ability to connect to other people, human connection, which we call community.

There is another one that can fast track you, but that tends to scare people off when we start talking about energy or spirit. While I do not believe in that, what I'm saying is that our modern language of engagement is science. Around physical, mental, emotional, and human connection, there's actual proof that we can make ourselves better.

As I said, there is a shortcut. Some people who are deeply religious or spiritual can take those shortcuts, but it seems to be in modern life that we need other confirmation and science. Certainly, it helps us out in that area.

Brendan: It's almost like we have biases as a human species. We've got to be able to touch, feel, and measure it to some extent. Otherwise, how can it be real or useful?

Matt: Yeah. You know what? I sat with a pretty smart guy called Deepak Chopra one time. I was an atheist at the time. I didn't really understand what he was on about. He pointed up to the TV beside me, and I think channel nine was on.

He said, what channel is that? I said, channel nine. He said, if I smashed that TV, the bits with the signal still were there. I went, yeah. He said, that's how I would explain what you are. Your body is the TV, but there's a signal inside it that's been with you your whole life. It's not your memory, but it's a signal.

While I can embrace that now and I understand that, still, there's a progression from where I was to where I wanted to get to. A lot of that was in the physical realm that I just spoke about, physical, mental, emotional, and obviously, our ability to connect to other people, because we're a community-based species.

Brendan: If we talk about these four, and actually I'll add the five—the spiritual—just in the bucket for this question, can you be a high-performing sports person, coach, leader, whatever terminology you want to use, without a foundation of these four or five things?

Matt: Not for a sustained period. No, you can't be. You can get some results. What we've learnt and what everyone now understands in life is about balance. The short answer is no, you can't. You can't become a high achiever. You can't become the person you want to be without balancing that in your life.

Just to expand on that slightly, stress gets a bad rap, doesn't it? Stress and pressure. I get a really bad rap. Do you know what exercise is? Do you know what it does? It stresses your body. But if you get the balance between loading your body and recovering your body right, you grow physically, sustained with mentally.

Learning new stuff can be quite overwhelming, can't it? But if you get the balance of going away, that learning then turns into knowledge. You can't learn new stuff without actually overwhelming yourself. That's the same emotionally.

It's the same also with our connection with people. Unless we can share adversity or challenge together, we're not bonded. We don't have that connection. It cuts across all of them. We need to be challenged in life to grow.

Brendan: Let's unpack the physical, the what we do. Tell us a bit about physical, and then we'll get into maybe some practical examples of people. Let's say people who are listening to this podcast potentially are probably up and coming leaders or they've been in leadership roles for a short period of time. There are certainly some that are more experienced. We'll unpack that and maybe what people can do to start their journey in that physical capacity to start to better themselves.

Matt: I think the thing here, Brendan, is we all need to recognize that when I speak about these things in the physical realm, you're already doing them. I presume right now you're breathing. I hope you are.

Brendan: I'm doing my best.

Matt: You will eat at some stage today. You will have slept hopefully really well over the last little while. We're moving. I was told not to move too much. I'm sorry, mate. I'll keep still, but you're doing that. You're doing all these things.

There's a way of doing it slightly better. If I taught you how to breathe slightly better, for example, if I go [....], there's a signal that goes to my brain that there's something bad going on. You know that, you'll pass out. I always have to give the bad news first because it gets people's attention. Is that right, though?

If you’re hyperventilated, eventually there'll be a signal that goes up through your vagus nerves to your brain going, dude, you need to just stop for a bit, and you'll pass out. Is that right? Equally, if you learned to breathe deeply and diaphragmatically, there's a signal that goes to your brain that goes, man, everything's okay. You can relax.

By learning to do that as a practice, not 24/7 but to do that as a practice, it just allows you that balance, that recovery, that we spoke about. There are just little ways to do things better. You got to eat, why not? Why not eat in a way that's going to serve you rather than deteriorate your physical well being, which so many of us make the choice of?

You can't get it right 100% of the time, again, but if you can get it right, most of the time or in your own home, when you're eating at home, what a great start that is. 

Movement. We are designed to move. We have a thing called our lymphatic system. It's another circulatory system in our body where our immune system is located. It actually functions on how we move. If you don't move, you'll be unhealthy. That's simple.

This is not exercise. Movement and exercise are different things. I'm moving now, I'm not exercising. If I was exercising, I'd be doing something different. Exercising is great, by the way, because again, it accelerates the loading of our body. As long as we get our recovery right, we can then again spike hormones in our body that are super healthy for us. It's about just doing all those things that we're already doing, just a little bit better.

Brendan: Let's take breathing. It's something so simple. Although done properly, maybe it requires a little bit more deliberacy to start with. How can something so simple be so effective and powerful?

Matt: Again, if I just get you to pinch your nose, and stop breathing, it's pretty powerful, right?

Brendan: Good point.

Matt: I've worked with a guy who I've met through Mick Fanning, a guy called Nam Baldwin. He's worked with the Blues. Sorry, Nam. He's worked with the Roosters in Richmond and Jess Fox.

He teaches you that it's not just the level of oxygen in your body, but the signals that are sent through your body when you breathe well. It's not a difficult thing. But again, if you can elevate the level of oxygen in your body and get the balance between oxygen and carbon dioxide right in your body, you have clarity of thought. You're able to relax. But also, if I'm going into a thing where I'm going to compete at a high level, I can stimulate myself through breathing, because I understand how it serves me, so you're doing it.

There was a time where intuitively—way, way back in the past—you would have understood that, okay, I need to breathe deeply here because I'm just about to go into a situation that's going to be challenging. Again, you see other species do it. We've just forgotten how to do it because we've been programmed out of it. But by breathing well, it'll give you access to better sleep.

We're separating all these things out at the moment. But if I sleep better, I'm probably going to wake up with better mental clarity, which means I might make some better decisions about what I eat or how I move. Does that make sense? Or have more energy.

What we like to separate things in modern life, they're all connected, but breathing is central to it. Most definitely very central to, again, the quality of health, the chemical reactions, and hormonal responses that are going on in our body. Also how we can stimulate ourselves, but also wind ourselves down. Sleep is very, very underrated as well.

Brendan: I just want to follow on from what you said about these things that connect and that comes through the book, obviously. Is there one out of the four to five that is the one that is the most leveraged into the others?

Matt: Again, great question. There's a yes or no answer to that.

Brendan: Just like in marketing, I'd say, it depends.

Matt: What I would say is this. If you look at frequency, we have about 24,000 breaths today. The science that I've read around thought processes is we have about 60,000–70,000 thoughts a day, but we're in an emotional state 24/7.

I went and got a knee replacement recently, and I was under general anesthetic apparently. Even under general anesthetic, I'm in an emotional state. We tend to find that our emotions are the biggest driver of our behaviors. It's because if you go way, way, way back when we were born, our reptilian brain which sits just above our brainstem that goes up there and our cortex grows there, it's fully developed.

When you're a baby and you're hungry, how do you communicate that? You cry. We initially communicate through emotions. When you're happy, you laugh. What we've done with our cortex, which is amazing, which has made us an amazing species in the way that we've grown, particularly our prefrontal cortex, is we can articulate that as language—I’m feeling this way for this reason.

We forgot to do that a lot in modern life. When someone feels anxious, we are told to suck it up and have a cup of concrete. We get rid of that, don't we? That gets compartmentalized in us and (again) manifests in a different way, which I'm sure we'll speak about later.

That was my long way of saying emotions probably have the biggest impact on our behavior. Again, our emotional state isn't separate from how we think. It isn't separate from our physical state, nor is it separate from how we connect with people either.

Brendan: Absolutely. Let me just go back to sleep. One of the common things maybe you hear, I know I hear a lot, is I've had a terrible night's sleep, or how are you feeling today? Yeah, all right, but I sleep pretty ordinary. What helps people have a better night's sleep?

Matt: Again, what we've all got to recognize is genetically, we're not that different to what we were a few thousand years back. Even when I was a kid, there were no phones, right?

Brendan: Me too, mate. Me too, but no offense for me.

Matt: The telly stopped at 10:00 PM when I was a kid. What we're not doing, first of all, is in the morning, we get up, and if we get sunlight on our face, the thing that helps us sleep, melatonin, is produced in our body from sunlight in the morning, particularly before 10:00.

One of the things that we do know is that if you get 10 minutes of direct sunlight, and that doesn't mean sun on your face, that means it can even come through clouds on your face, your melatonin levels go up. That's the thing that helps you sleep at night. That's the first thing. Doing that in the morning would be really good for you, and it would be some movement during the day.

The other thing that we used to do was we used to wind down at night. But people are still looking at their phones and there's blue light going into there. We're stimulating ourselves and then go, I can't get to sleep, I can't understand why. One of the big things is certainly breathing, that allows you to relax, breathing deeply and diaphragmatically at night, but also just starting to maybe turn some lights off.

Maybe there are blue light blockers now that you can put on all your technology. That's a good idea, but just starting to wind down at night. We tend not to do that as much these days and that impacts our sleep.

Again, there's a hormonal thing that happens to us that keeps us stimulated, because we're telling our body it's daylight. If we do that on a consistent basis, we get in the habit or this routine of not sleeping well.

Brendan: Out of the three you've spoken about in relation to physical—sleep, eat, and breathe—people starting on a journey of being more deliberate about their physical health in those three aspects, which one of those would you suggest they start with? And what would they do?

Matt: You always got to tread softly around this, but what we put in our body and what we eat at the moment, there are a lot of things, when I was a kid that I was told, were unhealthy, like fats. Fat doesn't make you fat. We were told the most important meal of the day was breakfast. Sugar is not a food, it's a substance. It's the most addictive substance on the planet. It's not a food, you need to understand that. There's no nutrient value in it for us, but it's great, isn't it?

Brendan: Yes.

Matt: I'm not saying don't take it because I can't, because I'd be a hypocrite. I've got a sweet tooth. I had my little bit of ice cream last night. I would love to say it was organic.

Brendan: I may have had ice cream, mate. I've got a weakness for that.

Matt: I'm not saying you don't do this. What I'm just saying is that you need to limit that stuff. Vegetable oils. One of the things is glyphosate, which roundup which is on our food, these things are massive causes of illness on the planet. It's unfortunate that I've got to get your attention through telling you what's bad again, but I'm not making this up. This is the truth in life.

I love the quote where, what was it that made people ask why organic food is so expensive? Maybe we should be asking, why is food that we buy in supermarkets so cheap? I'm in a house, and it's great to be in a nice house. That's great, but this is what we live in.

The body that we live in, we need to make sure that what we put in our mouth is going to help that. If you don't do it, we see it. Your eyes work, right? We see it on a daily basis that people aren't physically in a state where they need to be. Carrying weight or being obese is not how we're meant to be. That is not normal.

While we have to be delicate around this, because I'm certainly not into shaming people about it, we have to be delicate around it. You need to understand that that's not how the human species is meant to be. You need to be very conscious about what you put in your mouth if you're committed to being healthy.

Brendan: One of the absolute key things I found about your book, The Change Room, is the practicality of the things that you talk about and suggest in there. I found that a bit astonishing, actually, that it's number one in the psychology leadership thing. I didn't take any perspective of sight. I did on the psychology, but it's not like a typical psychology book, where you're trying to look up the definition of words and stuff. It was so practical.

Matt: I wrote the book, originally, it was about that thick when I originally wrote it. It was just full of information. It was ready to publish and they said, can you read it again? I read it and I said, there's no way I can put this out. The reason being is that we all have different abilities in life.

My ability is the process knowledge and making it accessible to people. My ability isn't to come up with the knowledge. All that stuff that I just shared with you, for example, isn't mine. I didn't do the research behind it, but so much of it is inaccessible to the everyday person.

That was my commitment in doing that. It was to make it practical so that, okay, you're saying all this stuff and we got to do all this, so how does that look? How can I do that? Once you get that momentum going and doing it, then you start to feel at ease, and then people then start to look deeper into it. For example, the easy menus and the cooking side of things, that's just to give momentum. It's not to create a whole lifestyle around

Brendan: What's your favorite recipe in the book?

Matt: Again, I've got that sweet tooth.

Brendan: Maybe the desserts?

Matt: Yeah, I'd go to the desserts. I'm into, at the moment, making desserts with coconut cream, organic berries, and just putting it in the blender. That works really well for me. Just with a little bit of banana in there and stuff like that. I'm a big experimenter, Brendan, when it comes to cooking.

Brendan: Sounds good, mate. Do you do the cooking for the fam?

Matt: Yeah. Slow cookers are the easiest thing in the world, and everyone loves it. I make my own bone broth, which is basically my stock. I just throw it all in the morning.

I have a tech free Tuesday, which all the family that are close to me come over, so there are no phones. We have a meal every Tuesday that's on the human connection side of things. It's always slow cooked. That's because I'm lazy, mate.

Brendan: I don't know, mate. Some would say smart. We love our slow cooker as well. It's probably the best thing in our kitchen, I would say. 

Let's go to emotional because that's the one you referred to earlier. Give us a bit of a summary again on the emotional side, the how we feel, and some of the things that impact our emotional state.

Matt: Again, we're in a feeling state all the time. Our emotional response to things has one of the biggest. We hear about cortisol. We hear about the negative effects of cortisol. We hear about adrenal fatigue. You heard about that constantly. That's our emotional response to situations. It's a perceived threat most of the time.

Cortisol and adrenaline, by the way, are fantastic, because in a real threat, they are exactly what we need. But for a short term, they give us the energy and the focus that we require to deal with a situation. What used to happen was a real threat—trauma or infection—used to be the biggest impact on human health. It's not anymore, perceived threat is, so our perception of threat.

The medical terms for threat is depression, and imagined threat is anxiety. What happens is that we're starting to see all these things that we call mental health, which is emotional health, to be honest with you, is that the impacts of excreting adrenaline all the time, because we perceive threat, we remember threat, or cortisol, that starts to break our body down.

We need to understand that's the bad news again. Sorry, Brendan. But there's good news to this. If you can imagine or remember great things, things like oxytocin and serotonin are then excreted in our body. These things enhance our digestive system. They help our liver function. They (again) have an impact on our ability and our clarity of thinking over a sustained period.

We have an issue with remembering great things. It's not a matter of being in a state of love and joy all day, because you don't go to the gym all day, do you?

Brendan: No.

Matt: You go to the gym, and that helps you elevate your physical capacities. If you can do practices around imagining or remembering real joy or really looking for the opportunity to be [...] during the day, they'll show themselves. That doesn't mean a challenge isn't going to come into your life. That doesn't mean that you're not going to get the shits occasionally. That'll happen to you. It's a part of the human experience.

But the more that you can practice those positive emotions, there's a whole massive impact on us, hormonally. You'll feel better. Don't you think that your body is trying to tell you something? Keep doing it, man, if you feel better. I always use the analogy, what do you do if you're walking down the street and you've got a stain on your shoe? What do you do?

Brendan: Stop, take the shoe, get it out.

Matt: Yeah, because that's your body going, Brendan, Brendan, I'm sending you a bit of physical pain here, mate, because this rock is down here. If you ignore it, your body goes, well, that didn't work. What we'll do is we'll rip the skin off, it will increase the pain, and that will get his attention. If you keep ignoring it, you're eventually going to have to chop your toe off.

Our body does the same thing emotionally. We'll have an experience where you'll get a little bit frustrated with something. That's your body going, you don't feel right here, so pay attention. But what we do is we stuff it down, we ignore it. Your body goes, well, that didn't work. Instead of being frustrated, let's just make him really annoyed, and you ignore it again.

That goes to anger, then to rage. We don't pay attention to our emotional state. I was certainly conditioned out of paying attention to yourself. Toughen up and have a cup of concrete, mate. Our emotional state has a huge impact on all our behaviors. It's something that you need to pay attention to how you feel.

Brendan: How do you raise that awareness? How do you become more aware of your emotional state?

Matt: The same way, if you and I are walking down the street, how are you going, mate? Why? How often do you ask yourself that question? How much expertise do you have in yourself? Because when you ask yourself that question consistently enough, you can't lie to yourself. You can try. I've done that.

You can try to do that. How am I going? Just feeling not at ease. I'm feeling annoyed. Why? Look, 90% of the time, you'll have the right answer. I always say, if you don't have the right answer, go and have mentors or ask someone you trust who comes feeling this way.

If they don't have the answer, that'll be the next 5%. The other 5%, go and ask a professional about it, but ask yourself first. Become an expert in yourself. Are you worth two minutes a day everyday, Brendan, of just going to yourself, how am I going, mate?

Why? I'm doing great. I'm getting really good. Why are you doing good? Well, because I got to do this podcast that was really cool. Keep doing it. Keep doing it, mate. How am I going? I'm not so good. Why?

I'm not saying that's the answer to everything, but it builds self-awareness. From that self-awareness, we become aware of the state that we're in and where we want to be. Then we can work out. I'm feeling this way or I want to feel this way, how do I get from here to there? 

I'm telling you 90% of the time, you have the answer. It'd be boring if you had the answer 100% of the time, trust me. You certainly wouldn't go to someone and go, hey, Brendan, I need a hand with this, mate.

Brendan: Fair point. For me and to know about this stuff, why were you lying to yourself?

Matt: Because I'm a human. The biggest impact on our behavior is our subconscious conditioning. That all happened when we were kids. You believed in Santa Claus, right?

Brendan: I did for a time.

Matt: That's the right answer. You did for a time, but you had Santa Claus conditioned out of your subconscious conditioning. He's not real. What? Are you kidding me? Yeah, he's definitely real.

He's eating carrots. He drops a whole lot of presents under the tree. Definitely real, but you have it conditioned out of you. Is that right? What haven't you had conditioned out of you between the ages of one and seven?

Brendan: Can I relate to when I read this part in the book that really resonated with me? Food.

Matt: Yeah, me too.

Brendan: I hate food wastage. That paragraph that you wrote in that book, I'm like, wow, my dad who's a great cook and I loved his food, one of his throwaway lines was if you didn't finish your dinner, didn't you like it? Why didn't you like it?

Matt: Yeah, and that's subconscious conditioning. Why did I lie to myself? Well, because I didn't want to be an underachiever in a certain area. I fib to myself. You can't give away what you don't have. So if you lie to yourself, guess what, you lie to other people about things, about inadequacies.

It wasn't the way that I was conditioned, not consciously by my [...], by the way. Through the schooling, if you didn't know something, don't admit to it. I think of learning about it or lie about it. That's what I did. I fib to myself about having things covered when I didn't.

Brendan: Mate, you're also a man who's spent a fair chunk of your life in, I guess I'd say, high pressure environments around professional sport as a player and as a very successful coach. What did you do in those pressure environments to help yourself maintain that level of emotional stability?

Matt: I do have some practices that I still do to this day. I got so lucky that I stumbled. I read a Phil Jackson book called Sacred Hoops in 1995. He got his team to meditate. I was super cynical at that time about that, but I read about it. I started looking at the results of it. Again, I need scientific validation, that's a real weakness. I wish I was more intuitive, but I'm not. That's the truth, I'm just not.

I read about it. I started using that for myself first. I had a tool that allowed me to escape just on a daily basis. I still use that. I've progressed that or use that with players. It was a bit unusual in 2009 and 2010 when I first started doing it, so I've got a little bit of resistance to that. But I use it everyday now.

It's just a really simple thing. I don't know who made it spooky, by the way, meditation. Again, physically, you go in an ice bath. That helps you recover your body. If you train for an hour, you do that for a short period of time. You recover for a short period of time. That's what my meditation practices allow me to do.

This is not just a tool. I can't just sit there and don't think for five minutes. I don't need to sit on a mountain. I don't need to burn incense when I do it. It's something that's a tool that works for me, but I have other friends that surf. They paddle out the back and surf. That's their practice.

In a high pressure environment, it was obviously a super efficient way of doing it. The issue is that when you place another load on it, when you start having some personal things, if you put pressure on top of that pressure that you've gone through, that's when you need to be very, very conscious about, well, your normal practices aren't going to be quite enough. 

Again, seek clinical help. I really believe in an integrated approach in extreme periods because that's why those people have expertise. Otherwise, why would you need a coach?

In footy, you've got most of it covered off, you go. In those high pressured times, that's where I believe, in modern times in particular, because that's the group it’s elevated, the expectations are elevated. Where the pressure comes from is that in modern times, particularly coaches, need that support, even when they don't think they do.

Brendan: Again, in your book, you refer to a situation around your first marriage and coming home and still pumped up or whatever. I guess the million dollar question—again is your view or your experience—what do we need to do better? Whether it's rugby league, whether it's professional sport in general, but even thinking about veteran affairs stuff? 

That's pretty topical. I've got some friends in that space where there's all this heightened alertness all the time. They're pushing their bodies and have high emotional states. What do we need to do to do something different to help them transition when they're off that park, when they retire, or whatever? Because there does seem to be some significant challenges ahead of us in that space.

Matt: Again, what a great question, Brendan. I can't use an analogy that I'm trying to remember where I pinched it from. I remember I said I have a good way of sharing it, but I don't come up with the knowledge.

Brendan: You do, mate. You really do.

Matt: What happens if you don't ever plan to climb Mount Everest? What happens?

Brendan: If you tried climbing, you're probably going to die, I would say.

Matt: What happens if you stay on top of Mount Everest?

Brendan: I think you'll die as well, eventually.

Matt: What happens if you don't have a plan to come off Mount Everest?

Brendan: You will die as well.

Matt: Yeah, it's a repetitive one. There are so many people like high-level coaches, police where I've done a lot of work with, military, they learned how to climb Mount Everest. They learned how to stay on top of Mount Everest longer than a normal person, but they don't get a plan to come off the mountain. Having a plan and a strategy to come off the mountain is crucial. If you don't, there's a consequence.

Now let me use an ex-serving police that I work with. There was a strategy coming off the mountain which was 10 schooners. That's not sustainable, is it? Let's use the place as an example. They need to be hyper vigilant at work, don't they?

There's no amount of money you can offer me to do what they do for our community, my goodness. My respect after working with them in this space has grown. They have to be cynical. Have you ever lied to a police officer?

Brendan: I have to say in my teens, mate.

Matt: I have. They get lied to every day. You got to think, they're hyper vigilant and they need to be cynical, then they got to go home to their families. They got to come off that mountain. Having the tools to come off that mountain is absolutely vital in life. Again, pressure is not something that is absent in modern life, is it?

Brendan: Definitely not.

Matt: We've added to it in recent times with the amount of change that we've had to experience in the pandemics and all sorts of weird weather that we're experiencing at the moment. I don't think that's going to go away in the short term. This is about, again, that self-awareness that we spoke about earlier, but having your strategy to come off the mountain is crucial for you to have sustained performance.

If you don't think you need to, there'll be a consequence to it. There will be a consequence to it. Understanding how to balance that load in your life is essential. We've lost balance in modern life, severely.

Brendan: What about your strategy, Matt? What was your strategy? When did you start to develop your own strategy around moving from the coaching roles that you've had off playing, to coaching, and then doing what you're doing now?

Matt: Again, not challenge-free. Definitely, I came out of coaching. I started doing one on one work with executives and different people, and then I started The Change Room business. It was really challenging. Then going back into footy again, I had some personal challenges related to that.

This time, what I did have was those tools and understanding that, okay, how am I feeling? I'm feeling not great. What do I need to do? Yeah, having those answers of, I know for myself I get in the ocean, I do my meditation, I connect to people that I really care about, I show some vulnerability, like, hey, Brendan, I'm lucky I've got really great mentors where I can go to them and say, I need a hand because I have not got this covered. You end up having a conversation and you realize that you did.

For me, that's that human connection side of things, having the right mentors in my life that I can have open and honest conversations with who I know are not going to judge me, who I know that I love these people. Again, showing that vulnerability, but also having those physical practices.

I train all the time, and I don't even recognize the benefits of what I do physically until I stop. I meditate every day. I didn't have a clue what it does for me until I stopped doing it. I eat well. Am I making sense here?

It just does little 1% increments that improves our health that we don't actually realize it, because we're hanging around ourselves the whole time, that you are feeling better, and then you stop doing it, and you go, oh, my goodness, I need to get back in the gym. I need to get in the ocean or whatever it is. Yeah.

Brendan: It sounds like me too, Matt, to some extent. Yes, there are some things that people can do around their emotional state. But fundamentally, if you as an individual are deliberate around improving, maintaining a level of emotional state, then find something that helps you do that and that works for you. It doesn't have to be all this stuff that people list in books, do this, do this, do this. If that doesn't work for you, why would you do it? Find something that makes you feel good.

Matt: You've nailed it. That's 100% accurate. I've got a mate that loves fishing, and that's how he winds down. I would rather run across broken glass than go fishing. Do you know what I mean? But that's his wind down, and he doesn't have to do it for five hours. He just gets there and comes back to that self-awareness piece. You need to ask yourself the question, how is it I wind down?

For some people who are watching this, they might not have the answer to it, but you're better off coming up with a wrong answer than no answer. Because you'll go and do it and you go, that didn't work. What is it that could be for me? Until you find it.

The other great thing about this is that we're all different. How boring would it be if we're all the same? But guess what? What winds you down when you were 20 won't wind you down when you're 30, won't wind you down when you're 40 or 50, which makes life exciting.

You can look at it another way. You go, oh, I just mastered this and now it's not working for me. That's one way of looking at it. I'm not being positive, I'm being useful. The useful way of looking at it is, thank God, I get to try and find something else to do. For me, anyway, I just think it'd be boring as.

Brendan: Absolutely. I'm just chuckling to myself a little bit because I remember I was telling my wife, Tracy, about your book, and you, and the interview coming up and stuff. Again, so many parts of the book really resonated with me.

One of the things about humans is that we are bred for variety, especially in our eating and stuff like that. She's like, lo and behold, you finally listened to someone, because I'm the person that would have the kangaroo meat. I love all that stuff, but I'd do that every day for ages. I'd do some checkups and the doctor would say, you're having too much of this stuff, and then I'd go and do the oats, fruits, and stuff like that forever. She's like, finally, you're going to listen to someone.

Matt: Again, it's so easy. My way of explaining is if I go to the gym and do arm curls, I'll get benefited. But if I do them every day, my body adapts, and the amount of benefit out of doing that diminishes. As much as we'd like to think we're in the modern world, we're not that different to how we were when we were living in huts, caves, and whatever.

You got different fruit and veggies all year. You couldn't eat bananas all year. You didn't go out and catch the same beast that you went out and caught. Even if you live on a river, you didn't catch the same type of fish. 

Diet variation and life variation is what we're built for. That's why we're the most adaptable species on the planet. Not only because we have consciousness, but we needed to because we're not the fastest or the strongest. We needed to have that adaptation so we can survive. 

Guess what? Not only did we survive, it's good for us. You can have the best plate of food in front of you. This is the most nutrient-dense plate of food ever. If you ate that every day, it'd be like that arm curl. Your body would adapt to it, and the benefits of it would be diminished.

It's so much fun being a human, we just forget about it. That word fun is so underutilized in high performance. We’re way too serious. We're equipped. When we're kids, apparently, we laugh about 400 times a day. By the time we're 30, we're down to under 40 times a day. I think we need to pay attention to kids a whole lot more, because we're meant to enjoy life. That doesn't mean it's easy. It does mean that we're allowed to laugh at things regardless of what they are.

Brendan: Absolutely. In regards to variety and fasting, in your book, it has changed something in my mind around fasting and being more deliberate about it. We always ate before eight anyway, but sometimes I'd have a sneaky snack, ice cream every now and again or whatever. Can I continue fasting between eight and eight? Will that reduce benefits over time as well, or is that something that sits outside of the box around variety?

Matt: Again, think about genetic makeup. Think about your ancestors. They got up in the morning and they probably went looking for food. When they found food, they bought it back for their siblings, and then they went looking for food again.

People, they have certain windows that they eat in all the time. We're not designed to do that. I don't often have breakfast, but how good is going out to breakfast on a weekend at a cafe with people that you love? Is there anything better than that? Again, that comes into the human connection side of things.

I'll just segue us into it. There's a thing called Blue Zones around the planet where they've done all this research, which is the highest concentration of centenarians, people over 100. There are six of them. There were geeks like me that went over there and started doing research on them. They exercise, but it was what they call incidental exercise.

In Ikaria in Greece, if I'm going to a friend's place, I walk up a hill, down a hill, up and down the hill. Okinawa in Japan, they never stop working, not because they have to, but because it gives them purpose in life. They exercise, they eat well. They have a dairy and they like wine. But the biggest impact on their well being, on their hormonal state, is human connection, the time they spend with other people.

That's what we're meant to do. We're meant to connect to other people. That doesn't mean some people like sitting in groups. Have you ever been to Greece at lunchtime?

Brendan: Not Greece. No.

Matt: Costa Rica? There are people everywhere. We eat and eat on the way, that's really healthy. No. You're meant to sit down and enjoy meals with people that you care about. Again, it's not a matter of you talking. I certainly talk in that environment, you might have picked that up.

Some people just sit there. It's that human connection. What they've found is the biggest impact on our health and well being is the biggest common denominator between the six areas around the world, where people live to over 100 more than anyone else. The concentration of 80 plus 80-year-olds is higher than anywhere else. Human connection is being around other people, feeling at ease in other people's company, feeling safe in other people's company.

Think about it. It makes sense. I went back and talked about us in caves. If you're back in those days, if you're on your own, you're likely to end up food. But if you're around other people that you felt safe with, you're likely to get food. This is an instinctual premise that we have in our life of how important that stuff is.

You could be the fittest. You eat great food, move, and breathe well, but if you're isolated, you won't be well. You've seen that person with a great rig. That's miserable, because they separate themselves from other people. It's such an important thing to have fun around, because it's hard to have fun on your own over a sustained period, yeah?

Brendan: Absolutely. In your experience, again, what impacts people? There are people out there that are better at maintaining, connecting with people, and developing relationships and others. What impacts people's ability to create good connections and community as you put it in your book?

Matt: I'm going to be repetitious here. It's, first of all, self-awareness. In our Change Room program, we have an author and international TED talker called Dr. Ali Walker. She's amazing and she talks about your connection time. Me understanding that I'm a bit of a not-at-all, that allows me to stop saying I know to people and just sit back. But understanding myself stops me getting in the way of my connection type.

I like to connect with people. I like to swim at both ends of the pool, so I like to go deep and meaningful and talk about the meaning of life, but I like the shallow end of the pool as well. I like sitting there talking about the footy, having a beer, we'll go to a cafe, and telling really bad dad jokes with my daughters.

I like both ends of the pool. Also, now, I need to listen better. By having that self-awareness, okay, it's good that you want to contribute, but try what our First Nations people used to do in Australia, deep listening. If I sat there, and we're in a conversation, and I was listening deeply to you, that makes you feel different and you feeling indifferent. We pick that up.

There are little tips like that about understanding yourself. Matt, you need to shut up occasionally when you're in conversations and just listen to people. Hear what they're saying rather than getting your next thing ready to say in your head about what's going on. My understanding of myself has built my ability to connect to other people.

Brendan: It sounds like you've got that shrewd listening trait. It's not about changing that trait, it's about what you do with the thought.

Matt: Yeah, but you can only do that if you listen. I found a saying recently that I added to. You're not teaching unless they're learning. What I added to it is that, you're not learning unless you're listening.

I found that a lot of times in conversations, I was listening to myself come up with the next part of that conversation instead of just being quiet in there and listening to what this person has to say. I feel like that's really elevated my ability to connect to other people. I wish I had learned it at 27 rather than 57, but you'll learn it when you learn it.

Brendan: Through your programs, Matt, in the Change Room, I watched a number of testimonies. It's fantastic, and they actually support what you said earlier about, Matt has an unbelievable ability to move complex things into simple language for people to get. How do you help people?

There's no doubt they learn in the room and in the sessions you're doing. What can you do? What do you do to help them continue that learning, maintaining the stuff, the really good stuff that you're sharing with these people and helping them learn?

Matt: Yeah, we're creatures of habit. One certainly continued support through an app and things like that, which is great, but just teaching people how to develop routines in their life.

I always say, you get that initial stage. When things are just starting to get boring, it means it's nearly a habit. Just get through the boring part. Then all of a sudden, you're doing it without consciously having to think about certain things. It's giving them the understanding and the tools. My big thing is giving people tools to create habits in their life that resonate with them.

Again, we have eight foundations in our program. We're talking about four key ones there. Don't choose them all, because they're all related. Whether it's developing emotional capacities, it's sleeping or eating better, don't choose all of them. Choose one, because you know that if you weight better, for example, you probably more likely to have more energy, which will mean you exercise a little better, and you probably sleep better based on the fact that you're exercising, and then that cycle starts. There are a whole lot of breaking points, you've got to find yours.

Brendan: Just to split environments, let's look at the corporate environment. I know you do a lot of work in that space through The Change Room. Have you noticed any regularity or any connection between white and performance with people?

Matt: Not on the leadership side of things. Not openly, no. However, I would say this in the most delicate way possible. If you can show people that you're looking after yourself, that doesn't mean showing up. Looking after yourself is a personal thing. This is not about walking around and having your abs flying out of your body. Exercise and health is about you.

You can tell when someone's looking out for themselves. That actually elevates their ability to lead, in my opinion. Because if they're leading themselves, that means that they're equipped to lead you. It doesn't mean that they're a marathon runner like that, as I said. That's my own assumption around it. I don't know that to be a fact. I just feel like in that leadership space, that'd be one thing.

Again, what we try to do is if they're not in the best shape or that they feel like they can't be physically, mentally, or emotionally better, why don't you go and ask the people that are in charge how they can help you? Because shying that vulnerability, goodness, I wish I again let that ages ago as a head coach or go look, I don't really know. Can you give me a hand with this because I really value your opinion on this or how I do this better.

That immediately makes people feel safe. It engages them in the purpose that you've got for everyone in the room. That stuff, again, I think I really encouraged these days with the people that we have in our leadership programs.

Brendan: Just to wrap up community, mate, and then interacting with people, what would you suggest to anybody listening to do to enhance their ability to interact?

Matt: Really quickly, again, understand yourself. How are you at your best when you're around other people? The other voice you have in your head when you're driving in your car that just doesn't shut up. Sometimes I feel like pulling them and say, mate, you need to get out. You drive me crazy.

If you have that self-awareness and go, what am I really good at having conversations in human connection? What are the things I'm not so good at? And then just get a little bit better at the things that you are good at.

Again, as I did, I learned probably five years ago to say, I don't know. It was the greatest gift in human connection I've ever had. I don't know. Wow. Why couldn't I say that my whole life? Just things like that of understanding myself better, it makes me easier to be around.

Brendan: What do you think stopped you from saying that earlier?

Matt: My conditioning. Again, I was a head coach, so I thought my job was to know. Even if I didn't know, I'd say I know. Then go away and then try to find the answer.

Again, leadership's changed and evolved as young people have. Thank goodness, people talk about our young people today. I know that's what was said about me when I was a young person. Thank goodness we're evolving.

Again, the leadership I was taught is you need to know. It's your job to know because you're in charge of these young people. That was my conditioning, I didn't know any better. But now, I can just see myself saying to some of the amazing young athletes I had, I need a hand here. You need to tell me what is the best way for us to advance in the right direction. If you could do that, not half the time, but as a leader, if you could do that 30% of the time, you'd be amazed at the impact that it has on your teams.

Brendan: Let's move to the fourth foundation that we're talking about today of the for mental, how we think. How important is this, how we think?

Matt: As I said earlier, apparently, 60,000–70,000 thoughts a day. I'm not encountering too many people that have an issue with underthinking. Our biggest issue with thinking in modern life, I really believe, is that we're doing way too much of it. We overthink things.

Remember that bit we talked about loading and then recovering? We're not doing the recovery piece in the mental area very well at all. We're thinking, and then we're looking at our phones, and thinking more, and then we watch TV. We think some more and then just before bed, we're looking at our phones again, and we're thinking. We get up in the morning, we're thinking. We're having this continual mental stimulation that didn't exist.

Again, when I was a kid, this wasn't prevalent. You didn't have to think all the time. You weren't taking any information all the time. We're not designed to do that. I think, for me, the biggest impact is on what we call mental health. This overthinking, this over analysis of everything, just requires us to have the ability to switch off. I don't think there's too much.

There is some bad information around these days, but I don't think there's too much of it. It's just that we're just trying to process way, way, way too much. There's a consequence to that. You either think constantly without recovering. Just like if you over-train without recovering, there's a consequence.

There's no escaping that. It's not a matter of if I can handle it. No, there's no escaping it. There'll be a consequence to you, and it all manifests in different ways. If someone will physically get high blood pressure and there are a whole lot of different consequences, some people will get a heart condition based on that, some people will get other circuitry issues right to it.

The overthinking side of things is the same thing. Some people will just shut down. They'll just hit a point where their mind will say to them, no more, you're shutting down. Some people will withdraw into themselves. Other people will just start blathering stuff that makes no sense. Eventually, if you don't learn to switch off, there'll be a consequence.

Brendan: If you're in a group and have friendships, they've known people for a long time, are there some early signs around overthinking?

Matt: I'd imagine there is. I have to say that I'm probably not the best one to answer that. The reason being is that I feel comfortable talking about areas where I have the most expertise. In the overthinking side of things, let's not overthink it. Let's just do what we talked about.

Brendan, you're not yourself, mate. If someone you love, someone close to you, or a close friend of yours, says that to you, pay attention. That would be my advice. They're the people that pick it up. They're the first person to pick it up.

If you're not paying attention to yourself overthinking and you're not having that self-awareness that we keep coming back to, I'd be pretty sure that your wife, your family, or a really close friend will go, you just don't seem to be yourself. That's when you need to pay attention.

The tools to stop thinking so much, again, I use meditation. That's my way of escape, of doing it. I tends to handle both the emotional and mental side of things. Again, all of us have got our own way. Some people use that mindfulness. My sister did the coloring in. I've got daughters that paint or do painting, and that's how they switch off. We've all got our own ways.

Brendan: Great example. I think, again, using I guess your traits around analogies, it's almost like you don't want the mind to be a marathon. Do you want it more to be a sprint and make sure we're getting adequate rest between those sprints? Is that fair to say?

Matt: Yeah, but again, some people have roles in life that is a marathon. There's no escaping it for them. Sometimes in the coaching realm, it's a marathon, because you have short weeks and you have long weeks. Sometimes there are no days off and they're long hours, so it's a marathon. But in that marathon, you know when to stop and have a drink.

We're amazing creatures. If I'm thinking for five hours, it doesn't mean I need to stop thinking for five hours. If we just give our brain a rest for 5–10 minutes, it's incredible what it gives us the opportunity to do. How do you switch off? What is your way of switching off? And pay attention to that.

That's how I know by now how to do it. Now, do it. Because if you don't, again, come back to what I said before. There's a consequence to it. At the moment, I'm not enjoying the consequences I'm seeing as outcomes of people overthinking.

Brendan: What works for you in that mental risk space?

Matt: Meditation, definitely. I have a thing called Kelee meditation. I do it twice a day, 75 minutes long. Journaling, it's amazing what comes out of you. When you journal, it's not even about what you're thinking. It's just what comes out of you that's really interesting. And just spending time with friends, laughing. They're my key ones.

When you feel your shoulders drop, because tension tends to travel this way, emotions travel that way, we've all done that both good and bad, but then your shoulders go up, and some people clench their jaw, and some people go like this. Tension travels the opposite direction to emotions.

You know when you're in a safe situation with friends, where you can let all that thinking go. For me, it's my shoulders that go up. I feel my shoulders drop. That's when I go, [...]. I didn't even realize I was tense. But then I sit down with people where I don't have to think. I'm just hanging out, I'm not going to be judged by anyone, we're going to have a good time, we're going to have a laugh, a coffee, a couple of beers, or whatever it is. For me, that's my switch off.

Brendan: In your book, again, I think it was from the age of about 30, we lose X number of brain cells per year. I did the calculation, and I'm up to about 50 million brain cells, which is a worry. But you also flip the coin and start talking about the infinite opportunity to grow, redevelop neural pathways, that sort of stuff. How can we, as we age, continue to develop and improve our mental capacity?

Matt: That's really interesting, isn't it? That's true. I think once we get to 30 years of age, obviously, it goes in different angles, depending on our lifestyle. If I want to drink every day and eat badly, the amount of brain cells I'll lose every day, obviously, the slide downwards will increase.

There are things like Nootropics that you can take that will decrease the speed of the diminishing brain cells, but you're not going to stop it. The neural pathways between cells are infinite. How do we do that? Learning.

Learn one new thing a day. It doesn't need to be quantum physics or rocket science, just learn one new thing a day. What that does is create new neural pathways. It's really interesting when you look at it, because again, I'm a bit of a science geek in this area, but I don’t want to go too deeply into it. You can see that you can stop neural pathways or bad habits and create new habits. You create new neural pathways. It's the way it pinches off and then grows into different directions. It's so fascinating.

We're amazing creatures. You need to use that phenomenal part of us. When do you have to stop learning? Have you met someone who's over 100 and really healthy?

Brendan: Unfortunately, not.

Matt: I suggest you go and find someone. Even if they're in their 80s who are really healthy, they're learning all the time. They certainly got a lot of wisdom to share, and they know we're not too scared of doing that. They're really confident people, but they're always inquisitive. They're always curious about you, they want to learn more about you, and why it's so interesting.

I've probably met 5 or 6 people over 100, but a lot in their 90s. The really healthy ones are so curious. They want to know everything about you. They just ask you questions repeatedly, because they want to learn. By doing that, they're creating new neural pathways. I got wireless brain cells in me, but they’re far smarter than me. Work that out.

Brendan: Mate, the way you're going with all this stuff, the learning you're doing, and the development in this space, you'll probably get to 150 or so.

Matt: There's a guy called Dave Asprey. He's what they call a biohacker. He invented a thing called Bulletproof Coffee, which is butter coffee, but he's into all that.

Longevity is not my thing. Again, I'm so lucky I got to hang around people like Deepak Chopra through a guy who is the publisher of Hay House Australia, I call Little Max. I met Wayne Dyer and so many amazing people. I guess what you'll learn from those really, really smart people, is not about how long you live, it's how you live. We're human beings, so it's about who you’re being, not what you're doing.

Just enjoying whatever timeframe it is that you've got, enjoying as much of it as you can. Not all of us enjoy it. Otherwise, you're not a human, you've arrived from the spaceship. Enjoy what you can. There are plenty of opportunities to enjoy life. There are heaps of them.

Brendan: Matt, you've mentioned a few names there. Now I think it's appropriate for me to ask you, who or what has had the greatest impact on your own leadership journey?

Matt: I thought about this one, because everyone has, to a degree. Everyone that I've been led by or I've seen as leaders, we tend to learn by contrast. We know what fast is because we know what slow is, what's hot and cold. Some leaders taught me what not to do, and some leaders taught me what it was to do.

I had a guy called Paul Singer, who I worked for as a recreation officer when I was in local government, at Drummoyne Council. I didn't realize at the time, by the way, but when I reflect back through all the amazing people I've been exposed to, Paul was probably the person that empowered me the most to believe in myself. He was the one that showed that vulnerability as a leader that I talked about earlier.

You need to work that one out yourself, man. I haven't really got that covered. He showed belief in me that I can work it out. I felt safe in his environment. I knew the purpose that he had. We were in a community services environment, I knew he had the purpose of serving people. That really resonated with me.

We didn't sit down and have leadership meetings with him or anything like that. He just made me feel safe, he made me feel empowered, and he made me enjoy what I did, not by saying go away and enjoy this, but by the environment that he created. I always look back on that little period of my life.

I think I've worked with him for probably 18 months, two years. I look back on that and just think, wow, I wish I took a lot more of what Paul taught me than some other people. I had guys like Brian Smith that I worked under. He was so smart and taught me how to structure being a head coach. It was the things that I forgot rather than what I needed to learn that perhaps got in my way.

Brendan: Mate, I normally close up there. But what I thought would be a great idea is chapter seven of your book, Pint Glasses for Arses. To close out, do you mind sharing that story? I think it is just so relevant to what you're about and everything we've spoken about today.

Matt: I guess the thing about it was, first of all, I'll give you the theme first. It's about balance in life. I was coaching. This was in the year 2000. We won a Challenge Cup at Bradford. The Challenge Cup at that time was right in the middle of the season because they moved from winter to summer, but the Challenge Cup was such a major event. We won the Challenge Cup, and it was an amazing experience.

It's still hard to explain, because the Challenge Cup was a little bit like the Melbourne Cup in Australia. Everyone becomes a horse racing expert. Everyone in the UK, all of a sudden, is engaged with rugby league, a sport that's not a big sport there, and yet you get 90,000 people show up at the ground.

Anyway, we won the Challenge Cup. I took them away to give them some opportunity to enjoy it, even though it was in the middle of the season. There was so much momentum on that enjoyment that the partying kept going, and I could see that it was impacting our performance levels.

One day, I was probably a little bit cranky every now and then. You'll understand, I started coaching when I was 32, so I was a pretty young head coach. At that stage, a guy was about 35–36. I brought in three pint glasses and I said to them, this is your family pint glass, this is your professional pint glass, you as a footy player, and this is your social pint glass.

I explained to them. I started filling them up. I said, if you get your professional pint glass and you overfill it, it will impact your family life and your social life, and eventually, your football life will be impacted by that. Then I said to them, if some of you have had kids for the first time this year and I can see that you overfilled your family glass, that's impacted your social and your footy life. Eventually, if you don't get that balance back, there are a lot of swear words that went with this, by the way, that I won't share.

I basically had two pints and I said, I want to show you what's going on at the moment. I just filled up the social pint glass until there was beer flying all over the floor and all that stuff. I said, that's where we are at the moment. Our social pint glasses are overfilled, and your families are suffering. I know that because your wives are contacting me, and your moms and dads are contacting me. I can tell you for a fact that our professional life is being impacted by this as well.

It was weird that I've never really progressed past that thing, Brendan, of how important balance in life is. You know what the funny thing about that story is I still have players from the UK always share that story with me, slightly different. Again, always sounds better with Yorkshire vernacular.

I think, for everyone, find your balance in life. It's so important. At that time, it was professional, family, and social. Now it's probably a little different life. It's how we integrate, because remember, we used to have work-life balance. That was family-work-life balance when I grew up, and then it was work-life balance, and then it was work-life integration. Now it's just that life balance.

In the pandemic, people were getting out of their bed walking two meters, and they're in their office sitting here doing what you and I are doing now. We lost balance. You got to fill those pint glasses up to the right level. Drink one of them, that's for sure. There's nothing like a good pint of northern ale, but finding a balance in life is, again, a key theme of what I like to share with people.

Brendan: Matt, there are so many aspects to leadership, we know that. But some of the key things that I believe around effective messaging, which is the story you've just shared, and people remembering that stuff. Leading yourself and that ability to improve ourselves and mastery, again, you're living and breathing that. Obviously, your ability to connect with people has been pretty first class over a long period of time, because you've got results from high-level people achieving high-level things in high-level organization environments.

Mate, well done on what you're doing. You've helped my neural pathways today because I've learned a lot. Your books helped my neural pathways a lot. It's been a pleasure connecting with you, mate, and an absolute pleasure having you as a guest on The Culture of Things podcast.

Matt: Thanks very much, Brendan. To all your listeners, again, if you need anything, don't hesitate to get in touch. If you have read the book, your feedback would be highly valued.

Brendan: Thank you, mate.

If you can’t lead yourself, how are you going to lead other people? Looking after yourself across the physical, mental, emotional, community and spiritual areas is foundational to your credibility as a leader. Physical health is the one you can’t hide from. In my experience, this is a sign of mental weakness and ill-discipline in a leader.

If you’re leading people and encouraging them to have mental strength and discipline in their work, do you think they’ll take you seriously? As a leader, take a good hard look at yourself. Are your actions congruent with the actions you expect of others? If not, will you be vulnerable enough to enter the change room?

These were my 3 key takeaways from my conversation with Matt.

My first key takeaway, leaders lead themselves first. Do you remember what’s said in the safety briefing on a plane? Fit your own mask before helping others. Take the right actions across your physical, mental, emotional, community and spiritual self. Be disciplined in these areas and lead yourself first.

My second key takeaway, leaders understand the power of simple. Matt’s superpower is turning difficult concepts into simple. He has the ability to process knowledge, and make it accessible to people through simple messaging This interview, along with his book are great examples of his ability to simplify Leaders understand the power of simple.

My third key takeaway, leaders pay attention to their emotional state. We feel 24/7, meaning we’re in an emotional state all day, every day. It’s the biggest driver behind how we think and how we act. Ask yourself ‘how do you feel’ regularly. Listen to your answer and make the changes to improve. Leaders always pay attention to their emotional state.

In summary, my three key takeaways were, leaders lead themselves first, leaders understand the power of simple, leaders pay attention to their emotional state.

What are your key takeaways from the interview? Let me know at thecultureofthings.com, on YouTube or via our socials.

Thanks for joining me. Remember, the best outcome is on the other side of a genuine conversation.

Outtro (music): Thank you for listening to The Culture of Things podcast with Brendan Rogers. Please visit thecultureofleadership.com to access the show notes. If you love The Culture of Things podcast, please subscribe, rate and give a review on Apple podcasts and remember a healthy culture is your competitive advantage.