Moment 57 - Why You Need To Forget About The End Result: Sir David Brailsford

00:02One of the things that definitely felt very original when I was reading about your philosophy is this idea of forgetting about the results because thinking about the results or the outcome of your performance can reduce the chances of success in that performance. That's very unusual because in teams, in competition, in business, we think about the result, we think about closing the deal or, you know, what and what that will mean. And we kind of imagine ourselves in that moment of getting the medal around our neck or that business deal won.

00:32Why is that not a good idea? Well, if an event happens or something happens, the first thing that's going to happen to you without you even knowing is you're going to have an unconscious emotional reaction to it. And it's emotion. You're not thinking it through. It's just purely emotion. And that's going to be either sort of a fight, flight, freeze response, really. But that emotional response will happen quicker than you know it before you can go in and get any logic or get any rationale into it.

01:00And, of course, in any kind of situation like, you know, what could be perceived as a threat state where you're putting yourself in some kind of threatening scenario, be it damage my pride or, you know, what happens to people, they start thinking, well, what happens if I win? What happens if I lose? What happens if I look ridiculous? I don't want to look ridiculous. I'm under threat. And that then becomes, you know, very easy to get emotionally hijacked by that.

01:25So then you're purely ringing on an emotion, which is inconsistent, it's illogical, you know, it's not a good way for you to be basing, it's not a good place for you to be basing your behaviour. But if you understand that and you think, okay, well, look, I understand that it's normal that I'm going to put myself in a threatening scenario. So if I worry about, let my emotion take over and I worry about what happens if I succeed, what happens if I fail, what happens if this, what happens if that, then it's actually pointless exercise.

01:56and if you can train slowly, recognise and train your mind to go, okay, I know what's happening here, this is just emotion, I'm going to put it to one side. Now then, let me separate this, whatever I'm doing, out into two things. We can have a dream, I want to win the Tour de France, it's a dream. My ability to win it or our ability or anybody else's to win it is I'm going to do my absolute best to try and win it, but other people are going to try and stop me and other people are going to try and do something.

02:20It's stuff beyond our control that can impact on that. So if you set your goal as I'm going to win, you're going to agitate nonstop because it actually is out of your control. Whereas if you set your dream and say, this is what I'd really, really like to happen, I'll go all in, I'll do everything I can. I'm fully committed to that. But let me break it down into targets, which is, well, I could get to the ideal weight. I could do the proper training.

02:48I could do the, you know, follow a nutritional plan that's going to give me the optimal energy. and, you know, I can train my tactics. I can really work hard to get a fantastic team around me, build good rapport, build confidence in my teammates. These are all things that you can do. And so if you say, okay, let's leave the dream over there for a while, but I'm going to go after the things I can do, and you base your plan around the things that you can actually control and do, you'll be on fire.

03:13You'll be on fire. You'll be absolutely on fire. And the dream might happen, and it might not, and you'll be absolutely delighted and the best thing ever if it happens. And if it doesn't, then you might be absolutely devastated. But you've got to leave it as a dream and you've got to understand that actually worrying about the consequence of an event is detrimental to the process and the performance and the chances of you achieving that event. So you park that, go after your targets and go, right, I'm going process, not outcome.

03:42And we talk a lot about process, not outcome. And when you catch yourselves, you know, it's emotion. the end so of course we do get hijacked and of course we do get fearful or you know a bit panicked and you've got to you've got to have a system whereby you can talk to yourself a little bit you can bring yourself back around and focus on the now and the process of now rather than worrying about the future and then you can come back and concentrate on the process get back into the now and you know some of the athletes would have a routine where they'd tie the undo and tie the shoelaces again or they do they'd have a little you know a little process that they'd tap into and they'd go into that into that and bring their mind back into the present and stop worrying about the future and of course the penalty kicks the best example yeah that's what i was thinking about ronaldo stood there yeah i'm sure they they bag 100 in training yeah exactly in the euros final exactly you know and if you take the crowd out and take a penalty those guys are so accurate and And the signal from the brain down into the muscle to contract in a certain way, that happens and the accuracy and the repeatability of that is absolutely massive.

04:48Put a crowd in there and what changes? Nothing changes physically, it's all between your ears. And so how can you train that? And mental skills can be trained just as much as you, we all know that we want to get fit and strong and you go to the gym and you know that you're going to overload your body and you give it time to adapt and it's adaptation that's going to make it a little bit stronger. And it's the same with a mind. You know, you can train your mind.

05:11And I think that's what certainly working with Steve was an eye-opener. As well as I think probably the biggest eye-opener for most people is it gives you, once you realise you've got like an emotional brain and a logical brain and, you know, a bit of a memory computer side going on, then it gives you insight into yourself and why you are behaving and feeling like you are and some of the assumptions you're making about other people. then you've got to start with yourself first.

05:38If you can get that little bit of insight, why do I feel how I'm feeling? Why do I respond like I do? What triggers me? What's my best self look like? And what's my sort of, you know, not the best self. Why am I different? Why sometimes am I behaving in this kind of, you know, this second or shadow version of myself? And why am I sometimes in my best self? What's happening there? Why can't I just be my best self all the time? Surely that must be doable.

06:02So take a bit of time to understand it and pick it. And some people just maybe haven't been educated. I certainly wasn't until really I sort of stopped and started to look at this stuff. And then you realise, you think, wow, a lot of my behaviour, a lot of my life was driven by emotion. It wasn't driven by the real me who could be calm and logical and think things through and quite, you know, a lot of passion and feelings and caring. And yet at times I could be something else, you know.

06:30And I think understanding that's fundamental, I think. I don't think there's any excuse for that. No, I agree. both points sounded very similar in fact because on one hand you're saying with your goals only go after the things you can control like really focus on those things and in the same way when we're talking about personal responsibility of self you're saying you can't control other people so yeah but the thing that you know maybe you do have control over in your life is your behavior how you act how you conduct yourself and then kind of leave the rest to well i think you can understand how other people are responding and how they're feeling so you can accept that if somebody's, you know, somebody's in a very, well, it's two things really. I think first and foremost, ambition is a big thing not to forget, you know, what's your level of, you know, you can be incredibly ambitious. Why can't we be the best in the world at something?

07:16Why can't we be the first to do something? What's stopping us doing something that nobody in the human race has ever done before? Nothing as far as I can see, you know, so I think there's a, it's, you know, you've got to have that ambition, enthusiasm and the belief we We can do whatever we want to do, you know, and really stretch that. And then I think the next bit, really, the target is more like the how to get there. It's more like the boring stuff to get there, you know, so it's like head and heart, really.

07:43And I think that if you understand yourself, then you should be able to put yourself in somebody else's shoes and if they're having a tough time or if somebody else is angry or there's something else going on with them, you know, rather than just dive in and respond to the behaviour you're seeing at face value, why not stop and think about it a little bit is this person in trouble what's causing this where are they coming from what's going on you know try and understand it and if they're just responding emotionally to something and you allow yourself to immediately respond emotionally back it doesn't really get anywhere you know so so you'd better hold back and wait and find out and try anyway not always easy but not always easy no no i struggle with that yeah i struggle with that especially being in a environment where my my time is so feel so precious right it's always there's so many things i could be doing and i'm you're exactly you're exactly the same i know i've you know i know people that work with you i know you're very very busy person so it's it's tough in the moment to stop and pause and to have patience when the rest of my life is ran on like efficiency yeah you know what i mean it's difficult yeah

08:47i guess in in my world you know i'm out to try and help people and i do push people and we've got high standards and you know you do want to level commit i don't like laziness for example i just can't that that would really hurt that gets me you know but then i have to manage it and think okay well if they that's what they want there's no problem this just this isn't the environment for them you know but in the main i think understanding challenges and and um setting standards and boundaries and working to all of that is important Thank you.