[00:01] Katie: Welcome to the Focus B show, where Katie Stoddart, high performance coach, interviews experts around the world in performance and mindfulness. Now here's your host, Katie.

[00:32] Katie: And welcome to a brand new episode of the Focus B show today. I'm here with Lee Chambers. Lee is an environmental psychologist and is also one of the top 50 under 50 entrepreneurs for Bam. He is a radio host and speaker at Ribble FM. Thank you so much for joining the show today, Lee.

[00:55] Lee: It's a pleasure to be with you today.

[00:57] Katie: Katie, you're also a mental well being expert or well being consultant, and I'm wondering why do you feel that well being is such an important part of peak performance?

[01:11] Lee: Yeah, so it's so often, in my experience, something that is underutilized. So we kind of know in the world of sport, and I spent a few years working in elite sport here in the UK. And what I started to see is that while in sport, well being as a tool for performance is actually quite utilized. There is a lot of aspects of well being, from nutrition through to sleep, through to mental resilience, through to emotional balance that's actually worked on in a sporting capacity to ensure that people are able to perform at an elite level on a weekly basis. And then for me, coming back out into the world of organizations, seeing that actually it's very much lower down the list of priorities, even in places that are pushing for high levels of peak performance. So for me, it suddenly became this mission to say, okay, I've got a range of qualifications in a number of different modalities. I've experienced different industries from elite sport to corporate finance through to local government, where well being is treated differently in each aspect and element. However, its importance is fundamental. And my massive passion really is helping people understand that your well being is actually your foundations and it's actually the cornerstone of performance. And we so often look higher up the chain to efficiency elements above, when actually there's quite a lot to be gained from looking at the foundation of well being.

[03:02] Katie: Absolutely. This is exactly how I see things. We totally see eye to eye on this. I also feel that well being is one of the pillar and foundations for high performance. Why do you think that this isn't common knowledge? Why do you think some people still neglect well being or still think they can have high levels of performance without taking care of their own well being, sleep, nutrition and exercise, for instance?

[03:31] Lee: There's a lot of different reasons, Katie. Suppose the first one on a very fundamental level is that many of us actually know in terms of looking after ourselves, what we should do on a simple level, what we should eat, what we probably shouldn't, that we probably should sleep a bit more, we probably should move a little bit more. We all know this in principle, but in the impulsivity of life. We just tend to do things that are not always that good for us because it's very much a compounding effect with well being, like one bad night's sleep. Yeah, it makes you struggle the next day, but it's not a complete disaster in the long term. And the same with eating too much pizza, even though pizza is very nice, but it's a compounding element. So if you continue to make choices that are not beneficial to your performance, it impacts you in an acute way at the time, but then that fades and you can get back into a level of performance. What you don't see is the fact that those continual poor decisions actually gradually decrease your performance. And that compounds over time to a point where over a period of a year, it can have a significant impact on your base level of performance. But because that's very incremental, you don't really see it. And then suddenly at some point you realize how high you are performing here and how it's dropped off. But you don't see that day to day. You see that in a longer term. So because it's incremental, you don't tend to see it and are aware of it as quickly.

[05:15] Katie: Yes, that's a great point and I think it also works obviously the other way around, the up way too. So if you start taking more care of your sleep, if you change the way you eat, if you exercise a bit more, you might not immediately notice the effect. You might feel you have a bit more energy, but after doing this for a year, just like you said, then you really notice, oh, I'm actually able to work a lot better or have more energy during the daytime, like you say, it sort of builds up. Is there one specific area that you feel the people in organizations, because you said you work a lot with organizations, the people neglect most.

[05:54] Lee: Yeah. So if we kind of just hook back into the last question for a second. The biggest issue that well being has faced in an organizational perspective is it doesn't provide data driven outcomes very often. And business processes tend to have a return on investment that's visible, tend to have metrics that are measured at the beginning, in the middle, then it's evolved based on the metrics and the data towards an outcome. And well being has in so many ways been treated as a oh, we're not going to measure that. Why not? My whole practice is around data driven well being where we analyze what's in place. We then use that analysis to build strategy and then tailor delivery. So it's more engaging. But as we kind of look back in terms of what's the biggest thing, for me, sleep is the cornerstone of performance and of health. It's absolutely pivotal because it affects every single biological process in our bodies and a very high level without going a whole episode into sleep, which I could easily do. But it impacts our hormonal regulation and because it impacts so many of our hormones it actually has a knock on effect to so many aspects of our lives all the way from our emotional regulation. It makes us see more negativity, it makes us swing from negative to positive more easily. It puts a little bit of mist on our mindset. We're less able to see possibilities and options. What it actually does is it makes us spin our wheels quicker meaning we find it harder to disconnect from tasks and reconnect to others. We end up with levels of what we always call brain fog. But what it also does is it affects our leptin and ghrelin levels which then change our eating habits more often than not for the worse. And then that spikes our blood sugar and puts us in a place where we feel even more tired and then not even looking at the fact because it affects our emotional balance. We're more likely to fall into conflict. We're more likely to communicate in a judgmental way. We're more likely to find ourselves in situations where normally we wouldn't do. And the way I actually put it in an organizational setting is think about that two year old who started to misbehave. Normally they're a good boy or girl but they're tired, they need their afternoon nap and suddenly they're a little terror. They're everywhere. And what do the parents say? Oh it's okay, it's okay, sorry, they just need a nap. And that is what most human beings in organizations need because they're so underslept. They've got used to being underslept and they can't even alchemize what high performance is because they've not laid the foundations every night to get there. And because sleep is so pivotal, like when I was working with the athletes they were sleeping for between eleven and 12 hours a day. They were taking naps. To get peak performance you need to recover. And sleep is our biggest form of recovery and recuperation and there's a lot of processes that take place in sleep that you can't get from anywhere else. And we all kind of know that back in the old leadership culture of well I only need to sleep for 4 hours, I'm a machine. Sleep is wasting time. Sleep is an unnecessary distraction. But actually now we've started to see just how pivotal it is.

[09:41] Katie: Yes. I'm not surprised that sleep is, first of all, one of the main, like you said, cornerstones, but also one of the areas people neglect most because people really know what they should eat and don't eat. And people realize the importance of exercise but they often brush off sleep. Sometimes radically but sometimes maybe just having 7 hours or six and a half and thinking that's fine when they maybe need eight or nine. And so it's just gradually diminishing slightly the amount of sleep that they're having. But like you said this accumulates has a compound effect and they're tired and they can't work at their highest level of performance. So this makes sense to me. And I also saw you did a course on sleep. So that's really interesting. So I know you know what you're talking about. So for the listeners, tune into this, really pick up on what he's saying on sleep. It's essential. Matthew Walkers, in his book on sleep, also covers this really in depth. Yes, it's such an important aspect and I do feel that people neglect it. And one more point that came to my mind while you were speaking about it is in terms of the emotional impact in our mood. This obviously also affects our motivation, not only in terms of work, but also, and I've noticed this in myself if I'm feeling tired, I'm a lot less likely to exercise, or if I do exercise, I won't exercise as well. So, again, you said this with the nutrition that sleep impacts what you eat, but then it also impacts how you exercise. And given that these three are amongst definitely the top elements of our well being, it's like you said, sleep is the cornerstone. So thank you for sharing all of this. In terms of sleep and the importance. I'm really curious about the metrics that you use. So I find it fascinating, the idea of measuring your well being. I know it can be done. I do this partly myself. Could you tell us a bit more, without going too far into details, but some ways that maybe the listeners could tune into to measure their own well being?

[11:42] Lee: Yeah, so it's interesting because I quite often use it in a business perspective. So we kind of help businesses to find ways to attach well being metrics to their own KPIs, to be able to show the impact of implementing bespoke and tailored well being for their employees. So from a personal perspective, we now have a lot of wearable tech, which gives us metrics and being able to leverage that, it's important. Naturally. What I see is that there's a lot of wearable tech and a lot of data being generated, but very little understanding of the data itself unless it's turned into something that people can then appreciate. And by tracking things, we're able to become more aware of what we are doing and what we're not doing. So, for example, there's a lot of devices that track how much movement that you make. Are they 100% correct? No, they're not. But they give you a really good foundational base point for how much you're moving and then the ability to track what we eat, for example. But these are not metrics that are particularly useful for a business. Businesses are more interested in how engaged people feel in work. They're more interested in how people are rating their level of happiness in their role within the organization, feelings of belonging, feelings of having space to express and participate in the workplace. And these metrics do show how people feel, because what we see from a psychological perspective is people will withdraw from work the lower their well being goes. And understanding that when people take more authority for the health behaviors, that is linked to feeling more in tune with the work that they do. So they're able to attach their values to the work that they do. They feel like they are valued in the workplace, that they are appreciated, and that they are heard. So these are ways to get metrics regarding people's well being by not asking them the simple question of how much do you sleep every night? Because that is something that I do through the programs that I deliver. But what I actually do is find ways to get well being metrics that businesses can look at and think, we can do something about that. Because so often you get that disconnect where a business says, it's nothing to do with me how much they sleep. It's nothing to do with me how much they eat. Yeah, I can bring people in to say, you got to sleep more. Yeah, I can take the vending machine out, and I can put a fruit ball in instead. But actually, at a very foundational level, well being within an organization doesn't start with the workshops. It doesn't start with the free gym membership, and it doesn't start with all the top layer stuff. It starts with employees feeling psychologically safe, feeling that they're in a workplace culture where they can express themselves, feeling like they have some level of autonomy to grow into their role and grow as a human being. And they feel that the leadership is actually congruent. So what the leadership says is what the leadership does. The values of the leader are the values of the company. And I can attach my values to them and be on that vision, that mission, and that journey. My work feels purposeful, and therefore I can sit down and perform at a higher level because I am engaged, I am motivated. I'm tying me to the business. And then you become a team rather than a group with a collective why to drive forward. And that is another massive driver of performance, because when human beings all drive together in a collective direction, you make a lot more progress than if you're having to carry the weight east, west, south, and north at the same time as everyone scatters and has to be brung in again. And scatters and brung in again. For my metrics, it comes through looking at individuals. Can you start taking some authority, measure what you're eating, track it? In fact, start to go a little bit more experimental and think about how you feel after you've eaten something. Think about how you feel after you've only slept five and a half hours. Actually document elements of the day and start to see how it impacts your performance because what all those things that we've just been through it does. When we are underslept, we are hormonally signaled not to be active because our body is still trying to tell us to recover. So we're less likely to engage in exercise and you're going to have to convince yourself and fight against that willpower. That's also lessened because you're under slept. And that impacts our consistency. It starts to break our habit cycles and it's never unfortunately for the negative habits because we tend to fall back into those when our ability to make more proactive decisions starts to fail. And if we kind of look at the concentration and focus that we lose, you just start to see how it's all interconnected. And if you can connect those dots and ensure that you're gradually moving those dots a tiny bit forward each day, that's where your incremental improvement comes. But they compound together. And that's the biggest part of my work is to help people understand that don't just go on this massive diet and try and push nutrition and change your life. It's not sustainable, it won't embed. But actually let's go. 1% on sleep, 1% on nutrition, 1% on mindset, 1% on resilience, 1% on habits so small that you can't excuse yourself from not making that little bit of effort. But that little bit of effort makes you become so much more over time and it helps you understand just how peak performance works. You don't get 10% in a day. Even if you're starting very low, you're still going to struggle for 10% in a day. But it becomes to a point where the marginal gains are tiny. But if you want to chase that performance, you've got to start to prioritize well being. And that does include a few sacrifices but those sacrifices are investments. If you're searching for peak performance.

[18:51] Katie: You shared so many interesting insights here it's hard to know which direction to go in. One point that was super interesting that you just talked about was how well being also comes from good leadership. So you were saying if it feels congruent, if the leaders are congruent with what they're doing and it's aligned with the company, then it's easier for the employees to be motivated to be engaged while they're working. And this then has an impact on their well being and them feeling they have a purpose and enjoying their work and also them feeling that they're working in a collective way driven by the same why. So I love this sort of correlation with leadership and well being because essentially this is also everything I do and believe in because I think high performance and leadership are directly connected and then well being is a huge aspect of this. So I might not put it on my LinkedIn profile that I do well being but if you're into high performance and leadership and you don't then I don't know what you're doing because it's such an important aspect. The second part that you were talking about right now I love. And this really speaks to my old self because as a hyperachiever and probably a lot of you listening also if you're interested in high performance, you might be a hyperachiever. This is great because you're striving for excellence. But on the other hand, it can hold you back because you do exactly what you mentioned. You do something that isn't sustainable by wanting to change your life 180 degrees. Increase by 15% your exercise or your well being or your performance and then it doesn't work. And I did this for years until I realized exactly what you're saying, pretty much little by little. First build a habit after reading Atomic Habits by James Clear. First do it two minutes every day and then once the habit is in, you can increase it. But it took me forever and I think a lot of the hyperachievers listening out there will probably identify with this. There's a tendency to suddenly have this urge and impulse and impatience to have a fantastic morning routine or to exercise lows or whatever it is or radically change your diet. It's possible but extremely unlikely and more likely to get burnt out. So the sustainable approach is great. So thank you for sharing this about the 1%. I think it's so essential.

[21:14] Lee: Yeah, and I think that like you say, Katie, for a lot of hyperachievers and I've been there myself, you tend to have almost a type form that drives you towards a level of perfectionism. So you are chasing optimization in every area of your life. And what that quite often does is it's something that quite often comes from quite a young age and you are driven, you are focused and you are someone who is going to drive towards those outcomes. But what sometimes comes from that is a level of perfectionism where you want that optimum no and optimal becomes perfect. And the truth is perfect doesn't exist because human beings, it's an ongoing journey. We're asked on topic, so what happens is we never know our potential. It's unknowable. But we're chasing that with such vigor and two things can happen. The first is you actually become tunnel visioned and start to lose sight of those interconnected aspects. And secondly, we drive forward with so much power that we actually start to box ourselves into a place where really perfection is driving us to a point where our floor becomes our ceiling. And we haven't got anywhere to move because we've rose the floor up so high in the chase of perfection that we actually got trapped literally between a glass ceiling and a glass floor and we've been squashed on a daily basis. And that almost creates this level of anxiety, this underlying feeling of progress. But it almost starts to progress sidewards in this thin gap you've left yourself. So a lot of my work is about helping people to kind of remove that perfectionism mindset and actually start to look and become an optimalist so how can we achieve what's optimal rather than what's perfect? Because they are two significantly different things. And as we start to kind of push that, again comes with the small incremental, the small changes, the actionable steps. And it's really important to have that really big goal, but to actually decouple it from your calendar. Because if you've got a really big goal, if you see that every day by making little bits of progress, you will get there. But with this type of mentality you'll see that and you'll be disappointed because you want to make bigger steps. So actually by decoupling it from your calendar and not saying I'm going to be the president in a year, what you actually do is you still have that massive compelling vision but you've not put like a really rigid timescale on it. So you're not pressuring yourself. Because what I found is what that does is it puts us in a position where we then try and go for larger gains even when we're quite high on that performance curve. And that actually generates anxiety. Now, in my experience, that anxiety causes people to struggle to sleep, it causes them to struggle to switch off. And the biggest problem with sleep for high performers is anxiety. It stops them sleeping because they are chasing, they're full of ideas, they're constantly switched on, they're always in motion. But when you sleep, you have to stop. Your body has to find a place to rest and recuperate because you're spinning those wheels very fast. But you need the little mechanics to come in and oil that wheel. When you're sleeping and when you can't switch off and you can't fall to sleep, that's when it starts to become an issue because that then compounds your struggling performance and you're still pushing for a really big performance, the gap widens and you feel disenfranchised, you feel frustrated. That's when people push themselves to injury physically, to sometimes to disorder in terms of sleep, psychologically levels of stress and ultimately stress in itself is a great performance tool. But not when it becomes unmanageable and it becomes something that is chronic and ever present. Because then we're not able to utilize the positive elements of stress to really benefit our performance. And a great way to actually help is to kind of remove that perfectionist mindset and start to look at a more optimalistic mindset, but also to find ways to disconnect, to stop that wheel spinning, to have moments where we actually honor our ultradium rhythms, which run about 60 to 90 minutes, and then find a way to disconnect for 15 minutes so you can recharge that battery. You can disconnect from the inputs and stimulation we get, which is so much in this world that we live in. And ways to do that meditation mindfulness, what it allows you to do is flick that off, switch in your mind. And the beauty is that by switching that off for ten minutes every hour or two, we're able to then switch it on again and reconnect more deeply to the work that we do, allowing us to work deeply, which creates workplace performance in a way that you simply don't get if you try and work through. And with so many people remote working at the moment, it's become even more difficult because a lot of those anchors that would take us out and make us mindful in a workplace are not present at home and domestic environments. So many have not designed for working. So yeah, when it comes to that, let's look at perfection and realize we're not chasing perfection, we're chasing optimal. And that we can start to remove the anxiety that stops us sleeping by actually practicing switching off. Because using your breath, using mindfulness, using meditation, finding ways to maybe journal aspects of your mind so that slows it down a lot of different ways. There will be a way that works for you that helps you to switch off and get a more regenerative night of sleep.

[27:34] Katie: Wonderful. You've touched on so many different things. Wonderful. Yes. I love what you said in terms of perfection and optimizing, which are very different, but also how just driving for goals is actually exhausting and can be demoralizing. And when I first discovered coaching, I was all about goals. It was goals, goals, goals. I had goals everywhere. I was obsessed about keeping track of my goals, a little steps, a milestone. And after a while, I realized there was something almost unhealthy about this. There was something almost constantly feeling dissatisfied with where I was not celebrating when I reached my goal, but straightaway aiming for the next. And I really noticed this. And now I'm all about the journey. Literally. I'm obsessed about this every single day. I'm trying to make every hour, pretty much every minute, enjoyable or peaceful or happy. And I have my vision, like you said, you have a compelling vision in the background. But I've changed my focus. I used to focus a lot on the goal and the journey was just a way to get there. And now I'm really focusing on the journey and it's almost as if, you know what, even if the goal doesn't matter, as long as I'm enjoying my conversation with you now, and we're both getting benefits from this, that matters more to me than if my podcast becomes number one. But before it would have been, let's make this conversation freaking amazing so I can ensure my podcast is number one. And now, no, let's make it amazing because this is all we have. We have this moment right now. So this sort of change of mindset is also something that I'm hoping to convey to the world, to my clients, to my friends, because it makes you so much happier if you're always striving for something that you can't see or achieve immediately, it makes you very impatient, can make you frustrated. And then when you do reach it and I had a talk with this guy, Phil Palucca, on the podcast a few weeks ago, and he said that when he did become a millionaire, he was actually depressed. He said this on the show for a week or so. And I thought, yeah, this is perfect. This is the perfect metaphor. People believe you reach the goal, you're happy. But that's not what happened. So thank you again for highlighting this. And just before we finish, if you could tell people maybe how they can start to be more mindful or have a bit of a meditation practice for those of you again who are listening, if you already have one, fantastic. For those of you who don't, why do you think Lee is so essential? And how have you seen it transform maybe your life or the people that you're working with?

[29:59] Lee: Yeah, so the biggest thing about finding a type of meditation or mindfulness that works for you is that what it allows you to do is it allows you to flip that switch in a world that's constantly trying to switch you on, trying to stimulate you and pull you. And what that does is actually, like you just said, Katie, it starts to take away that Outcome obsession that so many people who are high performers have. And we suddenly, when we start to meditate and just relax and disconnect, it allows us to actually see that we have lots of small moments of micro, moments of positivity resonance every single day, but because we're so Outcome obsessed, we just run past them. And I think the biggest thing for me is, and I do a lot of this with my clients, but ultimately we all want to be happy. That's a universal human trait. And so many of us are looking at happiness as that island that we're gradually rowing towards on our little boats of life. But actually what happens is when we focus on that happiness being on the island, firstly, we don't see the sunsetting on the river, we don't see the little turtles swimming past, we don't see the colorful fish floating around. We just are focused on the island. But happiness isn't the island. Happiness is the star in the sky. It's the star in the sky that is a compass that guides your decisions and you're gradually moving towards happiness. You're never going to get there. But by sailing your little boat in that direction and just doing it slowly, which means slowing down with meditation, with breathing, suddenly you have those moments to look over the side of your boat and see the dolphins. You see the shimmering waves, you see the coral. You see all these little things that actually make you happy. Because once you take that step back, you realize that by disconnecting, you are able to. Open your eyes and take those blinkers off and stop looking at the island and look at the little beautiful things that we have in the world around us.

[32:24] Katie: I love this analogy with the boat. I used to work offshore as a hydrographic engineer. Stand up the sea. And I love both. And it's so beautiful the way you portrayed happiness as this far non reachable island when actually it's around us at all times and how important it is. And it's just another way of portraying how we live our lives every day in the strive for fulfillment and success. And how actually, if we pause and slow down, we can actually see it. And this is why I love to relate high performance and mindfulness, because I feel they go together well. Being is also part of it. Leadership is also and altogether, they can make us feel happy, fulfilled, or at least at peace pretty much every moment of every day, or at least every single day during given moments. So thank you so much, Lee, for all your wisdom. It's been amazing to have you on the show. Where can people find you?

[33:21] Lee: So the best place for people to find me would be at Essentialise Co UK or@leechambers.org and there you can find my blogs, my services and all my social profiles.

[33:35] Katie: Amazing. Thank you so, so much, Lee. Thank you.

[33:40] Katie: Thank you for listening to the Focus B show. We would love to hear your feedback. Let us know in a review how this episode inspired you. Keep buzzing.