What happens when the life that looks successful from the outside is quietly falling apart on the inside?

Nick Coats is a former British soldier, endurance athlete and performance coach. After seven years with the Royal Regiment of Scotland, he moved into oil broking and pursued the things he thought success was supposed to look like: career, money, status and more. But behind that outward success, Nick was becoming angry, isolated and deeply unhappy.

Eventually, sitting at his desk, the pressure became overwhelming. He describes feeling “trapped by this invisible force” and reaching a point where he knew something had to change.

In this deeply personal episode of the mentl space, Nick talks with Scott Armstrong about shame, masculinity and why asking for help once felt like admitting weakness. They explore the pressure men can put on themselves to appear successful, the danger of constantly saying “I’m fine”, and what can happen when identity, brotherhood and community disappear.

Nick also confronts a more complicated side of endurance sport. Physical challenge became an escape and, at times, a form of punishment. His relationship with it has since changed. After completing a 230km ultramarathon through the Amazon rainforest, he began thinking less about collecting medals and more about purpose, values and what difficult challenges could mean beyond himself.

Now he is preparing for an extraordinary 1,700km journey through Albania, Greece and Turkey, linking two ultramarathons and raising awareness and funds around suicide prevention and veterans’ mental health. But this conversation is ultimately about much more than running. It is about what happens after rock bottom, why the “lone wolf” ideal can leave men dangerously isolated, how we redefine success when money and status stop being enough, and why sometimes recovery begins with one conversation and one step forward.

As Nick puts it, “everyone’s going through something.”

His message is simple: do not let shame stop you reaching out. Having the conversation can itself be empowering.

Chapters

00:00 The 1,700km challenge: why Nick is running from Albania to Turkey
04:15 From soldier and oil broker to a search for purpose
08:13 Rock bottom: “I felt trapped by this invisible force”
10:57 Shame, weakness and why asking for help felt so difficult
16:37 When endurance became punishment, and how that changed
23:21 Young men, masculinity and the search for identity and belonging
28:29 Losing the uniform, becoming a “lone wolf” and finding community again
34:46 Money, status and the arrival fallacy: redefining success
40:54 Why lone wolves still need a pack
49:14 What does a real man look like? Courage, action and doing the work