Episode 84: Calm Is a Competitive Advantage for High Achievers

Episode Summary

Most high achievers aren’t struggling because they lack skill. They’re struggling because their internal capacity is tapped out.

In Episode 84, James Brett breaks down what leaders miss under pressure: you can’t outwork a fried nervous system. When the inner critic stays loud, you live in reaction mode, decisions get rushed, and stress becomes your default operating system. James explains “quality of mind,” how low-quality thinking traps you in fear and story, and how presence creates space for better judgment and leadership clarity.

You’ll hear practical resets that bring mind and body back into alignment, plus a simple daily gratitude practice that rebuilds capacity over time. If you’re running hard and still feel behind, this episode is your wake-up call.

Key Takeaways 

• Spot your “low quality mind” fast. If you’re stuck in fear, story, or self-talk, you’re not leading—you’re reacting.
• Calm creates choices. The goal isn’t to “control everything,” it’s to create enough internal space to see options.
• Use the body to quiet the mind. Breath, soft jaw/tongue, and short pauses reduce fight-or-flight and restore clarity.
• Gratitude is a performance tool. It lifts your mental state and expands capacity, especially when pressure is nonstop.
• Presence beats pressure. The leader who can reset wins—because they can think, not just push.

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Intro

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Welcome to the Let's Think About It podcast, where high achievers stop performing and start transforming. I'm Coach Mo, certified core energy leadership coach, founder of the inner arena, and creator of the swag training world. Some awareness, my power, a learning action, and grit. Around here, we train your mindset, challenge your limits, and turn pressure into purpose. Subscribe now and join me on YouTube at Swag Coaching. So let's get your reps in.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

We come a big, come and big. Don't trip, gotta get it.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

His name is James Brett. James, what's good, my brother?

SPEAKER_02 1:10

Thank you so much. Yeah, excited for our conversation, Coach Mo. I am really, yeah, feeling very dandy and enjoying the nice hot summer in Australia.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Australia, that's where you're checking in from. Okay, okay. What's happening in Australia now?

SPEAKER_02 1:27

We're in, yeah, we're in the height of summer. I live on the mid-north coast. So for those aware, yeah, you'll be Sydney and Brisbane are the big cities on the east coast, and I live halfway between those uh big centers and live on a beautiful patch of uh land, two and a half acres, 10 minutes from the ocean. We've been building a yeah, retreat space to support transformation and yeah, loving it, loving it here, very grateful to be here and yeah, very grateful to be alive.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Man, that's awesome. Born and raised in Australia?

SPEAKER_02 2:04

No, so I've been here 15 years. I'm I came and migrated across from the UK in 2010. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

Wow. Okay, okay, okay. James, tell us who you are, what you do, and the type of value that you bring.

SPEAKER_02 2:23

Yeah, thank you. So I am a professional coach, facilitator, explorer of consciousness and what makes us the way we are, and how we can be at our best and step into our full power and possibility. And through my journey, I've come to see the real power of balancing both the mind and the body, bringing them into harmony and the deepest listening so we can then bring our deepest potential to the fore and align to our deepest purpose.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

You gotta take me back. How did you get into this line of work?

SPEAKER_02 3:03

So I've always had a yeah fascination with performance and also my own journey of what is true. How can I improve my own performance and capacity and capability? Found myself in sales roles very early on, had this real natural gift for selling. So I worked in from selling newspaper advertising into working for Unilever and fast uh FMCG, fast moving consumer goods, then went into IT and education in sales and then honed my craft in that. And within that was then looking at how I can become better at sales. Initially, that was looking at controlling the mind, how can I control my thinking and my state so I could be more confident and be more impactful when I'd speak. And that journey took me on a deeper journey through understanding the nature of our minds and how we can meet pressure with presence, the impact of how we have on the world when we're in presence, in our deepest presence and in that now moment. And that's been my continuing journey of now how I share and support leaders and professionals, those in transition, to be yeah, their best selves and to fall out of that foreground where we can get caught up in the narrative and the story and all of that noise to then come into that calm beneath that noise where we're then able to meet the world with our wisdom and our yeah, our full potential.

Defining Self-Awareness And Autopilot

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Man, I love that. That's why we're here on this show. Let's think about it. I'm listening to you, and you're talking about how you're a coach and your focus on mind and body, right? On this show, we have I talk a lot about leadership and how people show up to lead self first, and then it's your titles. But how do we lead self? One of the things I spend a lot of time talking about is my framework and swag, the swag frame, right? Self-awareness, why power, aligned action, and grit. And the first entry point to the to swag is self-awareness, right? And that's the area where a lot of us are on this autopilot, right? And you think about leaders, we show up and our focus is to get the damn job done. R-O-I go. And that inner critic is really present and it's pushing us to tell ourselves we can't slow down. Because if we slow down, there's this narrative that we frame as being bad if we do slow down, right? And so we're on this idle pilot that naturally creates this burnout over time because we're leaking this energy and we're trying to lead ourselves under pressure of the demands from your boss, from the economy, from politics, all of these different things, right? When you talk about self-awareness, we're just an autopilot reacting to all the noise and the chaos around us. So that deteriorates a little bit in those moments, just those moments, our self-awareness, because now we're distracted by that inner critic, and it gets louder and it's telling us in our head, you're not good enough, you got to press harder, you can't do this, you can't afford to take a reset right now. If you stop, what is your boss gonna think of you? What is this? What is that? And it's this narrative that's just going and going and going. So, my question to you is when you talk about coaching, you're focusing on the mind. And when you have leaders who are trying to navigate during stress, during these high pressure moments, what's the framework that you teach to help them gain that balance?

Quality Of Mind: A New Paradigm

SPEAKER_02 7:16

Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Coach Mo. But the heart of my work, I call it quality of mind, and it looks at in terms of when we're in a lower quality of mind, we're in then in terms of self-absorption, we're caught in our worries and our fears and the narrative and the stories that we have about ourselves, that self-talk, that inner critic that you talk to. And that's if we call it like a ladder, we can call that sort of quality of mind, this sort of low quality of mind. That's the world that we live in. That's how we experience the world. And it's very outside in. The world is happening to me with that. It looks like the experience, the circumstance, the relationship, the targets, that's creating the pressure that's that's then creating this experience that you're then having to navigate through. The opposite of that is in in high quality of mind, we're in self-awareness, the narrative mind quietens, and we then have space for possibility for insight. We have this freedom, and then this space for this inner wisdom will arise in high quality of mind. And that's, I mean, we can call it a framework, but it's more of a an understanding. It's almost like we can, for many people, we have a misunderstanding of how the mind actually works. So this morning I was down at the beach to see the sunrise, and it looks like the sun is rising and coming up. So it appears that the sun's rising, but actually, in actual fact, the sun is still, it's the earth that's rotating and it causes, creates this perspective that it looks like the sun rises and then it sets. And so it's a misunderstanding. And for me, what I share and teach and point to and coach to is seeing that we actually experience life from the inside out. It's this rather than us seeing the world like a camera, we see it like a movie projector where as we're having experiences, it's our thoughts that's then shaping how we experience whatever's flowing to us and and through us. And so that's that's a different paradigm. It's a paradigm shift. And when someone sees that, even just when we align and understand how something truly works, things start to quiet and without us having to do anything, the mind and the noisy chatter starts to slow down and quiet, and we naturally find ourselves in a higher quality of mind where we have more possibility, we have that self-awareness, which means then we don't get lost and caught up in a inner critic, in that narrative we might have around how you're doing and the pressure that you're feeling. So that's uh yeah, that's my approach. And it's at its heart, it's this seeing things that we're living and experiencing things from the inside out rather. But it often looks, and I'll still get caught up in that and lost in that sometimes, that it looks like it's outside in.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

Yeah, that makes sense. It really does. I'm gonna put myself in the shoes of a high-performing leader who's constantly under stress, decision making, and just carrying a great deal of pressure and needing to stay composed under that pressure. When you say it's not about really framework, but a central understanding of how your mind works, but help me understand if I'm a if I'm that type of leader, that high achiever, and I don't have time to sit back, reset, reflect on how my mind operates. I don't got time to think about that. I got to keep going. And what can you do right now to slow me down so that I can start to lead better under pressure? How do you approach it from leaders with that mindset, though?

Practical Slowing Down: Breath And Body

SPEAKER_02 11:17

Yeah, there's with anything where there's a new paradigm, a new way of seeing something, there has to be a curiosity, an openness to learning. And when we're in the oh, when we're right in the thick of it and in the pressure and there's high stakes, there can be that, yeah, we just feel we're in, we get lost in that, we get lost in in that emotional wave, in in that thinking process. And for a moment, then what we have to do, if we're curious, is we can slow ourselves down. Now we can do that also through the body and the breath and taking some pauses just to slow ourselves down. And it's a reorientation from looking to the outside to then coming back the other way. So through, and it's the process with that self-awareness, there's inner mastery of then how I see that when my nervous system is calm, when my breath is long and deep, that will take us out of fight or flight, out of that cortisol stress that we're feeling into a more relaxed state. So we can initially play through the body, changing the shape of the body, deepening the breath, will also help calming the mark, calm the mind. Neuroscience points to the impact of softening the face, the jaw, and the tongue. When we're thinking a lot, there'll be tightness and tension in the tongue. It's called the subvocalization. So, in softening, just that simple process of noticing that we're carrying tension, we're thinking a lot, we're caught up in that noise. So that practice of softening, softening the jaw or the tongue will also support the quieting of the mind, bringing us into that high quality of mind. And then in that place where we're more self-aware, we can then be more curious to look at what's actually going on, what is causing my experience. Is it the person that I'm annoyed with who's actually dropped the ball? Is that causing it? Or is it my reaction inside of me? And then in the shifting out of that blame into then appreciation, creating some space for them to come back into balance and get back on the playing field at their best. That will shift the game there when we're not in reaction to life, but we're in harmony and dancing with it.

Values, Authenticity, And Inner Alignment

SPEAKER_01 13:50

That's great, man. And I think one approach that I take is helping those type of leaders that I mentioned reconnect with their values and taking a deeper dive into what your why is. That's my approach, coming from the inside out, because with limiting beliefs, with the judgments, with our society and the energy that society brings into our consciousness, it's always in it, right? And it formulates certain judgments that we put on ourselves externally, right? It flaws the way that we perceive ourselves internally. So we live by not all of us, but those that are in that state of high pressure uh being, they're relying on external to validate who they are when in opposite, it starts from within. So I help take the steps of understanding your values because I think before you can identify your true purpose and your why, you got to know what those values are. That's just one simple step that you can start to do so that you can really get a hold of who you are as a person, as an individual. Then we take those baby steps to move more internally to learn more about self from within. Then we start to express more gratitude for what we do have and what we do carry from within, then it expands outward. So that's my approach. How much in alignment is that with what you were saying?

SPEAKER_02 15:33

I think it's beautiful what you pointed to, Coach Murray, around that there this narrative and there seem there seems to be part of the human condition, we can have a lot of a negativity bias in the mind in terms of what thoughts are arising and falling, which can shape how we see the world. And you're right, in that reorientation to going inward and then looking in terms of what are those deeper values, and is there alignment there? Are we aligned to that deeper purpose? And there is for me this layer of software, if I call it software, where we have these conditions, these beliefs, these ways of being and how we're being that are programmed. You know, some of those sort of say that they're part of our personality, our preferences, but they're also our life experiences, how our parents were, our experiences through life shape that our experience in our career. And that software layer is our expression and in how we be. It will also influence and impact those values as well. So there is some work I do as well around looking at that layer in terms of that idea we have about ourselves and the deeper question of who do we need to be and who do, you know, in order to show up in terms of to be how we want to in the world. And is there a mismatch between what we're telling ourselves and the way that we need to be in order to create the world and have the impact we want to in the world? So there's some layers around that, which I will explore too, to see what are the stories that someone's telling themselves and also telling others and challenging that, challenging that in terms of looking so they can become self-aware and then look at in terms of is that actually also having an impact on how they're showing up and then looking at those, yeah, the deeper, deeper values, what's their their authentic self and their authentic way of being? Because and that's been part of my own journey, Coach Mo, in seeing that for some of my career I was showing up in how I thought the company needed me to be, the shape, the culture, how I needed to be in order to fit in. And so that shifted over the over time for me then coming back to being, I want to be fully authentic and not having to yeah, keep myself limited in a way by trying to fit in. So that's yeah, hopefully that answers what you were you were.

SPEAKER_01 18:19

Yeah, let's explore that a little bit because how did you know, like you're in leadership? What was the shift for you to say that you needed to pivot and go in coaching? Learn more about your yourself internally. What was that pivot for you?

Cancer, Near-Death, And Priority Shifts

SPEAKER_02 18:40

Yeah, so there's, and it's uh yeah, beautiful question, and there's some parallel streams there, which are also linked and intertwined. So one was this fascination with looking at performance and this inner work, this inner mastery in terms of looking at how the mind works, where in motion, where pressure comes from. So that was that's been a continuing journey that I've been on and journeying through that. And then the other, yeah, my dark night of the soul. 15 months ago, I found out I had stage three cancer and a 10 centimeter tumor on my right kidney, and it was starting to grow up towards the heart. And I almost died. It was, I call it that dark night of the soul in terms of the biggest challenge, the fear of death, and almost, almost dying in that experience and in that journey. But the gifts that came from that and the pivot that came from that was the yeah, letting go of the of the chasing, the how I was needing to be seen, and in terms of I had some incredible results in terms of leading sales teams and winning multimillion dollar contracts and bids, the Department for Education, South Australia, 900 schools, a$86 million contract. And but also in that pivot and in that near-death experience was seeing how I was not being fully authentic and aligned in terms of myself. So that created that shift to leave those corporate roles. I still do some consultancy and step into coaching and supporting others then to yeah, soften into and step drop into their deepest potential, and then how they can be their best selves. And part of that is how to lead more consciously, where we're both looking after our people, we're looking after the planet. And so there's this conscious way of doing business rather than it just be purely driven by the bottom line, and that's been a big pivot and a shift for me in terms of how I yeah, how I now spend my time and the impact I'm having.

SPEAKER_01 21:03

What would you say to our listeners right now, who are these higher achievers, who are going, who's working 10, 15 hours a day because so much is on their shoulders through your experience and knowing what you know now as a coach and your life experiences and your pivot that you made, what would you tell a leader like that right now? What would what advice would you give them? What recommendation would you share?

Advice For Overworked High Achievers

SPEAKER_02 21:32

Yeah, great question, Coach Mo. So, one is my own direct experience in the in the striving and the driving and the overlooking the messages from the body. I'd been sick for a couple of years before I actually then found out that I was rushed to hospital and found out you you could potentially die with what's going on, is that disconnection between My mind and the body with not being able to listen and slow down and getting caught up. So that's for me the biggest lesson and sharing with others in terms of how to introduce some pauses and bring back and listen to the deeper intelligence that's in the bot in the body, to get curious around moving just away from just looking at the outside world to also what's the inner world and exploring that. And there's the the great pathways of meditation, of contemplation, of inquiry, those ancient ways of bringing in a mastery, so we then drop out of that foreground of all of the noise and all of the senses and all of that into the deeper calmness that sits always and ever present below below that storm. And that will take you know, it can take a health crisis to create that pivot. Or we can take a step now to get curious and just start to then slow down to pause, to work with a coach that can then help and support you in terms of having a shift, a paradigm shift, which then transforms in terms of how show up and be in the world.

How To Listen To Your Body

SPEAKER_01 23:24

That's great. Here's another question for you, because as you were talking, how you had mentioned listening to our body, right? If you are conditioned to be disconnected from your body, and I'm listening to you now, and you're telling me to listen to my body, how does one do that? How does one create the awareness to listen to their body? Your thoughts about that?

Gratitude Routines That Change Results

SPEAKER_02 23:53

Yeah, great, great question. And it's yeah, it's not uncommon, particularly in in business in this where we can very heady, very driven by the mind. And so there's various pathways that we can use to then start to drop in into the body, breath work and conscious breathing, um, deepening our listening so we're able to listen not just to what's going into our mind and the noise and the thoughts that are rising and falling, but also starting to broaden and expand that awareness. And we can do that in terms of how we listen to other people and are the looping our awareness, becoming self-aware that's what what's actually going on in the body and how am I feeling when I'm having this engagement or this experience? And then we can also then, as a skill, as something that we can cultivate and expand, is bring that into our relationships and connections as we're listening to ourselves and noticing where how where is our quality of mind? Am I in reaction and feeling limitation and not in possibility? Or in am I a high quality of mind where I'm seeing all of the possibility and the options that I have in front of me? We can also loop that awareness into then seeing where someone else is in terms of their quality of mind and what's happening in their body. Are they carrying lots of tension in the face? As I said earlier, around that softening will start to quieten in the mind and open and broaden our awareness. And then it's practice, it's starting to then listen to what's happening in the body. What am I feeling? Becoming more emotionally that quality of actually being aware of our emotions. That's an intelligence that we can cultivate, as well as just our mental capabilities, is then what's happening to in our bodies. And then that deepens and deepens as we start to become aware of it. We give our awareness to it, and then it will start to open and we'll have insights and shifts from being curious and open to then not being disconnected from it, but see it's has great wisdom. And for me, obviously, yeah, that's been one of my biggest teachings is seeing harmonizing the mind and the body, and then coming into this world with even greater capacity and capability to create impact.

SPEAKER_01 26:38

One of the things that I help leaders with in this space of what we're talking about is taking baby steps, just baby steps, right? Start, let's start with some gratitude thoughts. Let's pause, let's create some sequences where throughout the day we just have gratitude thoughts. And that's really simple to do, but it's easier not to do. But I think that's a great baby step for people. Then breathing techniques, and then go for four box breathing, something like that, and put more consciousness around listening to yourself breathe. And just pause for a minute and do that for three rounds of that, with about three minutes, three and a half minutes, four minutes, something like that. Those two steps. And I say, do that for a week. And when we come back and reconvene, tell me what's different. And those little steps, it's so powerful, particularly when you start including incorporating gratitude. Because we lose sight of that, we lose sight of the value of having consciousness around gratitude. That's the shift. The more you can put towards the awareness of gratitude, and you add the reps to that, the easier things starts to shift for you. And we're in this, we're in this reality where we need our fulfillment right now. I don't have the patience to wait. I need the gratification now. If you learn to be patient and trust the process and learn to be curious with self by asking those questions, how am I feeling right now? And then add some gratitude viewpoint to that. I challenge you to see where you would be a week from now, just from a feeling standpoint. You and I've worked with clients in the leadership space, and we've done these simple things, and it's moved mountains for them. So as we wrap out, close out, what is your thoughts on gratitude and how you incorporate that into your practice?

SPEAKER_02 28:48

Yeah, beautiful, coachmo. Yeah, I really love that you've yeah, brought that and emphasize the impact of that. And in that mood ladder, in that quality of mind I talked about and touched on throughout our conversation, the highest point in terms of that quality of mind is gratitude. Gratitude is love. And so for me, you're right, it's such a beautiful and powerful practice to cultivate and bring into our day. I have a daily and evening gratitude practice. So start the morning with gratitude. Six things, three things which are routine and are happening all of the time, but still being grateful for those, not taking them for granted. And three things which are unique or semi-unique that are in your schedule, in my schedule for the day. I wake up and I'm bringing in as much gratitude and appreciation. And then at the end of the day, just reflecting back in terms of what's happened in the day and what three things I can be grateful for. And it's so you said there's a muscle there as we bring more of that into our lives, and we can be, as Coach Moe has shared, be grateful and appreciative throughout the day, acknowledging others and giving acknowledgement to others in terms of our appreciation, also builds that same muscle, that capability. It will shift us into a high quality of mind. It will shift us into seeing more possibility and shift us out of reaction into curiosity, into understanding. So it's yeah, it's also one of my core practices to share with my clients. And that in itself will, as I said, shift and the boats will all rise as we're all in more appreciation and gratitude.

Closing Reflections And Where To Find James

SPEAKER_01 30:38

That's exciting to hear. I'm really appreciative of you being on the show, James. You brought tremendous value in the sense of talking about how we can connect the body and the mind as one and slow down and listen to what that what our bodies is signaling to us and being intentional, being more curious about how we lead our lead ourselves and how we lead under pressure. I think that's really important. And sometimes it takes certain experiences, drastic life experiences, for us to sometimes wake up to listen to our body. But I think, you know, this conversation, in my opinion, was much needed. It was very powerful, and it's a start to help people to take initiative in how they're showing up internally first instead of externally. How can my audience find you?

SPEAKER_02 31:37

Yes, Coach Mo, thank you. And I've also really enjoyed the conversation. It is about leading first and stepping into seeing that your presence instead of your pressure will create the most impact and results in the world than with yourself. You can find me on our website, which is oasis-within.com.au. I work with people around the globe. We also run in-person retreats and workshops here for those thinking you're coming to beautiful Australia. But yeah, please reach out if you'd like to connect and really grateful for the conversation.

SPEAKER_01 32:14

Thank you. I appreciate you, James, and thank you for your time today.

SPEAKER_02 32:18

Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Coach Mo.

Outro And Listener Actions

SPEAKER_01 32:21

That's another rep in the inner arena. You didn't just listen, you leveled up your swag. Self-awareness, why power, aligned action, and grit. If this hit home, share it, subscribe to the Let's Think About It podcast, and lock in with me on YouTube at Swag Coaching. Until next time, stay aware, lead with your why, act in alignment, and keep your grid strong.