The Business Case For Mental Toughness | Steve Ware

What if the person leaders trust to reduce stress at IBM, Salesforce and LinkedIn once lay awake at night, dreading sleep because of racing thoughts and burnout? In this MarketPulse episode, Steve Ware reveals how he went from a burned-out technologist to one of the most respected mindfulness and mental resilience teachers operating inside the world’s biggest companies. His story shows that calm is not soft and wellbeing is not optional. It is a strategic advantage.

Steve shares the moment everything changed at IBM, how scepticism turned into evidence-based practice, and how a simple desire to sleep again opened the door to a global movement inside the organisation. From Oxford partnerships to a 500-person waiting list overnight, Steve unpacks the real business case for mental resilience and why altered traits, not altered states, are what transform performance. His explanations land with the clarity of lived experience and the precision of someone who has seen this work at scale.

This conversation is packed with practical insights for leaders juggling mental load, decision fatigue and the pressure to perform. Steve shows how mindfulness actually works, why athletes demonstrate it better than anyone, and how to integrate calm into your day without carving out extra time. Even the busiest CEOs and parents will recognise themselves in this conversation.

Whether you’re navigating burnout, building high-performing teams or simply trying to think more clearly, Steve’s journey offers proof that resilience is a skill, not a personality trait. And when leaders master it, everything changes — for them, their teams and their organisations.

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Transcript

Paul 0:03

The least likely stress reduction teacher in the world, and yet one that is trusted by some of the biggest brands. Steve Ware is the founder of Steve Ware Mindfulness, where he helps senior leaders and teams make better decisions, reduce burnout. And rediscover their balance in high pressure environments. He's got science backed programs and they've been delivered to global names, include IBM, Salesforce and LinkedIn, Transforming performance by transforming the mind. But before launching his company, Steve spent nearly 3 decades IBM, where he pioneered the organisation's first HR approved mindfulness program. Within months he had a global wait list of more than 500 employees, and senior execs described his 8 week course Finding Peace in a Frantic World as the most transformative program we've ever done. today Steve is proof that mindfulness isn't soft, it's strategic. And his journey from corporate technologists to leading wellbeing innovator shows how calm can become a competitive advantage. Steve. Welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us. thanks

Steve 1:07

for having me, Paul.

Paul 1:08

It's a phenomenal journey. I don't think there are many people that can move between such big names and still help people with mindfulness. I tend to find there are a lot of people we've had on the show. i've avoided the big names because burnout is a challenge that they've been unable to cope with in those environments, and yet you've kind of fought through that and thrived regardless, right.

Steve 1:32

Yeah, I mean the big names are the big names, but I think everything I. Do is personal. I remember talking to a group once and the guy said to me, oh we're a small startup. You know, I know you did this at IBM and IBM's got 400,000 employees, whatever. I'm not sure it applies to us'cause we're a small startup. And I said, well. You'll kind of know pretty quickly whether or not it applies to you,'cause you'll kind of feel it here. This is, I'm just working with human beings. I'm not working with Chief Technology Officer of North America, you know, all these grand titles we've got

Paul 1:56

Yeah,

Steve 1:56

in these big organisations. So for me everything cuts through everybody's equal on my course. don't matter if you're the most senior leader in the company or whether you literally just started out and you don't have a flashy title yet, this work will either resonate with you or it won't, and you'll know that pretty quickly. And that's exciting for me. It's a very level playing field.

Paul 2:12

so you describe yourself as we said in the hook line there, the least likely stress reduction teacher in the world. Why do you describe yourself that way?

Steve 2:20

cause I never set out to do this, so I burned out IBM. Long story short, I burned out at IBM and so I, started off Paul by looking for something for me. I was looking for something to reduce my stress. Didn't even have the capacity to think about anybody else. So I was purely thinking, how can I start to sleep again? How can I stop existing and start living? How can I kind of, I just don't wanna be this anxious all the time. didn't really know, I didn't really know what would help me. I tried, other things I had therapy and other stuff in my 20's which were great, but I felt like something was missing. and. So I started looking up the greatest stress reduction programs in the world, really, or at least in the uk. And this one place kept coming up. The University of Oxford kept coming up and I didn't like the sound of it'cause it said mindfulness. And I thought that just sounds like a load of BS to me. It's what is it? Like what is meditation? Isn't that just weird? People that sit there and do nothing or have got time to chill out all day and I've got a busy job and a busy life. I've got clients that need me. So I was very skeptical about it, very cynical, but I thought, hang on, this is massive, very well respected organisation and there's a lot of people saying a lot of great things about it. So kind of jumped on a train and went there and said to him, you know What What is the Stress reduction program? Who's it for? And up to that point, really, when I first started there, it was very strong, clinically very strong clinically. So it was already a different flavour of the program that I teach was already approved by the National Institute of Clinical Excellence. So the debate had pretty much finished even then. Paul, does this stuff work? Does it not work? How effective, you know, for whom all the kind of peer review, double blind scientific studies, loads of them have been done. So we knew this stuff worked. They didn't have a great exposure in the workplace. So where I was interested in taking it. Can this program, can anyone have an 8 week program? A 6 week program? That's so good. That's so fun to do that people will just, you know, look forward to it and the diaries and they'll come along and they'll try it and they'll do it for long enough that they, that actually changes their life and they start to sleep better and they start to feel less stress and they stop drinking as much and they, whatever it is, however, the kind of benefits, outcomes manifest. So I, would say it found me rather than I found it. I went looking for stress reduction. I found it and I started practicing it. But then people at IBM came to me and begged me and said, can you teach? Can you teach us?'cause you look calmer, you look less overwhelmed, you look happier and better rested, and can you teach us what you've learned? And I said, no, because I dunno what I'm doing myself yet. But a year or two later I'd studied it long enough to. To give it a go. So I started teaching that program. Like you said, it then kind of blew up into this pretty big thing and people got some incredible results from it.

Paul 5:02

What an incredible journey. What an incredible journey. I wonder then, so let's rewind time. What did 10-year-old Steve want to do? What was your ambitions at that age?

Steve 5:11

Footballer probably,

Paul 5:12

Yeah.

Steve 5:13

I guess. Yeah.

Paul 5:14

Any goes? Did you play?

Steve 5:15

I did play. I wouldn't say I was great and I binned it. I ironically,'cause I'm not that tall, Paul, but i binned it for basketball at about 15. So I

Paul 5:23

Mm-hmm.

Steve 5:23

was playing a lot of football, although the school I went to was cricket and rugby,

Paul 5:27

Mm-hmm.

Steve 5:28

my entire school years deliberately dropping the rugby ball. So they didn't pick me to the team. So I'd go and play football on a Saturday. And then my mate rang me up and said, mate, you gotta come and see this basketball thing. It's a brilliant basketball, it's great. And I said, oh, not really into basketball. But I went down there and I loved the pace of it, I loved the athleticism of it. And Portsmouth back then had an amazing first team there one of the best teams in England. So, I fell in love with that and started playing basketball. But yeah, I guess probably sport as a youngster, probably

Paul 5:54

I love basketball at like 10, 12-year-old, but I was crap at it. I was really. crap. Didn't, just didn't put the practice in, didn't put the practice in. I love the idea of it. I just didn't wanna do the work. So then what did you end up studying?'Cause you ended up at IBM. How did you kind of get from wanting to be a basketballer to ending up at IBM?

Steve 6:13

so when I grew to about 5'9", I'm, I was, I figured the basketball career was kind of done. I ended up in IBM. It was just a chance thing really. I was at school, it was a rainy day. I was in the careers office'cause it was one of the few dry rooms in the school and there was a bit of paper on there and it said, I can literally remember the wording. It said, do you have an aptitude for or an interest in computing? So at this time I was doing a levels in French, German and computer science. And so I thought, hey I'm kind of vaguely interested in computer science. I'm doing it as a level. And it said, if you are IBM's running the sponsored scheme, so we take like 18, 20 people from around the country. and We handpicked them and we put'em through a program in our head office in Portsmouth. And yeah, you do your 4 year degree in 3 years.'cause not studying at uni, you come and work for us. You get work experience on the job, So I ended up I ended up going for that interview just'cause I thought sounds all right and I probably won't finish with any student debt. They paid

Paul 7:03

Yeah.

Steve 7:04

they paid me 7,440 quid my first year there in 1992. And I felt like a rich man. I was a student earning a few quid

Paul 7:13

Yeah.

Steve 7:14

happy days.

Paul 7:15

Yeah. Yeah. No beans on toast for you have beans and sausages on toast. Right.

Steve 7:19

Upgraded. Yeah.

Paul 7:20

So then what pa you were at IBM for 30 years. I mean, that's an incredible career in it, in its own right before you reinvented yourself. So what journey did your IBM career take?

Steve 7:30

i did a whole bunch of different stuff, almost all technical really. So I like, I've always liked pretty much helping people. I liked helping people solve their problems. So I got into techie stuff. I would understand the systems and I'd be kind, you'd have help led help desks, kind of first level support, and then second, third level, and we'd be sort of third or fourth level support. So more difficult problems would get sent our way.

Paul 7:48

Yeah.

Steve 7:48

and

Paul 7:48

i'd

Steve 7:49

like kind of getting stuck into the systems and just helping people and fixing stuff. But do you know what mate? I realised. I realised relatively early'cause I kind of fell into IBM'cause of that thing in the careers office. Right. And was all, I was good at IBM, right? I got some lovely, I was on the top talent program for a bit. I was, I got outstanding technical achievement awards. do good things. But I realised that as the years went by, I realised more and more I was in the wrong game. And just little things like people would come in and go, oh I'm buying this latest graphics card and I'm building this PC and I. That just sounded so not me. I mean, I didn't, the first time I bought a laptop was in 2020 when I lost my job. I've never had an interest, I've never been that interested in it. It was a job and it paid the bills, some people at ibm are real into this stuff, and it's their passion. It wasn't my passion I discovered as the years went by. It really wasn't my passion.

Paul 8:40

I think that's something that a lot of people need to listen to. I think that's a really important point, is that you could be good at something but not really enjoy it.

Steve 8:50

Yeah,

Paul 8:51

But when you actually find something that I guess what you've done is you've took the elements of what you were doing before that you enjoyed and turned that into a full-time job for yourself, right? Like you've, and that you've reinvented yourself around that

Steve 9:04

I mean, I

Paul 9:05

sounds like, well, no. No.

Steve 9:08

I was gonna say I always enjoyed helping people, if that doesn't sound too kind of sycophantic And I and I quite like the teaching bit of it, so. I was thinking,'cause I went through, before I lost my job in 2020 COVID, I'd already survived like 13 rounds of redundancy or something in the previous decade. every year they'd have a redundancy program and every year I wasn't caught up in, in it until I was, but it gets you thinking, right? What am I gonna do if I lose my job? What am I gonna do if I, and teaching was one of the things, it kind of appealed to me. It kind of didn't. I thought the teaching aspect would be good. I didn't know how good I'd be. Managing all those kids and what age group I'd do and stuff like that. But yeah, that was kind of, that's kind of in the back of minds. It all kind of fell together really. Like I'm teaching people now, but I'm teaching them something that honestly will change their lives. This is the most incredible stress reduction program you've ever seen. Even if you're a massive cynic, be a massive cynic. Be a skeptic. tell me you think it's bs. Tell me you think it won't work for you. It's the same as us going back to the 1940s, Paul, and you saying to me. What did you do this morning? And I say, Paul, I went running and if it was a 1940 as recently as the 1940s, right, when probably our dads maybe were born, certainly our granddads. If I said that to you in the 1940s, you'd say to me, who was chasing you? No one went running in the 1940s for health for fitness. No one. look at how far we've come. Now if I say to you, say, Paul, Steve, what'd you do to someone? And I say, went for a run, boy. He say, oh, nice one. You know, it's fitness, you know, it's good for you. You know, it's, and I really think mindfulness is starting to, let's not even call it mindfulness'cause people don't know that word. Mental toughness, mental resilience, mental strength, whatever. Right? Whatever it is. Whether you're a man, whether you're a woman. It's people are starting to accept it more, I think as something that's just normal and helpful. you know, if you're looking after your body, great, why wouldn't you look after your mind as well?

Paul 10:59

So if we look at Steve, who. First set out to find some help. Right. Like that, Steve, who decided enough is enough. I need to do something to change this.'cause I don't want to, as you said, just exist anymore. What was that Steve feeling and doing and what were the signs that you needed to do something that you were listening to?

Steve 11:18

Sleeplessness was massive. I dread going to bed mate. I would dread going to bed.'cause I would think I might fall asleep. I might get a couple of hours and then my mind's gonna be racing. It's gonna be torturing me and it's horrible and I'm gonna be anxious. So yeah, that was. Probably anxiety and awful sleep. Were the big things that motivated me to start to look for something else. And without those things I wouldn't have bothered,

Paul 11:43

Yeah.

Steve 11:43

If I was sleeping like a baby and pretty chilled. So it is actually been the suffering in my life and I'd invite anybody, listen to this, look back through your life. Has it? What's taught you the most? What's deepened you as a person? What's made you more empathic What's made you more emotionally intelligent, more, more self-aware? All these great things that we love, that we want it's the suffering in your life that takes you there. And so eventually for most people, that they'll actually end up being grateful for the suffering in their lives because without that, they probably wouldn't have got to where they. They've got to now. And you've gotta be very careful when you say that, right?'cause somebody's in the midst of of having a really tough time. It's not a great time for you to say, you No.

Paul 12:21

can

Steve 12:21

be grateful for this one day, Paul. It's gonna be amazing. You're gonna love it'cause they'll probably punch you.

Paul 12:25

Yeah,

Steve 12:25

once they've been

Paul 12:26

I hear that.

Steve 12:26

and back out the other end, they probably reflect back and go, yeah, it was, it sucked and I didn't like it. But yeah, did I grow from it? Well.

Paul 12:36

Yeah. And I, so this is, I've got an 8-year-old son as we were talking off air, right? Like I've got an 8-year-old and 2-year-old, and it's something I'm, we're now kind of discussing with the 8-year-old a little bit, because he's going through those times. Kids are awful to each other at times, right? Like it's not, you know, and you hear some of the things that he's coming out with and it's like, I was talking to my mum about it and she was like, oh, that's awful. That's awful. It shouldn't be happening at that age. I was like but kind of, it almost should. You can't go from being an 8 year old's mindset and thinking the world's a rosey place and everybody's gonna be nice to you and lovely and polite to then the work environment where that's the exact opposite. Quite a lot of the time where it's gonna be true. You've gotta be prepared for that. Like life isn't all roses and flowers and I love what you said the journey is the pro, like the journey is what you can be thankful for. You have to go through the journey to appreciate the end result. Right.

Steve 13:28

I think so. Yeah,

Paul 13:29

I, agree.

Steve 13:30

I mean if you look at the greatest, if I just think about stress reduction or mindfulness, whatever you wanna call it, if you look at the greatest teachers in the world, they've all got a story, all of them. None of their stories start with, I was get, well, maybe, no, none of them start with this, but it could happen. I was gonna say, none of them start with, I was given this trust fund of$10 million you know, I spend my life partying in Vegas and you know, skiing here and doing this and doing that. Although eventually even those people, right, those people some of'em end up finding something like meditation because eventually all those highs that you buy, those amazing trips. eventually the novelty will probably wear off eventually even with that,

Paul 14:07

Yep. Yeah, a hundred percent. So walk me through it then, so you're at IBM, you've decided that you need some some something different to, to change the way that, you're experiencing things. You've gone and experienced it for yourself. You're practicing it and you are seeing the difference and people around you are starting to notice. Now,

Steve 14:25

yeah.

Paul 14:26

that's still a long way from one of the IT guys, right? Loosely terming you that, right? Like one of the IT guys setting up a wellness or a wellbeing program, right? That's still a huge leap. What, how did you get From experiencing it to running it.

Steve 14:42

Well, people in the office asked me what I was doing and then when I told them, said, can you teach us? that, that was the thing that led me. Eventually to go into Oxford to learn how to teach it.'cause I thought I, need someone to show me how to teach this stuff. This isn't some Mickey Mouse out program. You know, that you just, there's a depth to this. There's a real depth to this.

Paul 15:04

Yeah.

Steve 15:04

So I ended up gonna Oxford'cause I thought that these guys will know how to teach me. And when I took it back in. Yeah I remember doing a pilot, I sent out an email saying, does anybody wanna do this program? And a load of people wrote back and said, yeah, I'd, I had like 3 I could have run 3 classes straight away. There was about, I only wanted about 15, and I had about more like 60 people that straight away just said. Yeah. Yeah. So, so we did it and those people then talked about it. And we already had a little mindfulness community at IBM. We already, people were talking about it in different parts of the world, and I was putting on something called a mindfulness summit where each year people would come together and I'd get external speakers to come in and we're doing lots of stuff like that. But we never really had a fully fledged course. We, were doing lots of little things. We'd have little practices here and there. We'd have little, we'd have newsletters and we'd have get togethers, but we didn't really have a fully fledged, kind of gold standard course. So that's what was really, I think, missing. And what Oxford could. Give us, so, but I got to know the people at Oxford very well, and they're amazing people there. And yeah, I think it was a conversation that was kind of brokered by me with the CEO at Oxford and I said to her, you know, may, maybe we could partner with you guys and let me put you in touch with some of the people here see what you think. Ultimately, it led to us partnering, which was. Which was quite a big deal'cause you know, to get a program like that. I mean, Google had been doing it since 2008 though, Paul, saying this are no mugs, right? Google know how to look after their staff and let's not get into the merits of why they look after their staff particularly, but they know that're happy, healthy. Staff member is a high performing staff member. Somebody who's gonna bring in even more money and do great things at Google, right? they were all about, if i go back to 2008, I think it was, they were bringing in some of the greatest mindfulness, stress reduction teachers in the world to do talks then. So they're way ahead of the game. then they created something called Search Inside Your, search Inside Yourself, which is a, like emotional intelligence program that Google created and still around now. some big tech firms were on it. IBM wasn't quite as on it as we hoped we should have been. So introducing this course is, I think, quite big step forward for'em.'cause then we had something that was comparable or or I think better than Google's one.

Paul 17:20

So you, are you running this concurrently whilst doing your day job as well? Or have you At this point, you've kind of extricated yourself from your day job?

Steve 17:26

No. So yeah, it was all kind of give back. It was all on top of the, it was all on top of the day job. So, that's why it became impossible to manage really, I remember doing like a webinar like this and we had about a thousand, no, it must have more than that. Probably had a few thousand people on it because it was a global thing. I was talking about this program and I I was just, I wasn't particularly trying to sell it. I was just saying, you know, we've done this and this is what people got. And I said, look, if people, if anybody does wanna do it, this lovely lady said to me beforehand, she said, oh, when you say, does anybody wanna do it? She said up my, it's called a task id. She had this like mailbox that you could send the thing to. And I thought we might get another 20, 30 names. And she mailed me first thing next morning. I said, anybody sign up for it? She said, I've got five, over 500. And I said that's like, that's crazy that we can't, I can't possibly fulfill that. You know, because you can't have too big a class on this course.'cause you want

Paul 18:13

it to be

Steve 18:14

wanna give people space, you want it to be kind of personal for them. So yeah, you can't have like 50, a hundred people on a good mindfulness course. So to work my way through that would've been, that's at least. Yeah, probably 30 plus courses I think at least. almost

Paul 18:29

created Yeah, it's a long time.

Steve 18:30

a monster.'cause it wasn't a monster. It was a nice, it was a nice monster. the version of that phrase is, creating a, we created a beautiful monster. A movement maybe.

Paul 18:40

Yeah, you created the turning point

Steve 18:42

Yeah.

Paul 18:43

and obviously you saw some good results. Is it something that you still run with IBM? Is it still something that you, they've got their own now or,

Steve 18:50

They teach that curriculum, I believe, although I've been outta the company 5 years now.

Paul 18:54

yeah.

Steve 18:55

I teach a, more refined kind of modified up to date version of that program. Obviously it's 5 years later and I've taught it in. Different places, different businesses. So I've kind of tweaked it and really made it my own and seen what really works in the real world, so to speak, and what doesn't. So, yeah, that program, I teach it in 6 weeks now. I taught it in 8 to start with, but that's one of the, one of the changes I made. But yeah, it's, I think it's still alive and kicking at IBM. It's certainly alive and kicking me. pretty, it's a pretty timeless program to be honest It doesn't it doesn't really depend on anything that's fashionable or not like fitness Right

Paul 19:30

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean there's 10

Steve 19:32

different ways of getting fit I can swim I can cycle I can run, I can do whatever, right? Play football balls. But ultimately I'm either, I'm exercising my body, I'm getting fit. That's the, if you drilled it down, and it's the same with stress reduction and mindfulness. Really are different ways to quiet your mind. There are different ways of building your resilience and your emotional intelligence and your self-awareness, which is nice'cause people can pick the one that already suits them. But ultimately, if you boil it all down underneath it is the same.

Paul 19:57

So doing that. And I'm gonna move away from IBM in a moment, but I've assumed that there was metrics tracked around that as well, right?'cause they're gonna want to know if they're gonna put that on. They're going to get you to do that. They're gonna want to know what measurable difference it's making to their employees. What are the outcomes of that?

Steve 20:13

Amazing outcomes is the answer. And it's hard to, some of this stuff can be relatively hard to measure in the same way that if I said to you, Paul, Eat really healthily and don't drink too much booze and don't smoke for the next 10 years,

Paul 20:26

Yeah.

Steve 20:27

and then tell me how much money you saved the NHS'cause you are health, you're a healthier version of you than the paul That was boozing and smoking And couldn't possibly say, well, I've saved the NHS pick a number. Right? Who knows? so there's the proactive stuff that comes as a result of, it is hard to measure, but you can absolutely measure some stuff. I mean, there was one lady, one of the first people I taught, and I still talk about her now. and She said I've come back to work from long-term sick ahead of time as a direct result of your course, so you can put a figure to that Long term sick as well. Yeah. somebody who's on X amount of money and they're off work and they come back and then you, now you're not having to.

Paul 21:04

Yeah.

Steve 21:05

So there's plenty of, there's plenty of things like that. There's plenty of of'em are harder to measure. People tend to make less mistakes when they're not so stressed. People have access to the parts of the brain. They need that. The executive function, the prefrontal cortex. When they're not stressed, when people are focused, they make the right decisions. They just perform at a higher level in their work. Hard to measure that. Hard to know what mistakes they might have made, but you'll see trends in performance going up. There was one company called Aetna, A-E-T-N-A, who are a provider in the us and they measured this stuff and they said the amount of people using their healthcare insurance. Reduce massively. And it saves I don't wanna guess the number'cause I might get it wrong, but I think it's like$9 million as a result of their stress reduction program. So people, they, they put, they could put like dollar value per employee on it, so, and Deloitte will

Paul 21:55

And they gave you, some of that, obviously, right?

Steve 21:57

say again.

Paul 21:58

They give you a share of that. Right.

Steve 22:00

But if you look at deloitte deloitte will come up with figures as well. You know, the sort of return on investment for something like a proactive evidence-based mindfulness program. In fact, it's probably important to, to mention here, mate, the difference between I call an altered state and an altered trait. So a lot HR HR people make this very common mistake and you can see why they'll bring somebody in. Let's say it's bringing puppies into the office and everyone comes and plays with the puppies for an hour at lunchtime. Or someone comes in and does beautiful massage at your desk and you sit and you have a lovely back and neck massage. And they do these things. They put this on, they bring these people, and then they say to them, Paul, what was it like? And you say, beautiful massage is lovely. How? How stressed do you feeling? Oh, stress levels are way down. How'd you feel? Great. So, so they talk to people straight after the event, right? And then they tick the box and go, well that was brilliant. That worked. But the problem is go back to speak to that person. A week later, a month later, 6 months, 12 months later, sadly the effects of those puppies in that massage won't still be happening. So that's called an altered state, right? It's like a temporary blip. It's a nice blip'cause it makes you feel calmer and more centered and more relaxed thing. But you return to baseline is relatively quick, probably within a few hours. What people really want and need is something called an altered trait, which is a, which are physiological and psychological changes that come about when you teach people the skills they need to regulate their own nervous system, to build their own resilience, to quiet their own mind, to sleep better, to be less anxious, to deal with difficult things, to stop reacting to things and start responding to things to have a little bit more pace, peace and space in their life, bit more empathy, so. When you teach people these skills and you take'em through a proper 6 8 week program, then when you go speak to'em 6 months, a year later, they say, yeah, I'm still practicing. It still works. It's still part of the good things I do, right? I try not to drink too much. I don't smoke. I try to do a bit of exercise. I try to get enough sleep, and I try to do a bit of this as well, just to kind of quiet my mind and keep me mentally as good as I can be.

Paul 24:05

I think that's a beautiful gift to be able to leave with people. Right? Like I can imagine, like, I know like different, but I do video repurposing for people, right? And there's nothing frustrates me more than when I do that. And then they don't post those videos out there. It never gets out to the wall because something happens. Life ticks over whatever. It's frustrating and. Nothing rewards me more when I see people doing the exact opposite of that. Getting it really pushing it really hard, getting it out there and sharing their story and their journey and their value with the world, and seeing the results of that. So I imagine that's the same sort of thing for you. It's not about, it's not about money or lifestyle. And yes, certainly all of that comes with it, but the gift of being able to make a direct impact, a direct positive impact on so many people must be incredible for you.

Steve 24:50

Yeah. You never get tired of that feeling, do you?

Paul 24:53

No.

Steve 24:53

And people know what that feeling feels like, even if they don't experience it in that way. Right. Everybody knows what it feels like to give somebody a present that they, and the seeing how delighted they wanna open it all you. You know, getting colder down in now, you know, if there's snow here helping somebody push the car out the snow. You get that nice feeling, don't it? We are, as human beings, we do, there's a nice feeling when you kind of help somebody else that doesn't get old. And so if that can be part of your job, I think it's a really nice thing.

Paul 25:18

You touched on it before about mindfulness being seen as it's misconceived for a lot of people, right? See it as wooly and fluffy and a bit, you know, a bit woo. What, how do you help people like that? Who have those sorts of misconceptions understand what it's really about. How do you bring them round?

Steve 25:37

We can do it right now if you want to.

Paul 25:39

Go for it.

Steve 25:40

anybody watching this? I'd say to them, think of one moment in your life where this last In fact, it could be any time in your life, right? Could have been yesterday or. 20 30 years ago, however old you are, but one moment when you either felt so you felt very peaceful, maybe you were very still don't wanna put any ideas in your head, but maybe you're lying on the beach in the summer or doing something like that, or sitting in front of an open fire or you're stroking your dog or whatever. when you, so are physically still, but there's a sense and there's a sense of peace there. There's a sense of, ah, that would probably be the sound right, if I could, so peaceful and still, or peaceful, but very. High energy. So maybe you're moving, maybe you're playing a sport. We talked, like you say, we talked about sport before we came on, right? Football. But any athlete will tell you, it's called flow state. When you get into

Paul 26:27

this Yep.

Steve 26:27

an athlete that's in flow state is at peace, just one word. What they're doing, they've mastered the art of what they're doing and they're just playing. Or so, so you've got peace, but still peaceful, but moving, snee, skiing, snowboarding, whatever it is. Or maybe you just noticed the be the beauty in something. Maybe you notice an amazing sunrise, sunset, or you just noticed how gorgeous your dog is when you went down this morning and she wagged a tail and your eyes met, whatever it is, right? And here's the thing, if I say to everybody watching this zoom all the way in, zoom all the way into that tiny moment where you felt that peace That joyful aliveness, that stillness where you notice that beauty, where the weight of the world lifted from your shoulders for half a second, a nanosecond, two seconds, however long it was. And I'd say to'em, how much thinking were you doing when you felt peaceful? none is the answer. Right?

Paul 27:18

None

Steve 27:19

So notice that. So that's what that, that could be your definition of mindfulness, Paul, whatever. Whatever you had in your head. Is your definition of mindfulness the most respected definition of mindfulness. I still, I deliberately haven't memorised it, but Skype a guy called Jon Kabat-Zinn who's an American man, brilliant teacher, and it's something like mindfulness is, i'm butchering this badly, something like is paying attention non-judgmentally the present moment. I think there's a little bit more, what does that even mean? Who knows

Paul 27:48

Yeah.

Steve 27:49

you can kind of know, you can kind of work backwards if you understand what mindfulness means to you. You can read that description then and go, ah, yeah, he's talking about that. But I, most people I don't think can read that and go, right. I don't think I've experienced it before, but I, now I know what that is. So I say to people, it's a normal moment in your life. It's lying on the beach just playing football. It just, and the moment when just. The weight of the world listens, and for two seconds you're not thinking, you're just utterly present and you're alive and alert

Paul 28:16

Yep.

Steve 28:16

and you're awake. And like we said, athletes in flow state, right? Which you're talking about your Sunderland fan, right? Flying high in the Premier League, playing great at the moment. Every Sunderland player that takes the pitch that they start thinking when they're playing football, their performance goes down straight away.

Paul 28:34

Too slow. Yep.

Steve 28:35

Any striker that's, we got our strike. I'm a Pompy fan, right? Our striker's having a tough season. He scored one goal whole season colby Bishop. And he basically all the commentators have been saying this. He hasn't said it'cause he hasn't done a lot of interviews about it, but they've all said he's thinking about it too much. He's trying to finish. He's, you know, taking one more touch. He's trying to get it around the. So his thoughts now come back in. What was this sort of beautiful, mindful activity? The ball comes, bang, it's in the goal headset. No thinking. It's just then bang, you chip the keeper, you go. There's no, as soon as you get in you're like, oh, I've got, you're missing. And that. And so any high level sports person any world class athlete, man or woman will tell you. Thought will degrade everything. So they're, the athletes are very mindful. Top class sports people are very mindful. Ultimate presence. Right. And if we go back to a Newcastle's favourite son, Paul Gascoigne, who's loved by most, right. And arguably the greatest midfielder of our generation. I know he is Newcastle, but bear with me on this. Why can he? We'll pick Tony Adams, Pickett and Paul, Merson and whoever else, right? are these people that are troubled outside with drink gambling drugs? All three. You ask these people, where's the one time you feel peaceful? tell me the one time, none of these problems enter your head. You haven't got a care in the world. Playing football is the answer. cause you can't play football at a high level and think so all their problems disappear. And when they come off the pitch, the mind starts up. And the mind says, ah put a bet on do this. Go and go and take this, go and gamble. So mindfulness is some many of the greatest moments of your life, but it's when you stop thinking, it's when the beautiful peace feel fills you. It's when you notice beauty somewhere. It's when you feel intensely alive and just. all your senses of are kind of in high definition, this is mindfulness. Right. It's not some weird thing. It's not some weird thing.

Paul 30:29

Yep. people sit

Steve 30:29

and do that. We can talk about meditation if you want, but mindfulness is something everybody probably use listening to this will have done in their experience, in their life, and it's some of the greatest moments. So that's what I, there's one thing people leave take from this interview. It'd be that know that what mindfulness is to you the most normal thing. And heres here's the beautiful thing, Paul. If you like those moments, which is a silly thing to say'cause it's a rhetorical question, but if you feel like you haven't got enough of those moments, can cultivate them and you don't need to go and play football or go and lie on the beach or whatever your scenario was, right? There's nothing you do. Nothing that you do in those situations where you have a quiet mind, you can't replicate. If you do a meditation or something, that meditation will show you how to bring more of those moments into your day.

Paul 31:13

That is incredible. I love that explanation, Steve. I think that's really powerful. Really powerful. One last question then before we pull an end to the show. And I want to thank you very much for all of your generous thoughts and your explanations, your story's been incredible. I loved it. If I'm a, if I'm a leader listening to this now and this all sounds great, but I'm really busy and I can't really fit any meditation and I haven't got time for that. I'm busy. I've got two kids. I've got a business to run. I've got, you know, I go and play golf on a Friday, all these sorts of things, right? Like, what do you say to them?

Steve 31:45

Yeah, it's a great question and it's the most common question I get. Probably I would say in a couple, well, there's loads of strand that answer one is Well, let me flip the answer back to me and I'll, let me take the, kind of hit on this. I said to, if somebody said to me, Steve, could you give me 10 minutes a day of your life? Could you give me less than 1% of your day, depending on how much you sleep, let's call it 1% of your day. Could you do that to improve your mental health? And I say, no, I'm too busy. I'm actually lying if I say that, Paul, because. Yes, I can take 10 minutes off scrolling my phone, messing around, or watching something on TV I didn't need to, or I'd even take it off my sleep if I really needed to. So if I had answered that personally, and I'm I'm not putting this on anybody else, and I know there's a hell of, I've met people that are ridiculously busy and they've got carers responsibilities on top of a busy job and all this kind of stuff. Right? And I'm not minimising that at all. So if somebody genuinely, isn't in this situation I'm in where I can find 10 minutes if I really wanna, right? It's a question of priorities. If you are not in that situation, I'd say there's still good news, right? Because there's nothing that people do in a formal meditation where they sit 10 minutes or whatever and they quiet and they focus and they take their attention away from thinking and notice how distracted they're, they just become more present. theres nothing that you do in a meditation that you can't do in the rest of your life. So I teach people how to do this stuff whilst they're living their lives. How? can do it when you're stopped at red traffic light. You can do it when you're in the shower. You can do it when you're drinking your coffee or tea. You can do it when you're walking down the street. You can do it anywhere in any moment. the people I work with, I'm teaching them these skills, right? Because for them it's not gonna be about doing different things. It's gonna be about doing things differently. If it's a very senior leader, yes, you can quiet your mind when your in sweat in the back of a limousine being driven somewhere fancy because the limo's still gotta stop at red light. And I can show you a way of quietening your mind when you're in the back of the limo When you're doing that, you still gotta take a shower, you still gotta drink your coffee, you still gotta walk up your VIP stairs to get on your vip jet. we can quiet your mind in those moments. So news is that there are plenty of ways that you can still your mind whilst you are living your life. that's solves the huge problem that pretty much everybody that works with me, Paul doesn't have time to work with me.

Paul 33:55

That's incredible. I love it. Thank you very much, Steve. It's been a genuine pleasure having you on the episode.

Steve 34:00

It's been a pleasure. Thanks for having me, Paul.

Paul 34:02

Thank you. And thank you listeners and watchers at home. Thanks for following us along. And please make sure, if you haven't already, give us a subscribe, give us a follow, and if you've got any suggestions, you've got a guest that you'd like to nominate for the show. If you know somebody who has an incredible story like Steve's. Feel free to share it. Would love to have them on the show. Love to meet them and find out more about their journey as well. Thanks. Bye-bye.