Ep19. Why Trauma Makes Some People Stronger (Post-Traumatic Growth Explained) with Phil Quirk

In this powerful episode of the Enlighten DXB Podcast, Erika Masako Welch sits down with Phil Quirk, world-renowned human performance coach, NLP practitioner, and hypnosis expert, to explore the mindset behind elite performance, resilience, and personal transformation.

Phil has worked with Olympic champions, special forces operators, corporate leaders, and high-performing individuals across the world. Drawing from his experience in the Royal Marines, as well as decades studying psychology, neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), breathwork, hypnosis, and ancient philosophy, Phil shares the mental frameworks that help people unlock their highest potential.

Together we explore a profound question:
Does trauma break us… or can it become the catalyst for extraordinary growth?

From the wisdom of Stoic philosophy to the science of breathwork and hypnosis, Phil explains why the path to mastery always runs through struggle — and why discipline, not motivation, is the true foundation of success.

If you’re interested in human performance, resilience, post-traumatic growth, mental toughness, or mastering your mind, this conversation will challenge the way you think about adversity and success.

Topics we explore include:
• How elite athletes and special forces train their minds
• Stoicism and ancient Western traditions of discipline
• Why mastering the basics is the key to extraordinary performance
• The role of breathwork and hypnosis in rewiring the mind
• The difference between PTSD and Post-Traumatic Growth
• How failure can become the foundation for resilience and gratitude
• Phil’s philosophy on discipline, struggle, and living with purpose

Phil also shares insights from his new book and the lessons he's learned coaching some of the world’s most driven performers.

If you've ever wondered how to transform adversity into strength — this episode is for you.

Connect with Phil Quirk: 

Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/philquirk/
Websites:
https://limitlessgroup.im/
https://www.aetherprinciple.com/
https://pq-performance.com/

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Special Shout out to our two soundtracks: 

• "Shadow" - Jungle Meets Desert (EP) by Janax Pacha, Fadi Rifaai, Louay Al Awam, Sandu
• "Gold Tiger" - for Yoga

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Transcript

Opening & Episode Preview

SPEAKER_04 0:00

In life, whatever is your biggest challenge is probably the best way to grow and develop yourself. But what people we tend to do now is we avoid our biggest struggles. We want a path of least resistance, not the path of most resistance. We don't talk about that enough. It's what we call PTG, post-traumatic growth. It's a really traumatic experience, but from that experience, post that traumatic experience, they develop an appreciation for life that they didn't have before. All failures is first attempted learning. All athletes and all sports understand that that it's not the training that makes you fitter and stronger, it's the rest in between. So athletes prioritize rest. Every athlete prioritizes rest.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

I think we live in a world that might be a little obsessed with performance, maybe unhealthily obsessed, let's say that way.

SPEAKER_04 0:52

100% agree. Our brain has something called an ultradian rhythm, which is a it's an oscillating cycle. Everything in your body oscillates under 24 hours, you know, heart rate, respiratory rate, but also focus as well. We get three or four good ultradian rhythms per day. If you want to be the best at anything, you have to be a little bit obsessive. And the obsession will have you know, it will leave a trail of things behind it, and it might be destruction, it might be relationship. That identity and purpose are huge. So when you've dedicated your whole life to something and then suddenly that stops, there is a huge void in there where your identity and your purpose that has driven you so far in your life now isn't really there, and that it's really important to build a new purpose and identity because I think humans without purpose can be a dangerous thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

Hey there. If you like this episode and you're getting some beautiful transmissions or are feeling inspired to support this podcast in any way, the best way to do that is to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, on YouTube, or wherever it is that you're plugging into the Enlightened DXP podcast. You can also follow us on Instagram at EnlightenedDXP.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Who is he, you might ask? He is a world-renowned human performance coach. And what I'm most excited about today is that he's worked with some global who's who's of excellence. I see that you've worked with UK tennis royalty, Liam Brody, three-time Olympic cycling champion Ed Clancy, and even some elite operatives from both US and UK special forces. Phil, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_04 3:06

Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01 3:07

Yeah, thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm really excited to talk to you about some of your specialties, which is neurolinguistic programming. Some people might know it better by its abbreviation, NLP, and hypnotherapy. And we've had a few conversations. And what I love about what I think you can bring to this sort of healing conversation about the spiritual warriors path is both that masculine and that feminine route of balancing that performance with, you know, moderating that, because I think we live in a world that might be a little obsessed with performance, maybe unhealthily obsessed, let's say that way.

SPEAKER_04 3:46

100% agree.

How Phil’s Passion for Human Performance Began

SPEAKER_01 3:48

Yeah, so you describe yourself as someone who's obsessed with human performance. When did this happen? Why did it happen? It was it born from pain or purpose?

SPEAKER_04 3:59

If I go sort of right back to the start, um, I I joined the Royal Marines when I was 20 years old, and I probably started the journey there without realizing it. Um I had that sporty but not academic badge that you get when you're at school. You kind of get given badges to wear, as Ram Das would say. And I I joined the Marines predominantly for that reason. I wanted to run around, put a Bergen on, and you know, kind of do physical things. Um and I didn't realise it then, but what I was experiencing firsthand was you know resilience, leadership, what what suffering really was, what pain was, how to endure, you know, when you're under incredible physical and emotional and you know mental stress, which is what Limpson is, where they train the Royal Marines. Um, but I was always a I would say a square peg and a round hole. I wasn't a real boot neck boot neck. Um I loved my time, I did six years, uh, but it was never really me. So I kind of left and I did a really odd thing and joined, switched sides, joined the RAF, the Royal Air Force, which was an unusual move. You know, my friends from the Marines let me know with their banter. But um, but really I wanted to do something in the RAF, which I couldn't do in the Marines, and that was to become what's called an adventure train instructor. So a mountain I would take people in the mountains, take people canoeing, take people climbing, and and we would use that experience as a way of developing them. You know, you learn about yourself when you're dangling off a cliff in the in the Alps or you know, ski touring in in the winter. You you learn a lot in nature that you don't really need any textbooks to teach. But the interesting thing about what we did is we wrapped that experience around lots of developmental models, which would become my passion. And I I just fell in love with the idea of not just having the experience in one hand, but able to facilitate that experience and contextualize it user models. And those that combination of those two worlds kind of set the framework for me to move into human performance and start studying it.

SPEAKER_01 6:12

I love this. There's so many things that you touch on that just it makes my little girl come alive. I was a total tomboy, I was an elite athlete. I mean, I I made it to collegiate basketball, um, was introduced to, you know, a lot of sports psychology quite young, which is probably why I got really into studying neuropsychology in undergrad. Um and there's just something about like even the military shows. I'm sure there's many men and women out there that can can feel viscerally whenever they watch a military, uh, there's something about that brotherhood, there's something about the training, the discipline it requires to be successful. That's quite interesting. And also the fact that you weren't quite fitting in there, but it obviously scratched an itch for you. What do you think that itch was? That was it the discipline? Was it like the rigor? Were you looking to be buffed up in some way?

SPEAKER_04 7:11

I think with the Royal Marines, I, you know, I you know, I wasn't, you know, I was quite physically active when I was young, but I wasn't physically strong. I was, I I still am, I'm, you know, not you know, really sort of what you would call like a mesomorphic man that's got muscles. Um, I was very good at running, I was very good at you know, kind of doing long distances. Um, and you know, part of me wanting to join the Marines was I wanted to be a bit tougher, I wanted to have a little bit of respect and reputation. Um, and that kind of backfired a little bit. I probably went too far the wrong direction. Um uh but what the Royal Marines, I always say, the Royal Marines built my character and the Royal Air Force built my intellect. Um I held on to the belief that I was not really an intelligent person. And when I joined the RAF, I I was mentored by uh a squadron leader, um a guy called Mark Lovett, who, for whatever reason, he kind of saw past the class clown and encouraged me to start thinking a little bit more instead of just messing around. And I started he gave me a book to read, it was Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. I read it front to back in a matter of days, you know, and kind of memory, I sort of read it once and it just all went into my head, and which was a shock because I couldn't retain information when I was at school, but that's probably because I was looking out the classroom at the football field rather than what was getting taught. And that that taught me a lesson in and of itself that you if you want to teach people and if you want them to learn, they have to enjoy the experience and be curious about it, and it's your responsibility as the teacher to create that environment of curiosity, and it's something that I've built into everything I do now when I teach. I I wrap all of my teaching around storytelling and metaphors and Greek mythology, and the reason for that is I want people to be really curious about what's going on, um, not just give them the information in a kind of sort of binary way.

Wisdom from Ancient Western Traditions

SPEAKER_01 9:13

Yeah, and I know you're a big fan of Stoicism and you call yourself a Greek geek.

SPEAKER_05 9:18

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

What is it? What are the lessons that you're pulling from these ancient Western traditions that really speak to you?

SPEAKER_04 9:29

Well, Stoicism itself is wonderful, I think. It's um, you know, the the the original the original Stoic was Zeno of Citium, and and I love his story about how he started Stoicism. He was actually a wealthy merchant trader in the Mediterranean, and his his ship, with all of his cargo on and all of his wealth, was shipwrecked and sank, you know, and he was he was sort of shipwrecked onto the shores of Athens. And as the saying goes, what he said was it would appear that I'm destined to be a less incumbent philosopher from this day forward. And that's the the essence of stoicism, is not about being tough or you know, kind of stiff-lipped, but it is about accepting your situation, whatever that might be. It's about um accepting things like temperance and and using some of the virtues of stoicism to live in a modern world, I think, is as valuable today as what it was, if not more valuable today. Um, you know, this idea that you know you can live a good life in accordance with nature is all wrapped in the stoic philosophy. So that on and of itself, I just love that whole concept. Um, some of the other Greek philosophers that sit outside of Stoicism, you know, the famous ones like Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, who were teacher, student, teacher student, lineage. I just think the stories are wonderful, you know. Socrates espouting philosophy in the ancient agora, the agora being the open space of Athens, which is where we get the word agrophobia from. And this idea that you know it's this old guy with a white beard with no sandals on would just stand there and just espouse philosophy on outside of Simon's uh shoe shop, I think it's just incredible. Um and we don't really know what Socrates said because he never wrote anything down, he never committed any of his ideas to paper. It was his student, Plato, that wrote all of his ideas. So we're we're never really sure whether Plato talks about Socrates in the first person or the second person and uses him as a mouthpiece for his ideas. It's difficult to separate the two.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

Oh, fascinating. Oh, that's interesting because he's so famous. But so Plato, his student, was the one that made him famous, perhaps.

SPEAKER_04 11:45

For s for sure. I mean, well, he was famous in Athens at the time. Um, perhaps made more famous by his death. You know, so his death, I think it was 399 BC, he was he was sentenced by a democratic jury of his peers of around 500 or 600 of them. Huge jury, that is, isn't it? And um and the first time he was sentenced, he was charged with corrupting the youth of Athens with his ideas, which was a score that was settled for an enemy of his. Um, he was found guilty, and his sentence was to pay a sort of nominal amount of money and some wine. He rejected that. He said that the the the jury were all idiots, so they retried him and sentenced him to death by hemlock.

SPEAKER_01 12:28

Oh my gosh. I had no idea that he was basically murdered by his peers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting, fascinating. Um it sounds like, you know, I don't know so much. I hear a bun a bunch of different Greek mythology stories, but with the with regards to Stoicism, it seems to be this sort of set of rules that make you a calm, patient, resilient person.

SPEAKER_04 12:56

Yes, yes, yes. Made more famous by the Stoics that came after Zeno than Zeno probably himself with the school of Stoicism. Marcus Aurelius, Seneca the Younger, and and Epictetus, are probably the three biggest protagonists of Stoicism that really kind of brought it, especially maybe Marcus Aurelius with meditations. But it is very much that, it's a simple set of rules, it's not complicated, it's actually living your life in a very simple way and abiding by the virtues of Stoicism. And actually, if you kind of filter all of your actions and your ideas through the virtues, then it then it gives you a compass of being able to navigate in the world.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

And what are some of your favorite tenets from Stoicism that you really try and live by?

SPEAKER_04 13:43

The struggle is the way, Marcus Aurelius. You know, you know, if whatever is in life, whatever is your biggest challenge is probably the best way to grow and develop yourself. But what people we tend to do now is we avoid our biggest struggles. Um we want a path of least resistance, not the path of most resistance, but that very resistance is what gives us resilience and fortitude.

Redefining Success & Mastering the Basics

SPEAKER_01 14:11

This is fascinating. I've been thinking about this today because I was thinking, you know, we might talk about limiting beliefs at some point, and I thought, what's one of my limiting beliefs that comes up often? And now that you've framed it in this way, now I'm not sure if it's a limiting belief or something that's gotten me this far. But I do have a belief that um success doesn't come unless you struggle. And I think it's all limiting in that I also think that success can come when you're in flow and it's joyful and graceful. Um and so sometimes it can, I suppose, any belief can can be a little unhealthy. And so if I oversubscribe to this stoic belief that the struggle is the way, um, I agree with that. That struggle is great and it it builds character. But if I only look for struggle, then it can be really hindering.

SPEAKER_04 15:04

Yeah, and I think just going back to what you initially said, uh is how you define success as well. Um and that's one of the things that I often say to clients is that we we talk about success without really defining what that metric is. You know, is it is it monetary, is it, is it, is it happiness, is it social media following? Is it, you know, how do you define what success really looks like? Because if you can't actually define that, you you're you're you're almost punching in the dark a little bit and hoping to get a knockout punch.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

Yeah, it's interesting because I know it it energetically it's changed over the years, and in the last 10 or 15 years, I've always said, I'm a student of eudaimonia, which is the pursuit of life lived meaningfully well. But then you could also say, well, what is a meaningfully well-lived life? Um, but it I think it it really is one that is led with purpose, that is really embodied, that um yeah, is is full of joy and grace and simplicity, um, is full of deep connection and meaning and and relationships. Um and of course, with that, I assume that you know there's financial success and all of these things that support that environment. Um, but one way I a friend of mine, or one of my mentors about 10 years ago asked me this question, and it has always stuck with me, is that he said, What do you want people to say about you at your 80th birthday or at your funeral? And if they were to only call out three things about you, what should one of those three things be? Or what should all of those three things be? And I used to always say, Well, if everyone, most people in that room said that Erica was one of the best huggers ever, and she always made time for us, even though she was busy, I think I would I would die happy. And I think it's always a good litmus test of questioning, well, what do you want people to say about you when you're gone?

SPEAKER_04 17:05

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I would 100% agree.

SPEAKER_01 17:08

What are your um what are three ways that you hope that people describe you when you're you're finished?

SPEAKER_04 17:15

I I'm not so concerned about many people. One of the reasons why I call my first book Legacy was was about my daughters, and I I I would I think it's very difficult for for my two daughters to understand what I do because it's quite difficult to explain. It's not like it's a you know, it's a my my dad is a teacher or he's a postman or he's a you know he's a university professor or whatever job title. I think if my daughter's friends asked them, Well, what does your dad do? I don't think they would be able to answer. Um and I wrote the book Legacy because at some point in their life they're gonna get to a point where they start to be curious, and I wanted them to be able to pick up a book and actually go, Oh, I kind of understand a little bit more now. Um, and if I can get to the end and have that legacy where I've handed that over to my children, and if nothing else, just ignited their curiosity to have a a lifetime of learning. I think I I wrote in the foreword for legacy to my daughters that live like you'll die, uh live like you'll die tomorrow, learn like you'll live forever. Um, and I think if you can have that philosophy in life, you you you won't go too far wrong.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

And in this book, Legacy, is it basically your own tenets and how you want to live your life? Is that what you're passing on to your your daughters?

SPEAKER_04 18:39

No, it's it's all the stuff I've learned. So it's it's it's it's 99 short chapters on how you can use stoicism and Greek philosophy in the in the modern world. But I think once you start reading the chapters, it's a blend of my interpretation of what all of those things were. So I kind of morph it into through my eyes. Um so it is, it has my sort of DNA wrapped into it, but it's the ideas of of many people that come before. It's kind of the ultimate standing on the shoulders of Giants Book.

SPEAKER_01 19:11

Well, you've worked with a lot of Giants, um everyday people, but also like Olympians and elite athletes. And I'm I'm so curious when you look at these people that have reached a certain level of performance, you know, they're the top in their field. Do you feel that there's something really like there's a one strand of thread or something that ties them all together? And it's like, yeah, this is what's different about them versus the 99%?

SPEAKER_04 19:43

A a relentless pursuit of doing the basics is what you know. So the the the the greatest of all sports. So if you look at the all blacks, if you look at you know the the great three from tennis, um they they just relentlessly practice the basics almost to a point where for anyone else it would just be mundanely boring. But the relentless pursuit of being able to do the basics better than anyone else is the foundation of when you're under the most incredible pressure, so you're on centre court Wimbledon, you're under the most incredible pressure because you've done those basics so much and you've committed so much of your life to drilling them into your subconscious mind that it all starts to become automatic and you reach that flow state. Um and I think you can only do that by this pursuit of mastery of the basic skills.

What Drives People Obsessed with Human Performance

SPEAKER_01 20:36

And let me also ask: do you think most elite anything are healthy? And by that I mean, you know, obviously they're physically healthy or whatever, but there is this idea, I feel, and I feel that even with myself, if you have an obsession about something, you and it obviously can bleed over to the other side. So you could become a workaholic or you could become so obsessed that you're just like this horrible person to everyone around you, or what have you. I think there was a psychologist, I can't remember who it was, but they talked about clean fuel and dirty fuel, and that a lot of famous people or people that have achieved momentous things in their life, they were actually burning dirty fuel, and that there was some sort of pain or trauma that they were running away from or making sure that they didn't have to deal with in adulthood. Is that an experience that you have working with people that are really obsessed with human performance?

SPEAKER_04 21:35

If you look at different sports, so cyclists are all a little bit unhinged, and that there's a good reason for that because the sport that they participate in is so brutally physically that you have to have a certain amount of that mindset to be able to put yourself through the pain that they do. If you look at things like the Tour de France, and so you if you look at most cyclists and you you kind of sit down and they're In a really wonderful way, a little bit bonkers. And obviously, not you can't over-generalize that statement, but I think it's a good it's a good barometer. And I think most cyclists would giggle and agree because they are a little bit like that. But I think across all sports, and if you want to be the best at anything, you have to be a little bit obsessive. And the obsession will have you know it will leave a trail of things behind it. And it might be destruction, it might be relationships. You know, it's very difficult to have a you know a solid relationship if you're on the ATP tour and you basically just travel all around the world. Um, and you're effectively for nearly the whole year, you are kind of bouncing from sometimes not even country to country, continent to continent. So the very nature of that is not what we would call conducive to building healthy solid relationships. So to do that is a is a huge challenge, it takes a huge amount of sacrifice, not only the athlete's perspective, but but their partner or their wife or husband or whatever it is. So um so each sport has its own kind of I think nuance, but that there is a general need for obsession to be able to be the best. Um, because I think talent only takes you so far. You can see it in lots of the best athletes. They're all so, so talented. And what separates them is this is something different about the the greats, um, and obsession will be in there for sure.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

I also think about all of the overachievers that I know, which are many. And yeah, I and probably to some extent I suffered from that as well. And that overachieving, though, at some point, that obsession, I think does lead to a point in your life where you go, this isn't working for me anymore. It's really gotten me to this far. I'm really grateful for it, I respect it, but it's actually no longer serving me. And I assume a lot of your clients kind of meet that point at some point in their careers or in their life.

SPEAKER_04 24:05

Yeah, I mean, I I haven't worked with many that have gone kind of past their careers. So, but I I know if you use the military as an example, that the identity and purpose are huge. So when you've dedicated your whole life to something and then suddenly that stops, whether it's leaving the military or you cease to be a professional athlete in whatever context, there is a huge void in there where your identity and your purpose that has driven you so far in your life now isn't really there. And I think it's you know, and it's the same with the transition from military into the civilian world or athletes into the same context, that it's really important to build a new purpose and identity. Because I think humans without purpose uh it can be a dangerous thing.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

And how important is it to balance out discipline and self-compassion?

SPEAKER_04 24:58

Discipline is a little bit overrated, I think.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

Oh wow. Well say more.

SPEAKER_04 25:02

No, actually, sorry. Let me I've gone I've gone the wrong way with this in my description. Most people ask about motivation. Motivation's overrated. Motivation is an emotion that comes and goes. You know, sometimes you know you're really motivated to go to the gym, sometimes you're absolutely not.

SPEAKER_06 25:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 25:20

And someone that only relies on motivation, when they're not motivated, they won't do that thing. What you find with athletes is discipline and commitment, commitment, especially, they have a mindset that they don't care whether they're motivated or not, they're going to go and do the session that they need to do because they know that you know just not doing that session then and giving themselves an off that day will lead to it happening again and again and again. And sooner or later you start to miss blocks of training. And actually, you if you have that mindset where no matter what, unless I'm injured, I will not miss a session. Whatever I've got in my training program, I'm gonna do that session at 100% of whatever I need to give to it. It's a it's a lifestyle of discipline and commitment. Many of them, if you talk to them, they don't they don't necessarily feel motivated. You do when you go to the the games or you know the big events. Obviously, the motivation takes care of itself there, the excitement and the the whole intensity of that experience. But you know, if you use like Ed as an example, it was a wonderful, wonderful guy, Ed Clancy. You know, he's a track cyclist that specialised in team pursuit. So, you know, there were four years in between each Olympic cycle, and although there were world championships and European championships, it was the Olympics was always the focus with team GB. So if you're you know into your first January out of the out of an Olympic cycle, you've got three years left, you've got to be committed and disciplined because you're not going to want to get on your bike and go for a six-hour ride and around Manchester in the rain.

SPEAKER_01 26:57

Yeah, I I really struggle with this because on one hand, I agree with you, discipline is so important, but maybe just from my personal context, having a Japanese mother where discipline was so ingrained in us, and if anything, people would describe me, I don't know how they would describe me now, but I would say a lot less intense. But they used to describe me as like super intense my whole life. One of the first words that people would describe me as like, oh, Erica's really intense. How did that change? I think it changed for a few reasons. One was because I was so career motivated and I realized that my intensity could sometimes didn't get the most out of my team.

SPEAKER_05 27:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

And so I had to temper that. But it also changed when I decided to work for myself for the first time, and also COVID and time changed and things slowed down. And for the first time, I got to feel what it feels like to not have my nervous system ratcheted up to here. And in that experience, I went through this process of like, oh, um, there is uh also an ugly side to overdiscipline. Um, and there's this whole other side of rest, for example, that I'd never really experienced. And and all of a sudden there was this real several years where I had to figure out what that new equilibrium was. Um and there I do remember there was a lot of hesitation in bringing self-compassion in, but I also really craved it. Like the I I could cry thinking about receiving compassion and being like, it's okay if you don't want to go work out today or if you don't want to do that thing today. Um, but I really still struggle with where that fine line is. And how that manifests in my businesses is that I really tend to work really hard when I'm in Dubai obsessively. And then I go on holiday because I know that I need to, and I'll turn off for like a week or two. Literally, like I'll turn off my phone. And then I'll come back, and the guilt has started to subside over the years, but it's been like a real work in progress to remove that so that I don't obsessively work again while I'm here, because otherwise it's it's really hard to sustain that lifestyle, especially as you get older.

What the Corporate World Can Learn from Elite Athletes

SPEAKER_04 29:16

I think what you do is you highlight a really important point about performance. Um, and this is the big difference between corporate business and sport. All athletes and all sports understand that that it's not the training that makes you fitter and stronger, it's the rest in between. So athletes prioritize rest. Every athlete prioritizes rest. So when they're not doing the session that they're doing, they're lay down and they're resting and they're they're letting their body recover to then go to the next session, and it's this continuous progress. The the corporate world doesn't work like that, and that's fundamentally the problem with the whole ecosystem. Is we we we live in a world which rewards busyness, not productivity. And actually, if you were to kind of control, alt-delete the whole corporate world and zero it and then rebuild it, you would rebuild it completely different. You wouldn't build it in the model it is now. You would create an ecosystem that primarily supports high performance, which I don't think we have.

SPEAKER_01 30:18

How would you rebuild it? I I agree with you, but I also don't know how that would look.

SPEAKER_04 30:23

You you you would destigmatise, take and breaks. Um, so our brain has something called an ultradian rhythm, which is a it's an oscillating cycle. Every everything in your body oscillates under 24 hours, you know, heart rate, respiratory rate, but also focus as well. Um, we get we get three or four good ultradian rhythms per day. Um and we only get 90 minutes of good quality focus. After that, we become more distracted, we lose our focus, we're more likely to make mistakes with the work that we do. But we live in a world where people that take breaks are considered to be lazy when actually, if you were gonna control alt-delete, like I said, and rebuild an ecosystem of high performance, you would prioritize small windows of low-charge rest. You would build spaces in the workplace where there were focus spaces, there were low-charge meditation spaces. It wouldn't be the kind of contrived ping pong tables and you know the and fruit. It would all be about high performance. The whole the whole blueprint would be designed and thought out ergonomically, like high performance. If you think of culture like a pond or a swamp, so if you put really good goldfish into a swamp, the goldfish die anyway, if it's toxic. But if you put them into a really wonderful, really well-kept pond, then they thrive in that environment. And culture and the ecosystem is the pond for which we work on. So if we focus more on not thinking about the goldfish in terms of we need to get better goldfish in our pond, but actually thinking about what is the ecosystem that we've built that supports a super high-performing culture? Well, the answer would be that you would start to look at it from a science perspective and not a product, not a busyness perspective that we have now.

SPEAKER_01 32:17

Hmm, fascinating. Does that mean you have like for for your calendar, do you have like these three 90-minute chunks every day where you're like, I'm gonna get something remarkable done here, here, and here, and the rest can be rest or little meetings that kind of happen?

SPEAKER_04 32:35

So so the way and I obviously I'm an entrepreneur, so I can choose the way that I work, so I'm fortunate. But you know, I I'm writing my book at the minute, my second book, and you know, I will have windows of focus. And I and I can tell when I'm starting to get mentally fatigued, and rather than keep trying to write, I just go for a walk, you know, do a little bit of breath work, do you know, do anything that puts me into what I call a low charge zone, where my brain disengages from focus, it can expand its thinking, you go into the sort of default mode network, um, and actually it just your your consciousness just rests for 10 or 15 minutes, and then I go back and then I do another all trade in window. Then at the end of the day, I'll do my emails when I need my least focus because I can just kind of plow through my emails at the end of the day. So I don't I don't burn my focus on stuff that isn't necessarily needed to be really, really, really concentrated. I allow that stuff to go towards the back of the day. Um interesting, and and all it is is just trying to lean into science and not mythology, and just think, well, actually, the science is really, you know, it's really kind of settled in this area. We know about these all tradean rhythms, there's huge studies and there's lots of agreed-upon science. What we now need to do is we need to then start thinking into the workplace and go actually, how can we incorporate this great work from a science perspective to build the pond, build the ecosystem for which we put our goldfish in? And then we'll get the best out of our people.

The Power of Breathwork & Hypnosis for the Mind

SPEAKER_01 34:11

What are other ways in which you maintain this or keep your your focus clean? Are you a meditator? Do you are you do you subscribe to the Huberman sort of three steps in the morning? Or what what is it? What are your No?

SPEAKER_04 34:24

I I'm not so much a meditator. Um I'm I'm more of a breathwork sort of guy. I I I I tried meditation for a long time, and I've got a great friend called Mike, who's a wonderful guy from you know, he's written a wonderful book uh about meditation, and we we have lots of great chats between us because we see the world in very, very different ways. But I think it's that's what makes for great conversation. And my my problem is the way that my brain is, the more I try and quiet, the more it sort of bursts into life. So when I discovered breath work, I found a way that I could achieve this meditative state without actually trying really hard. I just found that if I occupied my conscious brain with focusing on my breath, then actually that whole meditation piece sort of takes care of itself without me having to kind of force the issue. Um, and that's just for me personally.

SPEAKER_01 35:16

I just found that Yeah, a lot of people say that. And and I think if you're ever trying to meditate, you're you're not gonna get there. Uh it is supposed to be this this space that breath work can create, or just yeah, this emptiness, right? It's like literally emptying yourself. But for I imagine for high achievers or people that are used to doing things, doing breath work or something like that can really distract the mind from from sort of obsessing about whether you're meditating or not.

SPEAKER_04 35:47

Yeah, and there's a there's a deeper reason though as well, because if we look at stress as a component of that ecosystem we've talked about, what most people don't realize is that they don't have to be in their stress response. Their sympathetic nervous system doesn't have to be constantly engaged. Now, the only thing that we've got within the autonomic nervous system that we have a direct conscious control over is our respiratory rate. And actually, some conscious breathing, just once again, this low-charge zones, just going lying down for 10 minutes, putting some nice relaxing music on, and doing some sort of really deep extended exhalation, conscious breathing, just paying attention to the breath, you know, five seconds into the nose, a slight pause, and then 10 seconds out, and you can regulate your nervous system. It doesn't mean you're not going to get stressed out again that day, but it allows a period of respite for you to come out of your sympathetic nervous system, your parasympathetic nervous system to be activated, and then once again the brain go into the default mode network, and then you can regather yourself, refocus, and the next window that you've got is gonna be good pure focus, and you're gonna do good work in that 90 minutes.

SPEAKER_01 36:58

I love that. Do you want to lead us in one or two breaths like that?

SPEAKER_04 37:02

Well, we I mean we we could extend that if you if you really if you wanted to. Yeah, sure. So, you know, the the basis of the work I do with the ether principle is uh fundamentally that the breath leads into hypnosis. It was a kind of revelation I had 2017. I went to a um a huge Wim Hof workshop in London, and there were there was a a number of guys that we all went down, about 20 of us, they're all kind of students of mine that had learned uh NLP and hypnosis with me. And one of the the women, wonderful Swiss woman, I kind of surrogate grandmother to me, she got the coolest name as in the world as well, Claudia von Fellenberg. So I'll give her a little shout out on the podcast. So what happened was we were doing the breath work, and Wim was leading it, and there was a huge amount of people in this chalk farm in London. And Claudia had gone into hypnosis, and the Wim Hof instructor guys, they didn't really understand hypnosis, and they they every time they kind of tried to bring her out because the music and the rhythm and everything that was going on, she was going straight back in. Now, what that does within hypnosis is creates something called fractionation. You come out of hypnosis and then you drop back in, you come out, you drop back in. It it deepens each time you do it. So she's actually going further into the hypnotic experience via this fractionation, and it it kind of freaked the guys out understandably as well, because they didn't know what to do. And I was still doing my own breath work at the time, so I was unaware this was happening. And when I came to and saw what was happening, I very quickly realized she's in hypnosis. I kind of kneeled down to her, and then I brought her out of hypnosis, and then we took her out of the room, and then she was fine. But she was a little bit shaken because she was trying to come out of the state, but then obviously she was just kind of going back in. It's very suggestible as well, Claudia. But what it did for me is I kind of had this revelation. Nobody told her to go into hypnosis. There wasn't any kind of induction, as you would say, in a formal hypnosis, but she had gone into hypnosis using her breath, and that was the kind of the start point of this concept that I developed called the ether principle, which was could you bring breath work and hypnosis together and unify them into a singular experience? So you use the breath as a way to enter into the hypnosis, and and the reason for this as well, the kind of context behind it was breath work is incredible for having a huge emotional experience. Many people have experienced that, but there's no kind of like purpose to what we're doing with it, it's almost like an uh going into a room but not really knowing why you're going into that room. Now, what hypnosis does is it gives you a real purpose to what you're doing, you know, so you can use the hypnosis, sorry, the breath work to go into the room and then use the hypnosis whilst you're in that room to affect change. And you bring the two together and it multiplies the experience.

SPEAKER_01 40:01

And can you speak a little bit about the power of hypnosis and why you've used it as a therapeutic tool?

SPEAKER_04 40:08

I adore it. I just think it's incredible, non-intrusive, non-medicated. You know, it's it's it's it's one of the most wonderful things. It's so misunderstood in the modern world, you know, Hollywood and you know, so many, so many misconceptions and misperceptions around hypnosis. It it's it's an absolutely purely natural state. And it's the the the crazy thing about it from my perspective is it has very little to do with me. It's the other person, and if I can use a kind of analogy to help you understand this, I'm all I do is navigate. You know, I'm I'm like a satnav in a car. The person that is in the hypnosis, they are driving the car. But what I'm giving them is I'm giving them the directions that they need to achieve the outcome that they want. But I don't do anything else but but but give them the directions. The the perception within hypnosis is that you give some power to the person, the hypnotist, but it's the opposite of that. I give the power back to you via my direction, and then what happens is you have wonderful outcomes, non-medicated, non-intrusive. Um, I always say to people, you know, you know, there's certain contraindicators of hypnosis, certain things you wouldn't work with, psychosis and and and you know, people that perhaps suffer from bipolar, and there's a certain number of things that you would not commit to using hypnosis with, and quite rightly so, but for so many things in the modern world, it is so naturally effective.

SPEAKER_01 41:40

Yeah, Phil, for those people out there that you know think of hypnosis and imagine a man with like a little watch, you know, in front of someone's face. Explain how it works. And I think we'll do a demonstration in a moment, but explain how it works and and why it is. Because I think it's about really helping people be really present with themselves. And in my experience, has been well, people say that you get you get to touch your subconscious, and that's where most of the change happens. But I don't understand the science really around it. So I'd love to hear from you.

SPEAKER_04 42:22

I don't want to sound like I don't know what I'm talking about because I do, I'll promise you. But nobody really knows, really knows what hypnosis is. When we talk about the subconscious, we're talking quite metaphorically. In fact, when we're talking about pretty much everything within hypnosis, we're talking metaphorically. It is a pure state of focus and attention. Um, and you fixate the attention and then turn the intention, the that that that real focus and attention, you turn it inside. So the person then goes inside, and in that deep sort of hypnotic meditative state, where you you you experience a paradox where you have physical relaxation, but your mental focus is is is heightened. You hear everything that's going on, you have a heightened sense of awareness, especially of the sounds and the sensations that are happening around the around the room. So the idea that it's some sort of sleep state, first of all, is completely nonsense because you hear everything. Yeah. Um, and but at the same time, you have this kind of wonderful paradox where your body is in complete physical relaxation, so there's a kind of increase of the focus and attention, but also a kind of complete relaxation that occurs simultaneously. And then when you get into that wonderful state, you can affect change by focusing and directing your thoughts. Um, and you can do that in a number of ways. There's you know, there's indirect, sort of really permissive Ericksonian hypnosis, which is about using metaphors and wonderful storytelling that Ericsson was you know really famous for. And then there's a really direct approach where you know you're kind of telling the person exactly what you want them to experience, and they are following that satnav, they are following those suggestions. And as long as a person follows those suggestions and really commits themselves to that process, then you will nearly always have a positive outcome. Um the only people that I've been unable to work with is they they just don't they just won't go into hypnosis, they kind of their head goes down and then they lift their head up and say, you know, it's not working for me. And they don't give it the time because they their expectation is that that that that perhaps they're just gonna fall asleep like you would when you go to sleep at night, which isn't the case. And that's why it's so important that anyone that teaches hypnosis or anyone that practices hypnosis understands that the pre-talk is is so important. Everything that you say to the client before you do the hypnosis, it actually pre-frames and sets the context for the whole experience. Yeah. So you you the expectation and the focus and the attention, you build all of that in to that pre-talk.

SPEAKER_01 45:08

Yeah, I've been doing hip hypnotherapy on and off for probably the last decade. But I do recall at the beginning I was quite desirous of doing it. But I was one of those people who went to a hypnotherapy sort of meditation, even. And I would follow all of the instructions. I was very like I'm a very good student. And it would go, you know, they would go, okay, and walk down into your subconscious, into your basement, or whatever sort of um uh cue that they would give, and then they would say, and you're walking down the steps 10, 9, 8. And literally I would wake up 40 minutes later, and it exactly at the moment, that's like, and you are coming up three, two, one. And I was, I would literally would black out for that whole period of time. But it was so fascinating to me that I would literally black out from the moment of going down, and sometimes I'd make it to that basement room and be able to picture it, and then wake up here and I I would go to all of these hypnotherapists and say, What's going on? And they said, Oh, there must be something um that's blocking you. And I never got to the bottom of it. Obviously, I I did open up eventually, but um, for several years, hypnotherapy wasn't working for me. I'm so curious what your take on that is.

SPEAKER_04 46:26

Um I think it probably was, in in all honesty. And I think what was happening is I I I would I I wonderfully call it the Dory experience from find a Nemo. The reason why people think that hypnosis is sleep is because you have a certain amount of amnesia that occurs. You know, if you watch stage hypnosis, an example, the person doesn't remember what's been said to them. But what happens is it's like a sort of find and nemo dory experience. You hear what I'm saying, but then the moment I've said it, it kind of just disappears like Dory. So, and and it's it's going into your subconscious, which obviously, once again, is metaphorical. You're kind of hearing the words consciously, there's a there's an awareness of it, sort of a cogito ergo sun, I think, therefore I am. I'm aware these words are being said, but then the moment they are said, they're like clouds that disappear, and then you just forget what's been said, and then you come out 40 minutes later and you think, Oh god, I had this real time dilation, I don't remember anything that was said, but but I think it probably was working. Um and and hypnosis is really interesting as well, is there's there's people all around the world that's doing some amazing things now with hypnosis where the game has changed quite significantly in the last sort of 10 to 20 years, where where it's a lot less about you know, really long, sort of progressive muscle relaxation inductions, which sometimes can end with the person falling asleep, which is exactly what you don't want. It's much more precise now, it's much more sort of not I don't want to say fast because that gives it a sense of urgency, it's not rushed in any way, but it's a real deliberateness about the work, and it's actually we go in, we get to the depth where we feel as though we've got the right depth of hypnosis. Once again, the depth is a metaphor, there is no deep, but it is a deepening of such, and we work really precisely and affect change, and then we come at the other side. Most of my sessions with my clients are less than 20 minutes, 15 to 20 minutes. Wow. The old way it used to be was you know, sometimes you know, an hour, an hour and a half of really long hypnosis, and that's that's all still fine, it all works great. Though those guys that do it like that, they are brilliant at what they do, and a lot of that is that erecks only and permissive hypnosis. But there is a kind of a a new breed of of guys and and women that are kind of really coming through and and saying, Well, actually, you know, rather than spend an hour and a half, we can actually do this work really precisely in 20 minutes.

SPEAKER_01 48:54

And you were telling me the other day about a story of a woman who had a phobia of the dark, but there were it was quite a fascinating story. I wonder if you'd you'd entertain us with that uh specific example, because I think this uh uh r really showcases the power of hypnosis.

SPEAKER_04 49:13

So yeah, uh I'll um I I will refer to her name as Jay. Um I'm actually good friends of her now, so I'm sure she will be amused if she does see this podcast. So uh I I first qualified to teach hypnosis and LP in 2015, so it's kind of like sort of 10, 10-year anniversary for me, sort of time. Um and I I've I've taught all my life, so it's one my passion in life, it's probably I think my my my gift is the ability to teach, and I love it with you know every single fibre of my body. I I'm at my happiest when I'm in a room with a load of people and they're really interested to learn what I've got to say. Um, but early on, when I trained as a NLP and uh hypnosis trainer, you you're obviously finding your feet a little bit, and it was on one of my earlier courses, it was at a place called Lily Shawle in the United Kingdom. Um, and the great thing about Jay on the course was she um for the first two days I hated her, I absolutely hated her. You know, everything that I said, she contradicted, she challenged me non-stop, which is it's fine to be challenged when you're teaching, but after like two days of being constantly questioned and challenged, and that doesn't work like that. And if I'd have said that the sky was blue, she would have said it was black. Um, it was starting to wear thin a little bit. I mean, and I was kind of thinking to myself, I'm really struggling here with this student, and my and it affects your confidence as well, it affects the your delivery. Um, and the end of day two, teaching about phobias, and phobia is actually quite a straightforward thing to remove, it's actually a kind of nine-step process, and you know, and I've worked with probably hundreds of people now in the last 20 years that I've been doing this and have a probably a success rate of about 95-96%. So most of the people that work with the phobia is gone, not always, is never guaranteed, but most. So I'm confident with phobias, which is why I like to teach early in the course, because I know that if I can demonstrate to the group and we've got someone with a really severe phobia, you know, spiders or needles or airplanes or whatever it is, then it it convinces, oh my god, you know, this stuff works, and then you get this kind of buy-in. So that's the the theory behind why I teach it when and when I teach it. So we got to the end of the day, and she came up to me and she said, Um, would you do some one-on-one session with me tonight? And at that point, I used to do one-on-one sessions with students because I wanted them to have the best experience. I don't do it anymore because I find that I'm so wiped out from teaching all day, especially on a six-day course, to then do like coaching every night. Yeah, but back then I was trying to make my name, and so I would do coach, I would do individual sessions, so they got great value for that for their course. So, anyway, I said to her, What's the what's what would you like to be coached about? And she said, Well, I've got a phobia. And I said, But we've just done phobias, we've just been doing it for the last hour and a half, and she went, Well, I'm not gonna let any of these idiots do it. And I remember thinking, Oh my goodness, me, you're so I said, Okay, we'll do it, no problem. And it was the winter, it was. We went back, um, and it was kind of like sort of half seven, eight o'clock. Went back into the training room. It the training room at Lilushall is like an old library, like Harry Potter, it was really magical. We've got these sort of wing-back chairs, and so we've got sat down in our chair each, and I think to myself, I'm confident with this because I'm I'm good at phobias, I've been doing them for like 10 years at this point. I'm I'm super confident in my whole approach and technique. So we get into the technique, and um a phobia is the dark, which which phobias come from two places significant emotional experience or learned behaviour. You know, most spider phobias, as an example, is learned behaviour. Your mum's afraid of spiders, little two-year-old Tommy sees mum terrified of fibers and thinks, oh my god, that must be an existential threat to me. So I need to take a little image of that thing, and the phobia is passed down a hereditary line. Or significant emotional experience, something intensely emotional happens, and if the intensity is high enough and the change of rate of state from being calm to being terrified is sufficient or for phobia, it's kind of immediately.

SPEAKER_01 53:31

Um would you say that the latter is more common than the first?

SPEAKER_04 53:34

It depends on the phobia. So, so a lot of flying phobias are significant emotional experiences, so not afraid of flying, but then have a terrible experience, lightning and turbulence, and then the phobia is in there. Um, needles are usually significant emotional experience. Um spiders are not always, but I'd say 90% of spider phobies I work with are hereditary, so they're passed down, learned behaviour. So I know with a fear of the dot, usually it's like being locked in a cupboard or you know, playing hide and seek, and then you know, this panic that you can't get the lights on, or something like that. That's what it's usually. Um, and I say to her, you know, if you think about you're being afraid of the dot, do you have a picture? And she says, No, I just see darkness, just it's all I see is darkness. So we run the phobia technique, and usually, you know, you kind of get them to grade it, not to 10, starts off at 10 always, or pretty much always, and you're looking to get it down to about a two. So it's like, oh my god, it's I'm not terrified of this thing anymore. So I'm doing it with her, and her phobia is getting worse, not better. And I haven't seen this before. And I'm thinking to myself, this is gonna be, and if I can't do something about this, then she's gonna come in tomorrow and she's gonna be worse than the first two days. Um, I might have to give her a money back and then send her one away straight away. So, so I'm kind of labouring with it, but it's not working. And I think, well, I'll just use hypnosis. I know that if I if I'm ever in doubt, I just think, well, let's just use hypnosis, let's figure out what's going on. Um, we we we I put her into hypnosis, I do some deepening. She she's a really good hypnotic subject, which is a surprise, um, kind of a background, she's from London, corporate world, not to stereotype it, but that kind of corporate bitch sort of thing. Yeah, yeah. Um so quite analytical, you know, quite logical. But she was a really good hypnotic subject. She went nice and deep really quickly, and you can tell that by all the physiology, the breath deepening. So important when you're doing hypnosis to really be looking at the physiology of the person because that's what's giving you all of the cues. Um, which is the problem with people that read scripts, is they kind of don't see that. Um, so I ask her to go back to this first time, this event, this whatever's caused this phobia, and and for the she goes back to the 15th century into another lifetime, into another, you know, a regression into another life. And she starts speaking with a French accent. Now, I've never seen this before, I've been doing it for 10 years, and I'm kind of like, Where's my manuals? Like, I don't I don't know, I've not I know about regression, I've heard about past life experiences, but I've never experienced it myself. But I think well let's just go with it. Um, so she's speaking in this French accent. Um now the other thing to know about is really interesting is sort of funny thing with the neck where was she would speak to you and the kind of neck would be over to one side. Just with a crick. And then if she was aware of it, she could correct it, but then if she stopped thinking about it, she would just go back to that. And she'd she'd had it her whole life. She'd been to see physios, chiropractors, neurologists, all sorts of things. The common consensus was some sort of nerve damage that was in the neck, and it just basically gave her this little sort of tilt, um, which is important for what's about to happen. So I I ask her, Well, what's going on? What's your experience? And she says, I don't know, it's really dark. Um, it's really cold. I'm in, I think I'm in a dungeon. I can hear water dripping around me, it's really hollow, it's really cold, um, and it's really, really dark. And I say to her, Well, um, what else can you tell is going on? And she went, I can feel a really heavy chain around my neck, and I'm I'm hanging on the wall by my neck, chained to the wall. So I'm kind of like, I'm in that, and I so we we we carry on. Um, I do a little bit of timeline work, I get her to dissociate out of it, so looking down on it, and and we start to kind of you know take what she needs to learn so she can let go of it. So, you know, what what is it that her subconscious mind needs to learn about this event so she can then just release it and let it all go? And she has this kind of realization, and I see this huge shift in her physiology where she says, you know, uh, what I can't control everything, so I need to learn to let go, and that's which exactly what she said, or words to that effect, which I remember today because the moment she said it, her whole physiology changed. Um, and I kind of brought her back, so I sort of said, Look, you know, come all the way back to the present day, take as much time as you need, you know, any events that you experience on the way back, just learn what you need to learn from these events and allow them then to then and then only come back into this room once you've made all the changes, which is a kind of little bit of a sort of a really clever hypnotic command because you're effectively saying, you know, don't open your eyes until you finished everything you need. So I don't do any count outs, I just sit there now and wait. I and she comes out of the hypnosis, we look at each other, and I'm a little bit I'm probably more shaken than her to be fair. And she says, That was really fucking weird, was her exact words. I went, for me and you both, by the way. Um, how do you feel? And she went, I feel pretty discombobulated. And I went, should we should we have a look at the lights? Because it was it was winter, and she was really nervous, you get anticipatory for you. And I said, Look, listen, I'll go to that, I'll switch light off. Give yourself a moment, take a few breaths. But if it's really, really intense, and you know, I can always switch it back on, but just sit with it and let's see what it's like, and switch the light off. She was absolutely fine. And to understand her phobia as well, it was so intense that she used to sleep with her torch next to her bed face down with the torch on, especially if she was in somewhere she didn't know, like it Lily Shawl. So if there was an electricity cut in the night, because she slept with the light on, the main light on, she could then turn the torch over and she'd have light, and that's how irrational that fear was for her.

SPEAKER_01 59:39

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 59:40

But then the next day in the classroom, she walks in. I'm a believer. Everyone in the class is like, what's happened to you? And but halfway through the day, her neck people realize your neck's not tilted anymore. It was corrected.

SPEAKER_01 59:54

And to this day, she has a corrected neck, like she doesn't have a crick in her neck anymore.

SPEAKER_04 59:58

Yeah, I cannot explain it. And and I I I spent about two or three years trying to study and read and understand, and and I I kind of came to the conclusion that that it was my ego that wanted to be able to articulate and explain it. And and actually, if I subscribe to the idea that hypnosis is about that person, you or or whoever it is sat in that chair, not about me, then actually it doesn't matter.

Trauma vs. Post-Traumatic Growth

SPEAKER_01 1:00:26

Mm-hmm. Wow. Powerful stuff. Powerful stuff. Um I want to go into, I mean, obviously that was a really stressful situation for 15th century her soul in the 15th century anyway, but I want to talk a little bit about um trauma. Okay. It seems to be this hot word that everyone's sort of been throwing around. And I think it's it's great that we're bringing attention to it, big T trauma, little T trauma. Obviously, it does have an impact on us, on our performance, how we behave in the world. Um but there's also this feeling that maybe we're kind of getting a little imbalanced with all of that. What's your view on these this world we live in where we're sort of maybe oversubscribing to trauma or maybe the the meaning of trauma or what what what role it plays in our life is getting a little bit lost?

SPEAKER_04 1:01:23

So my my probably my favorite book is is Victor Frankl's Man Search a Meaning. And I've I've read so many books and I am a ferocious reader. Above all, you know, Victor Frankel's Man Search a Meaning is just a seminal book for me to understand human experience and and human experience of trauma as well. Um what Victor Frankel would say is that you know once you once you ascribe meaning to something, it you know, it gives it a new dimension. And and he believed that as long as he held on to this really deep power inside him, which was a choice and how he would react in Auschwitz, no matter what the Nazis did to him, take his, you know, they took his house in Vienna, they took all his wealth, you know, they stripped him of everything, his dignity, his clothes, his burnt his life's work, logotherapy. And the only thing that he wouldn't give the Nazis was his reaction to that. He cho he would have a choice on how he could react. And he believed that that's what allowed him to go through so much of a traumatic period, and also the fact that he lived in Auschwitz for such a long time and survived, where the the mortality rate was so high from you know from illness and disease and everything that would happen. And he he believed that that it was because he he had a purpose and he had meaning, and and and I think that we we do live in a world where I think it's great that we we talk about trauma. You know, I I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a psychotherapist, I never present myself as one. Um I have worked at a wonderful place called Battle Back, which is actually at Lily Shore where I used to run those trainings from. That's how I I came about it. And we work with what's called WIS, wounded, injured, and sick service people under the supervision of psychologists and and and academics, but primarily coaches. And it it's it's really interesting this idea that you know you could have 20 people. Let's just say we there's a a bomb that goes off, and 20 people are uh uh in this experience that they share the same terrible and terrifying experience. And we know that there's a certain amount of those people will have that experience and it will always be a very negative experience, but they will be okay, you know, there won't be something where it completely uh you know affects their life. But we also know that there's a certain amount of people, maybe because of stuff that's happened before that, you know, childhood and that will have that experience and it kind of tip their nervous system over the edge, and and they develop flashbacks and you know the the hypervigilance and and would develop the symptoms of PTSD. But there's there's also another group of people we don't talk about, which is what what I think we miss, is that that there's a certain group of people that will have that experience and it will still be a terrible experience, but it will develop a new way of seeing the world. It's what we call PTG, post-traumatic growth. It's a really traumatic experience, but from that experience, post that traumatic experience, they develop an appreciation for life that they didn't have before, they they actually develop a new way to see the world, a new lens switch to perceive that is built upon this really horrible, really traumatic experience. Now I think we don't talk about that enough. So people don't really kind of know that that's a thing that's there, that's an opportunity that we really talk about PTSD. And if you if you went we we chatted last night, didn't we? And I said, if you went around this bar and asked everyone who's packed the restaurant we were in last night and said, you know, have you heard of PTSD? Everybody would say yes. If you went round and asked the same question and said, Have you heard of PTG? I would think most tables would never have heard of it. And I think maybe we're missing something there where we it's not about discounting PTSD, and it's not about ignoring that group at all, but it is about saying there is something else that can come from this. And I think that's a conversation that's really worth having in the world.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:40

I think it is really important, and and I also like being a total nut that geeks out on these sort of things. I had never heard of post-traumatic growth. I've heard of different people talking about it, but I I didn't know that there was something called PTG. Um and I as I was reflecting on the story after you told me about it. I was thinking, yeah, well, if you think about all, you know, I work a lot with entrepreneurs and investors. And when you talk to them, they all say, I learn from, you know, failure is my favorite thing. It's obviously not like when you're experiencing it. But in terms of building character, in terms of building who you are as a leader or even as a businessman or woman, everyone says failure is gold because that's where you learn from. You don't really learn from successes and someone giving you a trophy. That's just kind of, you know, these flags that are saying you're kind of on the right track, but you're not exactly sure what you're getting rewarded for. And I'm even thinking about some of my friends who are really into performance training and how you build muscle or bone. It's really about apparently when you really train properly, you're actually breaking the fibers in your muscles and then it's repairing stronger. And the same with bones, right? So we don't have osteoporosis when you're when we're older is really lifting heavy things, and we we're actually fracturing the bone. And then there's repair happening. And I think, wow, if we're to if that's how we get strong, is by having micro sort of trauma applied to us physically. Then could that not also be applied in terms of mental resiliency or psychological or emotional resiliency? And I'm wondering what that line is, because obviously there is that line for athletes. You don't want to work out so hard that you can't work out for five days. And it's about finding that nuance, I suppose, of what is within the healthy limits. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:43

And I and I we could widen that question, I think, and expand that. I think culturally we we we educate our children out of the capacity to understand the the value of failure because the the very necessity of the educational system is we don't reward failure within that. Um, you know, one of the things that we used to say to the to the guys at Baalback is fail all failures is first attempted learning. Because for some of these guys, you know, that maybe that they've lost limbs in Afghanistan or Iraq, they have to find a new way to live their life, you know, they have to find a new way to do the things that they once did. The they can't maybe do it the same as what they did, but they still can do it, they just have to find a new way to do it. And there's a process of relearning that has to occur there. Yeah, but I think because of once again, if we control alt-d, alt-delete the whole of the school system and say, let's rebuild it, let's just we've we've built this whole thing based on the industrial revolution, and we've we we we we want our children to be punctual, to to have a dinner bell at the start and a bell at the end of the day, and and we want to really get them ready to go and work in the factories. And we we've evolved that idea for sure, but we haven't evolved it sufficiently enough. We still reward the same sort of hierarchy of of topics that are given more credence than others within a schooling system, um, and and most importantly, we we we develop a real fear of failure, and it and it comes from being scared of failing your exams and failing your tests, and and you can see it's certainly um I have had that experience with my daughters that you know they're doing spelling tests when they're sort of six years old and they're terrified of you know getting them wrong. And I think that it's not about rewarding failure, but I think that the people that create the most value in the world, they're not afraid of failure, and they'll fail and they'll fail and they'll fail. The old Edison story of light bulbs and things like that. They'll they'll keep going because in the end, they'll whatever they're working on will have this moment of epiphany that it kind of comes to realization. And I just think that we we we should encourage our children to really embrace the idea that failing isn't a such a negative thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:00

And how can you apply that for trauma as well? How are you educating your kids about, yeah, you're going to have horrible traumatic experiences in life, um, horrible heartache? What is the the missing piece or tip about making sure that that creates resilience instead of you know something that really creates some abrasion or resistance or contraction within our system?

SPEAKER_04 1:10:26

Probably so if I use my wife as an example, so my my my wife um I've just written a chapter about my wife in my book. She doesn't know this, so hopefully when this podcast comes out. And the the pack the chapters about gratitude um and and the power of gratitude. So you know, my wife was in a third year at university, she's a sign language interpreter, she was in her final year, um, and she thought she was getting really bad hangovers, um, she was really tired, her neck was really stiff, and this went on for months and months and months, and she just thought that she was perhaps you know having too much fun at Preston University. But but what really was happening was she had leukemia that she didn't realise, uh a rare form of leukemia called CML, chronic myeloid leukemia. And effectively what had happened, unbeknown to her at this point, is that two two of her chromosomes had mutated and number six and twenty two, I think, and created a 47th chromosome. So all humans have 46 chromosomes, but people that have CML have 47 chromosomes, it's called a Philadelphia chromosome, and and she got diagnosed and f and obviously was so so ill. And I didn't know at this point, this was way before I met her. Um, and then when I when I met her, what uh initially attracted me to her was her infectious personality, which you can only really understand when you meet her. She's got this bright sort of red hair, ginger hair, and but she has this real wonderful outlook on life, this beautiful way of seeing the world where she's just joyous and happy, even though she takes chemotherapy every day and she's done so for the last 10 years. Um, and I said to her, it was is it all was it always this way? Like you're so like positive, it blows my mind a little bit, you know. And she she she kind of changed her physiology changed and she got really kind of quite serious, and she said no, it wasn't, it was horrendous for the first year. You know, she had to have lumber punches and bone marrow extracted from her spine from her lower lumbar, you know, your your dignity is stripped away because you know you're getting poked and prodded, and and you just get to the point you don't care. And and she said that was it was it was horrible, and she was really angry about it, she was really resentful that that that this wasn't a lifestyle-related illness, this was a chance mutation, it was a cosmic lottery that landed on her for no reason, and and she was really, really angry about it. And I said, Well, well, what happened? How did this all change? And she said, Well, after about a year, I'd I'd been really angry every single day, and but every time I went to bed at night, I still had leukemia, it didn't make me any better. In fact, I was getting worse, and actually I was wasting days being resentful. And I said, Well, what changed? And she said, Well, one day I woke up and said, Why not me? So, and the moment I said that question to myself, it was almost like it released me from this captivity. So the illness no longer had a hold of her, she then stepped out and actually put it into the box and said, If if I've got to have this illness, I'm gonna own it. I'm gonna, you know, if it's if this is something that there's no cure and I've got no way of disconnecting from myself, then I'm not gonna be owned by it, I'm gonna own it. And and I'm and then she became grateful then and she started to see the world in a different way. And I don't know if I could have done that. I often think about it. Would I have had that same capability? I'm not I'm not sure. I don't think you ever will know unless you go have that experience. But gratitude is not this kind of fluffy thing that you know people think you know, you'd be grateful for everything. Gratitude is the ability to accept the circumstance you're in and actually just be grateful for what you have instead of what you don't have. And I think maybe that's part of the problem with our modern world is people have lost a little bit of connection with that contentedness with their situation.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:29

Yeah, there's this constant looking outside of yourself and going, why don't I have that? or why this? And yeah, what a beautiful question when something horrible happens to you, as it can happen to anyone, to just go, yeah, why not me? Why not me? That's a really different question. And I I love it because it it really instantly takes you out of being the victim to being the superhero. That's really writing your own story.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Humbling as well, quite humbling because it's such a profound but simple lesson. I remember saying to her, I think you've probably taught me more about mindset than I've learned in the last ten years of reading books.

Phil’s New Book & Final Reflections

SPEAKER_01 1:15:14

Uh Phil, you're writing this book that you've just mentioned called Innate.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:20

What is it about and why is it so important that you're bringing this book out into the world sometime in the next year?

SPEAKER_04 1:15:27

Innate is about hidden potential. Um I've I've condensed down what I think I bring to the world and I use a kind of an analogy to describe it. I'm I mine for potential with my clients, individually and sort of corporate and sport, whatever it is. I I'm I'm digging with them for their potential. But this concept of innate resilience, innate wisdom, innate curiosity, everything is already inside a person. It's about them discovering it themselves and connecting with it. And the whole book is to push them in the direction of inward inquire inquiry, so they so they have this realization that I have everything I need to do the things I want to do. The thing that stands in my way is my own limiting beliefs. Um, and actually, once I start to become insatiably curious and insatiably ambitious about wanting to do all the things I want to do, it it lights a fire that sort of just burns like a nuclear fire. I think the energy is relentless. And you see it in people when they kind of connect with this, they go and achieve the most amazing things and they do it because they realize that they can do it. And the whole book is about that. It's inside you all.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:44

I really love that. And I really think that in this day and age where so many people are burning out, chasing things outside of themselves. I I have noticed that you can, as you said, have this fire burning inside of you that will never burn out so long as you're in in deep alignment with that. I think that's a really beautiful reminder that, yeah, we we have everything that we need. We don't need to look outside. But sometimes it's nice to have a coach like you to have the conversations with to remind us of that.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:15

But I'll only ask the questions that lead you inside anyway. So so I'm once again, I'm just the sat nav. That's all I am. And no more, no less. That's all I do.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:24

Phil, we're gonna add all of your uh contacts on how to reach you um in our show notes. But where if people really want to get in touch with you and talk to you, where can they find you easiest?

SPEAKER_04 1:17:38

Uh so from a website perspective, limitlessgroup.im um uh and from uh breathwork hypnosis, etherprinciple.com, um, but then I kind of have a personal website, pq-performance.com. So I kind of have different websites for different sort of uses.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:56

We'll put that all in the show notes then and in the description, and whoever wants to get in contact with Phil can do so. Thank you so much for your time today. I really, really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:05

Amazing, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:06

Hey there. If you like this episode and you're getting some beautiful transmissions or are feeling inspired to support this podcast in any way, the best way to do that is to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, on YouTube, or wherever it is that you're plugging into the Enlightened DXP podcast. You can also follow us on Instagram at Enlightened DXB. If you want to reach out to any of the guests we have on the show, you can check out their profiles and their work at www.enlightendxb.com. And for those of you in Dubai looking for community, retreats, or additional resources, you can also sign up to our emailing list there. Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you on the next episode. Until then, I wish you more joy, more ease, and a little sprinkle of grace.