Why Men Feel Lost – And How to Reclaim Purpose & Confidence

In this episode, I sit down with former military leader and human performance coach, Rob to explore what it takes to build confidence, resilience, and authentic leadership in today’s world.

🔥 Key Topics Discussed:

• Why so many men feel lost and disconnected – and how to find true purpose.
• Overcoming self-doubt and fear – practical strategies for shifting from hesitation to decisive action.
• The power of breathwork and cold exposure – how these daily practices build mental resilience and emotional strength.
• Lessons from military leadership – why self-awareness, discipline, and emotional mastery create strong, effective leaders.
• How to break free from attachment, ego, and external validation – and start living authentically.
• Building a support network – the importance of mentors, coaches, and strong peer connections.
• Redefining success – why fulfillment comes from within, not external achievements.

🚀 What You’ll Gain from This Episode:

• A clear roadmap to developing self-trust, confidence, and emotional mastery.
• Practical techniques to calm the nervous system and make better decisions.
• Insights into why men struggle with purpose and how to realign with your true path.
• A deeper understanding of authentic leadership and personal growth.

If you’re ready to stop overthinking, build resilience, and lead with confidence, this episode is a must-listen!

🎧 Tune in now and start your transformation.

About Rob:

Rob Colley brings over 23 years of exceptional experience across military and civilian sectors, with a focus on human performance, leadership, and recovery. His journey began with eight years in the Royal Marines, followed by 15 years in elite military units, where he led small teams on high-stakes missions in some of the world's most demanding environments. Recognised with the Distinguished Service Cross for Gallantry, Rob's career highlights include leading critical operations and serving as Chief Instructor for advanced military training programs, mentoring recruits in specialized disciplines such as diving and combat swimming. These intense experiences inspired him to delve into the missing elements of human performance, leading to groundbreaking work in resilience, recovery, and well-being.

After transitioning from active service, Rob became the Director of Elite Performance and Training at Deep Research Labs, where he developed cutting-edge methodologies to prepare scientists and explorers for challenging subsea missions. Drawing on his personal journey of recovery through advanced yoga and breathwork, he has since pioneered programs that integrate military precision with holistic practices. Since 2022, Rob has offered transformative coaching, workshops, retreats, and guest speaking engagements for individuals recovering from physical and mental challenges, including military personnel, corporate leaders, and public service professionals. His approach combines breathwork, meditation, and resilience training, equipping individuals with essential tools to enhance well-being and navigate life's challenges.

https://thrivalinstinct.co.uk/

Transcript

0:00

In this week's episode, we talk about why men feel lost and disconnected. How to shift from doubt and hesitation to confident decision making. How the power of breath work and cold water exposure can help to build practices of resilience, mental clarity and inner strength. And lessons from military leadership, how discipline, self awareness and emotional mastery can shape strong leaders. Welcome to Man: A Quest to Find Meaning, where we help men navigate modern life, find their true purpose, and redefine manhood. I'm your host, James, and each week, inspiring guests share their journeys of overcoming fear Embracing vulnerability and finding success. From experts to everyday heroes. Get practical advice and powerful insights. Struggling with career, relationships or personal growth? We've got you covered. Join us on Man Quest to Find Meaning. Now, let's dive in.

James: 1:07

Hello, Rob. Tell me about yourself.

rob: 1:11

Hi, James. So I grew up in the Midlands. I left school at the age of 16 and I joined the Royal Marines a few months after my leaving school after my exams. So I spent the next year in the Royal Marines and then I went on to another part of the military. And lead organization. I spent the following 15 years there. So yes, but most of my adult life in in the military and I left at the age of 40. So my career naturally came to an end and towards the end of my career. I through my own personal journey, I got really deep into holistic healing human performance. And yeah, so I was moved into that area into sort of the corporate world. I had a short stint working for a defense company building equipment for the military, but I soon found myself in a corporate company focusing on human performance and training. Just after that and more recently I've just launched my own business. Where I've really found my path and I'm helping people basically by some of the lessons I've learned along my career. So yeah, so that's where I am today.

James: 2:15

I remember the other day we had a discussion about, a quick discussion, and you mentioned that you went to school within probably 20 minutes of where I went to school, in Stafford.

rob: 2:26

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So when I saw your your bio where you were from, yeah, just really immediately took me back to to back to school days. It's interesting because I'd forgotten and I'd left school at 16 and hadn't really gone back much. So yeah, it immediately took me back to that place, so it was quite a nice thing to see.

James: 2:42

A small world. So we've got regards to the army. What kind of lessons did you learn that can really help to shape leaders and to really help us to drive towards purpose?

rob: 2:55

Yeah, so throughout my career, I operated in or I worked in the conventional military and also unconventional military. So I guess some of the lessons that I learned on reflection, and this also Corporate world is the best leaders I saw were the ones who'd basically done the work on themselves, either knowingly or unknowingly, and they had the lowest egos. And they were the most authentic. So I reflect on this often in some of the training that I do with my coaching clients. And the more you can release your stuff, this insecurity, the imposter syndrome the need to be like high status amongst your peers, the more you can get rid of all that crap. The more you can start to focus on being a better leader and Achieving the goal of achieving the mission for the good of your people. Also, another really great realization was that, and I experienced this myself. It's very difficult to do, but making the right decision rather than the popular decision. And again, this comes from being very secure in yourself, having done all of the work, as a man, and and therefore you can make these clear decisions based on The right thing, or I use my intuition quite often, rather than the shoulds because you're worried about what people may think, etc. So those are some really big lessons that I carry forward and I reflect on pretty much daily.

James: 4:32

The last 10 years I've been on this personal and spiritual development journey, and it's almost become an obsession. What I've noticed is how calm I am, how much I trust my intuition. I remember being in a relationship, one of my first relationships, and we were going to buy a house together, but I knew it, deep down, I knew it was wrong, but I carried on with it anyway. Luckily, the relationship ended, and I learnt the lesson. But, from ever since then, I've focused on really allowing myself to trust my intuition on a deep level. Even if it's unpopular. But then again, the source of situations where you almost get into this, into your mind, and your mind tends to lead rather than your heart. So how can people shift from the mind into their heart to make decisions?

rob: 5:32

Okay, yeah, it's a really good question. So firstly it's understanding how it all works. So within the system, the inner mastery method that I teach, we focus, this comes from ancient wisdom in ancient traditional yoga. So there are five causes of human suffering. The first one is ignorance. So if you don't understand how Your mind works and your body works, then you know you're in a losing battle. So the only way to do that is to really understand this, do the work gain the wisdom and then you can elevate and you're effectively seeing a new horizon. So how to put that into practical terms. So by doing a daily practice of getting away from or going beyond your five senses. So what I do every day. I'm going too much into my routine. I do my yoga pranayama, so effectively breath work, but it's a deeper sense of breath work because we're using energy manipulation. So we do our pranayama, doing our meditation. And what you can do, you can start to quieten the mind. This is the purpose of yoga and many other techniques. You quieten the fluctuations of the mind, and once you quieten the fluctuations of the mind, then you have this incredible realization. You can access this. You can make this inner connection. You can start to get these real authentic ideas and wisdom coming through despite all of the fluctuations of the mind, all of these little voices telling you, you should do this, you shouldn't do that. So it's creating this these conditions for yourself by your daily practice, whatever you do. I use my method to create this piece, this inner piece that you can protect. And that's where you get your wisdom from. And what happens in this respect is, or when you apply this, is you no longer go seeking for advice or asking questions. You've got everything you need inside. So you stop. Looking externally for the answers, you can actually access these answers from inside you. This is what I help my clients with. And it's groundbreaking when you get this realization, but it all starts with shining a light on this stuff. So getting rid of this ignorance of how things work.

James: 7:36

I can understand that. I like to go outside barefoot first thing in the morning and literally allow myself to ground because the world's just full of moments on the news and what's going on around the world. There's so much information coming in and our minds are racing around. It's very hard to figure out the right information with what everything that's going on. And it's this idea that once you start to. Connect into that, into the quietness, into the wisdom, it almost becomes your next step. And then the next step, and the next step, and the next step. With regards to successful men, quite often there's a sense that people should I say, men and women, there's this idea that a lot of them look for fulfillment outside themselves, whether that's cars, houses, money. How can, why do men, why do they feel so unfulfilled inside there?

rob: 8:41

Yeah yeah, again, brilliant one. I talk about this on most treats a lot. We start off with a big question, what is the, what would success look like if we were to put a a mission statement on life, and it's comes down to fulfillment, meaningful connections and a positive contribution or meaningful contribution to the world. So it's trying to measure what your fulfillment is or create the the gauge on what your fulfillment is. And when you really strip it down, when you really. break down these things with an individual, you work out that actually it's about what really fills you up. What what gives you, what fills you with joy? I've, I'm very lucky in the place I've landed now where I don't feel like I work anymore. I feel like I'm just fulfilling my purpose. And when you get to that, what you'll find is the universe delivers everything you need to get there. My, my mantra is need less and give more. So, flashy cars. If you need a flashy car, then that's absolutely fine. But it's when we start to strive for excess we the sooner we get to fulfilling our needs, the sooner we can get to giving more, I will say more of a purpose and. The more we can tread lightly on this world, the sooner we can get to a point where we're having something to give back. So working out what fulfills you like what lights you up what you, everyone knows what I'm talking about. When you get to that point, you've delivered good hard days work or you've helped someone that really lights you up. So it's again, this comes back to the really diving into this and reflecting on What your needs are and then what your desires are and then scaling them back. If there's any excess in that,

James: 10:27

One thing that I've come to realize is that when it comes to purpose direction, whatever you want to call it, quite often, self doubt, overwhelm, procrastination, feeling lost kicks in. What can people do or what's the first step that people can do in order to really start to step into this purpose or step into this, into their direction that they're meant to go in?

rob: 10:59

Yeah, so I think if self doubt and the fear cycle which is common and again, it's a thing that happens to all humans. So the way I personally break this cycle is. I work from home often dealing with clients online, unless I'm running retreats and workshops. So sometimes I can get into this stuck cycle of not moving forward, going around. So the best, the first thing to do is to break that cycle. So taking yourself off the X or off the mark, okay, so out of the the environment, whether it be a retreat, whether it be just a walk or getting outside, and then you can start to reflect. And ultimately When we doubt ourselves I teach within my method, I've got something called the Thrival Principles. And one of these principles is trust, trusting yourself. This is something that we really, we're always working at. We'll never get, 10 out of 10. So we're always working on this element. And the best way to do this is, to start to challenge yourself. So seeking discomfort every day. So that's not, so I use cold water for this. I've been doing cold water training every day. Haven't missed a day for over four years now. And so that's one very easy medium to, to access this level of discomfort. And the more you do that, you build this incredible sense of confidence and self trust. And this fear of discomfort starts to melt away. And again, this through cross adaption, this. Transfers into our life not only cold water training, but if you have a fear of public speaking the thing that you really think you should do, but you don't want to do, nudge your edges, just go for it and see what happens. Because. We start to become more confident, especially as men, as we're trying to find our position in this dynamic world, which is crazy now. But we can still do that by nudging our edges and this will massively help us adapt to every other aspect of our life.

James: 12:51

You know what, cold showers have come up twice now. It's obviously, so I used to do cold showers quite a bit, and used to do cold baths. I found submerging myself in a cold bath quite liberating because yes, the first 10 seconds, you're like, oh, but then you, I find myself dropping into my body a lot when I'm in the cold bath, but it's come up twice. So I reckon I need to restart it. Definitely. Definitely. So it's also, it's. From my own perspective, I've been in business since 2018, but I've it's been, my business has been stagnant, probably for the last since then. So I've never really progressed and it's more I find myself usually when I don't know what I need to do. So if I don't have a clear enough plan, a clear enough way forward, I either, Get bored, because I'm trying to figure out what to do, or I find myself getting overwhelmed or procrastinating, so I might go and watch a film, I might go and do something else like washing or general chores in the house, and so that's, obviously it's been a reoccurring pattern, but then I find that once you identify the pattern, And you are able then to look a little bit deeper using self development, personal growth to look a bit deeper into it and why it's happening. Quite often underneath I find it's just like a scared little part of ourselves.

rob: 14:24

Yeah, I think so coming from the military, and some of the areas in the military I worked in were some of the most elite teams. One thing I do miss from leaving the military is not having this team around me, people to challenge me and within the organizations I worked in we never patted each other on the back. Because we're always striving to be better and to perform higher. So that's one thing I really miss. I've got loved ones around me who are very kind. My partner, she's absolutely amazing. And she challenges me, helps me, but not to that level. So I think it's really important. And specifically as men, as we're talking about on this podcast I think men need. Really strong peers and coaches and mentors to really lift them. So I think you can do your own planning, but if no one's holding you to account, you can slip into that cycle. Find, I call this within my, the method that I teach and the method my teacher passed down to me. We've got an element called, or a principle called inspiring company. So surround yourself with inspiring company. So those who are where you want to get to as opposed to someone who isn't where you want to get to. Someone who's done the work. They've walked your path and they can pull you forward. So they're inspiring you onwards. And it's identifying people, those around you that can be a coach. It can be a friend, it can be a colleague, someone who will hold you to account on your things. So make your plan, which is the first step, but then you need this accountability. So there's only so much we can do by ourselves, but. If you're working on your own like you and I it's really important to have these people who you can check in with and of course you can do the same for them. So that's a great tip and something that I've been I've been really really hard over on for the last sort of few years.

James: 16:17

Yeah, so it's talked about a lot by actually a lot of successful people having the right people around you. And in fact, I was at the professional speaking association the other day, and they were talking, the guy who was speaking, he was talking about not necessarily having also a team to push you forward regards to business and work or purpose, but also having a wellbeing team around you, somebody who you can chat to if you. Need but it's it had it in levels. So it was 8, 9 and 10. So people who was always there, you could literally call upon to support you. It's quite often you can have friends, but you might not interrupt your friends very often. But it's the really good friends. The ones who are going to challenge you. And not say, oh, you're good, you're fine, you'll do it. You need somebody to challenge you. And I found that with coaches as well. I found certain business coaches over the years that I've had. I found that they give you ideas and stuff, but they don't hold you accountable. So you need somebody who's going to hold you accountable and ask the hard questions. Why didn't you get it done? And even probably going a little bit deeper, what's actually stopping you? Which parts of you are stopping you from progressing?

rob: 17:37

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. You touched on another, at a point with regards to that inspiring company I talked about. It's like you said, having that the individuals, the friends or the coaches, people are gonna be quite hard on you to really nudge your edges. But sometimes you want a softer. Response. And again, it's trying to have that. Also I've effectively got a a a diagram. So it's me in the middle. And one of the things I visualize was, okay, so if I have a problem with, I, if I have a problem with business, who could I go to? So I've got my business person. I've got my spiritual person. I've got my digital course person. I've got my partner for, for love and and compassion. So having these go to people, but you have to be able to give them value as well. So making sure that, there's this energy exchange. So I think that's really important. Knowing who to ask when you have that specific question pop up.

James: 18:31

What I'm finding at the moment, what I'm finding at the moment is AI. So obviously AI is never going to replace coaches, but there's a program we're doing at the moment and there's different AI bots being made for different purposes. Obviously, A. I. Uses the whole of the Internet to collaborate information together. So if you're if you perhaps can't afford a coach, I find that having a I actually almost gives you a helping hand with regards to a coach.

rob: 19:11

Yeah I, yeah I've, yeah I've talked about this quite a lot actually in my industry with my sort of peers. I, yes, absolutely a really incredible tool. And I think it's, I use different tools for different things within my business. The one thing I do that do, does pop up, I've been running retreats now for over four years. I've trained about 400 service men and women in, in recovery. And the thing that AI can't replace is this human connection. This sense of, this tribal feel. And I think this is really important with men as well. Men coming together and being able to speak openly and talk through some of this stuff. With this struggle that's going on in the world. I'm going to talk about politics with, With, what this toxic mix masculinity and where men confine themselves in this in this sort of um, this era, if you like I think it's really important that we come together often as human beings. And I think when we go forward, I think when you look at business, I think businesses that are going to be successful going forward are the ones that are going to bring connection and community.

James: 20:18

Yeah, I can agree with that. As I mentioned before we started, I do a lot of dance. And so you have the dance community and you see the same faces and you are able to literally, even though during this dance event, there's no speaking, you're there in your body, in your energy around these people and you're able to interact. And it's that sense of Dancing and moving around. And one thing I've been challenging myself to do more of is to interact more with people, to dance with the, with other people. So one thing I'm great at is dancing on my own, in my own space. But I'm pushing myself by doing, I think it's, dance improvisation, where literally you are with a partner and obviously there's no speaking. You are moving with your partner to music. not in any set routine, but how your body or how the connection between you wants to move. And it's a sense of a number of a couple of weeks ago, we were doing a few of these different moves you can do while you're dancing. And I was able to start to incorporate some of these dance moves, some of the, some of these movements into the actual body movement. So there's one where literally you can, one person comes onto your hips and they almost spin them around 180 degrees, and I was able to incorporate that into the dance, and it's quite, it's, when it happens in that moment, It feels good. So there was no prep into the, Oh yeah, I'm going to do this dance move. I'm going to incorporate it. But that again, that comes down to human connection and being able to connect to that person on a deep level.

rob: 22:08

Yeah, absolutely. I think I think the great thing about humans is, aside from AI, is You can actually get really triggered by other people. We see this in relationships all of the time. I was married for 17 years. To an amazing woman. She's phenomenal. Had two amazing children. And she was at home looking after them while I was at work. I came home quite often, but. There's a period in my career where I was away quite a lot and not very safe places. So she's very worried about me. When we eventually, when I eventually retired from the military when I was 40, our marriage just broke down. And it's just one of those things we had to, but we both accepted it and we both amicably divorced, luckily, I'm very grateful for that. So amazing woman, amazing mother. And after that, I thought here we go. I can meet people. It's very new to me. And yeah and I had various friends and a few relationships and a few of them were very triggering to me. And and yeah, and it was, I was trying to work out what happened and. When I reflect, I do a lot of reflection, I do a lot of journey. That's how I I set my compass really for going forward. What I find was, what I found was, there was these patterns that had formed and every interaction, whether it be just as, a conversation online with someone I ever actually met, there was a lesson from each of those interactions. Which helped me to develop myself, to grow, to let go to refine myself for when I meet the one which I've met now. And I'm, I've got all of this I've got rid of all the crap basically. And I've learned a lot about myself. So I do feel that there's a massive requirement or need to have as many human interactions as possible in order to grow. And we learn a lot about ourselves from how we. React to other people because all of these, we can have lots of disagreements, not see eye to eye. So it's how we conduct ourselves in those situations around how we react to respond to others. So yeah, I don't think that's going to be going away or being replaced by AI anytime soon.

James: 24:08

A perfect example for myself is, at this moment in time, certain people in the politics arena around the world. I can feel myself getting triggered by it all. But one thing I've come to realize the other day was that there's a lot of hatred for some of these people. It's almost okay, there's this hatred that I hate and I'm projecting it out. How can I bring that back to myself in order to start to process what I hate about myself? Because I feel what we project out is quite often what we feel about ourselves. So if we have this hatred for somebody, then we need to turn that around and look at which parts of ourselves do we actually hate and how can we start to bring this part that we hate and accept it for what it is and start to love that part of ourselves.

rob: 25:02

Yeah, absolutely. I resonate with what you're saying with everything that's going on. The other thing is react to what we're exposed to. So the information we have and I've have several friends on social media and they're starting to share some of the things that are going on at the moment. I've got my own personal views, but that's based on my experience and my, my, the information I'm provided. And I find myself trying to private message them and say have you considered this? But then, It all comes down to we, we react or respond to, what we've been delivered in front of us. And generally human beings are always doing their best, they're trying to have good intentions. So I try to, firstly, I try to not get involved in these kinds of politics, but yeah, like you say, How we react, it's a mirror on what's going on with us. And again, with the benefit of doing reflection, doing breathwork, meditation, and then reflection, we can start to notice these things about us. And then we can start to do something about it and we can fine tune our instrument in order to, play better in the orchestra of life. So yeah, I think it's I welcome some of these triggering events or these experiences because it helps me to really understand more about myself.

James: 26:21

Yeah, definitely. And I think as well, once you start to work through these triggers, we can, you can start to love those parts. And it also then means that you're then projecting out love. So at this moment in time, there's so much going on with anger and hatred and all that kind of stuff. And the world's never been as divided as it is now. Thinking about it the other day, I don't want to add to this divide. Yes, there's lessons to be learned, and there's part to me that I need to accept about myself, but overall, I want to be sending out love. I don't want to be the part that sends out hatred. I want to be part, I want to be the person that sends out love. And then the more of us that we can help to an effect in that way, the more it's going to spread. And then that's the way I think the world's going to change.

rob: 27:09

Yeah, absolutely. It hit the nail on the head. One of my thrival principles at the bottom is cultivate love daily as opposed to fear. And in, in yoga, there's a one of the yamas, which is for the listeners, it's the eight limbs of yoga. The first one is the yama, which is and the first one of that is ahimsa. It's a principle of nonviolence. So this is nonviolence in our thoughts, our words and our actions. So again, so if you see something that Is directly opposed to your beliefs then it's trying to. A superior man would be able to acknowledge that and seek to understand that perspective and understand this person has been presented with the information and therefore they've drawn that conclusion. That's why they feel that way. So generally they're, they've got good intentions, but they're passionate. It just happens to be opposed to the view that you've deduced from the information you've been given. So once you can master, become a master of the inner world, you can start to. Dissolve this feeling of aggression or violent thought or violent word towards that person. You can just soften and change it. It's a little bit like a samurai. I always use that analogy. One of the organizations I operated in, we had to we had to be able to look control our nervous system. So if something triggered us, so one of our friends got shot or someone's shooting at us, respond violently or get triggered by that, then you will start to make mistakes. You have to really bring, you have to look after your nervous system, bring yourself back down to that parasympathetic. So it's that constant battle. If you see something that's not right rather than triggered, a superior man can harness that fear and turn it into something more positive. And like you say, cultivate that sense of love or kindness and compassion, which is all in the same bucket. Yeah.

James: 28:57

What kind of techniques can people use to calm down their parasympathetic nervous system?

rob: 29:02

Yeah, so I always say to, to people in my trainings and my courses, when you're in that position, the last thing you're thinking about is, oh, I need to do my. My parasympathetic nerve my vagus nerve breathing. That's the last thing you do. So if you can catch yourself and you can be conscious of it, so breathing in the belly, breathing in through the nose, there's lots and lots of different strategies, different breathing techniques. So whatever works for you. What I use is breathing in for six seconds and then breathing out for six seconds through the nose, deep into the belly and doing that for several minutes. However, because we can't catch ourselves, the best way we can combat this is to take our sympathetic nervous system to the gym. So taking our stress response to the gym so we can practice very strong dynamic breathing in safety so we can also get emotional release from this. But what we have, what happens is we can start to build stress resilience. Cold water training. So anything that's uncomfortable to us. We do that stimulates our sympathetic nervous system So when we are in these situations we get triggers You know road rage or in the office or whatever it may be We're more chilled and you'll get to the point in your life where you know, it's like the matrix just dodging bullets Nothing, nothing really bothers you and people like look at you Are you real? Why are you so chilled out all of the time? And it's because things on a different level. And that's when, that's where this inner master really comes in.

James: 30:34

Going back to the cold showers, I think, yeah, definitely, if you go underneath a cold shower, your automatic reaction for your body is, but if you can literally just stop yourself and then just go, and it will be uncomfortable and it will be hard, especially initially. And yeah, you can, as you say, you can just start off with. 10 seconds or 20 seconds and then build it up. But if you decide to go for the whole challenge of a whole minute and just roll with It's it isn't this it almost like you said facing that discomfort

rob: 31:10

Absolutely. I think that there's lots of ways to approach cold. I what my career in the military I've spent a lot of time in the water in the arctic in all kinds of places around the world. And yeah, and I You But even though I spent all that time in the water, I never really understood or really ever really mastered this ability, this cold water training, if you like. I used to jump in quite loose and not really know what I was doing. So what I, The way I do it now and the way I teach in my courses is it's very slow and you're trying to get in there, feel everything. And through cold water shock is when you jump into cold water and your body has this autonomic reaction or automatic reaction to take a breath. That's what's going to happen with your nervous system when you get into the cold water. So the best thing to do is to start off in control of your breathing. So focusing, nice deep breaths in through the nose, out through the mouth, and use that as a guide rail into the cold. And then when you're in the cold, keep state, we'll stay with the breath. And then when you get to the end of each exhale, just try and soften, try and open a little bit more, a little bit more. And before you know it, you melt away. We go through these three phases. Resistance, where you don't really want to get in the cold. Existence, where you're in the cold water, but you're contracted. And then Mergence, where you completely open, surrender, and into the body. And then that puts your nervous system to sleep. You slip into the parasympathetic, and you can just stay. And that's what you describe here when you're in there for a minute. One of the in my career had a near drowning experience where I was basically held down by some quite heavy equipment and I thought I was going to die. Initially I was trying to I was trying to, try to sort myself out. Saved myself. My, basically my mask had come off. I was trying to put my mask back in, my dive mask, and then something happened. I, my parrot, my sympathetic nervous system kicked in and I went fight or flight. And before I knew it, I was trying to swim and pull this big, heavy equipment up to the surface. Now, I had no control of my nervous system at this point on reflection when I thought about it. Later on, if I'd have just carried out a couple of procedures, I could have released myself, and I've been fine, but. This didn't happen. So after that. I had night terrors for about two years but after that I had the opportunity to do a free diving course with an amazing man who I later started working with many years later in my last company. And and basically he taught me to free dive. And this is the, this is the beginning to my yoga and breath work journey. I realized. how incredible the breath is at controlling our, how we react. And that was the start really. And since then after that course I could hold my breath for five minutes. And just by going through those processes it was amazing how he can hack into the body. And that was the start of my yoga journey. So I, that's the thing I do most of around the water. I think the water is incredible for healing, but it's an incredible way to To test our discomfort or give or practice our discomfort training.

James: 34:09

Yeah, when I did a bit of cold water swimming. Probably about a couple of years ago, and I would wear gloves and boots, but I would go in my normal shorts in January's winter, and it was freezing, and I could feel the pain going through my body, literally, because it was that cold, but eventually, probably within two, three minutes, that pain disappeared. And that's a quite astounding thing, is that you can have all this pain, but then that pain is just temporary, and then suddenly it's just gone and disappeared, and it's you can just carry on for ages.

rob: 34:48

Yeah, and that's the, and that's also the risk with the once the alarm Signals have gone. You've got to rely on your discipline. So we there's a training zone And then after the training zone, that's the sort of the death zone I call it So it's been really aware of it. But yeah, you're totally right. It's amazing We have this when we enter the water we have this I think called the mammalian reflex which basically got the periphery All our circulatory system on the peripheral arms and legs, for example, they shut down, bringing all the blood to the core. And there's quite a few things that happened to the body. So again, it's once you start to become aware of this, you can use this and start to nudge your training into the next level. But yeah, you can't beat it. That's my biggest piece of advice. Cold water train every day. It's a fantastic.

James: 35:36

It looks like I'm starting now.

rob: 35:37

Yeah. Life

James: 35:40

changing. The word authenticity is thrown around there's no tomorrow. It's become a new buzzword. How can, what is authenticity and how can men shift or how can people shift into more confidence and authenticity?

rob: 35:57

Okay yeah, this is What is one of my sort of fundamental principles and going back into my career what I noticed was there was lots of men generally like new, like more recent sort of generations who, Always gravitate, sorry, gravitate towards the, what I call the wolf pack, the sort of popular crowd and that's how they go through life. I've always, I don't know, I've always found myself like, I consider myself an outsider. So I would disagree with the group. And sometimes I'd go with the group, but sometimes I'd really disagree with the group. And then you feel a little bit What's the word I'm looking for? You're like, like an outsider. But that decision has always landed me in the right place and helped me succeed. So I've really embraced my authenticity from a an early age in my, both my careers in the, in my corporate world and the military world. So for me, authenticity is firstly, it leads to success in every aspect of your life, being unapologetically authentic. Also, it's the most terrifying thing ever as well. So speaking, unfiltered, doing if you do business online, like Facebook lives and LinkedIn lives, things like that, because there's no rehearsal. What comes out of your mouth is you. And However, when there was a study done recently, I think it was in Europe and they measured frequencies come out of the body. I always thought like love and gratitude are the most powerful frequency that humans can emit, but it's not authenticity is being measured to be the most powerful frequency. So when we look around us and we look on social media whether it be people we really dislike on social media or people we really resonate with. For some reason, these people show up on our feed, and these people are really successful. They're really popular, because they're unapologetically, sorry, authentic. And authenticity attracts people. Depending on what you feel wants to attract people, ultimately, we want to attract the right people. If we walk through our life wearing a mask, we're going to attract the wrong people, because those people are going to be attracted to the wrong people. Self, so this mask, if we remove the mask and we shine our light, we are unapologetically authentic. We're going to start to attract the right people into our lives and therefore get going with our path and our purpose. So I think authenticity comes from again, the things I've talked about reducing those fluctuations of the mind. So doing your breath work, doing your meditation, doing your reflection. Figuring out what you want to let go. Surround yourself by inspiring company. And you can really have a feel of who you are, what fills you up, what what brings joy. And then when you start to live that life, people will start to recognize that in you and it becomes contagious. So I think it's one of the most powerful principles that any man can do can do. And again, it leads to, in my experience, it leads to success in every aspect of your life.

James: 39:03

Yeah, it's we've got mutual friends. Shakti Sundari, and in the episode we're talking about relationships, we talked about how if you bring back your energy into your body, as I call it, your frame, and you do what you need to do, so following your purpose, dancing like there's nobody watching, going out and doing things that you enjoy, you will naturally, as I said, you will naturally attract The right people to you, but also there's an attraction quality within authenticity and I find it it's, as you said, it's, it can be, it's very hard sometimes to be authentic because we're programmed to want to fit in with everybody. But once you start to be you, and yes, you might annoy a few people, you start to live. You literally, you start to live within yourself. There's a sense that when you start to be your authentic self, you get more guidance come through, you'll find that more people who are meant to be in your life will gravitate towards you, there'll be more opportunities that are meant for you that will come into your life as well. And so I feel like authenticity. is a big thing. So how can people start to become more authentic? And how can they, obviously, how can they stop or not stop? How can they change from wanting everybody to like them to just be themselves?

rob: 40:38

Yeah, it's a really good point. Again, bring it back to the leadership. Again, all of my, when I look back, I'm preparing for this discussion. I was reflecting on some of the most incredible leaders I've ever had. And the top of the list is authenticity, the massive authenticity, which sometimes makes them unpopular, but they've led well and they've succeeded. And ultimately. After being unpopular, the individuals who didn't. like their decisions, realize that I, yeah, they made the best decisions for the team. So again, it comes back to this what, why aren't we authentic? Cause we fear fear a few things for being ourselves. Coming back to one of the, my original points on these, the five causes of all human suffering. So anything we suffer as a human can be put into these five buckets. The first one is ignorance of our existence, how things works. The next one is egoism. So this idea of ourself or how we should be performing. There's a few individuals I've met in the corporate world who really had lots of insecurities, and they were trying to figure out how they fit in the organization of the world as a man, for example. And this tarnished their ability to be authentic when actually if you show a little bit of vulnerability or show your team in a leadership context that you don't have all the answers but that's what you guys are for you. You guys are all the experts. It's my job to get the best out of you and to lead you and help you and solve your problems as your leader. If you can open up and be, have the strength and the courage to do that and be authentic. This will be like incredibly attractive to all of your people. But in order to do that, it's understanding that the ego exists and actually everything changes. Your experiences change you all the time. So nothing's permanent. So constantly releasing this fixed idea of yourself. The next cause of human suffering is attachment. So this attachment to Expectations of others, attachment to the other people liking us. So doing things to be liked. If we lose this, if we act authentic, authentically knowing that we are just doing the right thing. We're not expecting anything back. We lose this attachment. The next one is aversion. So aversion to displeasure. So if we don't like something's a little bit icky, we don't like to public speak. We don't like to tell someone that they're not performing well. We don't like to upset people. So if we get, if we lose these aversions and then finally it's fear of something coming to an end. So fear of death, fear of mortality. Or fear of I don't know, a career. So these five causes of human suffering, if we can use our tools, our breath work, our meditation, our cold water training, all of these tools to loosen up all of these problems with the mind, We suddenly get rid of all of the, all the obstacles. And then we just live through our authenticity. There's no questions. Obviously we're human beings, we're constantly battling with this, but we're no longer having these massive blockers to prevent us saying that thing that we feel like we should say, or we want to say, but we don't think we should because we will become unpopular, or intervening or doing the right thing. So once we become a master of it in a world using these these tools, we can then, we can just release, we can just open to the world. So yeah really important. But it starts with you. You can't be an effective leader if you can't lead yourself.

James: 44:22

You said attachment. I was like, yeah, no, but so give me an example. At the moment I've got this car, 10 years old and I am attached to the car. Yeah, I know it needs to go because it's become problem after problem. So I was thinking, when you were saying about different techniques, you could also use, as we've mentioned, I think quite a few times, journaling, but almost going deeper inside ourselves and asking ourselves, what is it that's really holding us back to do with this attachment? So for me, with the car, I think it's the fact that I would fear not getting a good, a car as good as that. Or maybe the other car might not work, or the other car might be too expensive to run. And so there's almost going into these ideas, these questions that we might have, all these different parts holding us into this attachment, and going a bit deeper into that, and then a little bit deeper into that, and eventually you will come up, come to this core idea of what the attachment's all about. And then it's when you can change, you can start to turn it around and it could be down. I think it could be down to beliefs. So then you can turn the belief around. It could be down to your inner child, not feeling safe, then you can bring a little bit of safety in and things like that.

rob: 45:48

Yeah, absolutely. I think sometimes so a really good point about do have to make decisions all of the time. So there's a couple of things. Firstly Are you in the best place, the best state to make that decision? A lot of people aren't necessarily they're making decision from a stress response. So firstly it's go away and sort out your state and then Go back to that decision and once you know that you're in a really good place What i'm talking about do your breath work do a meditation Then sit down with your journal and then go through the problem go through the decision you need to make You can't really get From it or do cold war strain it do can't really get to a better state to make that decision from After that when you do make that decision It's just owning that decision and then walking away from it Because the last thing we want is guilt and doubt and all those different things So it's just again come back from that, you know as we're talking to men So being that superior awakened man where you make that decision and you own it and then just walk forward and don't look back

James: 46:47

Like that What, so in regards to people following their purpose, I always find clarity is the key. Because if you have a bit of clarity, you have this idea of the steps that you need to take. So what daily habits or exercises can people start to do to start to get clarity in what they need to do?

rob: 47:12

So firstly, it's. We need to build, we need to build a, an ongoing practice within yoga is called sadhana. Sadhana is a daily practice, something we do every day to access spiritual enlightenment or enlightenment or just clarity depending what you believe in. For me personally, so everyone's different. I'm a single dad. I have my children 50 percent of the time. So I've got to deal with, I'm a householder, so I haven't got the luxury to, spend 10 hours at the gym. So I get up early, get up before my children. I spend a few minutes just to reflect. I listen when I first wake up, I listen. What have I been dreaming of? What comes to me straight away? And if anything comes to me, I'll write it down. If it doesn't, then I take it through to my practice. I come downstairs and I do my breath work. Okay, so it's yoga pranayama. I've got my specific method. I go through that and then I go into a meditation. Sometimes I feel it in me to do 40 minutes. Sometimes it's 20 minutes. And I do this meditation. I get to that point, and I, this is where I have my most clarity. I pull out my journal and I write down, sometimes it's a sentence, sometimes it might be a word. Sometimes it's two or three pages. I then go and do my I get my wake my children up. I have my cold shower. I do, I've got another practice I do. And then later on. In the day if I feel into it I teach yoga breath work, meditation and postures. So I get lots of movement in anyway. But but I also, before I go to bed, I make sure that I've got a little bit of time before I go to sleep and I journal. And the more you do this, it starts to, you start to go deeper. So it's keeping things simple, whatever works for you in order to access that clarity. This might be just going for a walk but making sure that you aren't, ultimately what you're trying to do is quieten the mind. So whatever you can do to quieten the mind. For me, yoga is the best thing I've ever found. And I really get to that point where I can make better decisions. One of the things I I did with my previous company, we do, which I still do now on a Monday, we do a lunchtime brief. So you can start your day and you get your emails and you get all your bits and pieces and you start hitting your to do list, but you get, get to the lunchtime and you've got so much to do. You're trying to work out what do I use the rest of the afternoon for? So it's really important to again, access that clarity so you can make better decisions. So I do it like a 20 minute. dynamic breath work practice on a Monday at 12, which is brilliant. And all my people, it just completely transforms their day and their week. And the more often you do that's your go to that becomes a habit. So rather think I'm going to get another coffee, which actually speeds life up. You can actually go and slow things down and access that clarity for the same amount of time. And then you can you can make better decisions in your life, your career your family life, etc.

James: 50:12

Thank you very much, Rob. Can you just tell us lastly, what is it that you do? What can you offer people? What and how can people get in contact?

rob: 50:20

Okay so what I offer, so I've created a business called Thrive Instinct, and this is about finding your spark and your true purpose in order to. an optimal human experience. So life is about experience. So we want to experience it fully. Okay. So that's fine tuning our instrument to really, like I say, perform well in, in the orchestra of life. So I offer an online platform. It's an online portal. I deliver. breath training, postures, coaching meditation and on demand resources. I also offer retreats. So this is mixed retreats in a mastery retreat. I do an awakened man retreat specifically for men and also a couple's retreat for reconnection. I'll do that with my partner. One to one coaching and I have a program called inner mastery mentorship, which is basically trying to unlock some of this stuff and actually helping you to empower you with the tools. So you no longer need me. You can actually do this all by yourself. So my website is www.thriveinstinct.co uk. You can reach out to me from there and yeah, and look, find my social media and then let me know if you wanna chat more. And I'll be really really pleased to help.