Mastering Pain, Pressure & Performance: NLP and the Athlete’s Mind | David Legro - Part 1

What does it take to bounce back from broken bones, broken hearts, and broken beliefs — and still chase gold?

In this raw, honest, and often hilarious episode of Man: A Quest to Find Meaning, James sits down with David Le Grys — world champion cyclist, coach, and all-around force of nature — to unpack the mindset behind resilience, the power of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), and why humor might be the most underrated healing tool we have.

From childhood bullying and suicidal thoughts to open-heart surgery and international cycling triumphs, David shares how decades of pain — both emotional and physical — forged the unshakable grit behind his success. But it wasn’t willpower or toughness that saved him; it was learning how to reframe fear, manage emotions, and use visualisation and anchors to override the self-sabotaging scripts that once held him back.

We explore how NLP helped David transform his nervous energy into performance power, how a sense of humor kept him afloat during dark days, and why being “driven” can sometimes be just another mask for avoidance — unless it’s balanced with self-awareness.

David's story is not just about athletic achievement. It’s about turning inward, embracing fear, and choosing to live with intention — no matter how many times life knocks you down.

Key Insights from This Episode:

• 🧠 Resilience is Built Through Repetition – Success often comes from showing up again and again after failure, not from avoiding pain.
• 🎭 Humor Can Heal – Laughter, silliness, and playfulness are powerful tools to navigate recovery, grief, and even trauma.
• 🧲 Anchors and NLP Work – Using personalized mental triggers can rewire your response to fear, pressure, and self-doubt.
• 🌀 You Can’t Control Emotions — But You Can Manage Them – Embracing feelings rather than resisting them changes the game.
• 🥇 Motivation vs. Drive – Motivation fades. Drive endures — but unchecked, it can also become destructive.
• 🎯 Focus on Process, Not Outcome – Shifting your attention to the present moment helps bypass performance anxiety.
• ❤️ Vulnerability Is Strength – David’s honesty about suicidal urges and emotional pain shows that true courage is internal.
• 🧰 Recovery Requires Tools and Patience – Healing is a long game, whether it’s from surgery, burnout, or heartbreak.

Transcript

0:01

In this episode we talk about the resilience for adversity and how this is a testament to what David has achieved the role NLP had in its mental transformation. And we talked about a difference between motivation and drive and the power of humor can have with healing. 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: 1:01

I am hard to kill. Good morning, David. Can you explain that statement?

Dave Legro: 1:08

Yes. It's a long story really,'cause I've written a book about it. It's about my journey through life. Having a lot of bad luck. I race bikes, push bike, cycling at a level, competing at top level with, Commonwealth games, world Championships, that sort of level. But it's been a rollercoaster ride to get there. And the crashes that I've had have been quite horrific. Somebody asked me what it's like to crash at 45, 50 mile an hour, and I said basically we're dressed up in Lycra. There's not a lot of protection. So if you can imagine getting in your car, I. Get up to in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and then get up to 50 mile an hour and chucking yourself out. That's what it feels like, if you can imagine that. So hard to kill. I've come back from, as I said, some horrific accidents. And even surgery, open heart surgery, which was one of my books, broken Heart was about in the recovery. And so I've had more bad luck and life threatening moments than I've had success in my cycling. But however, that doesn't mean I didn't have success.'cause I did though

James: 2:21

what you just said there brings back a. Childhood memory where basically I think I was, I'd just finished school, I'd gone outta school, was with my brother on a bike in the Loc in Hour Village where we were at the time. And I was driving around with my, my I think it was a hot summer day, my shirt opened and I came off my bike and went down the road on my stomach and I remember the whole of my stomach was bleeding, was grazed and had all grit everywhere. And I remember being in tears and having to go to first a bath of Detel, which was painful as hell. And then to hospital to go and get sorted.

Dave Legro: 3:07

I don't think unless you've experienced serious road rash nobody would understand the pain, and especially, you jumping in the bath with Detel following, the sort of thing they wouldn't do nowadays. But it's a similar story with me. In fact we used to have a badge of honor that when we crashed, there'd be a horrific burns. We'd put iodine on it. You know what, it is a good idea because it's a good disinfectant, but it used to burn like hell. But like I said, it was a badge of honor. When you turned up at a race, you had this big orangey brown leg and then your scar all around it. But hey, it's just one of those things you did as a youngster.

James: 3:45

It is like the old days where they got some whiskey, poured it over a wound. Yeah. And you're like, hold bite onto the stick.

Dave Legro: 3:53

Yes. That's the one. Yeah. Hang in there. I had that once in Canada when I had a crash in the Commonwealth Games. They thought that I ruptured my spleen and I had to go in there and because if I had that, the spleen had to come out. But the process of digging in through the stomach to get to the spleen was quite painful. And I remember this Canadian nurse said, hold my hand and I squeezed it, nearly broke it like what you're saying. And she was going, hang on in there, and I was breaking her hand'cause it was so painful. But there you go. I get you. You get used to immune to pain. I know that sounds crazy, but when you've had a lot of pain in your life as much as you don't like it, and I don't wanna boast about it, but you get immune to it. You live with it, just get on with it and get on with your life with pain takes a special breed of bastard. Because some people couldn't do it and some people can.

James: 4:49

I suppose it depends what kind of pain, because obviously you've got the physical pain, which you probably go through quite a lot coming off your bikes. But then if you think of relationships, it's the emotional pain are going through lots of breakups.

Dave Legro: 5:02

You are not wrong. I've been through two divorces. I'm on my third wife, my current edition. Lovely girl, Tracy. But the emotional breakdown as you said there, that's a different type of pain. Emotional thinking and feelings can lead you astray. In fact, there was a book by Dr. Steven Peters called The Chimp. Paradox and it explains in terms simple terms, that the chimp, that is an emotional thought, takes over your brain. And it gives because it's being threatened and that's why you think negative or aggressive. As an example, you might have an argument with someone and really you might end up in a fight or you might have some, verbal contact. And then when everything calms down, you say, I wish I hadn't have done that. Because the emotional thinking has brought out the bad in you. And it only takes a few moments with practice to calm that down and get your human brain to say, think logically and say Hang on, and think it through, rather than go steaming in. So interesting concept, emotional thinking and how to not control it. You've gotta manage it. It's a difference which we can come to maybe later on with NLP and stuff that I've studied in the past.

James: 6:15

Now this is a nice po point, really. Can you tell us what is your story?

Dave Legro: 6:22

My story goes back from being bullied as a child and my dad teaching me how to fight, and then I become punch up Dave all of a sudden. And I'm a Leo. I'm a natural leader. I'm not boasting it, it just happened. I like to be in charge and it's not necessarily other people but myself, but unbeknown to me, my real story goes back to a lot of dark thoughts. I was haunted by, I mean like the trying to destroy myself. For instance, if I was up a high building, I had this urge to jump. Or if a, I used to go train spotting as a kid and I just thought of what it would be like, what it would be like to jump in front of a train. I never went through the process. It's just these urges. But these urges went through my life at the back of my mind and I was a very crazy teenager when I learned to drive. At the age of 15, I had a license'cause I learned to drive in New Zealand and one of the crazy things I would do was to drive on the opposite side of the road and play chicken with the car coming towards me. And I wouldn't bottle it and the other car would just stop or pull over. How crazy is that? This went deeper'cause when I started racing, I got overly nervous to the point that I was ill. And I had to understand what was going on and I was on like self-destruct, if that makes sense. Because I was so nervous. I peaked and trained so hard for this one particular race only to lose sleep and be overly nervous. It's good to be nervous, but not at this state. And I was on self-destruct and it took me 60 odd years to combat this. And I eventually got there and I understood why I thought the thoughts I did and the trouble with anything that's emotionally attached when people try and control it. For instance, you say, I don't want, try and stop it. That's not the way to do it. It's like telling somebody historically going mad to calm down. That's not gonna work. So you gotta manage it, which is a different process. Managing it is going with it. So understanding if I'm nervous this might sound a bit nuts, but it worked. I tried to literally make myself more nervous. And now that sounds crazy, but the barriers come down'cause I wasn't challenging it anymore. And it made a huge difference in my outlook to, towards, not just my cycling but my life. It moved me on a lot.

James: 9:05

Tell what, why we're at this point here. Let's discuss that because you're right. When you try to control or push away or hide from an emotion or whatever's going on in your life, it never works. No. It just comes back twice as hard. Yeah. But as soon as you accept it for what it is and you roll with it and you even feel it. It just seems to disappear. That's my own perspec, my own from my own idea of dealing with emotions myself.

Dave Legro: 9:41

A hundred percent. I, my words would be embrace your fear. A lot of fear is in denial because you're trying to push it away. Don't think about it. That sort of mentality because it upsets you or you challenge it and get more upset. But what you're not dealing with is the source of the issue. And I think if you embrace it and own it, own that fear and work out that the strategy, the coping strategy that you are using is not working. And you need to change the record and figure out another strategy of coping. And that's how it is. You can only really do that by embracing it, confronting it rather than try and pushing it away.

James: 10:24

Yeah. Almost making friends with it.

Dave Legro: 10:26

Yeah exactly that.

James: 10:29

I gonna say, I think I know'cause the reason I started this podcast was really to help people where I was 10 years ago, and at that point where I've gone through a breakup, I was in a quite an emotional turmoil at the time. But after it took me many years, not quite as many as yourself, but took me many years to realize that rather than trying to hide from anxiety, depression, or grief griefs a big one. Grief is a big one. It's almost going with it, almost allowing yourself to feel that emotion and to almost acknowledge where you've come from and how far you've gone at the same time.

Dave Legro: 11:20

It is. And by acknowledging it and accepting it you, you've removed the denial or the challenge that you are trying to,'cause nobody wants to be in an anxiety. When I worked with a guy a few years ago that suffered with depression and I listened to his story and I said, you know what that's an achievement. And he looked at me and says, what do you mean achievement? I said an achievement is being good at something. And I said, you are good at being depressed. Now just by saying that lowered the barriers because he hadn't thought of that. He hadn't thought that being depressed was actually an achievement. And I went on to say that what other achievements he's had in life. And he, he's got a PhD, he's been a successful rower all sort. He's got a lovely wife and kids and stuff like that. But he suffered from depression, from something that happened in his life. So I went further and says if you wanna be better at being depressed, I think you need to be more depressed. How many hours do you spend being depressed? And he said, I, I said let's bump up, pump up the volume. When you studied for a PhD, was you studying what, two, three hours a day? You're probably between four and six or eight hours a day. I said being depressed, you could actually double that figure if you wanted to and you'd be more successful in your achievement. And he went, I didn't think about that. And I said where do you want, if you had to list your achievements, where do you want to pee? Do you want your depression to be up there in your top, the things that you've achieved in life? Long story short, just a simple discussion, reframe the way he thought about depression. He was fighting it. I was encouraging him to go along with it. I was encouraging him to get more practicing of being more depressed. And it was a bit, I must admit, I was walking a very thin line here. I'm not a doctor. I'm an NLP practitioner and I'm trying to help this guy and reframe him. But he eventually gradually came off his depression tablets stopped seeing his counselor and his mind was just reframed. And he had a different outlook in life and he got better. And then that's a simple thing of not pushing something, not trying to push it away and challenging it is to go with it.

James: 13:40

What do you have any particular methods that you use for yourself personally?

Dave Legro: 13:46

I'm a different case both medically. I've got rheumatoid arthritis and my blood test showed a false positive. All sorts of things that have come up. Even my heart problems when I had surgery, it's very difficult to understand how I, how that, how it works with me because I'm very different, but we're all different. And managing different people with different problems. There's no one thing that works for everything. You have to go with the personality and the understanding of how that's gonna be achieved. And with me it's, my sense of humor really is, when I had open heart surgery, the that's another story getting there. But basically I was in denial. I did admit that, but when I came out of it, it was real. My chest had been split open. My heart had been stopped. I was on a life support machine because they collapse your lungs, stop your heart so they can work on a dry zone, fix your heart so you all back up again. And you wake up a different person. You're completely deconditioned. You've got no memory, muscle memory of all the things that you've done in training on bikes and walking. You've gotta learn, relearn everything. And the struggle I had to combat this, I could have gone down two different ways, a depressive mode. Could have taken drugs or alcohol, or I could used my tool, which is my sense of humor. And I, and what I did, I made all these crazy videos that went online. I, I was walking around in a field in a pair of buddy smugglers with snorkel and flippers and I was just talking and showing the view of where in the fields. And then I turned the camera on myself and it saw my scar. And I was trying to explain that I'm having a good day. I'm out walking. That following evening I was in hospital with pneumonia and that cost me I went on to make more videos. I wasn't beat, the, I did the flower arranging. I did the grim reaper Oh, for pretending to fall off my bike. They were all hilariously funny. My wife. Didn't understand it. She said, why are you doing this? You are not I was telling everyone I was fine and I was making a complete idiot of myself, but I, that's how I got through it. And this is why I said we different, my sense of humor I used as a tool, and I must admit it worked as crazy as it was, and it made a lot of people happy as well.

James: 16:27

It's I'm not surprised because I was chatting to a guy last week. In fact, his podcast comes out this week and he talks about how fear tells lies and one of his superpowers is sent is U humor. And he's a a poet. He does, goes into kids schools, talks about fear telling eyes, and he uses humor in a way to help people.

Dave Legro: 16:57

Exactly that. And it's like I just mentioned on one of my cases, I helped the guy with depression. That was a little bit of humor in there, with the achievement thing. It made him smile anyway, but sense of humor is a good tool provided though some people aren't. To connect with someone, you've got to mirror them. And some people are, have not got a sense of humor. It's not a fault, it's just the way they are programmed. So you'd have to that in a completely different way.

James: 17:26

So let's go back. You mentioned about in your life how you went on this not this kind of escapade, the escapade we call it now. You went for a period of suicide and, or I think suicidal thoughts and that kind of thing. How did you get from there to becoming world champion cyclist?

Dave Legro: 17:48

I had some good days. It wasn't all doom and gloom. There were some days at worked and I managed to manage my nerves, but quite often there wasn't. And how I got there eventually took a long time because even though I'd won 25 odd World Masters cycling championships I also lost a few and all because of that, so it is like anyone that's successful they've, you learn from failure to be successful. You can't just be successful. You have to make a lot of cock up and or bad times to move on. Because I'm what I am, it took me a lot longer than normal to actually realize that I. All I had to do was to go with it, and I even re thought of the, one of the pressures, to try and manage the pressure was the key. The key is the pressure. And it's always the same thing. You are looking at the outcome and not the process. So when I'm racing I'm probably focusing on winning. People are coming up to me, you're gonna win today, Dave. That doesn't help. That's immediately put pressure on me. But they're being nice and kind, but in my brain that's putting more pressure. And I'm focusing on standing on a podium with a gold medal with a jersey like that secret saying I'm gonna be world champion. I'm trying to block it out. So I had this new technique that I worked with myself, apart from the fact that I. Tried to make myself more nervous. I dealt with the process more than the, I block the outcome out. The outcome will take care of itself. And if I was doing a two lap sprint and 500 meters, I would tell myself, it doesn't matter what, where I come, doesn't matter if I don't make the podium, but as long as I can't stand up after I finish job done, and if I've delivered and emptied my tank and somebody beat me, I'd be happy with that and I'll be first to shake their hand. But the thought process there wasn't the outcome, it was definitely the process. And that's what drove me. And I wish I knew that when I was younger, when I was at my prime.

James: 20:18

How did you block the outcome? Did you, is there anything you specifically did to block out? That's quite a hard thing.

Dave Legro: 20:26

No, it was, but visualization for instance, you know when the damage is done psychologically, it puts doubt in your mind and that can escalate, you can turn up at a race or meeting or wherever you are gonna be, that's got some pressure and be very focused, very positive, and all of a sudden this single thought can just knock you out because it's starting to put doubt in your mind. So you to overcome that, I use visualization. So if I even thought about it, I would just sit down with a towel over my head so I wouldn't be distracted by anyone. And I would go through the process of warming up and then getting on my bike, doing the final little bike checks preparing for the race, doing the race, that sort of thing. And what I was doing there, I was actually. Managing my conscious mind.

James: 21:19

And so there's

Dave Legro: 21:19

no subconscious mind interfering. And I held that. And then together with the process of dealing with, I don't care where I come, sort of attitude. I'm just gonna smash myself to bits. And if I can't stand up afterwards, that single thought inspired me. But the key is timing, because if you did this an hour before the race, you're gonna be a nervous wreck. You know it. With practice, it's the sort of thing that I could do within a minute or even 30 seconds. I can take my, bad Dave with bad attitude and nerves to the bike, and then all of a sudden I can hit my anchor and spark up and I'm a God. And that took practice, but it took a long time to learn that.

James: 22:06

Yeah. That reminds me that the other which day was it? Monday? So I am a member of, I do CrossFit weekly and we are doing one rep max shoulder press and mine at the moment, 6 63 0.5, seven five, something like that. And I went in there to do 60. So I'm building up again. So it's a new day and I knocked 60 out, bang, straight up. And I thought to myself, this is easy. I'm gonna go for 70. It's a massive jump. So I didn't do 70, couldn't do 70, and then suddenly, because I couldn't do 70, that blocked me from doing 65 and it blocked me from going higher than my one rep max.

Dave Legro: 22:50

Yep. And that definitely is mind over matter, isn't it? Where the subconscious will just doubt you and then, if you're not careful, you could go on a downward spiral.

James: 22:59

Yeah. Yeah. So the key lesson for me there was to, rather than think, get cocky, let your ego take over and just go straight for 70, just go for 63.5 again, and then build it up. Do that one easy, then do the next one. That way you're building yourself back up rather than going from high to low.

Dave Legro: 23:21

Yeah. So you, that's my point about looking at the outcome and not dealing with the process. Exactly That. And you're right. A gradual increase as well would've got you up there probably. So it is, the mind is so powerful. It can make or break you. It can destroy you or make you the happiest person in the world. And it's just understanding the coping mechanism of how you dealt with it. And when you're young, you don't know all this stuff. You just get on with it, I crash on my bike, I hurt myself, and I just get up again. Despite the damage that I'd done that I'm gonna pay for later in life, which I am now, so yeah.

James: 24:03

To become a world champion cyclist is obviously, that's no small feat. That is a massive How, what did you have to do in order to get yourself there?

Dave Legro: 24:15

It's, I've been cycling for racing 50 odd years, so there was a progression in that. Anyway I've raced at international level as a youngster and I turned professional. Then I took up running marathons, and then I went back to cycling and started doing masters racing, which I started to become world championing. But all the ingredients and knowledge of my experience helped me a lot. Experience does count when you're riding at that level, but the, there's something within me and people that are driven that, it's like Rocky would say, it's not how many times you get knocked down. It's how many times you get back up. And I actually did a podcast a few years ago about what's the difference between being motivated and being driven.'Cause they're similar, but there, there is a big difference. Somebody that's just motivated can be demotivated immediately with some bad news and it can destroy them or it take a while to get over it. Someone that's driven would have the same effect at first, but they'd bounce back because they don't know how to not bounce back. They keep going forward. However, being driven. Can also be your worst enemy?'cause it has with me I think I'm driven. That's what's kept me going to win those world titles. But being driven can be my enemy too, because, for instance, it can destroy you in the sense that when I was recovering from major surgery being driven means that I'm gonna get over this. I've got, I'm not listening to the rules. I'm, as one doctor said that I am there and I'm up here on the top of the building and I need to come back down to the first floor because being driven was actually another self-destruct. I was like, I'm not playing the rules yet. So it didn't work. So that can be a self-destruct as well as being a good thing. It works both ways. Understanding it helps. My recent back surgery I really have, I'm not programmed to do, not a lot, but I've had to get a grips with calming myself down.'cause I don't want to go, I'm too old to go through another big surgery like this and I don't like hospital food.

James: 26:45

So that's let's just cover this point quickly then. Obviously you mentioned that you've gotta try and bring yourself down a little bit and become a bit less driven. How are you coping with that at this moment in time? Is there anything you specifically do?

Dave Legro: 27:03

I've trained myself, I've got various tools to help me that they've given me, they've given me what they call a perching chair. So that if I'm trying to sit at a bench to do some vegetables rather than, standing up and do'em, I can sit down. I've got a grabber that I use at extending, and I've got into a routine that I've trained myself that I'm not gonna pick up that thing off the floor.'cause that's the worst thing I can do is bend down. I'm not ready to bend down yet. So I use, I use my grabber and it's, it is become a habit, so it's relearning. If you like a routine, a new routine that's not gonna be forever, but it's gonna be the start of the rehab. And then when you move on, you, you create a new routine. The danger point always in any injury is when you turn the corner and you feel better.'cause there's a while where you struggle and then you start gradually getting better. But you will turn a corner and all of a sudden you're starting to feel okay. But that's dangerous because that's not a green light. That's just telling you that you're at the next level. You can gradually, like you should have done gradually improve the weight a little bit more and a little bit more. And it's so easy to get the green light thinking I'm fine and then get back into it and then make it worse and go back to square one.'cause you've, shouldn't have done that.

James: 28:24

Yeah, I can, I relate to that'cause with doing, injuring myself, my back, pulling in my back and then perhaps three or four days later it's feeling better. Let's jump straight back into CrossFit and then probably a couple of days later, oh no, I've done it again.

Dave Legro: 28:42

You'd have done that.

James: 28:43

Yeah. Can definitely relate. Yeah, it's, so can you go a bit more into motivation and being more driven? Because I think there's gonna be people out there who probably have both and it's probably gonna be people who perhaps have more motivation and drive. Is there any way that somebody could become more driven?

Dave Legro: 29:10

Yeah, it depends on, especially with men, their ego isn't it? That's a big deal. Ego. And a lot of problems are, if your ego's too big or you are overconfident and that's where there could be a pitfall in being driven. And then you become cocky and, so understanding that I remember when I was at my peak I was racing all around the country and all around Europe and I never lost a sprint. I never lost. And until this one day I was riding this guy, a good friend of mine, Neville, and I could beat him quite easy, dude, no disrespect to him. He wasn't a sprinter really. But I, when he went, he took off, I let him go. And I was waving to the crowd and they said, I'm gonna go now. And I went to chase him. I never caught him. Lesson learned. I regret that, but it actually gave me, you know what, whoever I was riding with, I respect them. It doesn't matter what ability, they're doing their best. I got cocky and I thought I can win this. And that was my ego and that's where I, if you got an understanding about that and with other people too, you'll find the, you have Donald Trump's ego. Can you imagine that? It's

James: 30:33

Yeah. I it's almost like you need a little bit of humility and compassion for your opponents, or not even opponents. It could be anybody that you are up against.

Dave Legro: 30:46

It is respect without a doubt. Even if it's the worst nightmare, unless he's going back to embracing that, reversing the situation of not actually hating them. Embrace it and love them, that's weird. But it does actually stop your ego from running away from yourself. And that's the issue, isn't it? And we've all done it. Not, even now and again, even though I've calmed down and I know what I know, occasionally my wife reminds me about my ego sometimes. And it happens. We're human. It does happen.

James: 31:24

So one of our mutual friends who actually put us in contact, Kain Latham, he I'm sure he mentioned you in the podcast about yourself racing and going through it, a pe a period of perhaps not being at top, almost top of your game. But you were eating what you want, doing what you want, and then he came in, stepped in a bit of LLLP training with you, and it completely transformed you. Can you talk about that please?

Dave Legro: 31:56

Yeah. The going, it wasn't just the diet. I was on a rubbish diet. I could eat fish and chips cakes and biscuits. In fact, when I saw cane, he said, what'd you have for breakfast? I said, A cup of coffee and two digestive biscuits. He nearly fell off his chair. But it went a bit deeper than that because even going back to my nerves, I said I was really worried about my nerves. I put myself under so much pressure and without boasting, because I was that good. I knew I was capable of coming home with a gold medal, but that wasn't doing my mind any good'cause that was giving me this pressure that I didn't need. I look around at all my opponents and they're smiling and they're chilled out, and I'm there and I'm all tense and wound up and I'm thinking, why can't I be like them? And a friend of mine recommended Kane to go and he said, why don't you try NLP? And that's neurolinguistic programming. It is a kind of a reframing thing on the way you behave. And under understanding it and reframing it a bit like half full, half empty, it's the same thing. You reframe that half full, half empty glass. And there's different, various techniques. And when I saw a cane we went through it and he asked me how I'd like to behave. Now, that's the key thing, it is not he came into my world. He didn't say, ah, you need to snap outta that and do this. You, when you're working with something. Cain worked with me and he entered my world. He entered my world of eating digestive biscuits. He entered my world of nerves. And he went with it and he mirrored it. And then he started to restructure it and reframe it in a point that, as I said I could take my bad energy, thoughts and stuff and be on the start line and become a God. And that was how, mainly through NLP and when the, with the process of Kane getting me into a the way that I wanted to behave how would I want to behave? I wanted to be calm, a little bit nervous. I wanted to be able to manage my thoughts and manage my feelings. And he taught me into how I would want to do that. He's not telling me to do it. He's asking me how I would like to do it. And so I was actually, without realizing, installing my own anchor, in the thought that this is how I'd like to behave. Eventually he installed an anchor. And an anchor is a trigger, I dunno if you're a rugby fan, but do you do you remember Johnny Wilkinson? He used to kick goals for England and he used to do that, right? And that's NLP, that's his anchor. And what that is, is two rugby posts. And when he was being, helped with NLP one of the strategies that was taught to him that the, he had to imagine that, that the rugby posts were like a hundred meters apart. And then he said, go and kick a ball, and he couldn't miss. And when he did it a thousand times or whatever he said anchor it. And he come up with his anchor and it is by association of that, of him not missing. And if you recall, he would go. Sideways, even though the goal was in front of him, he, and that's him getting in the zone. The goal was over there. And then he would kick the ball and walk away knowing that he'd nine outta 10, he'd kick it. That's NLP for you. It's a trigger. He actually reframed how he thought about the pressure of kicking a ball and used a trigger, an anchor to use. And that's what Kain did to me. He installed an anchor. So on this particular occasion, I was off to Australia to ride the World Masters, and I come back with two golds. And I used my anchor. In fact, I phoned a mate up in the middle of the night'cause I'm, we're opposite time zones and I was up for a race and I rung my mate up and I said to him, this seven LP don't work. I'm still in a, he said, Dave you can't think about suddenly, he said, just go with the flow and hit your anchor. You don't, you can't just suddenly make yourself better. And that's what I learned with NLP. You can't, once you've hit that anchor you don't focus on it's gonna work. You just have to forget it.'cause it's by association. And understanding that more, if I was to explain that to somebody who doesn't understand that NLP technique is, if you smell something. It can take, that could be an anchor, a trigger to take you back to something that you've selt in the past that you liked or hated. Or if you hear a music, you hear a track of music that went back a few years and you are there and that's a trigger, so it's the same thing. The NLP practitioner can install an anchor that is, we've got loads of anchors anyway, installed through life.

James: 36:55

Yeah. It's so when I wake up, firstly in the morning, my, I suppose my anchor is to go downstairs and do my morning routine.

Dave Legro: 37:06

Is that right? Yeah. I've got a sign that says, wake up and be awesome.

James: 37:11

Nice. He puts a smile

Dave Legro: 37:12

on my face.

James: 37:14

You so an anchor is something that triggers specific action. I assume

Dave Legro: 37:19

It's a, triggers a body behavior.

James: 37:22

Okay. Okay.

Dave Legro: 37:24

So if you are shy you are gonna be withdrawn the way your body behaves. And you don't want to be up the front. You want to be at the back, out of the way. Because you are shy. Somebody that's opposite would be right at the front, Hey, this is me here, I'm, and he wants to be center of adaption. So yes,

James: 37:47

it's it's almost similar to habit formation, but you've got some kind of thing that you do where, if I remember rightly, that's a anchor point, isn't it? Touching my thing. My bomb and finger together. I think I remember David Heer speaker I know close to me. He uses that quite a lot.

Dave Legro: 38:09

Yeah. I don't even know a famous site as Chris Hoy when he was on, on the start line. He used to do this with his glasses and that was his anchor, and everyone's got a different anchor. It hasn't gotta be that, but that's by association.

James: 38:25

Okay. Okay.

Dave Legro: 38:26

That makes sense.

James: 38:27

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. So basically what Kane did was to get into your head by acting what you did. Yeah. And then allowing you to dictate how you want your anchor to be, and then instilling those behaviors and thoughts into you personally.

Dave Legro: 38:48

Yeah, that. It was going through the, that thought process, but on a repetitive way. So if I was imagining this is I want to turn up at a race, I want to be calm, but in control. I don't wanna let my feelings run away from me. And I wanna warm up. And I, most of all, I. With anything. I want to enjoy it.'cause I never used to enjoy it. Yeah. I used to hate it'cause of the mess I got in. So all, going through all these processes of how I'd like to behave and came and said, let's do that again. And it'd make me repeat it over and over again, but make it better that I arrived really calm and I really look forward to it. And I was gonna have a great time. And he magnified it to a point that he said, right now hit your anchor. So my anchor was actually that. So when I hit my anchor, that was associated to the way I wanted to behave. So this is me managing me, not controlling me.'cause it just takes a simple, gesture and some p sometimes it's very subtle, you wouldn't even know somebody's doing it because it is a personal thing.

James: 39:58

Yeah. Yeah. So let's use an example. Say there's somebody who's very nervous around people, has a massive social anxiety, but they wanna be confident. How would they instill, how would they use NLP and instill an anchor?

Dave Legro: 40:15

They could go in there and far, that sounds bonkers, but it's gonna make everyone laugh and go it breaks the ice. This is where sense of humor comes in is an understanding. I don't mean that necessarily, by the way. I'm just getting you to understand that sometimes your sense of humor can be a good tool. Yeah. Because they're anxious, they're very tight, they're closed. We've gotta open them up and get'em to chill, and again, understanding, visualization of easy, how, again, going back to how you, how would you like to behave? And they're obviously gonna come out. I say I'd like to be confident. I'd I don't wanna be shy. Tell me about it. How would you like to behave? And there's various techniques that NLP can use and it depends on for instance, if you are, we all have different ways of processing our thoughts. So with me, I'm not very visual. If you said to me, can you remember that last race? And think about, and I can't actually roll it through my mind, but I can hear the bell going, I can hear the crowd cheering, I can smell the invocation. So I would use a different technique to somebody that's visual. So for instance, if I said to you, what color is your front door? What is blue? Okay. And do you, did you notice that you looked up to the left? And IQs are a very good thing. You know it, when you look up you are actually searching for what you can remember, right? And it's, it changes from left to right, different people. If you look up to the left for instance, that's your instant. I know that. And if you look the other way up, that's I know that I'm trying to figure out what, so just thinking about it, okay. And then you got the eyes that go backwards and forwards or you can shake your head that's trying to connect with audio, trying to connect with what you can hear as well as looking up. Because you know some people when they go like this, oh, I dunno, right? They unbeknown to them, they're trying to think about it. As well as trying to pick up some sort of other senses. And then it gets more interesting when you start looking down, you are starting to talk to yourself'cause you don't know the answer. And that's where people lie or they're in denial. So getting to understand when you, when I'm talking to people, I would look at their eyes as well to see what they're processing and see if they're not so much telling lies, but seeing how they behave under, because you ask just basic questions, how you going, you know what's going on in your life. And all these IQs are giving me an idea of the person and how to deal with it. Yeah. So if you was visual, a good example of working that experience is taking them to the cinema is one of my favorite hypnosis sessions. I deal with some people. And what that is to, when I say hypnotize, is you're just getting somebody in a very calm. There's lots of levels of hypnosis. We're not going through rooms and going into another room and turning into a chicken. We're just getting them into a relaxed state and being perfectly aware of what's around them.'cause they might have cars rushing by and odd siren or birds tweeting and getting them to absorb all that. As well as listen to my voice, and we'll go through the cinema and I talk them through entering the cinema and I talk with them. I said, can you, are you standing outside the cinema? I go, yeah. I said I want you to walk through. And long story short,'cause it does take about 45 minutes and I'm not gonna do that. It'll take me a couple of minutes to explain. So I'll get them into the cinema, get them seated. They go through the foyer, they haven't gotta pay. They can pick up the popcorn if they want, and they sit down and there's nobody in the cinema except them, him, her. And there's just a screen and they look up at the screen and they're gonna roll the film. And it's all about their life. And then this, the, whatever the trauma is, they're gonna go through it and we're gonna watch that film about them watching themselves. And then this is where it gets weird. You can get an out body experience. And I said, what I want you to do now is leave your body watching that film. And if you look behind you, you can see the projector room and I want you to walk up there, but you still gotta be looking at the film.

James: 44:34

So I

Dave Legro: 44:34

get them to walk up to the projector room and they could see a projector running around flickering away. There's nobody in there. And I, and then there's a little peephole. I said, go and have a look through the pee pole. And they look at the peep hole and they can see themselves watching themselves. This is weird, isn't it? But don't forget, they're on a kind of a very low hypnosis there. And they're living this moment. They're watching themselves through the peep hole, watching themselves on the screen. And I we were talking, I said, how do you feel? I said I don't like this film. I said, no, but can you notice the way you are sitting, they're slumped down. They don't really wanna watch it, but they are. I said, look, turn your attention to the projector. And they look at it. I said, see that film, I want you to rip it off and destroy it. Absolutely. In whatever way you want to do it. You can set fire to it, you can jump on it, you can blow it up. And they do all that. And then get'em to pick up another reel. And I said, this film is all about you. You're gonna make a film about you how you want to be. And they get the film going and they started going and they go back to the peephole. And I said, can you see? And it's all, everything the opposite of way they behaved and they notice that themselves are starting to look forward at the film. And I'm, I like this film. I said go back down, come out the projector room, go back down and get back into your body. And now they're full on watching their film that they like, and we are changing lots of things, it could be a, yeah. A bit of a sunny day. And I said let's make it more sunny, brighten it all up and make all the feelings better and stronger. Eventually we get to the anchor point. We anchor it, and I say, in your own time, I want you to walk outta the cinema. So I've installed this anchor of them watching the film on how they wanted to behave. But the thing is, I've left the film running, so if they're ever have a difficult point, even with the anchor, they can just sit in a quiet place and go back into the cinema and watch that film again.'cause it's still running. And it's a very good technique for people that are totally focused. It could ping up visualize, I should say.

46:32

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