Why High Performers Still Feel Stuck (And What They’re Missing) | Ben Robins (EP 150)

If your life looks perfect on paper but feels strangely hollow, this conversation will hit home. We sit down with coach Ben Robbins, who rose fast in a global consultancy and realized the wins felt thinner with each promotion. Instead of doubling down on hustle, he rebuilt from the inside out—trading golden handcuffs for a compelling vision of freedom, health, meaningful work, and a life lived on his terms.

Ben breaks down a deceptively simple idea: most high performers don’t need to add more; they need to remove what’s untrue. He shows how hidden scripts like “I’m not good enough” quietly drive overwork, overplanning, and the constant chase for validation. Rather than pushing affirmations the nervous system doesn’t buy, he uses real evidence from your life to neutralize old stories, shifting change from intellectual to embodied. That’s where energy returns, creativity flows, and burnout loses its grip.

We also reframe success through a powerful lens: goals are not a place to get to, they’re a place to come from. If you want the million, the promotion, or the freedom, who do you need to be today in how you show up, connect, and create? This shift unlocks the feeling now and, paradoxically, helps results arrive faster. Ben shares practical ways to create space—micro-pauses, fewer low-value meetings, silent walks—so your best thinking can surface. And he makes a case for lives that look “weird” to others but feel true to you, from living abroad to crafting work around conversation and impact.

If you’re tired of chasing the next rung and ready to define your version of a 10 out of 10 life, this episode offers a clear path: remove, integrate, and create. Listen, share with someone who needs it, and if it resonates, subscribe, leave a review, and tell us the one story you’re ready to drop.

Chapters

• 0:00 Meet Ben Robbins And The Premise
• 1:50 Success On Paper, Emptiness Inside
• 4:20 Early Signs And Life Squeezed Thin
• 9:19 Facing Uncertainty And Choosing Vision
• 15:27 Not Autopilot: Conscious But Depleted
• 20:52 Redefining Success Without Quitting
• 26:17 Removal Before Addition: Dismantling Stories
• 33:17 From Intellectual To Emotional Knowing
• 39:17 The Victim Trap Of Chasing Outcomes
• 45:17 Goals To Come From, Not Get To
• 51:17 Lasting Transformation And Integration

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:15

Today, we're joined by Ben Robbins, a coach who once had all the markers of success but realized the life he was living didn't actually feel like his. Now, he helps high performers create real change by clearing the stories and conditioning they didn't even realize are running the show. This conversation goes deeper than mindset, hacks, or hustle. Ben breaks down why so many people who look great on paper still feel off and what it really takes to raise the standard of your life without burning yourself out. We also get into his own turning point why insight, but not effort, is often the shift that creates everything. I hope you guys enjoy the show. I want to then I think starting things off being whole from within, looking at your story and very successful, and everything has looked good on the outside. And I think a lot of men chase the exterior. And I've talked a lot, I've talked a lot about it a lot on other podcasts, but I want to hear your perspective, right? Kind of what you had, and then what were you looking to find within what do you think you were missing? A big question to to start the day, Josh.

SPEAKER_01: 1:39

Yeah. But yeah, look, I think that for me, I had a very, very successful career as you illuminated too, right? Before I went into coaching like I am now, where it culminated in me leading all of the international markets for a global consultancy, very, very fast growing global consultancy, leading large teams, growing double digits every year, many tens of millions under management, living in the nice part of town, overlooking the Thames in London, everything seemed great, right? To everybody external of me. And it obviously it's been it was what I had hunted down or what I had chased for a long time, thinking that the next level, the next promotion, the next paycheck, whatever it might be, would be where I would find that great satisfaction, that great peace. Yeah. And for me, it didn't reach at that point. In fact, I realized that with every promotion, with every pay rise, with every team member that you add, actually the feeling of winning was lesser than the time before. And so it really led not just me, but with conversations with people close to me, with my partner, etc., to really assess what is success for me? What is it that I really want to be doing and try and build a life completely around that? And that's obviously where I am today, where I help people do exactly the same thing. They don't have to do it in the same way. I tell people very regularly, I quit, you don't have to, right? Yeah. Um, but it's about how helping those high performers reach their version of winning today in the way that makes sense for them.

SPEAKER_00: 3:13

Yeah, I love that. And I just think about how a lot of a lot of folks and a lot of men, we do chase that next promotion, the next pay raise, that that that bigger apartment. We want to raise the level uh of our performance, right? And it sounded like the higher you went, the less you felt, I guess, great about the direction you were going. Like what were kind of the signs? Did you feel it like emotionally? What do you think were like those first indicators or signs that you felt maybe you were going the wrong direction or you just weren't living a life that was authentic to the values that you had for yourself?

SPEAKER_01: 3:57

Yeah. I think the tricky thing for me, Josh, was that I actually did enjoy and love parts of it, right? I enjoyed You do. You do actually, yeah.

unknown: 4:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 4:06

Yeah. Like I enjoyed when we were signing big new clients. I enjoyed when the team was growing. I enjoyed having those great conversations with the people that I worked with. I worked with incredible people, right? But the thing for me is that I never wanted my life to be 100% work. Like I wanted A to have something on in my own image, which is why building a business with me was so important. But I also wanted I also wanted life to have context. I I loved going to the gym, I loved spending time with my partner, I love spending time with friends and family, I wanted to try the nice restaurants. And when you the higher you climb, the more that I found that my life was pushed to the sides. Like I was a member of the 5 a.m. club in London because that was the only way that I could fit things into my day. I had to wake up as quickly as possible, eat something as quickly as possible, run off to the gym, run back, get on the tube to go to London, uh, go to central London to work. And it just became a thing that I was giving more and more to something that was important and I was enjoying, but it felt like less and less was energy was going to me, going to the people that I cared about. And so that's really where I started to think: okay, well, is this sustainable? Is this the way that I want to build my life? And if it's not, how can I rebuild it in accordance to the way that I do actually want to live?

SPEAKER_00: 5:27

Okay, so you got all this, you got all this success, you got everything. It's comfort, right? You know the direction you're going. What do you think made you, I guess, embrace the uncertainty of a new path? Yeah, right? With all that, you got success, right? You have it. Your family, friends, everybody is looking at you and they're proud of you. But want a new direction, it's a lot of uncertainty there, right? What does that feel like?

SPEAKER_01: 6:05

To be honest, bloody terrifying to be honest. Yeah, like obviously you can do the intellectualizing of it. You can, as I do with many clients that I work with, you can work through processes, you can you can change old scripts and stories to get there, but it it's still a scary step. Like for two years, certainly a year more actively, I was thinking about okay, do I have enough money to be able to make this change? Can I do it in the way that I want to do it? And it came really down to two ways of thinking about it in the end. I thought, do I want to do this for the next five or ten years? And if the answer was no, which it was, then why do I want to do it for another year? What does that really give me? And then, as we mentioned before, we started this conversation, Josh. Actually, we're in Sri Lanka now for until Christmas, so we've been here for we will be have been here for six months by the time we leave. We came here just before I quit, and I sat in uh in a villa with a coffee table overlooking the sea, and I thought, okay, I could build a business from here, I could make it work from here. And it was stepping into a compelling vision rather than stepping into or stepping away from the great career that I built, it became okay, this is the vision that I want for my life, this is how I want it to work, these are the types of people that I can talk to and the type of things that I can do now. I'm stepping into this rather than stepping away from that. And that became the thing that actually gave me the greatest conviction was knowing that the step that I was taking certainly was not certain. I didn't know where it was going to go or how it was gonna lead. And we can talk about it, Josh. It was it's entirely different than I anticipated it looking. But but it was then having that compelling vision, knowing that, yeah, okay, this is something worth trying at least.

SPEAKER_00: 7:56

Yeah. I mean, you mentioned a few different things there. First, before I even asked the last question, you said that you weren't putting a lot of time, energy into yourself. It was just kind of you were just going, it sounded like were you on autopilot, you would say, basically, right? Not necessarily, yeah. Well yeah, what do you feel like?

SPEAKER_01: 8:17

I would actually say that I was in a different position, right? I was the opposite of autopilot because I was so consciously aware of where I wanted to go, but that didn't mean that I necessarily had the energy to do what I wanted to do, right? Yeah. So one thing, let me explain that a little bit because I don't think I've been clear there. One thing that someone said to me very early on in my career that stuck with me is whenever you're in a role, look up. And if the people that you look up to in the more senior roles are not people that you want to become, then you need to question whether this is the place that you want to be in. And that led me to change a number of different roles over my years because the people that I looked up to were not necessarily people that I want to wanted to be. And that's not necessarily my managers. I had some really great managers along the way, but above them. And so you typically see, and I don't want to be too stereotypical, but you typically see when you work in large organizations or or big organizations that the people become overweight, that they become sluggish, that their relationships become strained, you know what it is, right? And so I was very acutely aware that that's not what I wanted my life to be. I was very consciously building my life every day, doing the things that I thought were important. As I said, getting up at 5 a.m., going to the gym, still finding time for my partner, still finding time for my friends and my family. But because I was squeezing so much in, it just meant that although I was doing those things, the energy that I was doing them was with was not my energy anymore. It was kind of the dregs of the day that I had left.

SPEAKER_00: 9:45

Does that make sense? That makes a lot of sense. So you had these values, you already had a value system, right? So you got a chance to understand who you were to some degree, right? And then you looked up the corporate ladder and you saw, hey, I don't necessarily want to be what I see my trajectory if I continue to go down this path. If I go down this path, that is what it'll look like, right? And so you had these set of values for yourself, and you knew that the path you were going wasn't gonna be in the coordinates of the values that you had for yourself, right? It sounded like you wanted to be healthy, you wanted to spend time with family, as much of it as possible. Yes. You and I we talked before we hit record. You've lived in all these different places, so I'm sure you wanted to travel on your own time, right? And so you had a vision. And I don't know if a lot of men kind of sit back, one, like you said, don't have the time or the energy to really put into themselves or that vision, right? And or they just haven't done the work to sit back and have that space to really think about what their values are and what that vision looks like for them. So it sounded like you had probably done some of that work already before you actually stepped into that vision like you talked about.

SPEAKER_01: 11:19

Yeah, uh, you're exactly right, Josh. So one of the benefits of the stories of the scripts that were embedded into my life was from a very, very early age I was doing personal development. I obviously started with the the Joe McClendons and the Tony Robbinses and those people in the world. And I went through spiritual conversations and did weird things like biofeedback training and all of these sorts of things to understand who I was, how I wanted to think about the world, what was important to me.

SPEAKER_02: 11:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 11:48

But you're right, I think that many people don't have the inclination to do that or think about that a little bit later. And so, again, that's where my conversations come in with people, the consultations that I have or the sessions that I have with people is to really disseminate all of the work that I've done over the last decade and a half, probably, and really distill that so that we can have those conversations with people that are having these thoughts and conversations. Typically, when people come to me, they're questioning: is this it? Is this really the version of life that I want? Do I have a 10 out of 10 life? I don't feel like this is what I want. Like I, as you we talked about at the beginning, right? I might have a life that looks successful. Very often the people that I work with are very, very successful indeed. But it's about then transposing that to other parts of their life, making sure that their health is in place, making sure that they've got the freedom that they want, making sure that they feel alive, whatever their definition of winning or 10 out of 10 life is for them, it's then putting those building blocks in so that they can they can do it.

SPEAKER_00: 12:49

Yeah. You know, I've heard it, your desired future state, right? And it's and it's not just work, it's it's the whole picture of it, right? Um health, family, you know, your spiritual walk, right? Um, finances, all these different things. And, you know, I know you mention a lot in your work uh real interchange. And we talked a little bit about this, is that interchange and if you are gonna go down a different path or really step into your higher self, it's an interchange, right? That you have to make, maybe some decisions to to really step into your true authentic self, right? And I think a lot of folks have that inner conflict of do I stay with the comfortable path where I'm getting all the approval, validation, or do I step into a more uh authentic path for myself where I might get judged, laughed at, mocked, whatever the case may be, right? Talk about that journey, right? I'm sure you probably faced some of that in your own path. Definitely.

SPEAKER_01: 14:03

And I think I think that that comfort is the overwhelming thing that people cling to. I look what I did as well, that we talk talk about as golden handcuffs. I lived in a nice place. I didn't I didn't necessarily want to give that up in the in the but it and so it's it makes it a thing to think, okay. Well, I'm not it's not that I'm trading my dream life or anything, it's that I'm just I'm too terrified to give up comfort. And so there's an element around, okay, well, making sure that people feel okay with the discomfort of it first, okay, what will people think? And again, I'm not telling people to necessarily quit their jobs or anything like that. We can redefine success in many um many different ways. And for most people, I would say 95% of the people that I work with, you can redefine success within the current parameters of their life. So they don't have to tear things down or start again. But it's about making sure that you build in that feeling of fulfillment, aliveness, freedom, connection, love, etc., into their life so that they feel that it is more of theirs rather than someone else's. And just to go back to the inner work that you talked about, right? The inner work I find is essential. And that's where I think that I deviate very substantially from the vast majority of coaching or personal development. Because I believe that the first step very often is removal, not adding. So if you go down the traditional life coaching route or coaching route, or you go to one of these seminars, very often they will say you need to be more, do more, try harder. But that doesn't ring true for the vast majority of high performers that I worked with. Certainly didn't ring true for myself, right? I was already doing a huge amount in my day. I was already pushing as hard as I felt that I could. And so for someone to come up and say, okay, you need to get up even earlier, which I was a big fan of Robin Sharmer, but I do think he's got a line now that says the 5 a.m. club is now not good enough. You need to get up at 4 a.m. Okay. This is getting a little mad now, Robin, right? Like, where am I sleeping in the middle of this? So, not to say anything against him, but he's got fantastic books, right? But it's just I can't, there wasn't any more capacity for more. And so, where I began to then interrogate was what are the stories that I'm telling myself that I can remove? And the stories that had been driving my life, and I find for all, if not the vast majority, of the clients that I work with, are there are stories in a similar realm. I'm not good enough, there's something wrong with me, I can't do this, whatever it might be, I'm not safe, and so that money becomes this thing that people chase for security. And so it wasn't until I interrogated, identified, and then removed that story altogether and really did that that deep inner work that I was liberated to go and do live the life that I wanted, right? Josh, we talked about again again, I think it was pre-recording, that even when I left my new job, there was this feeling that I could go and do something else. And that I wanted to go and do something else. And what was the judgment of other people and things like that? And so to try and circumnavigate that, I had this big plan. Okay, I'll be in Sri Lanka, but I would build this multi-million dollar business. I wouldn't enjoy building the business, but I had the skills, the aptitude to do it. It would be a huge business that I could sell in three or four years' time, and then I could have the peace and happiness and freedom that I so desired. And it wasn't until I really did this deep work and really understood the feeling of removing that that story that I've been telling myself, as I do with clients right now, that then I said, well, that seems like a silly way about going about things. Why don't I just circumnavigate all that struggle and all that striving in the middle and really focus on on the one thing that I really want to do, which is have great conversations with people all day long, try and impact people's lives, and really live in places that are aligned to where I want to live? And so that's what I'm doing right now.

SPEAKER_00: 17:58

Wow. I guess how did you start to remove those stories or rewrite those stories that you were telling yourself? Did that look like journaling? Did that look like what did that look like for you? Or was it just a conscious decision of, you know, maybe in a moment of doing some type of action, right? And then you you catch yourself maybe striving, and then you ask yourself, you know, hey, what am I doing this for? And then kind of rewriting it there and adjusting in real time. What did that look like for you? And I guess how do you teach some of your clients to start to rewrite those stories for themselves?

SPEAKER_01: 18:36

Yeah, I think the the thing for me was I I knew consciously for probably a year, year and a half, the stories that were running my life, right? As I said, in the realm of I'm not good enough, there's something wrong with me, those were the predominant things that were driving the direction of where I was taking myself. They propelled me to do well in my career because I was constantly trying to prove those things wrong. It allowed me to do loads of personal development because I was constantly trying to improve myself to the point that I wouldn't feel these things anymore. But anything built on that foundation is going to reinforce it, not remove it, right? So that wasn't the right approach. Obviously, perfectly natural and beneficial one in the longer run, but it wasn't giving me the feel the positive feelings or the satisfaction or the peace that I was hoping for by doing that work, right? And so, yeah, as I said, 18 months ago, perhaps I uncovered that these were the things that were running my life. Perhaps more obvious to people outside of me that that was where I was coming from. But I I began to to really do some interrogation. I worked with a number of different coaches, I talked to about a different number of different frames, and it became obvious that these were the stories that were telling myself. And much like Carl Jung says, until you make the unconscious conscious, it will run your life and you will call it fate, right? Yeah. And so it was great because I suddenly made the unconscious conscious to myself. But it was still running my life because although I could spot it in certain moments and I could course correct for it, when things became more important to address straight away, or because things would flare up, or whatever it was, I would fall back into those patterns. Patterns that I had been in. And so it wasn't until I really interrogated those, and I became I'm quite an analytical person, quite a lot of the people that I tend to work with are as well, that I proved that those stories were not true with data, because I find that we live in a world of duality. You tend to look at the good or the bad. We don't tend to look at the gray so much, right? Yeah. And so I had spent my life collecting things to prove that there was something wrong with me or I wasn't good enough or whatever, right? And it wasn't until I pointed out and looked at all of the other things to prove that there was another side to this, empiric, empirically, sorry, that suddenly my central nervous system could calm down. I could suddenly say, okay, my life couldn't have been any other way than it was. I stopped saying I should have done this or these things should have happened in a different way. And this is what I find with all my clients as well that they suddenly realize that although intellectually they've known these things, now emotionally they understand them, and actually there's a huge change within them that suddenly they are free to go and live the life that they want on their own terms. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 21:21

Yeah. You say it somebody. Yeah. They know it mentally, right? Intellectually, they know it. Emotionally, they don't know it. Right? Go deeper on that because I think a lot of times a lot of folks know what to do, or maybe know what the issue is, but they still allow maybe uh fear to get in the way, maybe different emotions to keep them from going past where they know they need to go, right? It keeps them from it makes them avoid certain things, right? Certain actions that they know they can take. Walk me through that. I think that's a brilliant statement. They know it intellectually, and then they have to know it emotionally to make the true change.

SPEAKER_01: 22:15

Yeah. Well, I think it comes back to what I said at the uh in the middle, right? About most personal development is about doing more, being more. We see it on social media as well, right? These people have got their highlight real, and so that's where I want to go. And so we are very often so busy that we don't have the opportunity to slow down enough to actually say, okay, can it can I allow this to come into my body? Because we spend so much time in our minds. The intellectual side of things in this world is so talked about so positively and is such a great trait. So we don't often think about, okay, well, can I sit with this? Can I understand this? Can I allow it to take the time to do it? And these changes are very quick, they are rapid transformations that I can have with people, typically over one or two sessions. But it does take time to sit down, and it's not always easy to sit down and say, okay, what are the stories, the events, the things that are shaping the story that I currently have? And what are the stories that I'm ignoring that prove the exact opposite of what I'm holding on to? And can we go through enough of those so that the story neutralizes, right? I am not a fan of positive psychology. I think that positive psychology is quite frankly bullshit. You're basically saying that this is not where I want to be. So the opposite of that is what I want. So I'm going to tell myself some affirmations in the mirror, and my brain is going to accept that. Well, no, I did that for a while. And quite honestly, the first thing that my brain would do is laugh at me and say, That's just silly, you don't believe that. Yeah. So what I think is the key to this is that the very first instance, at least, is neutralizing that story. So that that story just removes itself rather than us trying to create a more empowering story. That can come later as you build habits and patterns and and and stories that re- uh that feed that one. But the first thing is just removal by again getting very, very clear on the stories in your past that you've been ignoring, being very clear about who you actually are rather than who you tell yourself that you are, and really looking at the emotional things and tapping into the emotional energy of the events that have been in your life so that you start to get out of your head and more into your feeling body.

SPEAKER_00: 24:35

You know, I know a story that a lot of folks, hey, I I'm not worthy of whatever the case may be. I'm not good enough. And so either they don't try or they do everything in their power to make sure that everything is perfect, right? And they push and they strive. And then they don't realize that they're chasing almost a feeling, right? Once I get this promotion, then I'll feel good. Once I get this car, I'll feel good. You know, I'll live in this house, I'll feel good, and eventually they get it, and they don't feel like what they thought they would feel like, or maybe they do feel it for a small bit of time, right? Yeah. And you talk about removing, right? Removing whatever is blocking that emotion already, as opposed to trying to put a bunch of things on top of this emotion to try to make you feel better, when you can just remove that emotion and kind of come from more of a place of abundance when you are doing kind of, I guess, your your life's task or your life journey, right? That is that that's something that I'm I'm picking up. Man, I love that.

SPEAKER_01: 26:00

So And you said two, sorry, just you said two really interesting things there, right? The energy, I think, is important. You said that many men come from the perspective of I'm not worthy or I'm not good enough, right? Yeah, and I think the thing is that it can go one of two ways. Yeah, you can kind of go the way that I did, which is end up with maybe an amazing business, or you can end up with as a VP in a corner office, or huge success, maybe even an athlete that's done incredibly well. Or the same story can end up as you or someone on the street or someone that doesn't have a stable life. Because it depends whether you live into that story, or you spend yourself, spend your life trying to prove that story wrong. So that story can go either way. And I would say that the freedom that that person feels. Now, one I would I would suggest is preferable, probably, but both of them still have the energy of you won't be free until you get rid of that story. And so I think it's very important to identify that so that you can choose the next step. And again, I think as well, the what the thing that you talked about is that the people chase the promotion, chase the IPO, chase the business that makes millions of dollars, whatever it might be. And the way that I say this to clients, and it's very confronting very often, is that is that not the ultimate victim mentality? Because what you're saying is that I cannot be happy until I get to that point. And so I'm sacrificing my happiness today for this imaginary future that invariably we all know that when I get to that imaginary future, exactly as you said, Josh, I will celebrate for 25 seconds and then I'll say, okay, well, I'll double it next year, or I'll aim for something higher next year, or I have a new goal altogether. And so I try and get clients to come from that perspective today. I have a slightly different distinction when it comes to goals than most people. I say goals are not a place to get to, they're a place to come from. So if someone comes to me and says, I want to make a million pounds, I say, great, fine goal, right? There's things that we would do around that because I certainly think that there's more compelling things around the money than the money itself. Can we make that more compelling in some way? But I make it clear that I want you to try and become that person today rather than a year's time. Because if you set it in the traditional way and you say, okay, I want to make a million pounds in the next 365 days, if you don't do it for 364 days and you sign five big clients on the final day, you have spent the vast majority of that year beating yourself up, saying that you haven't hit your target, you're not good enough. And then on the final day, you hit that target, you celebrate for a second and say, Okay, well, I hit two million dollars next year or two million pounds next year. And so can you just say, okay, the goal is great because that's a desire that I have. That's something that I think is part of my 10 out of 10 life, however it is for you. But can you say, okay, to make a million pounds, who do I have to be to do that? How many type of calls would I have to make? How would I have to show up? How great, grateful about life would I have to feel? How would I interact in everyday relationships? And you won't get it perfect today because you don't know what a million pounds feels like. But it gets you a whole lot closer to the feelings of it, which I believe, funnily enough, gets you a whole lot closer to achieving it as well. But the the the got the the achieving is a byproduct of the feeling rather than the sole purpose of it.

SPEAKER_00: 29:28

You, I mean, you hit it right on the head right there, right? We we just yeah, you're looking for a feeling, right? And a lot of times what it is is it's the person that you want to become through it, right? And so if you can already radiate in that energy of, hey, this is kind of the goal, this is the person I want to be, this is the goal I have, I need to make some type of changes in my life to get there, right? And then you already radiate that, you already radiate that energy, right? As opposed to once I get there, then I can, you know, then I'll make the calls, right? Then I'll reach out to these people and email them and make all these different asks. When you can do that today, right? Exactly. Yeah, yeah. A goal to come from, not a goal to shoot for, but a goal to come from. That's that's that's key. What about here? What I'm thinking about is uh I guess lasting change, right? And I think a lot of folks they can change these patterns, but we've been in these patterns for maybe two decades, three decades, right? And then maybe we have a short amount of time and we have all this momentum and we're feeling good. And what do you think gets people back into those old patterns? And how do you think folks can, I guess, stay consistent in you know that new those new patterns that they've developed? You know, they come and work with you, right? They started to have some momentum in life. Yeah, how can they stay in that energy?

SPEAKER_01: 31:07

Yeah, well, I think, right, I would say I would make a slight distinction. I wouldn't say it's lasting change, I'd say it's lasting transformation, right? That's the business that I'm in. I'm in the transformation business. I want people to completely change their lives. Yeah. And so the first step is, as I said, very often removal, removing the old stories, removing the things that you're doing. People are often far too busy, far too many meetings. People often come to me and say, I don't have time. And then when we interrogate where their time goes, we find they have plenty of time. They're just leaking it in a number of different places, right? So the first stage is often removal. And then, as you said, goals are important. Goals as a place to come from, even goals aspirationally to get to. But getting very, very clear on what is their version of winning now, what is their version of success, what is their version of a 10 out of 10 life, and what is it that we want them to build in? Now we would obviously build in emotions at that stage that were those feelings that people want, as I said before, whether it's fulfillment, aliveness, connection, love, any number of things, right? That we can build in into those goals so that it makes a compelling future for them. And then it's about then integrating that into their life so that they are reinforcing the new story, not the old one. And again, that's where I think that my work differentiates from quite a lot of others, is that often either we're looking as a starting base to the future, and you someone gives you a 12-step plan to get to where you want to go, okay, but you're still dragging the story from the past, so I don't think that works. Or people just look at the the stories that you've been saying and say, okay, let's do this inner work and let's remove that. And then they forget to say, and then they just say, okay, off you go on your own, and then create the future that you want. Well, I take people through the entire journey to make sure that those habits and the the goals that you want and the life that you want to live is ingrained over the rest of your life. Now, we don't work together for the rest of our life unless you want to, unless you continue to have bigger, bigger aspirations, right? But typically, as I say, this is very quick transformation. Your life will not be the same afterwards in all the best ways after working from each other because you don't slip back into those habits. You will, of course, if you've been living with something for 30, 40, 50 years, perhaps you will have things come up. That's natural, right? And perhaps you will slip in certain places, but you now have reinforcing stories, reinforcement patterns to show you otherwise, and you will have the awareness to say, okay, this is just a story. Okay, I maybe I'll slip for one day or for one hour or whatever, but I can then bring it back. And it's very much like going to the gym. Like when you go and do a bicep curl, you don't walk all the way up to the 50 kg bicep curls and do that day one, right? I've never got there, so let's be clear on that. But you start small, so you you pick up the 1 kg, maybe 2 kg, and you work your way up to 10 kg, and then you feel more comfortable, right? It's very much the same with this. It is a muscle that gets trained. Now we can make very large leaps very quickly, but it is a case of then realizing what's going on in your life and then using that as your your gym, if it were, to make sure you're strengthening where you want to go rather than falling back. Does that answer your question, George?

SPEAKER_00: 34:23

It definitely does. And in a few things I picked up there is one, when it comes to transformation, is going to the root, right? Let's get to the root of our stories that we tell ourselves, right? The actual root of it. And I know you talk about the difference in your work and therapy, right? And you know, you talk about healing and different things like that. When you go through people's story, are you going back to childhood? Are you just staying at the story? Are you looking to go into the root of, you know, where these stories developed, or are you just more interested in just changing the story that they tell themselves?

SPEAKER_01: 34:59

So I want to make an important distinction here, right? So people will come in at different points and people will have different comfort levels, different things that they want to work on. They want to change their life, they want to have a 10 out of 10 life, they want to have their version of winning, but it will mean slightly different things to different people. I think of my work as like a grand piano. There's 82 different keys on a grand piano. Yeah. And so it's about being able to hit the right notes and the right keys for the right people to trigger that transformation or help them see the awareness to make the transformations for themselves, right?

SPEAKER_02: 35:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 35:30

And so the very I don't have a framework. Things are very bespoke. I think of it again like a bespoke suit. So if someone comes to me, I want to create a suit for them that fits them and only them. If someone else tried it on, it would look terrible, but for them, it looks fantastic. Yeah. And so, yes, very often there's the theme is removal, goals, and then integration, right? But it can play in different ways. An exec, for example, might not want to go straight to talking about their past, they might want to talk about other things. And so we talk about it in a in a slightly different blend of a slightly different journey. Yeah. But yes, if if in a in a typical case, in a case where we are doing the best work straight away, I would say that yes, you do want to go back to childhood. Now I'm very clear that I'm not a therapist and we won't spend a huge amount of time there. But the stories that we've inherited and the stories that we live our life by typically are formed around two, three, four, five, six, something like that, right? It might be that our parents have said something, it might be a teacher that we loved had said something, a grandparent, whatever it is. And that is, then we have made that part of our identity as who we are, right? Yeah. And so being able to tap into that. Now it doesn't have to be the exact story. I couldn't tell you any stories from when I was two or three, right? Right. But someone that has an emotional, a story that has an emotional charge around the story that we've identified for you, and being able to tap into that makes it ever more powerful to be able to rewrite the stories that you're living in today.

SPEAKER_02: 36:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 37:00

So is it an essential step? No, certainly we can come at it from a number of different angles, but it does tend to be very, very powerful if and and when we can do that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 37:10

You also talk about neutralizing the story, right? And neutralizing what do you is it you say create data. What is that? Neutralizing and creating data to the story that we've developed. What does that look like?

SPEAKER_01: 37:28

Yeah, so so again, it's going back to the past, right? So we've lived our lives. So you're 30 years old, you will have 30 years around of data to prove your story. If you're saying I'm not worthy, then you will have all of the evidence that you ever needed to show where the things that have happened that aren't you're not worthy. And that has typically got an inception point. So it's again going back to that inception point and understanding that, okay, just because you took that meaning from it at that time, perfectly natural, human that a child might do that, but it is it true for you now? Is it serving you now? Of course, in the vast majority of cases, it isn't. So then it's a case of then taking the data that we talk about, which is events, the stories that prove the opposite that you've got in your life. As I said, you will have an abundance amount of stories that disprove that you're not worthy, as many as you prove. Yes. So can you take enough of these? Now the the I'm not worthy will be very strong. So can you get enough data, enough stories, enough perspectives to then to basically equal out like an equation, I guess, although math was forever my strongest suit, to equal out the fact that you have been saying for so long I'm not worthy. Well, now I've got all of this empirical evidence to say that I am, I just haven't looked at it. And so does that lessen the story, dissolve it, neutralize it, and allow me to live an entirely different life as a consequence. Wow.

SPEAKER_00: 38:53

Yes. I mean, we have so many examples of stories. We can think about it over and over and over again, honestly. And I think that when we have a story in our in our mind, we look for evidence to prove that it is right, right? Very rarely are we looking for evidence that will prove that story wrong. Like you said, neutralize it, right? And it's not necessarily these positive things of trying to change it, but let's neutralize it and actually get a full picture of who we are, right? And then I'm thinking about goals, right? And creating authentic goals, right? Of you know, who am I? What do I want? Where do I want to go? And what does that look like? And I know when I talk with a lot of folks, it is very cookie-cutter, right? Or they just don't know. They have no vision, they're just kind of taking it one day at a time, right? How do you help folks, I guess, think about how to develop that desire future for themselves and those goals that they have for themselves? What does that look like?

SPEAKER_01: 40:08

Yes. So I'll make an analogy to start with, right? So it's very similar to what I say when I first start working with people. People in an initial consultation. So one of my first questions is normally around how can I help? What would make this an extraordinary conversation for you? And people will give me a very clicked, polite, acceptable answer in the first instance. And so very often my role is to completely disregard the first answer in a polite way, of course, and then ask them to tell me more. Can you explain that more? What does that really mean? And continue to do that until they get to the root of what they are actually saying, what they're actually asking, what they're actually looking for. And I find that it's very often the case with goals as well. Now, obviously, in most cases, we've worked together for a little bit, a session or two or three, by this point, because we've done the removal. And so you are more in your authentic self because those stories are not so strong. But it's still again prompting people to say, okay, I want you to suspend reality a little bit for now. I want you to play around with what the goals are. I don't want you to say what the politically approved answer might be. Yeah. What do you actually want? Right? This is a space to kind of go wild and say crazy things if you want. And in some instances, it's not exactly the goal. They say things in the goal that they want, but that's not exactly what they want. Again, what they're chasing is a feeling. So are there other ways that we can get that feeling? And can they dial it up? And so, yeah, it's about giving people the confidence and the belief that actually the goals can be whatever you want them to be. They don't have to be this clipped version that society typically talks about or sees. Make it yours. And again, it will be an entirely different journey for people, different prompts, different questions, different ways of thinking about it. But the important thing is making sure that it's really theirs because this is then the framework or the the starting point to define what they want for the rest of their lives, right?

SPEAKER_00: 42:06

Yeah. And first of all, I love how you said how you make sure that when you are speaking with people, you don't keep it just you don't have a just a cookie-cutter framework for po for folks. You want to figure out exactly what they want and what they need, right? And you might spend more time in that removal process, right? Or goal setting and different things like that. And I know for myself, I've had so many stories that I've had for myself, right? You know, for me growing up kind of a short, chubby kid, right? And so I would spend a lot of time working out in the gym and hours, right? Now I've gotten older and you get to a point where you're like, wait, hold on. Am I is this still serving me, this story, right? Does it still serve me to think this way, right? Does it still serve me to feel the need to be perfect, to be exceptional, because I grew up feeling invisible to some degree, right? And so you you you you said it so brilliantly. Either we try to prove the story wrong, or we just let the story defeat us, right? And I think it's so important for us to sit back, take an audit of our lives and and what that looks like. If you're talking to the guy who is constantly busy, constantly rolling, right? He has all these goals, and I think people should have goals and and have some hard work, have some sweat equity that they're that they're putting time into. But it's another side of understanding who they are and taking their time. What do you say to that guy, right, to get him to slow down? Right? What does that look like practically though, right? To slow down, right? We might say, hey, slow down, right? But what does that actually look like for somebody to say, hey, you need to slow down and take a step to really take an audit of who you are and what your life looks like. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 44:28

And first of all, I want to echo what you said, right? This is not about giving up ambition, this isn't about not working hard, this isn't about trying to achieve whatever the wild dreams that you have for your life, right? Yeah. And so it's yeah, it's very often people are concerned that if they feel better about things, then if they don't have this story, then it won't propel them to where they want to go. I say that that's completely false. So actually, when you have this feeling of freedom, when you have more creativity as a consequence of putting that story down, then you actually have greater capacity to create the life that you want, to create the goals that you want, to work harder. Like I feel that very often burnout is completely misunderstood. People just think it's you work too hard. I don't think that's the case. I think it's the stories that you're trying to prove wrong on top of working too hard that are actually draining you. And so, yeah, again, it's not about at all about not working hard or not doing anything like that. And so it's explaining that first of all to someone, right? That you can still have this ambition, you can still have these goals, but taking a pause is is valuable, right? Yeah. When do we have our best thoughts, typically? Stereotypically, people are always saying in the shower, when I'm out on a walk, when I I'm not listening to anything, when I'm in silence, right? And so people again intellectually understand that that it's an important thing, but we don't, it's society doesn't reward us stopping and pausing. Yes. And so it's okay, can you understand that? And again, I'm not asking you to go on a three-week three-week retreat or anything like that. It's okay, can we be intentional about what you're doing again? So very often, even very successful people that I work with are busy in the wrong places. They they spend time doing things that they don't need to be doing, that could be delegated, that don't need to be done at all, that could be reframed and done and done over email or however. So, can we create space in your existing day by removing meetings or or or structuring it slightly differently? So it doesn't have to be this grandiose thing, it's just moments of space. And then that space creates the opportunity. And that's what I would really do with people in the first instance when they come questioning it like that. It's about yeah, just creating those mini pauses, and then they see it for themselves. Oh, I felt a little bit better on this day, and I had an interesting thought as a consequence of it, and then they have a little bit more confidence to try and create a little more and a little more. And so it's again allowing people to see for themselves. I am never going to tell anybody, I don't prescribe or give advice necessarily. I might say, I have some ideas around this, I can be a great sparring partner for someone if they they have their own ideas, but I want people to try it on for themselves. I want people to have their own insights, I want their own way of thinking about things because it's their life at the end of the day. And so very often it's about showing them that what's possible, them seeing it for themselves, and then they want to go and do it for themselves even more.

SPEAKER_00: 47:36

Yeah, I think a lot of folks are uh it's uncomfortable to be silent, right? It's uncomfortable to have a silent walk without the headphones on, without putting your phone out. I mean, when I go to the grocery store today, everybody has their headphones in. Um if I'm commuting, I'm going for a walk, most people have their headphones in, most people are looking at their phones. Very rarely are people getting enough quiet time now. And, you know, when you read all these brilliant philosophy books, you know, I I think it's because they had a lot of quiet time to sit back and think, right? And they knew how to embrace boredom to some degree. And I think we struggle with that as a society, being bored and kind of letting these thoughts come and having some quiet time, you know?

SPEAKER_01: 48:29

Yeah, I completely agree. I I actually wrote about something similar on LinkedIn the other day. There's always a study, I can't remember the exact study, but 63% of men would rather electrocute themselves than sit in silence. Right. And so that speaks to the struggle that people are going through in their own minds. It was it was much lower for women, but still an alarming statistic. And so, how can you create the life that you want, the dreams that you have, when you're constantly at war with yourself like that? And so I'm not again, I'm not asking people to go completely to the other end of the spectrum and go and do a silent retreat for 10 days. But can you build the habit, very much like we talked about with the gym? Can you build the habit of building a little bit more space, a little bit more freedom, so that okay, I had a little bit of quiet. I didn't listen to the music on the way to the tube. I didn't get my phone out as soon as my date went to the toilet. I didn't, as soon as there was an awkward pause, I didn't just look at my phone or distract myself in some other way. I realized that I was okay just sitting in silence for five seconds, a minute, two minutes, right? And again, realizing that you can build that habit over time. And again, obviously the removal of the stories will further exacerbate that, create that transformation a little quicker. But you can do this for yourself as well, just by building it bit by bit over time.

SPEAKER_00: 49:59

100%. 100%. Last thing I want to go through is aliveness, right? To to really feel, you know, alive, right? What does that look like? What do you think that looks like for you? Now you have your life before where things have looked great, right? And then now you have this kind of inner freedom, and now it looks like it's been it's more outer freedom as well. Yeah to be alive. What do you think that that looks like? I guess it's different for everybody, right? Um, but for you, how how how how would you describe that?

SPEAKER_01: 50:39

Yeah, it is definitely different for everyone. I often say the more weird that your life looks to someone else, the more true it is for yourself, right? Because you don't want it's it's about what feels good for you. For me, my life, I think, especially versus the context of what my life was before, looks very weird to most people. I now live in Sri Lanka for the, or I have done, I will do for six months before moving on, back to London and then off to Cape Town for a bit next year. That looks unusual. I obviously traded working with companies like Google and and Samsung and Meta and and Juracell, etc., to talking to people individually one-on-one, day by day. That looks unusual. I used to have go for walks at lunchtime, perhaps in London. Now I go for a swim if I have the gap, right? I I try and build in that gap. I go surfing, I do all these different things. These things are what makes me feel alive. But again, it doesn't matter. Like I I have I'm living, I am already living my version of a 10 out of 10 life. But it's about understanding the person sat opposite to me, and often their version of aliveness, their version of winning is radically different. And so it's about sitting in their world to understand what that is for them and drawing those insights out for them. It's why all of my work begins with an initial two-hour consultation. I again, people think I'm weird for wanting to, before anybody has validated that they want to work with me, sitting with them for two hours. That's a large chunk of my time.

SPEAKER_02: 52:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 52:13

But I really want to understand their perspective, their view of the world, how they see things, because that will shape everything that we do together. And I don't think, again, coming back to that slowing down, I don't think that many people take the time to give back to the to other people, whether they work with me or not, to really understand their perspective, really understand what drives them, what their thoughts and feelings are. And that I think is an essential step because everybody's perspective, everyone's view of the world is entirely different. And I want to understand that as best I can.

SPEAKER_00: 52:46

Yeah, I love it. I love it. Where where can folks find you? Where can they get in touch with you? Where can they continue to follow your journey? Uh you just said that you have some things on LinkedIn that you posted. Yeah, how can folks find you?

SPEAKER_01: 53:00

So the easiest place, Josh, is ben-robins.com, R-O-B-I-N-S. And that's my website. On there, you'll find some blog posts. You'll obviously find my my my thinkings about things, and then obviously that links to my LinkedIn, which is where I do daily thoughts, daily things that are coming up for me, daily experiences that I'm having with clients. And then, of course, there's ever more podcasts coming out, such as the ones that we've had today with you, Josh, um, for people to check out as well.

SPEAKER_00: 53:29

Yeah, I'm I'm looking at the website right now, and it looks amazing. Rewire, integrate, create what we've talked about, right? Making it very simple. And so I'll make sure I put this in the footnotes for folks to follow. And man, I mean, you've added so much value to us, right? And like I said, I think there's so many men out there who are searching, who are looking for more, right? And I love how you mention your life is gonna look weird. You are gonna look weird, but it's gonna be very true. I know for somebody like myself who has chased validation and approval to be weird, to be looked at as different, it can be uncomfortable, right? But I think uh it's a lot of regret in uh not living a life that's true to myself, right? And so I think the the work you are doing is amazing, and you know, I can't wait for folks to to hear this. I appreciate it, Josh.

SPEAKER_01: 54:33

Thanks very much.