Peter Ryan's story is a story unlike another. A promising sporting star who lost his sight and was plunged into addiction. He fought his way back and today he shares his tool for building resilience.
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Today I'm gonna talk with Irish Paralympian Peter Oynn. Let's cure that intro! The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness and our longevity? That is the question on this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Rowman Podcast. Robynn, welcome back to another Robynn Cycling Podcast. It's Wednesday, I'm getting back into the flow of things post-Columbia and my seat feels like my own again. And I've got my nice little tidy podcast and set up here, I've got my sound dampening walls, I've got my microphone on my nice stand and I tell you, I missed those little comforts when I was away trying to podcast in Colombia. It makes a big difference for the amount of time it takes me to get out of podcasts, just having everything set up and ready to rock. So I'm absolutely delighted to be home if I'm not absolutely chuffed with the weather. It's rained every single day since I got home from Dublin so far and I'm going to let you in a little secret. My bike is still nicely packed inside its bike box. I am going to get round this evening to to building that bike and just brave and again getting back outside and it's just getting used to it. Once you get used to the weather it's fine but it's coming from 30 to 35 degrees and now having to ride out in the rain, it takes a little bit, it takes a little bit of getting used to it. But we'll get there, we'll get there. Okay folks, today's podcast I'm really excited to bring you this one because it's with a good friend of mine, Peter Ryan. I'll tell you a brief story of how I met Peter and it's what I'd say it's six odd years ago at this stage maybe a little less. A buddy of mine, a teammate rang me up and said, Hey, I'm supposed to go to Seville and do this cycle from Seville to Granada on the front of a tandem with a visually impaired guy and I can't make it. Do you want to go? And I was like, no, of course I don't want to go cycling around Spain with a visually impaired guy. Firstly, I haven't ridden the tandem in years. Secondly, I've no idea who this guy is. Towardly, I'm a miserable bastard at the best times. So I definitely don't want to be like, you know, nearly a forced date on the bike for seven days with a stranger. I'm like, er, no thanks. My buddy's like, honestly, he's a really good guy. I think you'll get on great with him. I'm an eat twist in my arm. He was persuasive. I turned up long story short. met Peter Ryan in the airport visually impaired and we rode from Seville to Granada as part of a charity cycle and since that day we've been great buddies and so I asked him to come on the podcast and talk about mental resilience because when I think about mental resilience and fortitude Peter springs to mind every single time his story is just a brilliant inspirational story very promising underage horror who lost his eyes so he saw his son then as any young or Isla does, he turns the drink to try and escape the reality. He's now faced with it. And he went down the dark hall of addiction until he managed to get himself together with the help of some really good people and broke free at a chance of addiction and started doing some really positive stuff for his life and he's made such an impact on almost everyone around them from raising huge amounts of money for people in Toreless. He's been elected a counselor in Toreless. He's also qualified for the last Olympics and I've had the pleasure of riding the World Championships with him last January in Toronto. I was on the front of the Irish tandem. He was on the back. He's a stand up guy, so I want to welcome to the podcast. But before I do that, I just want to remind you about Patreon because Patreon is how we fund this podcast. We're into 2021. The podcast, it's changed from something that was a little bit experimental to, oh, will a podcast work to, we know this will work. We know you want to listen to the podcast. I can see from the download figures that everybody's enjoying. It's grown week on week, which is great. Keep spreading that good word. But we also need to make this financially viable. You've got your Netflix's, your Amazon's, your YouTube plus subscriptions. You've got 10, 50 in Euro gone to all these people, and they really don't care any time you subscribe to their platform. But, I'll tell you, I really do care. When you subscribe to our Patreon, when you decide to buy me that point once a month to say Thanks for the podcast. It really puts a smile on my face and it secures the future in his podcast.
So please head on over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore world. The link's in the boil. If you've been on the fence a bunch of times and you're listening to me saying this all the time, please do sign up for it now because it really really makes a difference. And for those who have signed up already, I'm much indebted to you. Thank you very much. And I'll continue to pour my heart and soul into this podcast. Today's interview, it's one I'm really really excited to bring you Peter Ryan. So I'm not going to push it off any longer. It's Peter Ryan. Thank you very much, Auntie. Delighted to be here. And yeah, really like what you're doing. Yeah, so you're going to talk to us about resilience today. And when I was going through, the roadmap podcast has been such a cool platform to me that I can almost reach out to anyone. And there's a fair chance they're going to come and say yes. And when I went looking through my Role of X, where you know, imaginary Role of X, like, which is my Instagram friends, of who I should chat with about resilience. I'm like, I can't take anyone better placed to talk about resilience. It's, well, thank you, kindly. And yeah, look, I suppose I've been, I've been moving in these circles talking about something, talking in the business side of things and executive coaching and using it in sports and essentially it's they're tools that I've picked up through life like and when I talk to people I don't try to make it too much about science or like there's research to back up what I'm talking about but there's a lot of lived experience in here and I suppose I don't also come with the preface of saying like I don't have the monopoly on being right but what I talk about I've used for my own life and it's definitely helped me. And I suppose to your listeners that don't know, I've built a backstory like I'm a Paralympic athlete, I'm legally blind, I had to face a lot of my own adversity I suppose at the age of 20 and just figuring out that and it is a way of shaping you in a way of giving you perspective. So look it, I'm shy of saying I'm qualified to talk about, I think we all are more than we realize but it's definitely caused me to self-reflect and I kind of know what's worked for me and what hasn't and what I've been and the things I'm trying to use now going forward on a more regular basis. So like I said, thanks for having me. Oh Peter, Deloitte, Javier and I think a lot of our viewers on this summit. It's something they struggle with because I'm sure some of you guys watching, you are pro athletes and resilience made something different to you. But for the vast majority of people watching this, resilience for them, it's a balancing work with family, with cycling, we're trying to have some sort of social life and meaning myself. At times, it can feel like it's just all getting on top of us. And I know the people that have successfully navigated these waters like yourself. It's not accidental. There's a lot of strategies behind the scenes used to create that resilience. But without a doubt, look, I have a few things that I use, like borderline every day, and I'm definitely going to share them. There's tree kind of pillars that are, and it's not, as you said, the thing we get stuck in our identity kind of piece, like, oh, this is a cycling bulkhead, so it's only about cycling like that. Fair beyond that, like I'm only happy on the bike when I'm happy in my relationships when, you know, I'm ringing my parents that bit more regular, when the family buzz is gone, well, when I know I'm able to meet the rent at the end of the month, like we're more than just one thing. And I think we need to just take that step back. And a lot of what I talk about is actually that self-awareness and self-regulation. So I suppose if I was to kick into it for a moment, like there's a couple things I do want to kind of get across here. So there's three pillars in this resilience piece that I kind of want to have on walking away with. And if they can walk away with those three tools or three questions, then I haven't done a bad day's work. We might talk for a little bit around growth versus a fixed mindset. That's something I think that also comes across every stratosphere of our life and I can just add value and get now with those comfort summons. And then I was saying if we have time we might do a little bit. It'd be more for the coaches, they're unsure. Anyone in a leadership position, be it a boss at work, a manager, whatever the case may be, but anyone I suppose is directing others, there's definitely a cool little piece in that as well.
So I suppose to hit you with the resilient stuff and look, my back story, like two of us know each other where you're absolutely sick to see here and it's not going to get into the twos and throwers of Lewis in the site and hitting the bottle and all that side of things. But I'm sure it's out there if you want to direct people to some of the I'm more condensed version. Yeah, I think we can link up the all podcast we don't. I think we as a go to solitary or chat. So I'll try and link that somewhere down the bottom of the loudest video or something. Perfect. But like, yeah, conscious people's times we're all trying to consume content left, right and center. So it has to be just, I think on point, and there's, there's three, three staples of what I'm I'm trying to get across here today and death. So I suppose with that resilience piece and adversity, it's, like I said, I don't have them in updating on this. And adversity, and I said, well, we need to, that's part of it, getting ourselves away from that thing of thinking it only happens to me. So with this, I think like the tree will be, for me, self-awareness, self-regulation. And then there's an action piece in here as well. I like to say control, influence and accept. But when I talk about that self-awareness, like the one commenting I've come across like, and I do, now that I've lived it, I like actually reading up on this self and learning where are the commonalities. And when I talk about the self-awareness, it is completely the fact that the story after study has shown that resilient people actually realize shit happens. And that's me putting it at its most base level, but we realize that we're not this isolated being the only one in the world with a problem. And I reflect this across my own life. When I was at my lowest step, it was all because of this victim syndrome and thinking that I'm the only one with this problem and no one understands me and this, that and the other. And it's not until you can take a step back and realize, if there was a natural audience here, something might be doing is I'd be getting them to stand up if you know someone the physical or mental disability. Stand up if you know someone that's had a divorce. Stand up. Stand up. Stand up. Stand up. Stand up. And ultimately, yeah, exactly. And like when I'm talking like one people think through their own lives because they will, they'll invariably stand up. We've all been hit with adversity in our lives. Like we've and we're all still able to tell the tale. So just that self awareness to realize like it sounds so simple. And I'm not going to hit anyone with that and to complicate it here today. But being able to realize, shit happens to everyone. And there is not a house in this country that some bit of adversity isn't coming in the door of. And you're going to be more defined by how you respond to it than the actual thing itself. You know, on the self-awareness piece as well, I find that I've had periods in my life where I'm almost running downhill, where everything's gone brilliant and adversity will come along. You don't need to manufacture an adversity. You don't need to end those periods when you're running downhill and everything's gone great. You don't need to have a guild complex around it and things are going great for me because they won't always go great. You'll hit that speed bump and then this resilience piece just becomes so, so important. But it doesn't need to be a manufactured adversity when things are going great for you. No, 100% and we're two flipping and that's actually, it's funny you hit on that because like when I'd be going into the point number two around self-regulation and that's where it seems like the only thing that sticks is the bad news and that we're not like say when we talk I've heard you in your podcast, Adam of Grassroot and German and other things but like we're fair, we're fair to quick to acknowledge the bad stuff that's happened on And it's been proven like this is a big piece in positive psychology where like psychology and counseling were born out of like if you think of your life like a spectrum like and you have zero and then you're the minus numbers like it's when people are struggling with their mental health and they're done into the genuine the minus numbers be a depression be it whatever like and that was born to get them back to zero getting back centered but like why should that be good enough why can't we actually try and push on and be happy for what we do have and I just think there's fair it's because like you said we don't we don't acknowledge the good like so like in that self-regulation piece I use control influence and accept and when you say the word accept people assume you're talking about negativity or for me you're not losing the size or what you have about control influence accept so like if you're talking about like any problem that we have like or any situation we face like invariably I can go into these tree buckets like say I take my own or we're talking about adversity here today so my own challenge of losing the site like there's a control there's an influence and there's an accept piece here now in the control I had absolute zero to do it getting the condition and yet so much of my time was so much my unhappiness was spent trying to actually influence something I had no influence whatsoever.
We can look for why's where they don't exist. We can delve into that. It's no one that's the self-regulation piece. It's no one where to concentrate your efforts. Essentially, how long can I give, wondering why me, why this, why that, why the other? And yet, nothing good will come at us. So there's influence and there's a set. And the influence I have is right. I didn't pick those carrots. I didn't what they're the ones that got dealt with me. Now what are you going to do? And there has to be a move on piece. And that's, it sounds trite to say it, but like I'm coming out of it with, in my own opinion, like I had a pretty severe problem in front of me. Because people like it paralyzed by their problem and you know, they can be flippant. Like it's all, it's all like, obviously it's relevant and it's what hits you and you know. But it's, you touch the there and you use the word relevant. It's so relevant to almost every one of us watching this, because whether that adversity is I'm stressed at work or you're going to a relationship breakup or it's something more severe like you're talking about like a health concern like for you or family members it's just understanding that there's buckets of stuff you can control and there's buckets of stuff you can't control and if you spend your whole life focusing on those buckets you can't control it's not going to lead to a happy place. No one it was actually like you know we have a good relationship and it was something like you said it to me before actually and it was really profound it was like stressing about it doesn't mean you care any less and like that's exactly what I was doing. You spend all these times delving into the place where you have no control, you have no influence and all it is is like it's victimizing again so so we move into the influence territory and what can I do like and in my story it was like when I can start trying to challenge some of the things I like all these misinomers that I led myself to believe I can see what being visually impaired actually means because all I was doing was I had no acceptance so I was running back into this what my old life was I say I like to tell people comparison is the chief of joy and we do this so often like we're comparing to something that we've no saying so like concentrator efforts in that influence space what can you do with this situation and you'll be surprised where it takes you and you accept and this is actually akin back to what you said at the start of this talk but like acceptance for me it doesn't always have to be we delve into the negative all the time like why can't we accept the good things that are happening to us like we're we're fair to flipping to ignore the good things like whereas we the the bad just sticks to us all the time and that's all we're looking at and we blame it for everything else that happens in our life. There's a great quote I'm not sure if you know the serenity prayer and it's God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. I mean that's it, in case of mind, it's actually like that's like I don't know have you a background in the AA as well until that's a go to one for them as well and it's so true. So there the like This is point number two that I'm after making three pieces out of that control, influence and accept. And this one is brilliant, the last piece, and it's just a question that we can ask across everything we do. But it's as simple as this, is what I'm doing helping me or hurting me for what I'm trying to do. And that transcends absolutely so many aspects of our life. Be it on the bike, and the decisions we're making off the bike, because you well know like you're in the coaching space and that's exactly something that can, but it plays into our mindset, it plays into our positivity and it's such a good way to regulate ourselves, whether we're unhappy, whether we're having a bottle of beer, whether we're doing whatever, like if we can answer that question before, because your well rate is a well known as well and your say, man's search for meaning, famous quote from it, the space in between stimulus and action is our one true freedom. And that's a quote I carry around with me all the time. It's like the space in between stimulus and action. And it's known that our thoughts aren't our feelings. Like, thoughts turn to feelings. But like, you're not a victim of them. We're not bound like a robot that won equals the other. like we have that moment where we get to step away from it and say, well, is what I'm doing here going to help me in the long run?
And it can be a really, really powerful question to ask yourself. It's something I've done after years and I was only riding with a client today and I spoke to him about this. I haven't, I'm not read on this area, but I call it the binary filter. And I said to him, like your answer to this question is yes or no. And every action that you have is this making it more likely or less likely that I'm going to hit my goals. It's one of the two buckets. You're going out drinking with your friends. Is this more likely or less likely you're going to hit your target? The food you're eating, the errors you're sleeping, the relationships. This is obviously cycling oriented and we're talking about goals. You can use that filter if you're going through a breakup, if you've just been met redundant. It's like, Should I be flicking on Instagram right now and look at the show creeping on someone should I be? Probably sure. I honestly, you know as a rule at all. You don't need a podcast to tell you that but that's what I mean like but picking just taking that question and pulling it across so many aspects of your life. You can filter out the shit and the advice we all know like the advice we give to a friend is sometimes harder for us at this point. At the same time, that's a really strong tool. So, there are three self-awareness, self-regulation, and then that binary question as you politically put it, I think, is a nicer way than I have at my disposal. So, there you go, there are three pieces on resilience, and the one thing, there are three tools on resilience, but the one thing I would like to tell people is like, and there was a question I got put to me at a Carper's talk there lately, but it was like, is this something that basically you think you have? And, or was it born or all this kind of stuff? And it's like, not a open hell, like, because I had to get to a very low abe to start figuring my shit out. The reason I do the talks is that people, you don't have to, like, we were talking about the relevancy of problems. Like, rock bottom, it's actually an honor saying in the hey as well, but like you hit rock out and when you stop digging. So like you don't have to get to join your back against the wall. You can start making change anytime once you decide to make it. And that's that's the piece I want to kind of leave people. It's not it's not disinating that some people have and other people don't. And we need to challenge that and actually do not be good to ourselves for want of any better term and just one. You spoke at the outset between a fixed and a growth mindset. I think that's an important point because if you come to this discussion and you say, I'm not resilient and you label yourself not resilient, you've all of a sudden closed yourself to the possibility of realizing that this isn't a trait that you have. This is a set of skills you learn. But closing yourself off to what makes it impossible to acquire it. 100% is and that's actually the way the cycle of the fixed versus growth mindset works like the kind of Like the belief piece is the top and it's cyclical like so belief leads to action which in turn actually leads to you know you're getting better and then you're back to Believing that you're better and I suppose the quick way we can I can it's not It's like okay. Well, we call it like a growth mindset, right? But I prefer to actually say in my state Because like it's fluid we like there are teams were good at this things were better It's not work like sometimes I think it gets mixed up in fluff because people People swallow it to believe that we're trying to say you can be brilliant at everything It's not it's not what it's saying. It's saying that with a growth mindset. You can be better at everything and case in point think of anything that you can do right now, be it the fact that we're on Zoom and I'm visually impaired. There was a time when I couldn't use a laptop because I'm visually impaired. An ergo you have to try, an ergo you try again, and before you know what I can do it. Like, there's grandmothers that are using iPhones. Mine doesn't. Because she has a fixed mindset saying I can't do that. But it's not like Granny doesn't have the iPhone gene. John mean it's like, it's realizing that it takes a few attempts, make a fool of yourself, but you can actually get better. It doesn't mean you're going to be the most proficient IT dude in the world. It means you can grow at anything. And it's, what is it? Neuroplasticity or whatever it's got, but like you, it's based inside and it's like, we can get better at anything.
I'm one of the other speakers at Veal on the summit and we're talking about racers mentality and I'm sure you know it as well if you think of two different athletes I too in my mind when I was having this conversation with him what they're both physiologically very similar But I can identify something in them right now one guy's a killer one guy is not a killer one guy is gonna You know prance around he wants to call himself a cyclist and he'll go so far with the other guys killer He's shown up to win. And it's what makes that. We've made Edward chatting about this. And Ed is a killer. Like he's one of the best crit guys in North America for the last 10 years. And it's a super competitive scene where a lot of the best athletes in the world out there. And Ed shows up and he's a killer. He plays EP Cox around these struts. But it didn't start like that. And when you listen to the story, this is a learned skill. So if you're listening to it now and you're like, I'm not caught out for a boy, Creissner. I'm not caught out for this. The people you see, you see the finished product, you never see the races that Ed went home early. The really dark moment he has in the car on the way home question, and is this for me? I'm a good enough for this sport. You don't see that. We only see the muscle-bound guy with the hands and the air flexing on a podium. 100%. And I think a lot of that is actually based in kind of cognitive behavior of the stuff where we see a behavior but we can't actually know what someone's thinking or what someone's feeling or, you know what they might have in postural syndrome and like social media, I guess, in mind, like the amount of people that are always projecting this best work and that has a reflective piece where we feel shit because we assume our lives are supposed to be like that or to bring it back to the cycling. Like you said, it's you're coming in seeing it and I've seen it and he is the specimen that you describe and that can be done and but like he is driven and he created that and no one walks in the finish out but I just think it's that ratio between talent and like it's actually great becomes a bigger factor when you delve into that space. Like you go to the top of any sport or the top of any aspect of life like and I think the differential in the talent starts becoming more minimal. It's all those extra presents and the mindset, I think, is the big one. It's who wants it more at the end of the day. And like I said, I'm very much from the school of that's a learned thing. And you learn that by actually the down days. You learn that by the heavy defeats. You learn that by capturing that shit feeling when you're on the bus and the way home on a plane on the way home, saying no one up for me. And some people are too afraid to use negativity as an energy source, but like we all kind of seen in the last dance. We seen one of the best players in the world actually used a chip on the shoulder in grace to become what he was like. And half the time he was like John creating the nerves with himself, but these are the things that define you, whether you get on the court and it could be a pretend brooch, but we walk off from the shake hands afterwards, but if that's what you need to get yourself into that place, I think too many people are afraid to use that bit of anger, a bit of negativity and jump, poke to bear or whatever you want to call it, but that's a healthy hanging sport. What am I most powerful? Your resilience tools that I have, it's how I see myself. So I see myself as a boy-croider. So when I have a bad week, when I have a bad race, when I have even a bad season or a bad couple of seasons, I don't interpret that as, I'm not going to make it in this sport. I'm not cut out for this. I interpret it as I've had a bad week. I'm having a bad season. But I'm still a boy grider. It's still, it's my identity. It's how I see myself. I'm a boy grider. I belong at the front of boy graces. and other events can go on and you could interpret those events as, you know, this is my signal that I should quit, that I'm not going out for this world, that's too coach out, that it's too hard, or you can interpret as, I'm not having a good day, let's just come back again tomorrow. Because it's so hard to beat the goal, you just keep coming back. Well, I just kind of, you've actually hit a lot there, but like one being, we're back to our self-regulation, and who are we?
And take a shit moment, can just be a shit moment. It's not a reflection of you. And the other piece when we're talking about we're in this belief space and fix versus growth, but we see what we want to see. And unless we believe, you know what I mean, and visualization is such a strong imperative, and he is psychology. So if I know boxers that when they're injured, they're actually working on combinations, literally with those clothes, and it's been proven actually help performance when you go back like. So if you can't see it yourself, then you need to be asking more questions like, and that bravado, that force of the issue, it is self-fulfilling, literally all these things, but it starts off with just believe it yourself. Now, actually, that last piece we want to talk about, it's almost like that pigmanly in effect, and I don't want to go on to it just yet, but that's almost your core just to see it for you. it has to be a dynamic led by you where you want this thing and so I think you've touched on it a lot there. Tell us about this big media effect. This is cool and I really, I enjoyed this. I came across it just doing some reading for a talk before. I think it's like I was saying like we're as disciplined because I was just enjoying reading it but I think it's really useful for coaches if you have on this call or on this summit but, pigmalian effect essentially it was founded by David Rosenthal back in the late 60s in America. He was doing a study and he wanted to talk, he wanted to see how interaction affected behaviors. So long sorry long because I guess that's the geek here. But he labeled two sets of rats. Okay, so he had him in a cage who was science college at university experiment. He labeled one set, smart rats, the other one's done that right students came in essentially at the end of the week there was going to be a race true amaze from both etc and he actually gave these smart rats a back story and everything he said they were they were bread and hariver they were this door that door the other right you can see where this is gone and it is at the end of the week and generally this is you can look this up but I'll send you on details about if you want to put it up to your um so much friends but essentially the end of the week, the smart rats won the race. Now, the big thing obviously here is rats can't read. Rats were not aware who the smart and who were. But he realized it was the attention that we're getting by their mentors, that the students in effect, their behavior was, because we labeled the athletes. We're going to call the rats the athletes in this case. Because we gave him a label. It was like their potential was already unveiled. So anyways he did up his report and this is all scientifically based but he kind of had a line at the end of it saying if this was true for rats I wonder what's possible with students. And there was a principal in a school in California read this and said I wanted to come to my school and perform whatever whatever test he used to. So he went and it was under dread and no one knew that this was under the values of experiment. He came with this storyline that he's like, I've actually created an algorithm to find bloomers. So they're like, what? This, that, and he did a standardized test, a standardized test, and basically came back to the teachers and he marked off 20 of these bloomers. Now he said, now these are not the highest IQs right now, but I can assure you, these are your bloomers. So with that everyone went off happy, blah blah blah. It was over a two month period. And hey presto, the bloomers results went up by 22%, whereas the rest of the class on average was 11. And they were like, oh my god, how did you do this? How did you blah blah blah? And that's the point where he told them this was all bullshit. It's like this was just a made up exam. I told you who I just randomly picked 20 students out of a pile. Both the moral being like as soon as the coach slash teacher was told that this kid was a bloomer, this kid wasn't this. Soon as the teacher seen the potential in someone, it changed their behaviors and it changed probably the level of health that they gave and it changed the limiting ceiling that we put on people. I just became this like, like it absolutely blew my mind. I don't know what you think about it, but otherwise I'm after wasting about five minutes of your time. But it was just this whole thing for like, why are we capping where we could go, where who we could be?
And again, it's not this second fan angle belief that we can be everything and more, but it's that we can be better. And like your coaching guys every day of the week, like your sporty guy can be an A4 if he wants to be, or A4 can be an entry to whatever. But it's the fact that we have to stop putting a seal in on the guys or a coach and the athletes themselves have to stop saying oh I'm only, I'm only, my threshold is only, like can only reach, we kinda, you know ourselves like we can't, you I'm sure have what your best day ever number is and have you ever even visualized looking past it? Probably not like we, I think sometimes we tap ourselves. I think I don't think we're doing it today. Well, I think I broke it in trying of the other day. Yeah, we're you're you're talking to the best minds in the game for the last three weeks like, you know, you can't do it. No one can. But this is this is in essence what I'm trying to say, like, as coaches, as leaders, and this is a bit that transcends whether you're a boss at work, whatever you're doing, like, just, you know, stop putting these limiting beliefs on, on the people we're, we're trying to actually help grow. I definitely have forced that experience And it's what I take out is it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think you are predestined or preordained to be a cycle in Tour de France winner, you're gonna end up developing a set of habits that get you there. So even though there's no preordaining of Tour de France winners because you've decided in your head, that's my destiny. I'm gonna win at Tour de France. Now you open yourself to certain opportunities and you take certain actions that are aligned with this new imagined goal in your head. But I definitely had it as a kid and I remember the film Goodwill Hinton and if anyone hasn't seen it or you haven't seen it, one of the premises, there's this super genius going, he's working on a building. So I remember early, I was like a bit of a messer in school, but it was quite academic. And I remember early a teacher saying to me, you remind me of Goodwill Hinton, you just want to fuck around and play with the lads all day, but you've got super academic potential. that actually became a self-fulfilling prophecy where I would become an up-close to exams and I would think, no, I've got this genius switch. I can flick it on. Now in reality, I never had a genius switch. What I had was a fear to step away from that identity that someone had given me as a kid and because of it, a fear to not be that guy anymore because that guy doesn't get these on tests. That guy doesn't fail for a straight college. Because I had that identity, in the weekly and up to a test. I just went absolutely jettied and I pulled like 18 hours study days back to back to back to back to back and that it was that hard work and that groaned the government results not this like pre-ordaining by a teacher back when I was 15 years old. Something to live up to you had those kind of risk reward there as well I'm sure accountability but this just just cap in ourselves, it doesn't avail anyone. And I actually like the fact that you said you wanted to be a pro-torwriter or a sort of friends writer and then everything else aligns with that because I think as soon as we attribute a number to a thing, I think we do it in J-Mark, we do it in John Underwater, it's all numbers, numbers, numbers, but it should be, yeah, use them as incremental goals, but don't necessarily put that ceiling on yourself, see where it can be, if you change all the actions around it. It's packed that why not mentality. I think if you can kind of keep curious, keep saying how can I get better, how can I do this? Like it's like someone called up before like it's like, I ever you're doing you're trying to be a jungle tiger all the time, like you're trying to just stay out of comfort zone all the time, like whatever decision you make, like and even if it is asking questions, because it's easier to not ask or coach questions, it's easier to just do the mundane and train and but like it's like how can I push the dial, push the dial, push the dial and just see where you go? This is what I'm trying to get into athletes all the time. I don't think there's an athlete in our roster of athletes, they can't win a cap one race. That's not to say they're all even racers but I just think there's the gap, the magic, the X factor, the Junisei Qua or whatever you call it. That's when you're asked the difference between winning a world tour tour to front stage and coming toward.
There's an X factor, there's talent, the difference in Saigon and Bennett. All of us down the bottom, like when we're, I talked about this in one of the other interviews, when you think you're at 100%, you're not, you're at 60% max, you can go a lot, lot deeper. And in that, or refer to it in a race specific context, but I'm talking more on a macro level now, like in terms of removal from that regulator, the limiter and what you think is possible, where you think the ceiling of achievement is, because it's way higher where you take? Well, it's one thing. Sometimes we, and it is about having that honest relationship with your coach or whatever, like sometimes are the goals for certain are they our goals? Like, who is should is that like, is it like, sometimes you have these conversations, I'm saying what I feel you think I should say, if that makes any sense, maybe you've ended up in coaching dynamics where it's like, is it, and it, it fine and does the goal align with your values? And like, because if it is what the athlete wants to do, well then it's my goal, do you know what I mean? It's not and there's no amount of help you can give the athlete that will actually make him go back to our question of is this going to help me, is this going to hinder me? And it's a kin and that to every decision you make so and I honestly I don't think you'll ask that question unless the goal is what you truly want, unless that because like you said like Like the levels were raised in it, we're moving around in. Like it's not a divine race. The guys that are winning are putting in the hours. And like the self-shoot for hard work is pretty limited at the site in the game. So it's the equation is small. You know? Peter, how are we wrap up your sort of teachings on resilience into somebody that's watching this now and they're thinking, Oh, like I'm a little bit fragile. I need this resilience that he's talking about. What are my actionable steps? How do we become anti-fragile? That's a great book if anyone hasn't read it, anti-fragile, but how do you become anti-fragile? What are your kind of action points for someone that you'd like them to take away from this, Ja? She's a santa. You're hitting me with the hard questions. Like anti-fragile, I go back to like, what are we calling the fragility of the... So what is causing them to stop, like tooting stop people, right? It's fear and the stories we tell ourselves. We touched on this, like, but create our own stories. We are architects, like, and it's something I always say in the talks as well. It's like, but you can't hear a pair of care. You have to actually, like, why not try and question and back to the limit and beliefs, like challenge the stories or telling ourselves. Like we can't, we can't truly say that we're trying and it's, it's that whole self honesty, please. All right. Try something new and see if it makes a difference. So, like I know for me, like I'm, I'm living in this cool little world and we talk about being fragile and being whatever. Maybe this is better analogy for it. But like, my life seven, eight years ago, as you well know, ended up in a treatment center, rock bottom, all these kind of things. Now, multiple national titles seen the world in training for Tokyo, doing all these cool things, this, that, and the other. My condition hasn't changed one bit. My mindset changed. OK, so if we can ask people to go back to the start of the talk, maybe take those three pieces for resilience, that self-awareness, self-regulation, and ask the questions. And after that, we have to just put some action into place. Like, we can't pamper the subject, you know what I mean? I'm the biggest advocate for mental health in the world, but we really need to just challenge what we think. And sometimes there isn't a why, we just have to get on with it. I think that point to wrap it up and finish on, the email story is so, so powerful. when I shot the clients with limiting beliefs, when you dig deep into it. It's always the story they have playing in their head as to why they can't do it. I was even talking to someone the other day and he was on the fence about coming on should he start with coaching or not. And he's been training away on Zwift because he had a story in his head that coach was for pro athletes that he couldn't get any better with coaching. So I gave him an example of another client it was hesitant and the other client that was hesitant came on. He said a strava time that he's had on the local climb here in the hole. He's had that time for about five years. He's never beat the time.
He's been close to it a few times and he came on and within eight weeks of stepping away from Zwift moving on to a structure trying to plan. He'd taken a minute off his 10 minute time going up there. But as soon as I told this story to the client that was thinking about coming on board, all of a sudden And now we had a new story that trumped his story and it gave him permission to come on and try the coaching because he's like, it worked for him. He's similar to me. It worked for him. Why can't it work for me? We see that was self-defeating stories, the narratives that are gone in our head all the time. We have to just challenge them and that's as simple as that. It's push the boat out. It's easy to tell people to get out the comfort zone. I know that. Right. If it was, why isn't everyone doing it? but it goes back to the stories we tell ourselves. And why not investigate those stories? And not just thinking, Jage, negative thought tends to come in like one sentence. Like, you can't do that. You're shit at this. You'll never be able to do that. You're naturally maths. You're naturally this challenge to share all those things, all right? Investigate it and see what happens. So, so folks, Peter, Ryan, press pause, figure out what you can change, and what you need to accept. Start telling yourself a different story. CIA, my man. Peter, if people want to tell a bit forward or if they're interested in getting into the club or the business to talk about this type of stuff, is that something you offer or is that something you do? Or where can they go and follow your journey? Yeah, 100% like the website in at peterrain.ie. You'll be able to find contact details there and see, I do, look at, I do a bit of executive coach and doing the corporate speaking. And yeah, more so looking in the wellness and leadership space are two of my main topics. Like that's where I think I'm creating a bit of impact. It's where I'm in my happy place when I'm talking about that. And just balancing off of people and like this in a more interactive setting. And yeah, if I can stay a doing it, I'll be happy for a long time. People have called them the Tony Robbins, it's horrible. No matter what it is, cheers anytime. Before you go anywhere, our first ever romance summit had aired back in December. I brought together 30 experts and they shared with me their secrets on how to boil hack your physiology, melt away body fat and smash your cycling goals. airing that back in December. I've just been in on days of my Instagram DM's Twitter direct messages with requests to get access to this material. I hadn't locked up in the vault, but I've decided to open access to this material for you, the podcast listeners at the Roadman Podcast. So to get access to this, it's a one-point payment of €47 and you're going to have all the interviews, all those secrets forever. You're going to have the videos and the MP-Trays. In there I've got interviews, world horror mechanics, nutritionists, sports psychologists, bike fit experts, and some of the legends of the sport like Tyler Hamilton and Pete Sten. Over 30 hours of content in this members area that I've created for you guys. So if you want to get access to that, the way to do it is to head on over to this URL www.roadmansomit.com forward slash 2021. I'll give you that again. It's www.roadmansonic.com forward slash 2021. That's numerical. The link to that is in the bio. Get it, check it out, learn it, take it in because this is sure to set you on the right path for 2021.
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